The Fall of the House of Borgia

by E R Chamberlin

  Until now. For it was as war leader that Calixtus III saw himself.

  The task might have intimidated even a young man with skill in arms and experience in European diplomacy. The squabbling nations had to be prodded, cajoled, threatened and bribed until they formed a united front. The massive inertia of the Papacy had to be heaved almost bodily off its comfortably established lines. It seemed to many nothing less than miraculous—or lunatic—that a sick old lawyer could even contemplate such a task. But under the spur of his titanic ideal, this man who had spent all his life in lawyer's chambers, who had handled nothing more lethal than parchment documents, now emerged as the would-be leader of men, the supreme organizing general of an immense military undertaking. The fastidious lawyer still remained, demanding written record for every transaction. The chief monument of his reign was an immense collection of material documenting this, the last of the Crusades. Transcripts of impassioned speeches and sermons, prosaic lists of chandlers' stores, reports from Papal legates abroad, his own official Acts—all these were carefully filed away, bearing testimony to the passion that filled his frail body and enabled him to ignore its pathetic limitations so long as his Crusade triumphed.

  It failed. In part, the failure was the result of his own deep-seated coldness, his ingrained austerity which kept the world at arm's length. But in the main, his failure was simply the result of trying to reverse the tide of history. The unity of Christendom was now nothing more than a scholar's dream, for Europe was composed of sovereign states each perfectly prepared to make common cause with the Moslem if politics or commerce demanded. Envoy after envoy returned to the Vatican with dismal tales of the indifference, vaccilation or downright hostility of France, of England, of Spain, Portugal, Germany. And with each rebuff, each disappointment, Calixtus became more sour, less tolerant. His attempt had been noble, his failure honorable, but he stirred no sense of admiration, no compassion. Men did not see an aged and lonely figure battling against time, but a nagging, pedantic bureaucrat endlessly demanding the submission of petty accounts, endlessly expecting the impossible and raging when it was not performed.

  It was his misfortune that his pontificate should follow the glowing reign of Nicholas V. Suspicious of the new learning with its pagan overtones, frugal by nature, employing every available resource to combat Islam, Calixtus looked on the secular work of his predecessor as frivolous at best. The new buildings of the Vatican Palace remained unfinished, the hunt for classical manuscripts ceased, and the writers took their revenge, laying the foundations of the Borgia legend. Vespasiano da Bisticci, the Florentine bookseller whose gossiping biographies made or broke many a man's reputation, contributed the story of how Calixtus was supposed to have broken up the Vatican Library in a combination of ignorance and avarice:

  When Pope Calixtus began his reign and beheld so many excellent books—five hundred of them resplendent in bindings of crimson velvet with clasps of silver—he wondered greatly, for the old lawyer was used only to books written on linen and stitched together. Instead of praising the wisdom of his predecessor he cried out as he entered the Library, "See now where the treasure of God's Church has gone." Then he began to disperse the books and that which had cost golden florins was sold for a few pence.1

  So eager was Vespasiano to pillory his victim that he overlooked the inherent contradiction in his narrative: a man like Calixtus was unlikely to accept pence for books that were worth golden florins. Even though Calixtus undoubtedly did strip many of the books of their gold and silver bindings in order to finance the Crusade, most of them remained to form the nucleus of the Vatican Library. The twisting of his motives was a natural product of the dislike he was beginning to arouse. It was only a short step from the accusation that he destroyed the Church's treasure in ignorance to the accusation that he adorned his relatives with that treasure in prideful and contemptuous arrogance.

  The origins of Calixtus's nepotism were innocent enough, being nothing more than the natural desire of a foreigner to surround himself with familiar faces and to relax in a familiar tongue. Nepotism was, in any case, more or less forced upon every Pope. His oath of acceptance bound him not only to maintain the Christian religion but also to defend the Church's temporal possessions—and these included the rich Papal States which stretched in a broad belt diagonally across Italy. An hereditary monarch faced with such a task would automatically have the support of his brothers, his sons, his uncles. Not only was a Pope alone, but the majority of his Cardinals and counselors were themselves blood relations of the potential despoilers of the Papal States, their loyalty to family only slightly modified by the knowledge that they might themselves become Pope one day and be charged with the defense of the glittering burden. The Pope had to have allies, and the only allies whose steady loyalty could be counted upon were those who knew that their power would vanish with that of their great relative. In his defense, Calixtus could have pleaded that his Spanish relatives and their retainers were conspicuous only by being Spanish—Rome had long since become accustomed to papal court dominated by great Roman or Italian families, with a sprinkling of Frenchmen. Although jealousy of another race initiated the protests, during Calixtus's reign the endemic nepotism became epidemic.

  Among the relatives whom Calixtus had left behind in Spain was a favorite, his widowed sister, Isabella, whom he had installed with her children in his archbishop's palace in Valencia when he became Pope. Despite his preoccupations in Italy, despite the fact that he returned to Spain only for the most fleeting of official visits, he acted like a father to her family. In particular, he arranged for the education of Isabella's two sons, Pedro and Rodrigo. Pedro, the elder by a year, would some day inherit his father's small estates and so the only education he needed was the smattering of Latin grammar that a country gentleman ought to have. But Rodrigo was intended to follow his uncle into the Church, and he therefore began that long, drawn-out study of the law which could eventually provide a key to the highest offices.

  Isabella hastened to profit from her brother's sudden elevation. In addition to her two sons, both now strapping young men in their early twenties, she had a flock of daughters, each of whom needed dowries on a scale with the family's new importance. Her long residence in the bishop's palace seems to have convinced her that she had a natural right to the treasury of St. Peter—her Spanish piety did nothing to abate her opportunism. Even Calixtus grew irritated by her continual importunities, bursting out that he heard nothing from Spain except requests for money. Nevertheless, dowries were provided and his nieces moved up a notch or two on the social scale in Valencia.

  But it was not the gaggle of lovesick girls in which the

  Pope was really interested. It was their brothers—the two strong young men who could be a support in his rapidly failing years, whose courage and loyalty could be his shield against a throng of devious enemies—it was toward these that his mind turned, these whom he wanted in person. Pedro and Rodrigo Borgia accordingly took the sea road that led from Valencia to Rome.

  Pedro Borgia's career was like that of a rocket—soaring very quickly and flashily to a great height and plunging back, spent, as swiftly. He left behind him only an evanescent memory of cruelty, of arrogance and, what was far more self-destructive in Italy, of stupidity. No one bothered to record any detail of his character or his appearance; posterity knows him only by the disturbances he caused and by the fact that he was Rodrigo's brother.

  Rodrigo not only survived, he prospered and in so doing, attracted the attention of the literary gossips. Later, when he strode gorgeously to stage center, there would be a super-abundance of portraits but even in these early years there was an air about the young man which ensured at least passing attention. His tutor in Italy, Gaspare da Veroba, provided an vivid assessment of the young Spaniard:

  He is handsome with a most cheerful countenance and genial bearing. He is gifted with a honeyed and choice eloquence. Beautiful women are attracted to him and are excited by him in an ext
raordinary manner, more powerfully than iron is attracted by a magnet.

  Even without his uncle's backing such a man would go far in Rome; with his backing he picked up effortlessly what other men spent a lifetime working for. At the age of twenty-five he became a Cardinal. A few months later he was made Vice-Chancellor of the Roman Church, responsible for the day-to-day administration of the enormous and venerable institution.

  By calling his nephews to Rome Calixtus had acted in an expected and, indeed, approved manner. The Papacy was a dual organization, spiritual and temporal, and it was therefore natural that he should wish to ensure support from both sides. Pedro, the layman, was made Prefect of Rome, Captain-General of the Papal armies and given the lordship of a string of cities in the Papal States, while Rodrigo was given incomes and sinecures to match his high office. All this was to be expected, but from then on, Calixtus seems to have lost control of the situation. His uncritical adulation of his family and compatriots transformed the mild dislike the Romans had held for him at first into a vicious hatred that encompassed him and all his followers.

  Xenophobia was not an Italian or even a Roman characteristic. Italians tolerated the naive, uncouth Germans, the more subtle French, the condescending Greeks; Jews found Rome the safest home in Europe. But from the first, a fierce and lasting hatred smoldered between the two related races. To Spaniards, the Italian was the soft, rich predestined victim of a fighting Spanish race; to Italians the Spaniard combined ignorance and arrogance to the ultimate degree. Two centuries earlier Dante Alighieri had dismissed the entire Spanish race in a single, cutting phrase —"the greedy poverty of Catalonia"—and the phrase now received fresh currency, for all who came to Rome in the train of Calixtus III and his nephews were styled Catalans whether they came from Aragon or Castile, from Sicily or Naples. Roman families were shouldered aside as the newcomers grasped the plum jobs in the city and the Curia. Although the total number of Spaniards in Rome was never very great, they were so utterly alien that they would have been conspicuous even if they had acted with restraint. The nobles, with their thin veneer of culture, were barely tolerable: their followers were offensive even to the noses of the Romans: Because the Spaniard associated the taking of baths with Moors and therefore with heresy, uncleanliness became an active virtue, and it was said that if the wind lay in the right quarter, an advancing Spanish force could be detected before it was visible. They ate like animals, bolting their food as though an enemy was just on the horizon. They slept with an indifference to comfort and hygiene that disgusted a people whose wealth had allowed them to develop rules of conduct.

  But Romans had learned to tolerate even wilder, even more unpleasant barbarians than these: it was the Spaniards themselves who erected a permanent barrier between the races. Transported from the most austere to the most voluptuous of European countries they reacted at first with pride and contempt for their effete hosts. But when they gave way they crumbled totally: their natural indifference to suffering became a devilish cruelty, their natural vigor became unrestrained lust, their natural pride became unbounded arrogance. The hatred they aroused was kept in check only by a complex balance of forces deriving from the presence of a Spaniard on the papal throne. But as soon as that Pope was dead. . . .

  Despite the fact that Rodrigo was showered with fat Church appointments, including his uncle's old archbishopric of Valencia, it was Pedro who received the full force of Roman hatred, partly through his insolent, arrogant manner, partly because he was thrust into the thick of a Roman feud when his uncle made him Prefect. The great family of Orsini had always provided the Prefects of the city and they had come to look upon the office as private property. Now, not only were they thrust aside in favor of a young upstart, they found themselves despoiled and plundered by that same upstart, ostensibly on behalf of the Papacy. They fought back and found that they were not simply fighting a greedy young Spaniard but the Church itself, for Calixtus merely assented to whatever measure Pedro claimed was necessary. It is probable that the old man never intended —and perhaps was never aware of—the degree of power which Pedro exercised. He was, after all, an old and sick man who, in addition to the normal heavy burdens of a Pope, was preoccupied to the point of obsession with his Crusade. He simply dismissed the complaints about Pedro as the expression of jealousy and envy.

  Rodrigo proved remarkably level-headed, frequently exercising restraint on his unstable brother. But Pedro completely misjudged the situation in which he found himself. Lacking his brother's insight into the Italian nature, dazzled by the visions of splendor which he believed lay in store for him, he mistook the Italian pliancy for cowardice, the automatic flattery for recognition of his inherent superiority. The flimsy foundations of his position became obvious when Calixtus's health abruptly worsened in July of 1458 and he became so ill that rumor sped around that he was dead. Immediately the Catalans were hunted down in the streets of Rome, an ominous herald of their fate when the old man should at last die. He rallied and the city quieted again; but there were bitter protests when it became known that in his last clarity of mind he had invested Pedro with Neapolitan cities that had fallen to the Papacy on the death of King Alfonso of Naples.

  Calixtus sank again and this time it was clear that he would not recover. The uncertain quiet of Rome was broken and broken with it was the power of Pedro Borgia. Immediately the Sacred College, so obsequious until now, demanded the keys of the fortress of Sant' Angelo. Pedro never lacked courage and he was prepared to hold the castle against all Rome if necessary; but Rodrigo argued him out of an idea that would have been suicidal, advising him to get what he could out of the situation and to leave Rome as swiftly as possible. Deprived of a military base, Pedro's position in the city was hopeless. The Orsini rose, intent on vengeance against the man who had robbed and humiliated them; his official bodyguard, composed mainly of Italians, hated him as cordially as the other Romans did and they abandoned him. On August 6 Pedro and his brother slipped out, disguised, on the road to Ostia where they were supposed to meet a galley laden with treasure. The galley-master, too, had abandoned the fallen Prefect— no galley was there. As best he could Pedro made his way to Civitavecchia where, three weeks later, he was dead of a common fever.

  Rodrigo had turned back to Rome a few miles outside the city in the belief that his brother was safe on the way to their native land. In all the turbulent years that lay ahead of him no single act required such cold courage as this return to a city whose mobs were howling for the blood of his kinsmen. He personally was popular; but he was also a Catalan, and the Orsini would have seen no valid distinction between the popular cardinal and the hated Prefect. Still in disguise, he made his way safely through the city to the Vatican where Calixtus lay in his death agonies, alone in the shuttered room where he had directed the affairs of the Roman Church. And there Rodrigo waited until the old man died.

  The Borgia dynasty, it seemed, was at an end scarcely two years after it had been transplanted on Italian soil.

  1 The Cardinal from Spain

  Late on the evening of August 17, 1458, a group of eighteen men were gathered together, talking desultorily, on the first floor of one of the new buildings of the Vatican Palace. Despite the stifling heat of a Roman summer the windows were boarded over, as they had been for the past twenty-four hours. Through all that period the only light had come from candles—made of pure wax as befitted the station of these men but nevertheless still giving off an odor so that the air was dead.

  Arranged around the sides of the low-ceilinged hall were eighteen wooden huts or cells, each furnished with a table, a bed and a stool. These cells, with their meager furnishings, offered each man the only possibility of privacy for a period that might conceivably extend into weeks. For this was a conclave—the cardinals of the Sacred College meeting together to elect a successor to the dead Pope Calixtus and cut off from the world until they did so. Their only connection with that outside world was a heavily guarded wicket gate through which food wa
s passed and empty utensils removed, twice daily. They could, however, hear the outside world—or at least one aspect of it. Below the blind window facing the great basilica of St. Peter was a courtyard and this now echoed to the tramp and metallic clatter of armed men, one of the detachments of the papal guard which patrolled inside and outside the Palace to make sure the sacred deliberations were not disturbed by riot.

  The hall with its wooden cells formed the living and recreational area for the conclavists. Leading off it was another, smaller chamber furnished with eighteen cardinal's stalls, each with its high-backed wooden chair and its canopy bearing the arms of its occupant. The vital business of lobbying was pursued in the larger chamber where ever-changing groups formed in this or that corner as now one, now another man won the temporary support of the uncommitted. In the smaller room the effect of the lobbying was put to the supreme test—here a slip of paper bearing a scrawled name would join seventeen other slips of paper in the chalice on the altar facing the stalls.