[4] For what follows read Corio, Storia di Milano, pp. 417–20.
[5] Mach. 1st. Fior. lib. vii.; Corio, p. 420.
[6] See Corio, p. 420. Corio hints that the Venetians poisoned the Cardinal for fear of this convention being carried out.
[7] 1st. Fior, lib. i. vol. i. p. 38.
Sixtus, however, while thus providing for his family, could not enjoy life without some youthful protégé about his person. Accordingly in 1463 he made his valet, a lad of no education and of base birth, Cardinal and Bishop of Parma at the age of twenty. His merit was the beauty of a young Olympian. With this divine gift he luckily combined a harmless though stupid character.
With all these favorites to plant out in life, the Pope was naturally short of money. He relied on two principal methods for replenishing his coffers. One was the public sale of places about the Court at Rome, each of which had its well-known price.[1] Benefices were disposed of with rather more reserve and privacy, for simony had not yet come to be considered venial. Yet it was notorious that Sixtus held no privilege within his pontifical control on which he was not willing to raise money: 'Our churches, priests, altars, sacred rites, our prayers, our heaven, our very God, are purchasable!' exclaims a scholar of the time; while the Holy Father himself was wont to say, 'A pope needs only pen and ink to get what sum he wants.'[2] The second great financial expedient was the monopoly of corn throughout the Papal States. Fictitious dearths were created; the value of wheat was raised to famine prices; good grain was sold out of the kingdom, and bad imported in exchange; while Sixtus forced his subjects to purchase from his stores, and made a profit by the hunger and disease of his emaciated provinces. Ferdinand, the King of Naples, practiced the same system in the south. It is worth while to hear what this bread was like from one of the men condemned to eat it: 'The bread made from the corn of which I have spoken was black, stinking, and abominable; one was obliged to consume it, and from this cause sickness frequently took hold upon the State.'[3]
[1] The greatest ingenuity was displayed in promoting this market. Infessura writes: 'Multa et inexcogitata in Curia Romana officia adinvenit et vendidit,' p. 1183.
[2] Baptista Mantuanus, de Calamitatibus Temporum, lib. iii.
Venalia nobis
Templa, sacerdotes, altaria, sacra, coronæ,
Ignes, thura, preces, coelum est venale, Deusque.
Soriano, the Venetian ambassador, ap. Alberi ii. 3, p. 330, writes: 'Conviene ricordarsi quello che soleva dire Sisto IV., che al papa bastava solo la mano con la penna e l'inchiostro, per avere quella somma che vuole.' Cp. Aen. Sylv. Picc. Ep. i. 66: 'Nihil est quod absque argento Romana Curia dedat; nam et ipsæ manus impositiones et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur, nec peccatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur.'
[3] Infessura, Eccardus, vol. ii. p. 1941: 'Panis vero qui ex dicto frumento fiebat, erat ater, foetidus, et abominabilis; e ex necessitate comedebatur, ex quo sæpenumero in civitate morbus viguit.'
But Christendom beheld in Sixtus not merely the spectacle of a Pope who trafficked in the bodies of his subjects and the holy things of God, to squander basely gotten gold upon abandoned minions. The peace of Italy was destroyed by desolating wars in the advancement of the same worthless favorites, Sixtus desired to annex Ferrara to the dominions of Girolamo Riario. Nothing stood in his way but the House of Este, firmly planted for centuries, and connected by marriage or alliance with all the chief families of Italy. The Pope, whose lust for blood and broils was only equaled by his avarice and his libertinism,[1] rushed with wild delight into a project which involved the discord of the whole Peninsula. He made treaties with Venice and unmade them, stirred up all the passions of the despots and set them together by the ears, called the Swiss mercenaries into Lombardy, and when finally, tired of fighting for his nephew, the Italian powers concluded the peace of Bagnolo, he died of rage in 1484. The Pope did actually die of disappointed fury because peace had been restored to the country he had mangled for the sake of a favorite nephew.
[1] This phrase requires support. Infessura (loc. cit. p. 1941) relates the savage pleasure with which Sixtus watched a combat 'a steccato chiuso.' Hearing that a duel to the death was to be fought by two bands of his body-guard, he told them to choose the Piazza of S. Peter for their rendezvous. Then he appeared at a window, blessed the combatants, and crossed himself as a signal for the battle to begin. We who think the ring, the cockpit, and the bullfight barbarous, should study Pollajuolo's engraving in order to imagine the horrors of a duel 'a steccato chiuso.' Of the inclination of Sixtus to sensuality, Infessura writes: 'Hic, ut fertur vulgo, et experientia demonstravit, puerorum amator et sodomita fuit.' After mentioning the Riarii and a barber's son, aged twelve, he goes on: 'taceo nunc alia, quæ circa hoc possent recitari, quia visa sunt de continuo.' It was not, perhaps, a wholly Protestant calumny which accused Sixtus of granting private indulgences for the commission of abominable crimes in certain seasons of the year.
The crime of Sixtus which most vividly paints the corruption of the Papacy in his age remains still to be told. This was the sanction of the Pazzi Conjuration against Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici. In the year 1477 the Medici, after excluding the merchant princes of the Pazzi family from the magistracy at Florence and otherwise annoying them, had driven Francesco de' Pazzi in disgust to Rome. Sixtus chose him for his banker in the place of the Medicean Company. He became intimate with Girolamo Riario, and was well received at the Papal Court. Political reasons at this moment made the Pope and his nephew anxious to destroy the Medici, who opposed Girolamo's schemes of aggrandizement in Lombardy. Private rancor induced Francesco de' Pazzi to second their views and to stimulate their passion. The three between them hatched a plot which was joined by Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, another private foe of the Medici, and by Giambattista Montesecco, a captain well affected to the Count Girolamo. The first design of the conspirators was to lure the brothers Medici to Rome, and to kill them there. But the young men were too prudent to leave Florence. Pazzi and Salviati then proceeded to Tuscany, hoping either at a banquet or in church to succeed in murdering their two enemies together. Bernardo Bandini, a man of blood by trade, and Francesco de' Pazzi were chosen to assassinate Giuliano. Giambattista Montesecco undertook to dispose of Lorenzo.[1] The 26th of April 1478 was finally fixed for the deed. The place selected was the Duomo.[2] The elevation of the Host at Mass-time was to be the signal. Both the Medici arrived. The murderers embraced Giuliano and discovered that this timid youth had left his secret coat of mail at home. But a difficulty, which ought to have been foreseen, arose. Monteseoco, cut-throat as he was, refused to stab Lorenzo before the high altar: at the last moment some sense of the religio loci dashed his courage. Two priests were then discovered who had no such silly scruples. In the words of an old chronicle, 'Another man was found, who, being a priest, was more accustomed to the place and therefore less superstitious about its sanctity.'