1540. Giulio was released in 1559 and died, aged eighty-three, in 1561.

These facts deserve to be recorded in connection with Lucrezia's married life at Ferrara, lest we should pay too much attention to the flatteries of Ariosto. At the same time her history as Duchess consists, for the most part, in the record of the birth of children. Like her mother Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity and mercy. After this fashion the bright and baleful dames of the Renaissance saved their souls. But to return to the domestic history of Alexander. The murder of the Duke of Gandia brings the whole Borgia family upon the scene. It is related with great circumstantiality and with surprising sangfroid by Burchard, the Pope's Master of the Ceremonies. The Duke with his brother Cesare, then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their mother Vannozza. On their way home the Duke said that he should visit a lady of their acquaintance. He parted from Cesare and was never seen again alive. When the news of his disappearance spread abroad, a boatman of the Tiber deposed to having watched the body of a man thrown into the river on the night of the Duke's death, the 14th of June; he had not thought it worth while to report this fact, for he had seen 'a hundred bodies in his day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no questions asked about them afterwards.' The Pope had the Tiber dragged for some hours, while the wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true successor of S. Peter, this new fisher of men. At last the body of the Duke of Gandia was hauled up: nine wounds, one in the throat, the others in the head and legs and trunk, were found upon the corpse. From the evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder it appeared that Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have supposed, out of a jealousy of his brother too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable, because he wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, we do not know exactly. The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild beast driven to bay. He shut himself up in a private room, refused food, and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets beyond his palace. When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to have struck him. He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church. But the storm of anguish spent its strength at last. A visit from Vannozza, the mother of his children, wrought a sudden change from fury to reconcilement. What passed between them is not known for certain; Vannozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of the family by his abilities than had been the weak and amiable Duke of Gandia. The miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took food, put from him his remorse, and forgot together with his grief for Absalom the reforms which he had promised for the Church. Henceforth he devoted himself with sustained energy to building up the fortunes of Cesare, whom he released from all ecclesiastical obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by some mysterious power. Nor did he even resent the savageness and cruelty which this young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of his favorites. At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, with his own hand, when the youth had taken refuge in Alexander's arms: the blood spirted out upon the priestly mantle, and the young man died there.[1] At another time he employed the same diabolical temper for the delectation of his father. He turned out some prisoners sentenced to death in a court-yard of the palace, arrayed himself in fantastic clothes, and amused the papal party by shooting the unlucky criminals. They ran round and round the court crouching and doubling to avoid his arrows. He showed his skill by hitting each where he thought fit. The Pope and Lucrezia looked on applaudingly. Other scenes, not of bloodshed, but of groveling sensuality, devised for the entertainment of his father and his sister, though described by the dry pen of Burchard, can scarcely be transferred to these pages. [1] The account is given by Capello, the Venetian envoy. The history of Cesare's attempt to found a principality belongs properly to another chapter.[1] But the assistance rendered by his father is essential to the biography of Alexander. The vision of an Italian sovereignty which Charles of Anjou, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, and Galeazzo Maria Sforza had successively entertained, now fascinated the imagination of the Borgias. Having resolved to make Cesare a prince, Alexander allied himself with Louis XII. of France, promising to annul his first marriage and to sanction his nuptials with Ann of Brittany, if he would undertake the advancement of his son. This bribe induced Louis to create Cesare Duke of Valence and to confer on him the hand of Charlotte of Navarre. He also entered Italy and with his arms enabled Cesare to subdue Romagna. The system adopted by Alexander and his son in their conquests was a simple one. They took the capitals and murdered the princes. Thus Cesare strangled the Varani at Camerino in 1502, and the Vitelli and Orsini at Sinigaglia in the same year: by his means the Marcscotti had been massacred wholesale in Bologna; Pesaro, Rimini, and Forli had been treated in like manner; and after the capture of Faenpza in 1501, the two young Manfredi had been sent to Rome; where they were exposed to the worst insults, drowned or strangled.[2] A system of equal simplicity kept their policy alive in foreign Courts. The Bishop of Cette in France was poisoned for hinting at a secret of Cesare's (1498); the Cardinal d'Amboise was bribed to maintain the credit of the Borgias with Louis XII.; the offer of a red hat to Briçonnet saved Alexander from a general council in 1494. The historical interest of Alexander's method consists of its deliberate adaptation of all the means in his power to one end--the elevation of his family. His spiritual authority, the wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, the arts of an assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, were all devoted systematically and openly to the purpose in view. Whatever could be done to weaken Italy by foreign invasions and internal discords, so as to render it a prey for his poisonous son, he attempted. When Louis XII. made his infamous alliance with Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house of Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanction. The two kings quarreled over their prey: then Alexander fomented their discord in order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his operations in Tuscany unchecked. Patriotism in his breast, whether the patriotism of a born Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate, was as dead as Christianity. To make profit for the house of Borgia by fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, was the Papal policy. [1] See Chapter VI. [2] Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488 by their mother, Francesca Bentivogli. Of Astorre's death Guicciardini writes: 'Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni e di forma eccellente ... condotto a Roma, saziata prima (secondo che si disse) la libidine di qualcuno, fu occultamente insieme con un suo fratello naturale privato della vita.' Nardi (_Storie Florentine_, lib. iv. 13) credits Cesare with the violation and murder of the boy. How far, we may ask, were these dark crimes of violence actuated by astrological superstition? This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363) apropos of Sigismondo Malatesta's assault upon his son, and Pier Luigi Farnese's violation of the Bishop of Fano. To a temperament like Alexander's, however, mere lust enhanced by cruelty, and seasoned with the joy of insult to an enemy, was a sufficient motive for the commission of monstrous crime. It is wearisome to continue to the end the catalogue of his misdoings. We are relieved when at last the final crash arrives. The two Borgias, so runs the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to dine with the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging to their host. Thither by the hands of Alexander's butler they previously conveyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by the contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent, they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Nearly all contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.[1] Yet Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father and son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed his illness to apoplexy.[2] The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths from fever had been frequent. A circular letter to the German Princes, written probably by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, distinctly mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden decease, _ex hoc seculo horrendâ febrium incensione absorptum_.[3] Machiavelli, again, who conversed with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career, gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father being simultaneously prostrated by disease. [1] The story is related by Cinthio in his _Ecatommithi_, December 9, November 10. [2] The various accounts of Alexander's death have been epitomized by Gregorovius (_Stadt Rom_, vol. vii.), and have been discussed by Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani Dispatches, 2 vols. Florence, Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks the question still open. Villari decides in favor of fever against poison. [3] Reprinted by R. Garnett in _Athenæum_, Jan. 16, 1875. At this distance of time, and without further details of evidence, we are unable to decide whether Alexander's death was natural, or whether the singularly circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, in favor of the hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's testimony, which does not, however, exactly agree with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose report, even at Venice, was rejected by Sanudo for the hypothesis of poison. On the other side, we have the consent of all contemporary historians, with the single and, it must be allowed, remarkable exception of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio goes even so far as to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken in his extreme terror to counteract the possibility of poison. Whatever may have been the proximate cause of his sickness, Alexander died, a black and swollen mass, hideous to contemplate, after a sharp struggle with the venom he had absorbed.[1] 'All Rome,' says Guicciardini, 'ran with indescribable gladness to view the corpse. Men could not satiate their eyes with feeding on the carcass of a serpent who, by his unbounded ambition and pestiferous perfidy, by every demonstration of horrible cruelty, monstrous lust, and unheard-of avarice, selling without distinction things sacred and profane, had filled the world with venom.' Cesare languished for some days on a sick bed; but in the end, by the aid of a powerful constitution, he recovered, to find his claws cut and his plans in irretrievable confusion. 'The state of the Duke of Valence,' says Filippo Nerli,[2] 'vanished even as smoke in air, or foam upon the water.' [1] 'Morto chel fu, il corpo cominciò a bollire, e la bocca a spumare come faria uno caldaro al focho, assì perseverò mentre che fu sopra terra; divenne anchor ultra modo grosso in tanto che in lui non apparea forma di corpo humano, ne dala larghezza ala lunghezza del corpo suo era differenzia alcuna' (letter of Marquis of Mantua). [2] _Commentari_, lib, v. The moral sense of the Italians expressed itself after Alexander's death in the legend of a devil, who had carried off his soul. Burchard, Giustiniani, Sanudo, and others mention this incident with apparent belief. But a letter from the Marquis of Mantua to his wife, dated September 22, 1503, gives the fullest particulars: 'In his sickness the Pope talked in such a way that those who did not know what was in his mind thought him wandering, though he spoke with great feeling, and his words were: _I will come; it is but right; wait yet a little while_. Those who were privy to his secret thought, explained that, after the death of Innocent, while the Conclave was sitting, he bargained with the devil for the Papacy at the price of his soul; and among the agreements was this, that he should hold the See twelve years, which he did, with the addition of four days; and some attest they saw seven devils in the room at the moment that he breathed his last.' Mere old wives' tales; yet they mark the point to which the credit of the Borgia had fallen, even in Italy, since the hour when the humanists had praised his godlike carriage and heroic mien upon the day of his election. Thus, overreaching themselves, ended this pair of villains--the most notable adventurers who ever played their part upon the stage of the great world. The fruit of so many crimes and such persistent effort was reaped by their enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, for whose benefit the nobles of the Roman state and the despots of Romagna had been extirpated.[1] Alexander had proved the old order of Catholicity to be untenable. The Reformation was imperiously demanded. His very vices spurred the spirit of humanity to freedom. Before a saintly Pontiff the new age might still have trembled in superstitious reverence. The Borgia to all logical intellects rendered the pretensions of a Pope to sway the souls of men ridiculous. This is an excuse for dwelling so long upon the spectacle of his enormities. Better than any other series of facts, they illustrate, not only the corruption of society, and the separation between morality and religion in Italy, but also the absurdity of that Church policy which in the age of the Renaissance confined the action of the head of Christendom to the narrow interests of a brood of parvenus and bastards. [1] Cesare, it must be remembered, had ostensibly reduced the cities of Lombardy, Romagna, and the March, as Gonfalonier of the Church. Of Pius III., who reigned for a few days after Alexander, no account need be taken. Giuliano della Rovere was made Pope in 1503. Whatever opinion may be formed of him considered as the high-priest of the Christian faith, there can be no doubt that Julius II. was one of the greatest figures of the Renaissance, and that his name, instead of that of Leo X., should by right be given to the golden age of letters and of arts in Rome. He stamped the century with the impress of a powerful personality. It is to him we owe the most splendid of Michael Angelo's and Raphael's masterpieces. The Basilica of S. Peter's, that materialized idea, which remains to symbolize the transition from the Church of the Middle Ages to the modern semi-secular supremacy of Papal Rome, was his thought. No nepotism, no loathsome sensuality, no flagrant violation of ecclesiastical justice, stain his pontificate. His one purpose was to secure and extend the temporal authority of the Popes; and this he achieved by curbing the ambition of the Venetians, who threatened to absorb Romagna, by reducing Perugia and Bologna to the Papal sway, by annexing Parma and Piacenza, and by entering on the heritage bequeathed to him by Cesare Borgia. At his death he transmitted to his successors the largest and most solid sovereignty in Italy. But restless, turbid, never happy unless fighting, Julius drowned the peninsula in blood. He has been called a patriot, because from time to time he raised the cry of driving the barbarians from Italy: it must, however, be remembered that it was he, while still Cardinal di San Pietro in Vincoli, who finally moved Charles VIII. from Lyons; it was he who stirred up the League of Cambray against Venice, and who invited the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy; in each case adding the weight of the Papal authority to the forces which were enslaving his country. Julius, again, has been variously represented as the saviour of the Papacy, and as the curse of Italy.[1] He was emphatically both. In those days of national anarchy it was perhaps impossible for Julius to magnify the Church except at the expense of the nation, and to achieve the purpose of his life without inflicting the scourge of foreign war upon his countrymen. The powers of Europe had outgrown the Papal discipline. Italian questions were being decided in the cabinets of Louis, Maximilian, and Ferdinand. Instead of controlling the arbiters of Italy, a Pope could only play off one against another. [1] 'Fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de' mali d'Italia,' says Guicciardini, _Storia d'Italia_, vol. i. p. 84. 'Der Retter des Papstthums,' says Burckhardt, p. 95. Leo X. succeeded Julius in 1513, to the great relief of the Romans, wearied with the continual warfare of the old _Pontifice terribile_. In the gorgeous pageant of his triumphal procession to the Lateran, the streets were decked with arches, emblems, and inscriptions. Among these may be noticed the couplet emblazoned by the banker Agostino Chigi before his palace: Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora; tempora Mavors Olim habuit; sua nunc tempora Pallas habet. 'Venus ruled here with Alexander; Mars with Julius; now Pallas enters on her reign with Leo.' To this epigram the goldsmith Antonio di San Marco answered with one pithy line: Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypria semper ero: 'Mars reigned; Pallas reigns; Venus' own I shall always be.' This first Pope of the house of Medici enjoyed at Rome the fame of his father Lorenzo the Magnificent at Florence. Extolled as an Augustus in his lifetime, he has given his name to what is called the golden age of Italian culture. As a man, he was well qualified to represent the neo-pagan freedom of the Renaissance. Saturated with the spirit of his period, he had no sympathy with religious earnestness, no conception of moral elevation, no aim beyond a superficial polish of the understanding and the taste. Good Latinity seemed to him of more importance than true doctrine: Jupiter sounded better in a sermon than Jehovah; the immortality of the soul was an open topic for debate. At the same time he was extravagantly munificent to men of culture, and hearty in his zeal for the diffusion of liberal knowledge. But what was reasonable in the man was ridiculous in the pontiff. There remained an irreconcilable incongruity between his profession of the Primacy of Christianity and his easy epicurean philosophy. Leo, like all the Medici after the first Cosimo, was a bad financier. His reckless expenditure contributed in no small measure to the corruption of Rome and to the ruin of the Latin Church, while it won the praises of the literary world. Julius, who had exercised rigid economy, left 700,000 ducats in the coffers of S. Angelo. The very jewels of Leo's tiara were pledged to pay his debts, when he died suddenly in