The Renaissance Wars in Italy (ePub)

When Innocent III. died, vast sums began to pour into the Roman banks. It was evident that the Papacy was for sale to the highest bidder, and that the bidding would run high. One of the competitors, Roderigo Borgia, the nephew of Calixtus III., was a man of great wealth. He expended it lavishly, and by this and by the unsparing but judicious placing of big promises, he got the requisite majority of votes. It is said that only five votes were not for sale. Roderigo was then a hale, sanguine man of sixty-one years, of no very large brain, but of a good deal of driving power. He was half intoxicated with joy at his success. "I am Pope, Pontiff, Vicar of Christ!" he shouted, with the delight of a successful schoolboy at a game. Roderigo was the adoring father of a fair-sized family, chiefly by a lady to whom he gave a variety of husbands and to her husband's place and emolument; but this hardly deserves notice: his predecessor had openly avowed himself as the proud head of a family of sixteen well-favored youths and maidens, all of his own begetting, and the new Pope does not appear to have laid claim to so |many. He was, indeed, rather a welcome successor to the Papal chair, for he had had considerable discipline and experience in affairs, was a trained jurisconsult of Bologna, and esteemed to be a good companion and full of bonhomie. For Alexander was one of those essentially selfish men who gain a good name among their fellows by a bluff manner and the absence of any hypocrisy concerning those little frailties to which most men are inclined, and which they freely excuse in one another. Such petits defauts were almost commendable in a man who had become an Italian Prince and the official head of a Church that was now almost purely official. They did not detract from the qualifications of the Vicar of Christ.