The Cambridge Modern History. R. Nisbet Bain
prince. He appears or affects to have entirely returned to the ideas of the early years of his pontificate, when he formed leagues to keep the foreigner out of Italy. He paints the wretched condition of Italy in eloquent language, declares that her last hope consists in an alliance between himself and Venice, and calls upon the Republic to cooperate with him ere too late. It was too late already; had it been otherwise, the cautious, selfish Venetians would have been the last to have risked anything for the general good. Alexander must have allied himself either with Spain or with France; he might have decided the contest, but would himself have run great risk of being subjugated by the victor. A quite unforeseen stroke delivered the Papacy from this peril, and, annihilating all Alexander’s projects for the grandeur of his house, placed the great work of consolidating the Temporal Power in more disinterested though hardly more scrupulous hands. On August 5 he caught a chill while supping with Cardinal Corneto; on the 12th he felt ill; and on the 18th a fever carried him off. The suddenness of the event, the rapid decomposition of the corpse, and the circumstance that Cesare Borgia was simultaneously taken ill, accredited the inevitable rumours of poison, and his decease became the nucleus of a labyrinthine growth of legend and romance. Modern investigation has dispelled it all, and has left no reasonable doubt that the death was entirely natural.
Alexander’s character has undoubtedly gained by the scrutiny of modern historians. It was but natural that one accused of so many crimes, and unquestionably the cause of many scandals, should alternately appear as a tyrant and as a voluptuary. Neither description suits him. The groundwork of his character was extreme exuberance of nature. The Venetian ambassador calls him a carnal man, not implying anything morally derogatory, but meaning a man of sanguine temperament, unable to control his passions and emotions. This perplexed the cool unim-passioned Italians of the diplomatic type then prevalent among rulers and statesmen, and their misapprehensions have unduly prejudiced Alexander, who in truth was not less but more human than most princes of his time. This excessive “carnality” wrought in him for good and ill. Unrestrained by moral scruples, or by any spiritual conception of religion, he was betrayed by it into gross sensuality of one kind, though in other respects he was temperate and abstemious. In the more respectable guise of family affection it led him to outrage every principle of justice; though even here he only performed a necessary work which could not, as one of his agents said, have been accomplished “by holy water.” On the other hand, his geniality and joyousness preserved him from tyranny in the ordinary sense of the term; considering the absolute character of his authority, and the standard of his times, it is surprising how little, outside the regions of la haute politique, is charged against him. His sanguine constitution also gave him tremendous driving power. “Pope Alexander,” says a later writer, censuring the dilatoriness of Leo X, “did but will a thing, and it was done.” As a ruler, careful of the material weal of his people, he ranks among the best of his age; as a practical statesman he was the equal of any contemporary. But his insight was impaired by his lack of political morality; he had nothing of the higher wisdom which comprehends the characteristics and foresees the drift of an epoch, and he did not know what a principle was. The general tendency of investigation, while utterly shattering all idle attempts to represent him as a model Pope, has been to relieve him of the most odious imputations against his character. There remains the charge of secret poisoning from motives of cupidity, which indeed appears established, or nearly so, only in a single instance; but this may imply others.
Cesare Borgia afterwards told Machiavelli that he deemed himself to have provided against everything that could possibly happen at the death of his father, but had never thought that he himself might at the same time be disabled by sickness. He succeeded in seizing the Pope’s treasure in the Vatican, but failed in securing the Castle of St Angelo, and was obliged to adopt a deferential tone towards the Cardinals. Alexander had gone far towards filling the Sacred College with his own countrymen, and although the Conclave is said by a contemporary to have been more decried for venal practices than any before it, the influence of Ferdinand of Aragon, conjoined with that of Cardinal della Rovere, who found the pear not yet ripe for himself, decided the election in favour of one who assuredly had no share in these practices, the upright Cardinal of Siena. Something may be ascribed to the law already noticed, which frequently fills the place of a deceased Pope with his entire opposite. This may be deemed to have been exemplified anew when, after a sickly pontificate of twenty-seven days, the mild Pius III was replaced (November 1) by the most pugnacious and imperious personality in the Sacred College, Cardinal della Rovere, who evinced his ambition of rivalling if not excelling Alexander by assuming the name of Julius II. His election had not been untainted by simoniacal practices, but cannot like Alexander’s be said to have been mainly procured by them. It was rather due to an arrangement with Cesare Borgia, who had the simplicity to expect others to keep faith with him who had kept faith with none, and permitted the Cardinals of his party to vote for della Rovere, on condition that he should be confirmed as Gonfaloniere of the Church. History has never made it a reproach to Julius that he soon incarcerated Borgia in St Angelo, and applied himself to stripping him of his possessions in the Romagna. In some cases the exiled lords had reinstated themselves; in others difficulties arose from the fidelity of Cesare’s castellans, who refused to obey even the orders extorted from him to surrender their castles. When at last everything had been got from him that could be got, Julius, instead of secretly putting him to death as Alexander would have done, permitted him to depart to Naples, where he was arrested and sent prisoner into Spain. His career was yet to be illustrated by a romantic escape and a soldier’s death in an obscure skirmish in Navarre. The Homagna could not forget that he had been to her one just ruler in the place of many tyrants, and he retained partisans there to the last. Had he survived until the new Pope’s war with his brother-in-law the Duke of Ferrara, he would probably have commanded the latter’s troops, and a new page of conquest might have opened for him.
Julius had hated Alexander above all men; but it was now incumbent upon him to resume Alexander’s work, repair the damage it had sustained, and prosecute it to a successful conclusion. His record as Cardinal had not been a bright one. When in favour with Pope Innocent, he had failed to inspire him with energy except for an unjust war, or to reform any abuse in the papal administration. As the enemy of Alexander, he had put himself in the wrong by turbulence and unpatriotic intrigue. If he had not done Italy infinite harm by his invitations to France to invade her, the reason was merely that the French would have come without him. When ostensibly reconciled to Alexander, he had shown much servility. His private life had been licentious; though not illiterate, he was no proficient in literature; and one looks in vain for any service rendered by him as Cardinal to religion, letters, or art. Yet there was always something in him which conveyed the impression of a superior character; he overawed others, and was never treated with disrespect. There was indeed a natural magnanimity in him which adverse circumstances had checked, but which came out so soon as he obtained liberty of action. Unlike his predecessor, he had an ideal of what a Pope should be,—defective indeed, but embodying all the qualities particularly demanded by the age. He thought far more of the Church in her temporal than in her spiritual aspect; but Luther was not yet, and for the moment the temporal need seemed the more pressing. He possessed a great advantage over his predecessor in his freedom from nepotism: he had no son, and was content with a modest provision for his daughter, and not only seemed but was personally disinterested in the wars which he undertook for the aggrandisement of the Church. The vehemence which engaged him in such undertakings made him terrible and indefatigable in the prosecution of them; but, as he was deficient in the prudence and discernment of his predecessor, it frequently hurried him into inconsiderate actions and speeches, detrimental to his interests and dignity. Transplanted, however, to another sphere, it secured him a purer and more desirable glory than any that he could obtain by conquest. Having once determined it to be a Pope’s duty to encourage the arts, he entered upon the task as he would have entered upon a campaign, and achieved results far beyond the ambition of his most refined and accomplished predecessors. His treatment of individual artists was often harsh and niggardly, but of his dealings with art as a whole Bishop Creighton rightly declares: “he did not merely employ great artists, he impressed them with a sense of his own greatness, and called out all that was strongest and noblest in their own nature. They knew that they served a master who was in sympathy with themselves.’“
While Julius was ridding himself of Cesare Borgia, a new enemy appeared, too formidable for him to contend with at the time.