Chapter 16: The March of the Nephews
Pater Romae
)
)
)
1. The new pope would pay one hundred ducats per month to every cardinal whose yearly income totaled less than four thousand ducats.
2. A crusade would be launched against the Turks.
3. The Roman curia would be completely reformed.
4. No one under thirty would be named a cardinal.
5. No more than one relative of the pope could become a cardinal.
6. The total number of cardinals would be permanently fixed at twenty-four.
)
The approach lacked subtlety, but it worked; Cardinal Civò became Pope Innocent VIII. In all of papal history his eight-year pontificate may contain the most astounding concentration of curiosities.
)
• Innocent openly recognized at least two illegitimate children,[4] Franceschetto and Theorina, who were probably born before Civò was ordained. Rumor attributed to the pope an additional fourteen or more offspring. In all cases the mothers were married. A popular couplet described him with these words:
Octo nocens pueros genuit totidemque puellas,
Hunc merito poterit dicere Roma patrem.
)
The wicked[5] man fathered eight boys and as many girls;
Thus Rome will justly be able to call him father.
• Pope Innocent was Rome’s worst ruler since Caligula. The crime rate during his pontificate was astounding. Rape and murder were commonplace throughout the city. “No morning dawned without revealing corpses in the street.”[6] If that account even approximates the truth, then Rome, a town too small for a mall by today’s standards, witnessed as many murders as twenty-first century New York.[7] Churches were routinely looted; even the True Cross was stolen for its mountings.
One obvious source of the crime problem was the pope’s approach to law enforcement. Trial and imprisonment were rare. Instead, fines that enriched the pope’s son, Franceschetto, and the vice-chancellor, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, were levied. Borgia has been widely quoted as explaining that “God desires not the death of the sinner, but rather that he should pay and live.” The fines soon became a calculable cost of criminal enterprise. This attitude might have been Borgia’s idea. Even so, the pope could easily have put the kibosh on these shenanigans, but he never did.
)
• Pope Innocent initiated the Church’s long futile effort to control printing. By this time a significant number of written works had been published, especially in Germany. The pope issued a universally binding bull prescribing censorship of all books. The bishops were ordered to enforce it, but most paid little heed to his unfunded mandate.
)
)
• The pontiff kept for the Church a priceless object recovered from the Muslims – a piece of metal identified as the Lance of Longinus. Everyone from the pope down to the most disease-riddled prostitute became convinced that it was the same scrap of iron that Peter Bartholomew had produced in St. Peter’s Church in Antioch during the First Crusade, the spearhead allegedly used over fourteen centuries earlier to pierce Jesus’s side. And yet:
)
1. The item had been missing for hundreds of years.
2. Its source was the hated Turks, who had already conquered the Christian city of Constantinople and obviously coveted the rest of Europe.
3. Peter Bartholomew’s trial by fire had denied the authenticity of the piece.
4. At least two other European cities, Nuremburg and Paris, claimed to possess the original lance.
)
• Pope Innocent lacked interest in a crusade to the Holy Land, but in 1487 he declared a mini-crusade in the Dauphiné region of France against the Waldensian fundamentalist sect. Its leaders preached that the popes and bishops were guilty of homicide in the crusades.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
)
)
Popes had occasionally addressed the subject of witchcraft. Pope Gregory IX in 1233 detailed the obscene ways in which devils and demons procreated with women to create witches. St. Thomas Aquinas, whom two popes had declared an authoritative guide on all matters theological, expounded upon the sexual congress of humans and demons and the magical powers of women. Pope Eugene IV often spoke of pacts between humans and demons. None, however, went as far as Pope Innocent, whose famous bull, “Summis Desiderantes Affectibus,” attributed to witches the power to render men and women sterile, to slay infants in the womb, to destroy crops, and to kill animals. It specifically targeted the areas of Mainz, Cologne, Treves, Salzburg, and Bremen, which were reportedly (Pope Innocent never personally visited these cauldrons of iniquity) teeming with witches. Thenceforward denial of witchcraft officially constituted heresy, punishable throughout Europe by death on the pyre. Pope Innocent’s actions brought witchcraft under the Inquisition’s purview and subjected all accused witches to torture and, when they confessed, public burning.
)
)
The crackdown was counterproductive; the practice of witchcraft increased dramatically. Black masses and other occult rituals described in Malleus Maleficarum became much more commonplace. Women actually accused themselves of witchcraft. In a few cases whole convents of nuns met their end in flames. Wow! Thank goodness Sr. Mary Immaculata never taught us about that development. Any thought of flaming nuns would have doubtless generated unwholesome notions in the minds of restive ruffians in her class.
)
)
)
)
The practical difference is even more striking. Even in Pope Innocent’s time doubting a matter of faith was not generally dangerous as long as one kept silent. Discretion, however, was no safeguard against an accusation of witchcraft. A single woman past her prime faced jeopardy any time that a tragedy befell her community. Once accused of witchcraft, a woman’s chances before an Inquisitor were not good. Fortunately, the attitude of the Church has evolved. Bringing up the subject of witches is now considered bad form. Most theologians today consider “Summis Desiderantes Affectibus” an embarrassment. For example, few modern clergymen would site it or Malleus Maleficarum to convince the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the successor institution to the Inquisition, that Hillary Clinton was a witch.
)
)
We had also heard stories of regular people being burned to death. S’ter explained how the Romans tried to execute St. Lawrence on the spit. “Turn me over,” he said. “I’m done on this side.” I have no recollection of any such description of burnings in which Christians lit the fires.
Family Values in the Papacy
)
)
)
)
)
In fairness one should also note a few positives about Rodrigo Borgia. This remarkably accomplished man managed the Church’s finances for thirty-seven years over the course of five pontificates during which the papacy emerged from near extinction to a state of fabulous wealth. To a great extent Cardinal Borgia is rightly credited for this stunning turnaround. His methods may not have been strictly kosher, but they worked.
)
)
Pope Alexander somehow saved the papacy in an extremely dark hour. Before due homage is paid to his greatest trick, however, a few unusual aspects of his pontificate deserve attention. His Holiness had a well-earned reputation as a party animal. When still a cardinal he was chastised in writing by Pope Pius II for participating in a bacchanalia in Siena. This letter is widely quoted. “We have heard that the most licentious dances were indulged in, none of the allurements of love were lacking, and you conducted yourself in a wholly worldly manner. Shame forbids mention of all that took place. … All of Siena is talking about this orgy.” Alexander VI’s coronation party was another world-class bash. By all accounts it put to shame all previous celebrations. The city was festooned with images of the bull passant, the symbol of the Borgias. A fountain in the shape of a bull was constructed. Wine flowed from some orifices, water from others. His Holiness also enlivened the Roman social calendar with many lavish entertainments, including bullfights in the Piazza San Pietro and some memorable orgies.
)
)
The pope’s sober master of ceremonies, Johann Burchard, wrote of another famous party. The pope and his daughter Lucretia (also written Lucrezia) were on the judging panel as fifty prostitutes and as many palace servants vied in a sort of sexual “So You Think You Can Dance” for prizes offered by the Holy See. After the competition, chestnuts were dispersed around candelabra. The naked harlots and their ad hoc partners scurried around on hands and knees to gather them.
Two other papal fetes were equally notorious. One featured stallions and mares herded into a Vatican courtyard, where they were encouraged to mate for the Borgias’ amusement. In another Caesar reportedly shot down criminals who were driven like animals within bowshot. It has also been alleged that Caesar could behead a bull with one fell stroke, but unless he had access to Luke Skywalker’s light saber, that yarn has one too many bulls for my taste. A bullfrog certainly, a bulldog maybe, but male bovines have awfully thick necks. Who can say? Caesar certainly knew a trick or two.
) Definitely. | ) Quite possibly. | ) Not so sure. |
Pope Alexander skillfully augmented the cardinal-packing trick with a simony flourish. The thirteen cardinals named in the first year included Alexander Farnese, the brother of the pope’s young mistress. Most others paid for the privilege. In 1496 four Spanish cardinals were named, including the pope’s nephew, Giovanni Borgia.[16] The next year the red hat was placed on the comely head of the pope’s twenty-two year-old son, Caesar. In 1500 positions for a dozen more cardinals were created; the revenues funded Caesar’s adventures. In 1503 another nine men were awarded the purple.[17] These appointments simultaneously assured the papacy’s solvency and the durability of Alexander’s influence.
)
Pope Alexander was remarkably tolerant of Jews and Muslims. He did not inherit his predecessor’s obsession with witchcraft; he was accused by some of being a sorcerer himself. A future pope asserted that he was a closet Jew or Muslim. All these claims were completely baseless. Seldom has anyone been slandered more than Alexander VI and his children. Many people insisted that the pope had concocted a poison called “white powder” that mysteriously remained latent in a victim’s digestive system for a few days or weeks and then turned toxic when the Borgias had established alibis. The pope’s arrogance and his son Caesar’s ruthlessness made many enemies. Every strange or violent crime that befell anyone close to the pope’s family was pinned on the Borgias by one chronicler or another. Here is a partial list.
• Many have asserted that Rodrigo Borgia killed a playmate when he was twelve.
)
• In June of 1497 the pope’s son Giovanni, the Duke of Gandia, was tied up and stabbed a dozen or so times; his throat was slit; then he was thrown in the Tiber. The pontiff ordered a search for his son’s body and was devastated when it was recovered. The crime was never solved. Despite the lack of evidence, some saw this as Caesar’s work. Although Caesar eventually did assume the role of Captain-General of the Church, he inherited neither his brother’s land nor his title.
• In September 1497 three servants of the Archbishop of Cosenza were caught with forged documents. The pope cast the archbishop into a cell in Castel Sant’Angelo, where he was put on a diet of bread and water until he expired. The three minions were treated to a more rapid and much warmer death in the Campo di Fiori.
)
• During his protracted siege of the town of Faenza, Caesar hung a local citizen named Grammante who had brought Caesar information about weaknesses in the town’s defenses. Previously Caesar had sent to the gallows two men who had violated his order against pillaging Forli. Expecting clemency from Caesar Borgia was a mistake, often a fatal one.
• Astorre and Gianevangelista Manfredi, the hereditary rulers of Faenza, were incarcerated permanently in Castel Sant’Angelo. Caesar had previously agreed to release the valorous teenager Astorre; he never explained his change of heart.
)
• Thirty women were captured and brought back to Rome after Caesar’s siege of Capua. Guicciardini upped the number to forty and claimed that Caesar claimed them for his harem.
)
• In Victor Hugo’s play Lucretia Borgia poisons everyone and his pet hamster. In real life she was known as a rather passive figure.
)
• The leaders of a revolt against Caesar’s forces were duped into a meeting in Sinigaglia when they thought that Caesar was at his weakest. He arrested and tried them. All save the Orsinis were strangled.
)
• Cardinal Giovanni Michieli died within six weeks of contacting a violent illness. Years later a subdeacon named Asquino de Colloredo confessed under torture that the pope and Caesar had forced him to poison the cardinal. The ambassador to Venice reported that Pope Alexander had confiscated the cardinal’s possessions on the night of his demise.
• Some attributed Cardinal Gianbattista Ferrari’s death to the Borgia’s white powder.
• After a supper party at Cardinal Corneto’s villa both the pope and Caesar became violently ill. Caesar recovered, but the pontiff died. Pietro Martire d’Anghiera wrote from Spain that their attempt to poison the host had misfired. The Borgias allegedly acted in a clumsy or incompetent manner. If so, it was the only time either man displayed either quality. D’Anghiera also claimed that Caesar, who was completely incapacitated for months and actually lost a layer of skin as a result of the illness, recovered by being dunked in a jar of ice water. The explanation evolved into the claim that he had been wrapped in the entrails of a recently killed mule. In a later version the mule transmuted into a bull.
Dodging the French Bullet
)
In any fair contest no one would bet on Charles over the pope. Charles was a short ugly man whose meager intellect was demonstrated by the fact that he died in a coma after striking his head while walking through a doorway. Thirty-nine years younger than the pope, he knew little of the world’s ways. Alexander was large, handsome, charming, and athletic. People magazine named him the sexiest man alive every year from his appointment in 1455 as vice-chancellor until his son Caesar began beheading bulls and stealing hearts in 1492. Pope Alexander was also as crafty as anyone who ever donned the tiara.
)
Charles and his army retraced Hannibal’s route across the Alps. The campaign through the Papal States separating the north from Naples started quite well. In only two months the king, his troops, and his cannons were in the Eternal City. The outlook for Alexander’s papacy was dismal:
)
• The Orsinis offered to admit the French to their castles.
• The Turkish sultan’s offer of financial support to the pope in exchange for Djem’s murder[22] had been intercepted and was in Charles’s hands.
• Cardinal Della Rovere and other influential clerics encouraged the king to depose the pope and convene a council to name a replacement.
• The pope’s army, mostly mercenaries of questionable dependability, was no match for Charles’s.
• He abandoned his alliance with the Neapolitan regime. He had cemented it a few months earlier by marrying one of his sons into the royal family of Aragon.
• He named two French bishops as cardinals.
• He ceded a few papal properties to the king for the housing of his troops.
• He turned Djem over to the French.
• He granted free passage to the French army through the Papal States.
• He ordered his son Caesar to accompany King Charles on his journey to Naples as a hostage.
)
)
After the French had been repulsed, Pope Alexander could be found sitting tranquilly in his Vatican apartment contemplating the prayerful pose chosen by Pinturicchio for the papal portrait.[24] The pontiff bestowed on the assembled staff his most fulsome grin and then reached between his clenched teeth. He leaned over, ducked his head to one side, and produced – a cannonball! He arched his eyebrows and showed everyone assembled the quite legible markings of King Charles VIII of France.
Fired Up in Florence
)
)
)
)
)
Not long after Charles left town, the Medicis were overthrown in a bloodless coup. Florence then established a religious democracy with no official leader. Its constitution, approved by the pope himself, was based on the fear of God, the promotion of the public welfare, and amnesty for political prisoners. It established a council called the Signoria that was similar to Venice’s, but without a doge. Although Savonarola held no official position in the government, he inspired all the laws. Little was done without his approval. That a democracy piloted by an unelected fanatical mystic could be quite effective defies all expectations. Nevertheless, Savonarola succeeded primarily because his first priority was the people’s welfare. He implemented many policies aimed at income redistribution, full employment, and removal of corruption. He was a popular ruler.
)
Florence had been plagued by juvenile delinquency. In carnival season boys had engaged in “the festival of the stones,” in which they extorted money from their elders, performed wild nocturnal dances around bonfires, and threw rocks at citizens and their houses. In 1497’s carnival, by contrast, followers of Savonarola encouraged people to donate their costliest possessions to the poor. Young people collected various “vanities” – masks, dice games, and other objects related to carnivals of yore – from the citizenry. They piled the knickknacks in the Piazza della Signoria and set them ablaze.[26]
Having cleaned his own house, Savonarola directed his attention to the rest of Italy. He railed against the widespread corruption, unrepentant simony, nepotism, flagrant immorality, murder, rape, and unbridled mayhem throughout the peninsula. He named names, and Pope Alexander VI’s topped his list. The wily pope attempted to win over Savonarola by offering to make him a cardinal. The only documented downside to the red hat was that after a night of carousing it tended to bring out unsightly blood vessels in a cardinal’s eyes. The income was fabulous, and the work was negligible. A cardinal’s sole discernible responsibility was attending conclaves. Savonarola, however, refused to become beholden to the Holy See. He replied, “No hat will I have but that of a martyr reddened with my own blood.”
)
While the Medicis plotted to regain power by stirring up anti-Savonarola feelings in Florence, the pope subjugated St. Mark’s to a Dominican outpost in Tuscany. Savonarola would not yield. He sometimes temporarily submitted to the pope’s demands to stop preaching, but he always returned to the pulpit. Alexander promised to treat Savonarola well if the Florentines handed him over. Nevertheless, everything indicated that the tricky pontiff was determined to use one artifice or another to make the monk disappear.
The word spread through Florence that the controversy over Savonarola would be settled by a trial by fire. Nothing excites the popular imagination like the prospect of a white-hot flame in close proximity to human flesh. On April 7, 1498, two stacks of wood in the Piazza della Signoria were soaked with pitch and oil. The course was sixty feet long. A Franciscan monk, Francesco da Puglia, had loudly volunteered to prove Savonarola a false prophet through ordeal by fire. However, in the end Da Puglia withdrew in favor of Julian Rondinelli. Savonarola declined to participate personally, but he allowed his friend and supporter, Fra Domenico da Pescia, to submit to the trial. The event was officially sanctioned by the Signoria. Ordeals by fire were extremely rare. Florentines camped overnight in the square to secure a good view of the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle.
)
)
The Things That Are Caesar’s
)
)
1. The French king journeyed to Rome to petition Pope Alexander for a divorce. Almost simultaneously the pope asked Louis to make Caesar Duke of Valentinois. He also enlisted the king’s help in arranging a marriage for Caesar with Carlotta of Aragon, the heiress-apparent to the throne of Naples.
)
3. Caesar discarded his red hat.
4. The duke, the king, cases of jewels and rich fabrics, and hundreds of attendants set sail for France. Caesar brought with him the dispensation for the king’s marriage as well as a promotion to cardinal for the Bishop of Rouen.
5. Carlotta spurned Caesar’s courtship.
)
7. France and Venice signed a treaty. The pope was a silent partner in the alliance.
8. Caesar married Charlotte, and she quickly became pregnant.
9. King Louis brought his army to Italy; Caesar accompanied him. Louis conquered Milan; Caesar watched.
)
11. King Louis provided Caesar with a formidable army; the pope gave him a fat book of blank checks.
12. Cardinal Della Rovere abandoned his relatives and sided with Caesar and the pope.
13. In the pope’s name the inexperienced Caesar conquered one town after another in the Romagna. Many towns welcomed him as a liberator; a few offered significant resistance. No one, however, could stop him.
)
)
In 1503 malcontents seized the opportunity afforded by the pope’s death and Caesar’s long debilitating illness to foment revolutions. Even after Caesar recovered, he never again dominated Italian politics. Cardinal Della Rovere, who had furiously opposed and then warmly supported the Borgias, struck a deal with Caesar after Pope Alexander’s death. He later drove Caesar into exile. Caesar’s short life witnessed many more adventures before he died a mercenary’s death in 1507, nineteen years after his wedding. He never laid eyes on either his wife or his daughter after he returned to Italy.
Alexander’s Big Finish
)
)
)
The next pope after Alexander was Pius III – the perfect papal candidate. He was the nephew of Pope Pius II, and he was in poor health. He confirmed Caesar Borgia, who was still extremely ill, as Gonfalonier. He then set to work on a program of reform. His promising pontificate, however, lasted less than one month.
The Sword-Bearer
The second conclave of October 1503 was a quick one. The cardinals were worried about the pope running amok again. They came up with the novel idea of the following “capitulation,” to which all the cardinals consented.
• The war against the Turks would be continued.
• A general council would be called within two years for the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline. Its location would be approved by two-thirds of the cardinals.
• War and all other important matters, including the expansion of the College of Cardinals, would require permission of two-thirds of the cardinals.
)
)
Why would any cardinal expect a wheeler-dealer like Cardinal Della Rovere to fulfill his commitments? Throughout history popes almost always ignored capitulations. Cardinal Della Rovere repeatedly had changed allegiance to promote his and his relatives’ interests. Maybe the bargaining position of the Spanish cardinals was so weak that they had to negotiate the best deal possible. In any event Pope Julius soon demanded from Caesar the keys to his towns in the Romagna and then arrested Caesar and forced him to return the money seized by Michelotto on Pope Alexander’s death. Subsequently the young Borgia was double-crossed and taken prisoner by the Spanish Captain in Naples.
Pope Julius began making his own mark by mending fences with the powerful Italian families – the Caetanis, the Colonnas, and the Orsinis. He arranged marriages between his own relatives and their eligible scions. With these affairs in order, the pope took off the gloves, or rather he put on the gauntlets. In 1506 he personally donned armor and led the army[33] in successful assaults upon Perugia and Bologna, two papal cities that had recently exercised some independence. Throughout his pontificate he accompanied his troops on most campaigns. These were not photo ops with fake turkeys; the pope experienced the hardships of battle including the unpalatable grub and sleeping on the ground. What a sight this old-timer must have been, and what an inspiration to the soldiers!
)
)
Pope Julius hired the Swiss Guards to defend the Vatican and to drive the French from Italy. The papal and Spanish forces, accompanied by the young Medici cardinal, were defeated by the French at Ravenna on Easter Sunday of 1512. The pope’s will never faltered. He hired more Swiss troops, enticed the Venetians he had previously humiliated into joining his cause, and expelled the French. He then purchased Siena from the emperor and dissuaded him from further incursions into Italy. All that remained to complete papal domination of the Italian peninsula was the removal of the Spanish from the Kingdom of Naples. However, in 1513 as Pope Julius neared the age of seventy, he died before he could begin that campaign.
Julius’s Legacy
Julius transformed the Papal States into a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, subsequent popes were unable to keep the northern cities on such a short leash, and invasions of Italy by other European countries soon resumed. Nevertheless, Julius’s successful military campaigns firmly established the pope’s suzerainty in central Italy. The Papal States lasted for another 350 years.
)
Pope Julius spent heavily on his wars, and his tiara cost a fortune. Nevertheless, at his death the Church’s fiscal condition was healthy because of the expansion of the territories that the papacy controlled and the money-making schemes inherited from his predecessors. Compared with the other popes of his era, Julius was reasonably frugal.
)
The pope finally convened his own council in the Lateran in 1512. It declared the bishops attending the Pisan council schismatic and placed all of France under interdict. For the fifth session of the council the pope published a bull condemning simony in papal elections. Of the many strong contenders for this title in Church history, this was perhaps the most flagrant example of “do as I say, not as I do.”
)
)
Sr. Mary Immaculata would have scolded such a judgment. “‘Let he who is without fault cast the first stone.’ And we all know someone who would NEVER qualify for that honor, don’t we, class?”
“Yes, Sister.”
[1] “A Papal Retrospect,” op. cit., p. 242.
[2] The nephew of Pope Paul II, who was the nephew of Pope Eugene IV, who was the nephew of Pope Gregory XII. Borgia and Della Rovere were also papal nephews.
[3] Chapter 10 relates how the popes came to hold Djem.
[4] Waddington insisted that Pope Innocent publicly recognized seven illegitimate offspring. George Waddington, A History of the Church from the Earliest Ages to the Reformation, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1834.
[5] Nocens means harmful or criminal in Latin. Since the word is singular, it modifies the one doing the fathering. It could therefore mean that Pope Innocent was a criminal or, more likely, that the circumstances of the begettings were illegitimate. Merito must be an adverb – justly.
[6] Rafael Sabatini, The Life of Cesare Borgia, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, p. 59.
)
[7] New York recorded 572 homicides in 2004.
)
[8] One nephew, the son of his illegitimate brother, was elevated to the rank of cardinal.
[9] No one should confuse the Inquisitor with the equally vicious wrestler, Tor Kamata, whose real name is Macronald KamaKa. In a best-two-out-of-three match, I would predict that, once the ref had relieved the Spaniard of the thumbscrews secreted in his vestments, Tor would score the third fall with a flagrantly illegal maneuver following a diversion created by his tag-team partner, Oki Shikina.
)
[10] De Rosa explained that “whippings, thumbscrews, and even the rack were considered only part of the preliminaries. They were not classed as ‘real torture.’” Op. cit., p. 187.
[11] Peter De Rosa lists some Church doctors (Regino, Burchard, Ivo, and Gratian) who were skeptical of the concept of witchcraft, but these people were a dim memory in Innocent VIII’s pontificate.
[12] The belief that Mary was born without original sin. This is different from the virgin birth, which, because it is clearly stated in Matthew, has never been controversial in the Church.
[13] Infessura’s report that Borgia sent four mules laden with silver or gold to Cardinal Sforza in Milan has been discredited. There is no doubt, however, that Borgia offered Sforza his job of vice-chancellor, which amounted to a guarantee of great wealth.
[14] Valori wrote to the Signory of Florence that Borgia was lacking not even one vote. This may refer to a vote of accession after he reached the required level.
[15] Infessura cited 220 murders in Rome during the interregnum, an average of almost thirteen per day.
[16] He was the son of one of the pope’s cousins. Pope Alexander also made cardinals of three other relatives named Giovanni or Juan. The pope’s son Giovanni was never a cardinal. Another Giovanni Borgia was born in 1498. His parents probably included some subset of the pope, Caesar, and Lucretia.
)
[17] This phrase is commonly used even though cardinals seldom wear purple. The Italian word is “porporato,” which means something colored “porpora” or crimson.
[18] The line of demarcation between Spain and Portugal was renegotiated later to allow Portugal to colonize Brazil.
[19] Native Americans still clamor for the Catholic Church to repudiate this doctrine.
[20] Sabatini, op. cit., pp. 78-79.
[21] This lie is necessary for dramatic effect. Sorry.
[22] Described in Chapter 10.
[23] Some French called it “the Italian disease.”
[24] Julia Farnese is the Virgin Mary in this painting.
)
)
[25] Confessor-shopping has long been a popular Catholic pastime. Lorenzo reportedly chose Savonarola for his honesty. In our parish the choice was old strict disciplinarian, Father Brontolone, or the much younger and slightly more lenient Father O’Flynn . My fellow miscreants preferred Father O’Flynn because he demanded only two or three Hail Marys or Our Fathers as penance. Father Brontolone often went to double digits on the easy prayers and sometimes threw in an Apostle’s Creed. The problem wasn’t the difficulty; it was the time required. We could all race through an unintelligible Hail Mary in a few seconds, but completing the penance still required a full minute or even more. How could we avoid impure thoughts about things like Annette Funicello’s sweater for such a long period of time? We never got that “feel good all over” experience from Father Brontolone’s confessional before guilt returned.
[26] This ceremony provided the title of Tom Wolfe’s best-seller, The Bonfire of the Vanities.
)
[27] Barbara Tuchman wrote that Caesar wore a mask to cover up “blotches that disfigured his face,” The March of Folly, Alfred A. Knopf, 1984, p. 88. Nearly everyone else has portrayed his appearance as essentially flawless. De Rosa explained that he probably contracted syphilis after the French invasion. Op. cit., p. 108.
[28] Evidently no previous cardinal had resigned. Why would anyone abandon such a lucrative position with so little responsibility? Several cardinals resigned subsequently. In 1587 Ferdinand de’ Medici persuaded Pope Sixtus V to release him from his vows when he became Grand Duke of Tuscany. In 1647 Camillo Pamphilj, Pope Innocent X’s nephew, resigned to marry Olympia Aldobrandini.
[29] Louis’s first marriage was annulled on the absurd grounds that his wife was “malformed.” At about the same time Lucretia Borgia’s first marriage was annulled because her husband (whose first wife died in childbirth) was supposedly unable to consumate the marriage. Both dumped spouses loudly protested. Louis was then able to marry King Charles VIII’s widow, and the pope named Louis king. Lucretia married Alfonso of Aragon. A union of Caesar and Carlotta would have put the Kingdom of Naples within the grasp of the Borgias.
[30] Pope Alexander VI dropped the X-bomb on the entire Savelli and Colonna families. He then seized all of their possessions. A similar fate befell the Caetanis.
[31] The pope imprisoned Cardinal Orsini and confiscated his belongings.
[32] “A Papal Retrospect,” Dublin University Magazine, September 1875, p. 350.
[33] Von Ranke wrote that Julius’s army mostly consisted of Swiss mercenaries. Op. cit., p. 57.
) | |
) | |
Bankable Bar Bets
$ Pope Innocent VIII recognized at least two illegitimate children. Fourteen others were popularly ascribed to him.
$ The crime rate during the Pope Innocent VIII’s pontificate was staggering. Even the True Cross was stolen.
$ Giovanni de’ Medici was thirteen when Pope Innocent VIII made him a cardinal.
$ King Ferdinand of Spain gave the pope one hundred captured moors. The pope distributed the slaves among his friends and fellow clergy as gifts.
$ The Turks gave Pope Innocent VIII a piece of iron that they claimed was the same sacred tip of the Lance of Longinus that Peter Bartholomew had found in Antioch. Everyone believed it.
$ Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull in which he attributed to witches the ability to cause infertility, slay unborn infants, destroy crops, and kill animals.
$ After the Inquisition started pursuing witches, the number of black masses and other Satanic rituals increased dramatically.
$ For the last few weeks of his life Pope Innocent VIII allegedly survived on milk from a woman’s breast.
$ Pope Alexander VI had at least nine children. He publicly recognized them all.
$ As a cardinal Pope Alexander VI had been reprimanded by the pope for participating in a notorious orgy in Siena.
$ Fifty prostitutes and as many papal servants were hired by Pope Alexander VI to put on an X-rated erotic show in the Vatican. Another show involved bestial couplings. There were several bullfights in St. Peter’s square.
$ Pope Alexander VI gave all land more than one hundred miles west of Cape Verde and the Azores to Spain.
$ When Pope Alexander VI died, his corpse turned black and so bloated that it could hardly be crammed into his casket.
$ Caesar Borgia took ill at the same time as his father. He recovered after a few months, but he lost an entire layer of skin.
$ Pope Alexander VI’s grandson, Francis Borgia, was canonized as a saint.
$ The conclave of October 1503 selected Julius II within twenty-four hours.
$ Pope Julius II fathered three daughters.
$ Pope Julius II donned armor and joined his troops in the field throughout his papacy even though he was in his sixties.