APPENDIX III.
The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's Story, Fiorentina, cap. 27. See Chap. vii. p. 412 above.
So died Pope Alexander, at the height of glory and prosperity; about whom it must be known that he was a man of the utmost power and of great judgment and spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his first accession to the Papacy was foul and shameful, seeing he had bought with gold so high a station, in like manner his government disagreed not with this base foundation. There were in him, and in full measure, all vices both of flesh and spirit; nor could there be imagined in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad but that he put it into working. He was most sensual toward both sexes, keeping publicly women and boys, but more especially toward women; and so far did he exceed all measure that public opinion judged he knew Madonna Lucrezia, his own daughter, toward whom he bore a most tender and boundless love. He was exceedingly avaricious, not in keeping what he had acquired, but in getting new wealth: and where he saw a way toward drawing money, he had no respect whatever; in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, dispensations, pardons, bishoprics, cardinalships, and all court dignities: unto which matters he had appointed two or three men privy to his thought, exceeding prudent, who let them out to the highest bidder. He caused the death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even be rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded much, with the view of seizing on their wealth. His cruelty was great, seeing that by his direction many were put to violent death; nor was the ingratitude less with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and Colonnesi, by whose favor he acquired the Papacy. There was in him no religion, no keeping of his troth: he promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but what was useful to himself: no care for justice, since in his days Rome was like a den of thieves and murderers: his ambition was boundless, and such that it grew in the same measure as his state increased: nevertheless, his sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he was to the last of his days most prosperous. While young and still almost a boy, having Calixtus for his uncle, he was made Cardinal and then Vice-Chancellor: in which high place he continued till his papacy, with great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become Pope, he made Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of Pampeluna, a Cardinal, against the ordinances and decrees of the Church, which forbid the making of a bastard Cardinal even with the Pope's dispensation, wherefore he brought proof by false witnesses that he was born in wedlock. Afterwards he made him a layman and took away the Cardinal's dignity from him, and turned his mind to making a realm; wherein he fared far better than he purposed, and beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any Pope before. With greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March, and the Duchy; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the Florentines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and the King of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he showed how great was the might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages peradventure had been any pope before.
APPENDIX IV.
Religious Revivals in Mediæval Italy. See Chap. viii. p. 491 above.
It would be unscientific to confound events of such European importance as the foundation of the orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic with the phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and preachers were due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its pilgrims. The vast unsettled populations of mediæval Europe, haunted with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by imperious religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon the shores of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning and scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of semi-bestial impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages. The celebrated shrines of Europe—Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano, Canterbury—acted like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous devotion of the mediæval races, like setons to their over-charged imagination. In all these universal movements the Italians had their share: being more advanced in civilization than the Northern peoples, they turned the crusades to commercial count, and maintained some moderation in the fakir fury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general history of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that we have to do, but rather with those intermittent manifestations of revivalism which were peculiar to the Italians. The chief points to be noticed are the political influence acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, the preaching of peace and moral reformation, the panics or superstitious terror which seized upon wide districts, and the personal ascendency of hermits unaccredited by the Church, but believed by the people to be divinely inspired.
One of the most picturesque figures of the first half of the thirteenth century is the Dominican monk, John of Vicenza. His order, which had recently been founded, was already engaged in the work of persecution. France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, and the stakes were smoking in the town of Milan, when this friar undertook the noble task of pacifying Lombardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at that period torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; private feuds crossed and intermingled with political discords; and the savage tyranny of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations. It seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to agreement. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice of a single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza began his preaching in Bologna during the year 1233. The citizens and the country folk of the surrounding districts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the magic of his eloquence. The themes of his discourse were invariably reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. The heads of rival houses, who had prosecuted hereditary feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and swore to live thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated him to examine the statutes of their city, and to point out any alterations by which the peace of the commonwealth might be assured. Having done his best for Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his sanctity had been already spread abroad. The carroccio of the city, on which the standard of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to many a bloody battle, was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he entered the gates in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace produced the same results. Old enmities were abandoned, and hands were clasped which had often been raised in fierce fraternal conflict. Treviso, Feltre, Beliuno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas were about to reign, Vicenza, Mantua, and Brescia, all placed themselves at the disposition of the monk, and prayed him to reform their constitution. But it was not enough to restore peace to each separate community, to reconcile household with household, and to efface the miseries of civil discord. John of Vicenza aimed at consolidating the Lombard cities in one common bond. For this purpose he bade the burghers of all the towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of Paquara, in the country