The Fall of the House of Borgia

by E R Chamberlin

  Reading Guicciardini's confident, unqualified statement, no one could guess that the conclave was among the most mysterious ever held, that its inherent contradictions totally confused contemporary Romans, much less a Florentine living and writing a generation later. The records of the conclave itself gave no certain clue. There was no Piccolomini to break the rules and transmit to posterity his priceless account of the negotiations as had been done in 1458. Johannes Burchard, the master of ceremonies, was stationed at the hatch through which food was passed and was therefore in a good position to pick up authentic information at the source. He probably recorded it in his immense diary, but that section is missing. The scrutiny lists of the conclave survived, but they merely tell how the members voted, not why. The elaborate ceremonial of secrecy whereby the conclavists were literally immured served merely to distort, not conceal, what really happened. Those conclavists who eventually talked were men intent upon justifying themselves or displaying their virtuous abstention from unholy actions. And the sum of their later accusations was that Borgia literally bought the votes of thirteen of the cardinals in order to secure a majority, carefully grading his bribes according to the voter's own chance of success, so that the ninety-six-year-old Cardinal of Venice received a mere five thousand ducats while, at the other extreme Ascanio Sforza, the prime favorite, received not only a vast quantity of bullion but also the pick of Borgia's own offices, including that of vice-chancellor.

  The observer following the path of Borgia's life repeatedly encounters at vital points a curious web of contradictions, a web so tangled that the following of separate strands can lead to totally opposing conclusions. Most of these webs were of Borgia's own construction, the product of a subtle but limited mind intent upon defending its own and indifferent to the interpretations that might be placed upon his actions. It is out of these contradictions that the more lurid charges against him were to be manufactured, particularly the tangled legal web he wove around his family which made inherently credible the otherwise grotesque charge of incest. But the contradictions in the conclave which brought Borgia from the wings to the center of the stage were, for once, none of his making. Nevertheless, the pattern endures so that it is possible to argue with almost equal force and logic that he committed simony on an unprecedented scale, or that he was simply the victim of appearances.

  It was not inherently improbable that naked bribery with actual money should play a part in a conclave. Piccolomini's candid evidence had made that quite clear even thirty years before, and matters had deteriorated considerably since then. Rather more complex—bordering, indeed, upon the metaphysical—was the charge that Borgia had committed simony by promising Sforza the office of vice- chancellor in exchange for his vote. If this were simony then the honorable Piccolomini had been just as guilty in confirming Borgia in that same office for the same reason, and guilty, too, was every newly elected pope who distributed his necessarily vacated benefices and offices among his friends rather than among his enemies.

  In any case, Borgia could have continued his defense, what bribe could a conclavist offer to a rival that could possibly compensate him for the loss of so universal and so absolute a power? Ascanio Sforza had stood on the brink of success. His only two rivals had been Borgia, and della Rovere. Borgia was personally popular and known to be highly competent, but was compromised by his nationality, while della Rovere had not only incautiously displayed his true nature while in a position of power during the previous pontificate, but was also known to be strongly pro-French. It was rumored, indeed, that the king of France had contributed some two hundred thousand florins to his campaign fund. As usual, the favorite had emerged not so much because the conclave liked the idea of him as pope, as that it disliked the idea of one of his rivals emerging as supreme lord. Reluctantly, the cardinals were opening a path by which Ascanio Sforza could ascend the throne—and then he abruptly drew back. Why should he do this, accepting the lesser for the greater?

  The Roman observers were content to accept the fact without delving into the reason. Each man, after all, had his price, and the Roman chronicler Infessura came forward with the dramatic story of how four mules loaded with bullion were seen to pass from Borgia's palace to Sforza's during the small hours of the morning of the conclave, the precious load constituting the cash element in the transaction. Infessura was a republican and bore so bitter a hatred for the papacy that, in his chronicle, the woman's milk that was administered to the dying Innocent was transformed by Infessura into blood taken from children at the cost of their lives. But liars can also tell the truth, and his charge that Sforza succumbed to bribery was endorsed by the Milanese chronicler, Bernadino Corio, a temperate and well-informed man who was naturally sympathetic toward a leading member of Milan's great family. He knew Ascanio Sforza well and so was able to give some insight into the reason why a man in such a position might sell his vote. In Corio's view, Ascanio was something of a simpleton, a man who lacked the courage to stake everything on a single throw of the dice and therefore accepted immediate wealth, together with an immensely powerful office, with the intention of fighting another day from a secure base. He made a fatal mistake, Corio believed, and so, with a certain justice, was responsible for his own ultimate destruction.

  Apart from Corio's judgment and the cynical, though not necessarily inaccurate opinion of the Romans, the silence of those accused provided a powerful, if negative, indication that Borgia's election was indeed a criminal act, for that silence looks uncommonly like the silence of guilt in the circumstances. Eighteen months after the election a massive international movement was made to oust Alexander from the throne. The major accusation was that his simony had invalidated his election, and he made no attempt to counter that particular charge. Moreover, bribery was a two-way business, as Guicciardini pointed out honestly enough, and if Alexander was guilty so too were those who "without any regard to the precepts of the Gospel, were not ashamed of making a traffic of the sacred treasures, and that in the most high and eminent seat of the Christian religion." Those who had accepted the bribe also remained silent under the accusation. Objectively speaking, it seems probable that Borgia did indeed buy the majority of his votes, but that the prevailing situation of corruption made his act appear virtually normal, and it was not until a legal weapon was sought against him that the charge was formalized and thereby entered the canon of Borgia legend as a uniquely wicked act.

  Hindsight has luridly colored the reaction to his election, but at the time it was welcomed heartily enough even though it had come as a surprise. The Roman populace, which had often enjoyed Borgia's lavish public entertainments, looked forward to a glittering pontificate of pleasure. The princes of Italy and Europe came to the reasonable conclusion that no pontificate could possibly be as bad as the last, a conclusion backed by the members of the Curia itself, who had nothing but good to say of Borgia's solid professional competence. Doubtless many of the compliments were the product of protocol rather than affection, but most seem to have been imbued with a genuine respect for the man and hope for the future. Ferrante of Naples sounded a sour note: "Upon hearing the news he dissembled his grief in public but with tears—which he was not accustomed to shed at the death of his children—told his queen that this creation would prove fatal to Italy and a scandal to Christendom."18 But given Ferrante's character and the long-drawn struggle between the papacy and the Kingdom of Naples, Alexander Borgia might reasonably have concluded that a Neapolitan insult equaled a compliment from any other source.

  He began his reign with a characteristic admixture of good sense and ostentation that appealed at once to the sober minority as well as the majority ever agog for new sensations. It was a secretary of the Chancery who noted that, as cardinal, Borgia had attended every consistory for thirty-seven years, a record impressive in itself and outstanding in an administration where the frivolous were increasingly in evidence. One of the results of the increasingly corrupt administration of the papacy was the complete c
ollapse of law and order during the interregnum between the old and new pontificates. There were riots, the product of pure hooliganism, but unconnected with any political object. Over two hundred people were murdered in a little over ten days and ordinary life in Rome came virtually to a standstill. Alexander acted vigorously. Murderers, instead of flaunting themselves as folk heroes, found themselves pursued, apprehended and hanged—not from the traditional gallows near Sant' Angelo but over the razed ruins of their own homes. For a brief period the papal troops became the symbol of law instead of a weapon in a dynastic struggle; so that by August 26, when Alexander's coronation took place, Rome was as quiet and orderly as it was ever likely to be.

  Borgia's supreme cultural gift was an ability to organize ceremonials. In another age and another milieu he would have been a superb theatrical producer. On the occasion of his coronation on August 26, two weeks after his election, he surpassed himself. The ceremony was the oldest such in Europe, older by far than the coronation even of the emperor. For more than a thousand years the crowning of a pope had gathered to itself a wealth of symbols, each having originally possessed a precise legal meaning now forgotten, thus becoming part of the mystery of the popedom but providing opportunity for brilliant display. Borgia turned his lively mind and deep purse upon the ancient ritual and produced a ceremony whose magnificence seems to have taken even Rome by surprise.

  Bernadino Corio was in Rome that August and devoted page after page of his chronicle to it, groping for ever more adjectives to describe adequately this dawn-burst of the Renaissance over the ancient city. At St. Peter's, where Alexander was crowned and emerged to display himself, "there was an incredible crowd of prelates—a most wonderful thing to see for each was wearing his mitre and each was adorned according to his particular office. One after another the cardinals advanced to kiss his feet, his hand and his mouth and all the other prelates followed suit." 19

  The second part of the ceremony, that in which Rome as a whole took part, was the procession across the width of the city to take formal possession of the ancient Lateran Palace. Corio seems to have followed it the entire way, beginning with the assembling of the procession in the piazza of St. Peter's. He cast a particular eye on the Milanese archbishop who might have been the center of all this splendor. "The first was he who was blind to his own fate —that is to say, Ascanio Sforza—attended by twelve pages, each dressed in jerkins of crimson satin, purple capes and carrying batons bearing the arms of Visconti and Sforza." 19 Each of the cardinals who followed was attended by his official "family"—retainers dressed in his colors—so that the great square was a blaze of crimson and silver, purple, violet, gold, the colors clashing with the scarcely less gaudy trappings of the papal troops—twenty squadrons of mounted men under the command of the captain, Niccolo Orsini. There were "seven hundred priests and cardinals with their retinues, knights and grandees of Rome in dazzling cavalcade, troops of archers and Turkish horsemen, palace guards with long lances and glittering shields." Civic and papal Rome were briefly united in one dazzling splendor of pageantry.

  In the center the pope himself—Alexander VI, "Sovereign Pontiff and Universal Pope, Servant of the Servants of God, Supreme Lord of Rome and of the Papal States,"— benign, reveling in the magnificence which he had conjured in a matter of days. He was an impressive enough figure in his own right but after the ailing Innocent, Borgia struck the Romans as a man capable of living up even to the grandiloquent name he had chosen. Another eyewitness, Michael Ferno, described Borgia's appearance in terms suitable for a national hero and only just this side of idolatry.

  Upon a snow-white horse he sat, serene of countenance and of passing dignity. Thus he showed himself to the people and blessed them: thus he was seen of all. His glance fell upon them and filled every heart with joy. And so his appearance was of good augury for everyone. How wonderful is his tranquil bearing. And how noble his faultless face. His glance, how frank. How greatly does the honor we feel for him increase when we behold his beauty and dignity of body.

  Ferno's hyperbole was doubtless the automatic flattery of a hungry scholar keeping an eye open for preferment, but it reflected Roman opinion accurately enough, for the Romans were as quick to worship as they were to destroy.

  The assembled procession moved off on its long route —past Sant' Angelo, where the great cannon boomed and the men-at-arms stationed thickly between the battlements added brilliant color to the cold stone; over the bridge and past the Torre Nona, the latter innocent of its usual dangling corpse; through the narrow streets of Parione with the sinister names proclaiming their proximity to Rome's official torture chamber—down through the Street of the Executioner, the Street of the Cord and so on—into the handsome Via Papalis. The day was hot, the crowds immense, the water with which the sweepers had cooled the streets having long since evaporated so that "there was so much dust that it was almost impossible to see the sky." Past the Pantheon, the home of the old gods witnessing the triumph of the servant of the new; past the Forum, now grass-grown, its name forgotten along with its glory so that men knew it now simply as the Cow Field, a useful place for pasturing cattle in the heart of the city, past the Colosseum; past the buried Golden House of Nero.

  Corio was particularly impressed by the immense triumphal arches that had been erected in a matter of days, and though for an ephemeral purpose appeared permanent, towering over the surrounding roofs. And everywhere was visible the ox emblem of the Borgia—as a statue with water and wine pouring from it; as a medallion, embroidered on banners and gonfalons, painted on walls. That emblem would take on a ferocious character later, but the inscriptions that now proclaimed Alexander a god— Jove himself—hailed his emblem not as the destroying bull but as the benevolent ox, symbol of fertility and promised abundance.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, the procession reached the Lateran and there Alexander fainted, for despite his health and vigor he was sixty-one years old and much tried by that day's events. "All the court were dead with fatigue from the dust, heat and the rest," a member of the procession later remembered. "You can imagine what it was like having to ride eight or ten miles at a stretch through such crowded streets." 21 Reviving, the pope completed the ceremonies, earning the admiration of onlookers. "Alexander assumed the pontificate with the meekness of the ox—he administered it like a lion."

  Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI was not only the vicar of Christ, believed to be the unique successor of the Apostle and thus charged with the burden of all human souls. He was also the head of the world's largest organization, a bureaucracy so enormous that its functioning seemed a daily miracle. Externally, the Curia resembled a species of dinosaur lumbering along its chosen path, unaffected by outside stimuli, but internally it was flexible enough. No organization could have survived the trauma of the past century unless capable of some degree of adaptation.

  The most obvious change was the increased status of the cardinals. Princes though they were in every sense of the word, they had always been, paradoxically, the guardians of the democratic element in the Church, exerting a continual braking pressure upon the theoretically absolute power of the pope. Over the past century, when councils convened by cardinals had dared to pronounce upon the validity of this or that pope, the cardinals' power had increased. Before each election now, each member of the conclave signed an agreement that should he emerge as pope, he would recognize the privileges of the cardinals, refrain from adding to their number without their approval and contribute, if necessary, to their financial upkeep. Alexander automatically had signed that agreement—and as automatically made a mental reservation, for who could tie the universal pope, to whom had been given all powers of binding and loosing, to a promise made when he had been but cardinal? Nevertheless, the wise man moved cautiously in these uncertain times. It was not his intention to exert his will in a head-on clash with these proud men but, rather, through the smoother, surer method of simply diluting the power of the college by packing it with his own
supporters.

  The declared annual income of the cardinals varied widely, from a minimum of two thousand ducats a year to Giuliano della Rovere's income of twenty thousand ducats. But the overt wealth of a cardinal, even his family connections, was of less direct importance than the influence he enjoyed in an organization which had to delegate power in order to operate at all. The administration of the Church was divided into three concentric rings. The outer ring was Christendom itself, with the apostolic power dividing and subdividing into ever smaller channels until at last it passed through the humble parish priests from Iceland to Africa.

  There, the permanent representative of the pope was the bishop, but there was always the danger that he might identify himself too closely with local patriotism or succumb to the pressure of the local monarch. In moments of crisis, therefore, the cardinal legate was dispatched to the locality, armed with the absolute powers of the pope himself for a limited period.