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votes of a majority of the College. Nor could Borgia, despite bribes of up to 25,000 ducats and promises of lucrative promotion spread among his colleagues. As the Florentine envoy reported home, Cardinal Borgia had a reputation for being “so false and proud that there is no danger of his being elected.” In this impasse the rivals saw a danger of the election of Cardinal Marco Barbo of Venice, widely respected for his high character and strict principles, who would undoubtedly have limited the scope for a Borgia or a della Rovere and might even have contemplated reform. When Barbo came within five votes of election, Borgia and della Rovere joined forces behind the unassuming Cibo, indifferent to the affront to reformers of electing a pope with acknowledged children. Awarded their combined votes, their candidate was duly crowned as Innocent VIII.

As Pope, Innocent was distinguished chiefly by his extraordinary indulgence of his worthless son Franceschetto, the first time the son of a pope had been publicly recognized. In everything else he succumbed to the energy and will of Cardinal della Rovere. “Send a good letter to the Cardinal of St. Peter,” wrote the envoy of Florence to Lorenzo de’ Medici, “for he is Pope and more than Pope.” Della Rovere moved into the Vatican and within two months raised his own brother Giovanni from Prefect of Rome to Captain-General of the Church. Innocent’s other promoter, Cardinal Borgia, remained as Vice-Chancellor in control of the Curia.

Riches for Franceschetto, who was both greedy and dissolute, given to roaming the streets at night with bad companions for lewd purposes, absorbed Innocent’s primary attention. In 1486, he succeeded in arranging his son’s marriage to a daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici and celebrated it in the Vatican with a wedding party so elaborate that he was obliged, owing to chronic shortage of funds, to mortgage the papal tiara and treasures to pay for it. Two years later he staged an equal extravaganza, also in the Vatican, for the wedding of his granddaughter to a Genoese merchant.

While the Pope indulged himself, his more business-minded Vice-Chancellor created numerous new offices for apostolic officials for which the aspirants were required to pay—evidence that they looked forward to remunerative returns. Even the office of Vatican Librarian, hitherto reserved for merit, was put up for sale. A bureau was established for the sale of favors and pardons at inflated prices, of which 150 ducats of each transaction went to the Pope and what was left over to his son. When pardons instead of death penalties for manslaughter, murder and other major crimes were questioned, Cardinal Borgia defended the practice on the ground that “the Lord desireth not the death of a sinner but rather that he live and pay.”

Under this regime and the influence of its predecessor, the moral standards of the Curia melted down like candle wax, reaching a stage of venality that could not be ignored. In 1488, halfway through Innocent’s tenure, several high officials of the papal court were arrested, and two of them executed, for forging for sale fifty papal bulls of dispensation in two years. The extreme penalty, intended to display the moral indignation of the Pope, served to underline the conditions of his administration.

Swamped beneath the influx of Sixtus’ cardinals, who included members of Italy’s most powerful families, the Sacred College was a stage of pomp and pleasure. While a few of its members were worthy men sincere in their calling, the majority were worldly and covetous nobles, ostentatious in their splendor, players in the unending game of exerting influence in their own or their sovereigns’ behalf. Among the relatives of princes were Cardinal Giovanni d’Aragona, son of the King of Naples, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, brother of Ludovico, regent of Milan, Cardinals Battista Orsini and Giovanni di Colonna, members of the two rival and forever-feuding ruling families of Rome.

Cardinals at that time did not have to be priests—that is, qualified by ordination to administer the sacraments,