Alexander VI

Italian pope (1492-1503)

• Born: January 1, 1431
• Birthplace: Játiva, Valencia Aragon (now in Spain)
• Died: August 18, 1503
• Place of death: Rome, Papal States (now in Italy)

Alexander VI’s policies contributed to the growth of papal temporal power in the Papal States. A discriminating patron of the arts, he employed a number of noteworthy artists, including Pinturicchio and Michelangelo.

Early Life

Born Rodrigo de Borja y Doms (Borgia), the boy who was to become Pope Alexander VI was the nephew of Pope Calixtus III, who adopted him, showered him with church benefices, and sent him to the University of Bologna to study law. In 1456, Rodrigo was appointed a cardinal-deacon, and the following year he was made the vice chancellor of the Church, a lucrative post that he held until his own elevation to the Papacy in 1492.

Rodrigo’s many benefices enabled him to live in great magnificence and to indulge himself in such pastimes as cardplaying and merrymaking. His youthful indiscretions prompted Pope Pius II to send a scathing letter of reproof in 1460 for his alleged scandalous misconduct at Siena sometime earlier. His ordination to the priesthood in 1468 did not cause him to change his immoral behavior. Sometime in the early 1470’s, Rodrigo entered into an illicit relationship with the beautiful Vannozza dei Cattanei, who was to be the mother of four of his children, Juan, Cesare, Lucrezia, and Jofré. In spite of these moral failings, Rodrigo was appointed bishop of Porto in 1476 and made dean of the Sacred College in Rome. On August 11, 1492, he was elected pope by a bare two-thirds majority, amid charges, never substantiated, that he had bribed several cardinals to switch their votes in his favor. So worldly had the office of pope become by his time that there was little public criticism of his elevation to the See of Saint Peter, despite his reputation for moral irregularity. In fact, the Roman people held torchlight processions and erected triumphal arches to commemorate his election.

Life’s Work

Described as a handsome and imposing figure, Pope Alexander brought considerable talent to his office. Francesco Guicciardini, a contemporary historian, noted that “in him were combined rare prudence and vigilance, mature reflection, marvelous power of persuasion, skill and capacity for the conduct of the most difficult affairs.”

He began his pontificate by restoring order to Rome, which had been the scene of considerable violence, including more than two hundred assassinations, in the several years before Alexander’s elevation. He divided the city into four districts, over each of which he placed a magistrate who was given plenary powers to maintain order. In the course of his pontificate, he subjugated the fractious Orsini and Colonna families, who had been troublesome elements in Roman politics for generations. In addition, he designated Tuesday of each week as a time for any man or woman in Rome to come before him personally to present his or her grievances.

As pope, Alexander advanced the interests of his own children, not only for their sakes but also as a means of strengthening papal political power. He betrothed his daughter Lucrezia to Giovanni Sforza in order to link the Borgia family with the powerful Sforza rulers of Milan. When this union ceased to be politically useful, Alexander annulled it and married Lucrezia to the son of the king of Naples. When Lucrezia’s second husband was killed in 1501, Alexander arranged her marriage to Duke Alfonso I of Ferrara in the hope that it would further papal schemes in the Romagna. Favorite among his children, however, was his eldest son, Juan, the duke of Gandía, and Alexander provided richly for him until Juan was murdered in 1497, whereupon the pope then placed his fondest hopes in Cesare. Alexander encouraged Cesare to establish a powerful principality in the Romagna, the most troublesome part of the Papal States.

Italy was subjected to two French invasions while Alexander was pope. While the French kings had hereditary claims to both the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, as long as the Triple Alliance powers of Naples, Florence, and Milan had been united, a French effort to make good these claims seemed remote. By January of 1494, however, the Triple Alliance had collapsed. Ludovico Sforza, the duke of Milan, finding himself politically isolated in Italy, attempted to ingratiate himself with the French king, Charles VIII , by encouraging him to invade Italy and claim the kingdom of Naples. Pope Alexander joined King Alfonso II of Naples, and Neapolitan troops were sent northward to block Charles’s advance through the Papal States.

Alexander’s position worsened when two of his enemies, Cardinals Giuliano della Rovere (the future Pope Julius II) and Ascanio Sforza secretly went to the advancing Charles and tried to persuade him to call a council that would put Alexander on trial and depose him. Alexander met with King Charles, and an agreement was reached whereby Charles was allowed to enter Rome on December 31. A month later, Charles set out for Naples. In March of 1495, with Charles in possession of Naples, Pope Alexander formed the League of Venice, also known as the Holy League, consisting of the empire, Spain, and all the major Italian states except Florence. Its main purpose was to drive the French from Italian soil, a goal achieved by the end of the year.

When Louis XII succeeded Charles VIII as king of France in 1498, he quickly began planning an invasion of Italy to lay claim to the duchy of Milan. Before executing this invasion, however, he dissolved the League of Venice by negotiating with Alexander, who agreed to remain neutral in return for Louis’s assistance to Alexander’s son Cesare in his efforts to conquer the Romagna. Louis invaded Milan in August of 1499, and by April of the following year, he was firmly entrenched there. Louis then prepared for the conquest of Naples. King Ferdinand II also had claims to Naples, and Alexander arranged a settlement in November of 1500, whereby Naples would be partitioned between them, with Louis in control of the northern provinces and Ferdinand, the southern.

Meanwhile, Cesare, encouraged by the promise of the French king’s friendship and assistance, waged vigorous war against the petty tyrants of the Romagna. His masterful and unscrupulous resourcefulness, coupled with his father’s unstinting support, made Cesare remarkably successful. In April of 1501, Alexander made his son duke of the Romagna, and it appeared that a powerful state would soon be his. The death of Alexander in August, 1503, however, ended Cesare’s successful course. Cesare was defeated by the forces of Pope Julius II, a bitter enemy of the Borgia family, and his lands were added to those of the Papacy. Julius would eventually make a modern Renaissance state of the papal holdings.

In 1495, Alexander first took official notice of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola when he ordered the latter to cease preaching in Florence. Savonarola’s fiery sermons, in which he spared neither prince nor pope, had led to the expulsion of the Medicis from Florence, and he had begun to denounce the political machinations of Alexander. Savonarola had defied the pope, asserting, “You err; you are not the Roman Church, you are a man and a sinner.” Pope Alexander excommunicated Savonarola in May of 1497 and again ordered him to cease preaching. While Savonarola had many supporters in Florence, the pope had many enemies. In order to restore public order to the city, the magistrates arrested the monk in April of 1498; after papal commissioners officially pronounced him guilty of heresy, Savonarola was ordered hanged and burned in May of that year.

Among the more positive acts of Pope Alexander were his efforts to preserve peace between Spain and Portugal by proclaiming the Line of Demarcation in 1493, whereby he allocated the New World to Spain, and Africa and India to Portugal for the purposes of exploration. Though he was generally preoccupied with worldly affairs, Alexander did, on occasion, assert religious leadership. He was the first pope to give strong support to missionary activity in the New World. The beginnings of Index librorum prohibitorum, or the Index of Prohibited Books, can be traced to his pontificate. The Sapienza was considerably augmented under his direction. He proclaimed the year 1500 a jubilee year, and pilgrims flocked to Rome. That same year, Alexander preached a crusade against the Turks, and, in a period of remorse and reflection after the death of his favorite son Juan, Alexander appointed a commission of cardinals that was charged with establishing proposals for extensive reform within the Church.

Despite the “moral miseries of the reign of Alexander VI,” he was a splendid patron of the arts. Alexander employed architects and painters who beautified the region around the Vatican called the Borgo Nuovo. The artist Pinturicchio decorated many of the rebuilt and new Borgia apartments in the Vatican. His work included a famous portrait of Alexander kneeling in adoration of the miracle of the Resurrection. Churches and buildings were renovated, and new ones, such as the Tempietto, designed by Donato Bramante, were erected. It was under the patronage of Alexander that Michelangelo’s Pietà was completed in 1499.

Pope Alexander and his son Cesare both became seriously ill at a banquet that they were attending in August of 1503. Although Cesare recovered, the pope died on August 18. While there were rumors that Alexander was the victim of poison that he had intended for certain of his enemies at the banquet, it is generally believed that he died as a result of a plague.

Significance

Modern scholarship has tended to reject many of the more vicious moral crimes charged to Alexander VI. While few scholars have attempted and none has succeeded in exonerating him of corruption, immorality, and Machiavellian statecraft, it has been noted that many of the Renaissance popes were guilty of similar behavior. Although he did use the power and wealth of his office to advance the interests of his children, he was able to enhance papal power as well. The petty tyrannies in the Romagna that were destroyed by Cesare Borgia were never reestablished, and Julius II would be able to build a strong papal government in the Papal States on the foundation laid by Alexander’s son. Although the political machinations practiced by Alexander hardly seem appropriate for the Vicar of Christ, the necessity to protect papal lands in Italy from encroachments by the empire, France, and Spain led many medieval and early modern popes to practice a diplomacy characterized by capriciousness and deceit.

Although some scholars might be willing to acknowledge that Alexander’s failure as pope was in a measure counterbalanced by his patronage of the arts or that his encouragement of missions to the Americas more than compensated for his unwholesome example as a spiritual leader, most will not. Catholic scholars generally conclude, however, that “the dignity of Peter suffers no diminution even in an unworthy successor.”

Bibliography

Chamberlin, Russell. The Bad Popes. Stroud, Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 2003. Alexander is one of seven popes profiled in this study of papal corruption across the six hundred years leading up to the Reformation. Includes photographs, illustrations, genealogical tables, bibliographic references, and index.

De la Bedoyere, Michael. The Meddlesome Friar: The Story of the Conflict Between Savonarola and Alexander VI. London: Collins, 1957. A good discussion of the early lives of the two men, with an explanation of the political events that led to the conflict. Dispels many of the legends that have surrounded both men. A well-balanced reassessment of the much-maligned Alexander. This book is based on extensive documentary research, although there are no footnotes and no bibliography.

Ferrara, Orestes. The Borgia Pope, Alexander the Sixth. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1940. An attempt by a practicing lawyer to rehabilitate the character of Alexander and to refute the legends of his misdeeds and evil influence on the Church and the secular history of his time. While based on extensive research, the author’s interpretation of evidence is often questionable. Must be read in conjunction with other works on Alexander.

Mallett, Michael. The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Dynasty. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1969. Hailed as the best treatment of the Borgia family in any language. Presents Alexander as a representative personality of the Renaissance and places his achievements as well as his vices into a sound historical perspective. Discredits many of the legends concerning the Borgias. Includes extensive footnoting, an annotated bibliography, genealogies, and maps.

Pastor, Ludwig. The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. Vols. 5 and 6. Reprint. Wilmington, N.C.: Consortium, 1978. Much of both of these volumes in this classic, monumental history of the modern Papacy is devoted to the pontificate of Alexander. In part based on archival material not available to earlier scholars, Pastor’s account is well balanced and strongly documented. While acknowledging the merits of Alexander’s cultural patronage, this account is critical of Alexander’s failure as a spiritual leader. Includes an extensive bibliography, much of which is not in English.

Pellegrini, Marco. “A Turning-Point in the History of the Factional System in the Sacred College: The Power of the Pope and Cardinals in the Age of Alexander VI.” In Court and Politics in Papal Rome, 1492-1700, edited by Gianvittorio Signorotto and Maria Antonietta Visceglia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Close and detailed study of the institutional mechanisms of power and the ways in which it was exercised within the Sacred College. Analyzes specific shifts in the balance of power and their consequences for Alexander’s papacy. Includes bibliographic references and index.