THE PAPACY DURING THE RENAISSANCE 75 



was, in effect, his wife for thirty years ; and his corruption 

 in the exercise of his office and the bribery practised at his 

 election are not less admitted. 



But it is his "conduct as Pope that matters, and, although 

 Catholic historians here shrink from a full acknowledgment 

 and writhe under the plain evidence, they have to admit that 

 he maintained his looseness in his seventh decade of life, and 

 ended his appalling career in murder. In reality, the ponti- 

 ficate of Alexander VI presents, in view of his sacred char- 

 acter, the most repulsive page in the history of religion. 



It is notorious, and admitted, that two or three years before 

 his election he adopted as his mistress Giulia Farnese, a blue- 

 eyed, golden-haired girl of fifteen summers, and almost to the 

 end of his life we find her associated with him. It is notorious, 

 and admitted, that a son was born to him in his sixty-seventh 

 year ; though such an event seems to have stirred some shame 

 in him, and the legal document, which is preserved, is an 

 extraordinary piece of duplicity. It is admitted, and notorious, 

 that he gave the cardinal's hat to his son Csesar (and just as 

 easily unfrocked that intensely unscrupulous youth when he 

 desired it), and to the brother of his mistress (another future 

 Pope). It is admitted, and notorious, that he exterminated 

 his enemies, nobles and cardinals, by sword and poison, and 

 appropriated their fortunes. But a hundred other facts are 

 known on evidence which only sectarian zeal can impugn, 

 and they make up a picture which, when we consider the 

 Christian profession, far surpasses in its license anything that 

 the records of ancient Rome or Corinth or Babylon suggest. 



At that time a German cleric, Johann Burchard, was 

 Master of Ceremonies at the Vatican, and Burchard kept a 

 diary, which has in modern times been published. Burchard 

 knew the life of the Vatican, minutely and intimately, day by 

 day ; and the only argument with which the Catholic seeks 

 to assail his truthfulness is that he, the highest official at the 

 Vatican for thirty years, was himself (as his stories show) not 

 free from lasciviousness ! Burchard is transparently honest* 

 His most deadly passages occur, coldly and indifferently, 

 between long accounts of rites and ceremonies. For instance, 

 on the last Sunday of October, 1501, you read that His 

 Holiness was not well enough to attend service, but was well 

 enough here there is just a glint of malicious humour to 

 attend a banquet given by Cardinal Caesar in the sacred 

 palace, at which fifty courtesans were present, and after which 

 they performed, nude, one of the salacious dances which the 



