The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [45]
3. Depravity: Alexander VI, 1492–1603
When Rodrigo Borgia was 62, after 35 years as Cardinal and Vice-Chancellor, his character, habits, principies or lack of them, uses of power, methods of enrichment, mistresses and seven children were well enough known to his colleagues in the College and Curia to evoke from young Giovanni de’ Medici at his first conclave the comment on Borgia’s elevation to the Papacy, “Flee, we are in the hands of a wolf.” To the wider circle of the princes of Italy and the rulers of Spain, Borgia’s native land, and by repute abroad, the fact that, though cultivated and even charming, he was thoroughly cynical and utterly amoral was no secret and no surprise, although his reputation for depravity was not yet what it would become. His frame of mind was heartily temporal: to celebrate the final expulsion of the Moors from Spain, in 1492, the year of his election, he staged not a Te Deum of thanksgiving but a bullfight in the Piazza of St. Peter’s with five bulls killed.
After serving under five popes and losing the last election, Borgia was not this time going to let the tiara pass from him. He simply bought the Papacy outright over his two chief rivals, Cardinals della Rovere and Ascanio Sforza. The latter, who preferred coin to promises, was brought round by four mule-loads of bullion that were despatched from Borgia’s palace to Sforza’s during the conclave, although it was supposedly to be held in camera. In later years, as the Pope’s habits became more exposed, almost any tale of monstrosities could be told and believed about him, and the bullion train may be one of them. Yet it had an inherent credibility in that it would have taken a great deal to bring round so wealthy a rival as Ascanio Sforza, who in addition received the Vice-Chancellorship.
Borgia was himself the beneficiary of nepotism, having been made Cardinal at 26 by his aged uncle Pope Calixtus III, who had been elected at age 77 when signs of senility suggested the likelihood of another choice soon. Calixtus had had time enough, however, to reward his nephew with the Vice-Chancellorship for his success in recovering certain territories of the Papal States. From revenues of papal offices, of three bishoprics he held in Spain and of abbeys in Spain and Italy, from an annual stipend of 8000 ducats as Vice-Chancellor and 6000 as Cardinal and from private operations, Borgia amassed enough wealth to make him over the years the richest member of the Sacred College. In his early years as Cardinal he had already acquired enough to build himself a palace with three-storied loggias around a central courtyard where he lived amid sumptuous furniture upholstered in red satin and gold-embroidered velvets, harmonizing carpets, halls hung with Gobelin tapestries, gold plate, pearls and sacks of gold coin of which he reportedly boasted that he had enough to fill the Sistine Chapel. Pius II compared this residence to the Golden House of Nero, which had once stood not far away.
Borgia was said never to have missed a consistory, the business meeting of cardinals, in 35 years except when ill or away from Rome. There was nothing about the workings and opportunities of the papal bureaucracy that he did not grasp. Intelligent and energetic, he had fortified the approaches to Rome, and as legate of Sixtus had accomplished the complex task of persuading the nobles and hierarchy of Spain to support the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella and the merger of their kingdoms. He was probably the ablest of the cardinals. Tall and large-framed, robust, urbane, he was dignified, even majestic in appearance, delighting in fine clothes of violet taffeta and crimson velvet and taking great care over the width of ermine stripes.
As described by contemporaries, he was usually smiling and good-tempered, even cheerful, and liked “to do unpleasant things in a pleasant way.