§ 54. POPE ALEXANDER VI — BORGIA. 1492-1503. 445
personal possessions. His palace was noted for the splendor of its tapestries and carpets and its vessels of gold and silver.^ The new pope possessed conspicuous personal attractions. He was tall and well-formed, and his manners so taking that a contemporary, Gasparino of Verona, speaks of his drawing women to himself more potently than the magnet attracts iron.^ The reproof which his gallantries of other days called forth from Pius II. at Siena has already been referred to.
The pre-eminent features of Alexander's career, as the supreme pontiff of Christendom, were his dissolute habits and his extravagant passion to exalt the worldly fortunes of his children. In these two respects he seemed to be destitute at once of all regard for the solemnity of his office and of common conscience. A third feature was the entry of Charles VIII. and the French into Italy and Rome. During his pontificate two events occurred whose world-wide significance was independent of the occujDant of the papal throne, — the one geographical, the other religious, — the discovery of America and the execution of the Florentine preacTier, Bavonirrotal As in the reign of Calixtus III., so now Spaniards flocked to Rome, and the Milanese ambassador wrote that ten papacies would not have been able to satisfy their greed for official recognition. In spite of a protocol adopted in the conclave, a month did not pass before Alexander appointed his nephew, Juan of Borgia, cardinal, and in the next years he admitted four more members of the Borgia family to the sacred college, including his infamous son, Csesar Borgia, at the age of 18.^
Alexander's household and progeny call for treatment first. It soon became evident that the supreme passion of his pontificate was to advance the fortunes of his children.* His parental relations were not merely the subject of rumor; they are vouched for by irresistible documentary proof.
Alexander was the acknowledged father of five children by
1 The letter of Cardinal Sforza to his brother, dated 1484, and publ. by Pastor, III. 876, gives a description of his associate's palace.
^ Sigismondo, II. 53, ascribes to Alexander majestas formce.
3 Burchard, I. 577.
* Seine Kinder zu erhohen war sein vorzUglichstes Ziel is the statement of the calm Catholic historian, Funk, p. 373.
446 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Vanozza do Cataneis: Pedro Luis, Juan, Ciesar,Lucretia, Joffre and, perhaps, Pedro Ludovico. The briefs issued by Sixtus IV. legitimating Ciesar and Ludovico are still extant. ^ Two bulls were issued by Alexander himself in 1493, bearing on Cesar's parentage. The first, declaring him to be the son of Vanozza by a former husband, was intended to remove the objections the sacred college naturally felt in admitting to its number one of uncertain birth. Li the second, Alexander announced him to be his own son.^ Tiring of Vanozza, who was 11 years his junior, Alexander put her aside and saw that she was married successively to three husbands, himself arranging for the first relationship and making provision for the second and the third. ^ In her later correspondence with Lucretia she signed herself, thy happy and unhappy mother ^ la felice ed infeliee matre.
These were not the only children Alexander acknowledged. His daughters Girolama and Isabella were married 1482 and 1483.* Another daughter, Laura, by Julia Farnese, born in 1492, he acknowledged as his own child, and in 1501 the pope formally legitimated, as his own son, Juan, by a Roman woman. In a first bull he called the boy Ciesar's, but in a second he recognized him as his own offspring.^
^ They are given in Burchard, Supplement to vol. Ill, and dated Oct. 1, 1480, and Nov. 4, 1481.
2 See W. H. Woodward, Tico Bulls of Alex. VI., Sept., 1493, in Ejigl. Hist. Sev., 1908, pp. 730-734.
8 Vanozza outlived Alexander 15 years, dying 1518. Her epitaph formerly in S. Maria del Popolo reads, Vanotice Cathance, Ccesare Valentiae, Joane Candice, Jiifredo Scylatii et LncreticB Ferrarice, ducibus Jiliis, etc. See Creighton, III. 163, Pastor, III. 279. Pastor says that to deny the authenticity of this inscription as OUivier does is nothing less than ridiculous — geradezu larherlich. On Ollivier's attempt to rehabilitate Alexander, see Pastor's caustic words in 1st ed., I. 589. Burchard constantly calls Lucretia ;)«;)(E.n7ui, II. 278, 386,493, etc., and .Joffr6 and the other boys his sons. So also Sigismondo II. 249, 270, etc. The nativity of I'edro Ludovico is not absolutely certain, but it is highly probable that Vanozza was his mother.
* Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, p. 19, and Appendix, Germ, ed., where the marriage contract of Girolama is given.
' These two bulls, extant at Mantua and first published by Gregorovius, Lnrr. Borgia, Appendix, 76-85, were is.siu'd the .same day. Burchard, III. 170, calls the child's mother qwxdam Humana. Following Burchard, Grego-