He was a master of deception, articulate and artful.
He would become, to some, the black sheep of the papacy, a Pope whose lust for wealth
and power knew no bounds.
The great Italian writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote the world’s most renowned book
on unscrupulous politicians, once said of this pope, “He never did anything, or thought
of anything, other than deceiving men.”
We might add women to that, too, because this incorrigible and corrupt pope fathered quite
a few illegitimate children.
He was also renowned as being something of a smooth-talker and not hard on the eyes to
females.
Some say he sold his soul to the devil and would stop at nothing to achieve his goals.
Welcome to the life of the bad pope, Alexander VI.
He was born on the first day of the new year in 1431 and was named Rodrigo de Borja, which
was the Italianized version of his Spanish name.
The pope-to-be came from a noble background, from an Italo-Spanish family that was part
of the House of Borgia.
During the Italian Renaissance their power extended across Europe, and together the families
would be accused of many, many crimes.
These days when some historians speak of the Borgias, attendant are tales of murder, adultery,
theft, nepotism and rampant corruption.
Their sins were plentiful to say the least.
During his early life Rodrigo studied law at the University of Bologna, but when his
uncle was made Pope and so head of the Catholic church the 25-year old Alexander was made
a cardinal.
This didn’t take much effort since nepotism was the order of the day back then.
Those in the family were given prominent positions on the basis that they were part of the family.
Merit didn’t count for much.
Just a year later and Rodrigo found himself in the position of vice-chancellor of the
Holy Roman Church.
For the next decade he lived not how one would think, seeing that he held a position in the
church.
He did not dedicate his entire life to the service of God, and instead spent much of
his time amassing a fortune and spreading his seed.
In 1468, he was ordained into the priesthood, but this did not change his ways.
He wanted wealth and power and he wanted to seduce those he was attracted to.
He was after all very rich, but in in younger years he was also a handsome man who had a
way with words.
It’s thought he had seven children in total, and four of the kids he had to a woman named
Vanozza de' Catanei.
Those four have also gone down in the history books, especially his son, Cesare Borgia.
In later years, Rodrigo would become the archbishop of Valencia and when he gave up that post
Cesare would take it over.
His stepping down from this position happened because of a death in the papacy.
This was the death of Pope Innocent VIII which happened on 25 July in 1492.
A new pope was needed and the now 67-year old Rodrigo wanted that position.
There were two other men also vying to be pope.
Rumors surfaced that Rodrigo paid vast amounts of money to bribe certain people and ensure
his ascendancy to the head of the Catholic church.
It wasn’t only him, though, chroniclers at the time wrote that all three contenders
ran very expensive campaigns.
200,000 gold ducats can go a long way in politics, and after being made head of the church a
person could do certain people a lot of favors.
We say politics, because the church was steeped in politics.
Rodrigo won and was made Pope Alexander VI on 11 August 1492.
A wolf was now in the big seat and in time he would share a place in the Christian Church’s
Hall of Infamy.
The Roman people were happy with the result since Rodrigo was a popular man, and they
might have cheered him as he began to talk about justice and order.
He went about Papal business in a way that impressed the populace and also started some
grand building projects.
Things were looking up for the new pope, but then his power got the better of him.
He soon started granting his relatives positions in the church and those positions would give
a person power and wealth.
Doing these favors is a practice known as simony.
This made him as many friends as it made him enemies.
People started asking if the new pope was more interested in advancing his relatives’
power and their wealth than he was in the Catholic Church.
Problems were brewing, though, because a French invasion was imminent.
The French King had laid claim to Naples, but that’s a story in itself.
Alexander was well aware that the French wouldn’t stop at just taking Naples, so something had
to be done about the threat.
The Pope formed an alliance which would become known as the League of Venice, or the Holy
League.
There wasn’t really anything holy about it.
It was an alliance that joined together some of the wealthiest people in Europe and they
all agreed to stop France in its tracks as it sought to take over parts of Europe.
It would grow to include a number of European states, all of them united against the French.
What all this resulted in, in the end, was more power for Alexander.
In total, he appointed 47 new cardinals to further enhance his power.
Then something terrible happened to the Pope.
Remember we told you about four of his children that all had a certain amount of influence
themselves.
Those children were named Cesare, Gioffre, Lucrezia and Giovanni.
The latter, sometimes named Juan, was murdered.
This man held a lot of positions, notably the 2nd Duke of Gandia, Duke of Sessa, the
Governor of St. Peter's, the Grand Constable of Naples, and Gonfalonier and Captain General
of the Church.
When you were born a Borgia, gaining titles such as these was inevitable.
On the night of 14 June, 1497, Juan had attended a feast with many people including his three
siblings.
He left that feast on horseback and the next day as the sun rose his horse was seen wandering
around without a rider.
Juan was presumed missing since no one had seen him.
He was soon found, though, with his throat slit and his body stabbed nine times.
An investigation was launched and it was first thought that the murder could have been related
to a feud with another noble family, although some people thought his own brother, Gioffre,
had done the act.
Others said the other brother, Cesare, had committed the vicious crime.
No one ever found out who the assassin was.
Juan had many enemies not only over power feuds but because he was also infamous for
his lust and relationships with countless women.
Alexander went into a dark phase after this but came out saying that from now on he was
going to dedicate all his life to reform and morality in the name of God.
Those might have been empty words, given he was so embedded in power struggles.
There were some people who believed he and Cesare had poisoned one of his own cardinals
since a cardinal’s wealth went back to the church after their death.
Some poor people who got stuck in the middle of this affair did admit that Alexander had
been involved, but it has to be said their confession was extracted through torture.
The torturers worked for Alexander's worst enemy, Julius II.
That Julius didn’t like Alexander is something of an understatement.
He despised the man, and when Alexander’s reign as pope ended Julius would become the
next pope.
When he gained that position this is what he had to say about Alexander and the entire
Borgia family:
“I will not live in the same rooms as the Borgias lived.
He [Alexander VI] desecrated the Holy Church as none before.
He usurped the papal power by the devil's aid, and I forbid under the pain of excommunication
anyone to speak or think of Borgia again.
His name and memory must be forgotten.
It must be crossed out of every document and memorial.
His reign must be obliterated.”
Something you’ve all heard about happened when Alexander was pope and that was when
a man named Christopher Columbus arrived at a place we now call North America.
Back then it was just The New World.
But what about the natives who lived there?
Well, Alexander issued a set of decrees called papal bulls that granted the ownership of
certain parts of these new lands to certain noble people.
There are some historians that say Alexander gave those people the right to make the natives
of these new found lands their slaves, although others just say the decrees were only supposed
to ensure the natives were converted to Christianity.
Yet others say the natives were given an option, either submit to your new rulers or face an
attack.
Inside Rome, Alexander was always threatened by factions that wanted to bring him down.
He had many critics, too, and they weren’t afraid to speak out.
One such critic was the head of a monastery and he was named Girolamo Savonarola.
Savonarola said the church had to shape up and it had to be rid of its corruption.
He said the concern should be and should have always been practicing religion and concentrating
on helping the poor.
He actually became known as the “Preacher of the Despairing.”
To this day Alexander is symbolic with the corruption of the Catholic church and he paved
the way for the rise of Protestantism.
That would happen not long after Alexander passed away.
His day of reckoning with his God was the 18th of August, 1503.
Alexander had been feeling ill the previous few days and had a temperature.
There was some blood-letting to try and improve his sickness, but that didn’t help.
He knew he was on his way out and on the 18th he made a confession to a Bishop.
Surrounded by cardinals he died some time later.
His body was presented to the clergy of Rome a day after that, but decomposition had already
altered the way he looked.
One historian wrote, “It was a revolting scene to look at that deformed, blackened
corpse, prodigiously swelled, and exhaling an infectious smell; his lips and nose were
covered with brown drivel.”
If that doesn’t sound horrible enough, another witness wrote that the body was, "the ugliest,
most monstrous and horrible dead body that was ever seen, without any form or likeness
of humanity.”
There are theories that suggest the way the body looked was perhaps due to him having
been poisoned, and by his own son, Cesare, no less.
Others said he merely died a very diseased man, and this is what was to blame for the
fast decomposition.
A lot of negative things were said about this pope, but on the positive side he devoted
much of his time to promoting the arts.
A man you might have heard of named Michelangelo had the support of Alexander.
He wasn’t the only artist to work for him, either.
Alexander also got behind education and issued decrees for the building of universities.
He approved the construction of what would one day become the University of Aberdeen
in Scotland, and he also approved the construction of the University of Valencia.
Still, the Catholic Church remained mired in controversy and 14 years after Alexander
died a German reformer named Martin Luther would famously walk up to a church and nail
his Ninety-five Theses to a door.
This outlined the corruptions of the Catholic church and many people approved.
Luther’s words would spread around Europe as fast as a plague.
Luther’s words in modern parlance went viral, and the world was forever changed.
Wars of religion would be fought and many people would be persecuted and killed over
many years.
We’ll leave you with a quote from Alexander:
“Who are we to trust if not our family?”
His problem might have been keeping things in the family a little too much, and if the
stories are true, his family weren’t exactly the most virtuous people in the world.
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