74 THE PAPACY DURING THE RENAISSANCE 



But the corruption increased under Innocent VIII, in 

 spite of this show of reform. Again the deadlock of the 

 furious Roman rivals for the Papacy let in an obscure 

 provincial cardinal ; and this cardinal had children as well 

 as nephews. Cardinal Cibo had, it is true, outlived the 

 irregularities of his youth when he became Pope ; in which 

 we shall hardly be tempted to see the hand of Providence 

 when we reflect that he was now in a state of senile decay. 

 But his tardy piety did not exclude his children from his 

 affection. His daughter Teodorina shone in Roman society. 

 His grand-daughter Peretta was married in the Vatican. 

 His son Franceschetto, on whom he doted, enlivened the 

 streets at nights with rape and murder, as the youthful Nero 

 had done fourteen centuries earlier, and shared with Cardinal 

 Rodrigo Borgia the heavy bribes with which criminals bought 

 immunity. The illegitimate son of the Pope's brother was 

 made a cardinal. The fourteen-year-old son of the ruler of 

 Florence, another future Pope of unsavoury life, was also 

 made a cardinal. The majority of the cardinals were now 

 loose and luxurious men. Sometimes a hundred thousand 

 pounds would change hands when a small group of them 

 spent a night over the gaming-table, and their hundreds of 

 armed guards reddened Rome with murder. 



Thus was the way prepared for the pontificate of Rodrigo 

 Borgia, or Alexander VI. A shower of gold (he distributed, 

 I calculate, nearly a million sterling among the cardinal- 

 electors) and a shower of blood (there were in Rome two 

 hundred murders in fourteen days) overcame the last opposi- 

 tion, and Rodrigo Borgia stepped into the throne of Peter. 

 The debasement of a religious institution could hardly sink 

 deeper. 



I have still a memory of the zeal with which the Catholic 

 writers of my youth defended Alexander VI against " Pro- 

 testant calumnies." The Vatican must have smiled, as it 

 does smile, at the naive fervour of these English Catholics. 

 There were at that time in the secret archives of the Vatican 

 the proofs of Rodrigo Borgia's life-long immorality, and they 

 are now accessible to the scholars of the world and have been 

 reproduced by more than one Catholic writer. These official 

 documents one may read a candid account of them in the 

 Catholic Dr. Pastor's History of the Popes (ii, 453) put it 

 beyond question that, as was never doubted in Rome, Borgia 

 had, while he was Cardinal and Vice-Chancellor of the Papal 

 Court, three sons and two daughters. Vannozza dei Catanei 



