Alexander VI.
ity of Burchard, master of ceremonies to Alexander VI, who left a journal, which was afterward published in 1696 (Hanover, ed. by Leibnitz) in part, and has recently been published in full (Florence, 1854, 8vo). Burchard states the price paid by Roderic for the votes of the cardinals as follows : to Cardinal Orsino, the castles of Monticelli and Sariani; to Ascanius Sforza, the vice-chancellorship of the Church ; to the cardinal of Colonna, the rich al >bey of St. Benedict, as well as the domains and right of patronage for himself and family forever ; to the cardinal of St. Angelo, the bishopric of Porto, and the tower which was a dependency on it, with a cellar full of wine. The cardinal of Parma re- ceived the city of Nepi : Savelli received the govern- ment of Citta Caetellana, and of the church of St. Mary the Greater ; a monk of Venice, who had obtained the cardinalate, sold his vote for five thousand ducats of gold. Roderic became pope August 2, 1492, and took the name of Alexander VI. His pontificate of eleven years was a stormy one, as he made every thing sub-
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ordinate to the purpose of raising his bastard children above the heads of the oldest princely houses of Italy. Of the crimes alleged against Alexander and his chil- dren, Cassar and Lucretia, this is not the place to speak in detail ; it is enough to say that this pontificate ri- valled the worst periods of the Roman Empire in de- bauchery, venality, and murder. It was in 1492 that Columbus discovered America, and the Portuguese were soon after disputing with the Spaniards as to their claims through Vasco de Gama. The dispute was re- ferred to Alexander. He traced a line which passed from pole to pole through the Azores, or Western Islands, and decreed that all the countries which were beyond this line, that is, the West Indies, or America, should belong to Spain ; and all east of it, i. e. the East Indies and the African coast, to Portugal. The censorship of books forms one of the man}- claims of Alexander to the gratitude of posterity, as he is said to have originated it in 1502. The monk Savonarola (q. v.) fearlessly exposed the wickedness of Alexander, who caused him to be burnt in 1498.
The wits of the time did not fail of their dutj' in pasquinades, one of which runs thus :
Pe vitio in vitium, de flamma transit in isnem.
Vendit Alexander clave?, altaria, Christum ;
Vendere jure potest, emerat ille prius; Etc.
The death-scene of this wretch is stated by Tom- masi, in substance, as follows : After the marriage of his daughter Lucretia, the pope requested Cardinal Corneto to lend him his palace for a great feast, to which all the cardinals and nobility were to be invited, and at which some of them were to be poisoned. By mistake the poisoned wine was handed to the pope and his son Csesar. Both were soon taken ill ; Ca;sar re- covered, but the pope died the same night, August 18, 1503.
Of course there have not been wanting apologists even for such a monster as Alexander YI. Among those who doubt, or affect to doubt, the stories of his great crimes, are Voltaire, Roscoe, the Biographie Uni- verselle of Michaud, and Appleton's Cyclopwdia. But the evidence of contemporary writers is not to be shaken by the kind of criticism employed by those who would whitewash the Borgias. See, as the chief authorities, Burchai'd, Diarium, mine primum pub. juris factum ab A. Gennarelli (Florence, 1854, 8vo) ; Tom- masi, Vita di Ccesare Borg'a. The chief points of Bur- chard's diary are given in Gordon, Life of Alexander VI and C<rsar Borgia (Lond. 1729, fol. ; 1730, French, 2 vols. 8vo). See also Ranke, History of the Papacy, i, 44 sq. ; Masse, Hist, du I'ape Alexandre VI (Paris, 1830, 8vo) ; Gieseler, Ch. Hist. per. iii, § 133, and au- thorities there cited.
VII, Pope (originally Fabio Chigi), born at Sien- na 1599, succeeded to the papacy in 1655. He sur- rounded himself with splendor, and while he indulged in luxury and licentiousness, he also spent vast sums in improving and adorning the city of Rome. He confirmed the bull of Innocent X against the five propositions of Jansenius ; and was the author of the. "Formulary" — an act the intention of which was to prove that these five propositions were contained in the writings of'Jansenius. In consequence of a diffi- culty with the government of France, French troops seized the town and the district of Avignon, which at that time still belonged to the Papal States ; and the Sorhonne published theses in order to prove that the popes, so far from being infallible in temporal affairs, were not even infallible in spiritual matters. After having in vain invoked the aid of several Catholic princes, Alexander complied with all the demands of the French king, and had Avignon restored to him. He died in 1607. His bulls ;ire found in Cherubim's Bullanum. A volume of his verses, Philomathi Muses, JutH niles (so called because written when he was at the college of the Philomathi, at Sienna), was printed in
lGr>G.—Biog. Univ. i, 526; Ranke, Hist, of Papacy, ii, 191 ; Pallavicino, Delia Vita di Alessandro VII libri v (Prato, 1840, 2 vols.); Hoefer, Biographie Generale, i, 903.