Glimpses of Church History

11.Period 1492 - 1550

 

Reaching the Top by Bribery

Rodrigo Borgia, nephew of Calistus III (Pope No 208) became Archbishop of Valencia in 1456 at the age of 25. He was made cardinal a year later and Vice-Chancellor a year after. His favourite mistress was the beautiful Vanozza Catanei but he also dallied with her sister and mother.

 

At the papal election, Rodrigo faced stiff opposition. According to John Burchard (Secretary of the Conclave and assistant to four pontiffs), one rival cardinal was backed by the French King with 200,000 ducats and the Republic of Genoa with 100,000. But Borgia being Vice-Chancellor could offer bigger bribes - towns, villas, abbeys. A rival, Cardinal Sforza (favoured by Milan), was reportedly silenced with four mule-loads of silver. Borgia emerged the winner and took the name Alexander VI (odd as Alexander V was an anti-Pope). He was 61 and it was the year 1492 - when Columbus landed in the New World.

 

Sex & Simony

Alexander VI (left)

Borgia had 10 known illegitimate children, including Cesare and Lucrezia by Vanozza. When he was 58, he was infatuated by a 15-year old beauty, Giulia Farnese, who had recently married one Orsini. She soon became known as the Pope’s Whore. The Pope openly acknowledged his children by her - Laura, Juan and Rodrigo. He made Guilia’s brother cardinal - the future Paul III. His son Cesare became Archbishop of Valencia and a cardinal a year later. Alexander did not hesitate to appoint cardinals for a hefty fee and later have them poisoned, expropriating their property and making appointments afresh. His favoured poison was cantarella, a concoction laced with arsenic.

 

Savonarola burned

One of the few who protested at the excesses at the papal court was Savonarola, Dominican Prior at Florence and a great preacher. The Pope tried to silence him by offering to make him cardinal for free. When the monk refused, he was tried, hanged and burned in public. 150 years later, he was made a saint by another pope, Benedict  XIV.

 

Festival of the Whores

Alexander’s reign was known for its orgies. One of the more spectacular ones was organised by his son Cesare on 31 October 1501. The pope was the only other male invited. His daughter Lucrezia was present. 50 of Rome’s top prostitutes danced a striptease before the two men, finally flopping naked around the pope’s table and scrambling for chestnuts thrown to them by the Borgias.

 

The Pope’s children

The pope loved his children. With his ill-gotten wealth, he could offer them the best education. He also officiated at their weddings. Lucrezia married 3 times. Her father annulled her second marriage (to Sforza) of 3 years on grounds of non-consummation which husband denied vigorously. The real reason for the annulment was to get her re-married into the Naples royalty. Son Cesare had the new husband strangled in 1500. Like many other clerics, he contracted syphilis and later took to wearing a black silk mask to conceal his disfigured face.

Cesare is also rumoured to have killed his own brother Giovanni, Duke of Gandia. His body was dumped in the river Tiber. The pope was in deep anguish  over this death and resolved “to amend our life and reform the church.” But the reforms never really got under way.

 

Death of Alexander VI

In 1503, the pope mistakenly drank the poisoned wine which he had served many an eminent personage in the past. His face turned a mulberry colour and then yellow. The eyes turned red, the lips puffed up and the tongue doubled up. He started foaming profusely at the mouth and the skin was peeling off.  Soon the corpse began to blacken and putrefy. The Venetian ambassador noted that this was “the ugliest, most monstrous body ever seen without any human likeness”. Meanwhile, Cesare’s men were pulling off rings from the fingers, carting off candlesticks, ornaments, vestments etc before the palace was ransacked.  

As the body would not fit into the coffin, it was squeezed in after wrapping with a piece of old carpet. It was reluctantly allowed to be buried in St Peter’s basilica but was removed in 1610 and now rests in Spain. Alexander’s son Cesare died three years later in battle.

 

Julius II

The next pope, Pius III, a ‘nephew’ of Pius II, lasted just a month. His  successor, Julius II, resorted to massive bribery to become pope. He was not even religious, his Lenten fare consisting of prawn, tunny, lampreys and the best caviar. He had sired three daughters as a cardinal and his sexual exploits had left him syphilitic. By 1508 his foot had become too ulcerous to be kissed by the faithful.

In this very year, Julius had issued a bull granting the Spanish Crown in perpetuity all tithes (taxes) collected in the Americas. He was a great patron of the arts and it was he who commissioned the  decoration of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo (1475-64).

 

Leo X’s Lifestyle

The next pope, Leo X, (right) born of aristocratic parents lived in the lavish style he was used to. He kept 683 courtiers. There were 50-course dinners and all sorts of delicacies and surprises, such as nightingales emerging out of pies and nude little boys out of puddings. Bullfights were followed by banquets and masked balls. There was a permanent theatre, an orchestra, jesters, wild animals. A parade through Rome in 1514 presided by Leo included Indian peacocks, Persian horses, a panther, two leopards and an elephant.

 

Pope Leo had to be inventive to pay for his expensive pursuits. The brothels did not fetch enough - despite 7000 registered prostitutes, about 14% of the population. He created and auctioned over 2000 clerical posts. A cardinal’s hat fetched about 30,000 ducats. The sale of indulgences was common.

 

Buying your way to Heaven

High placed clerics could commit  crimes with impunity. Any civil ruler who dared to try them was excommunicated. The offenders could be absolved on payment of stipulated sums to the pope. For a murder of one’s foe, a deacon’s fee was twenty crowns while a bishop or abbot paid 300.

Leo’s problems came to a head in far-off Germany. This country had been reeling under never ending papal taxes. Selling indulgences was ever profitable. For example, payment of a 20^th of a guilder exempted one from the Lenten fast and earned a 20 year remission in purgatory. Indulgences were sold even in inns and taverns.

 

Enter Martin Luther

In 1517, the pope appointed Dominican friar John Tetzel to promote a special indulgence in Germany to help raise funds for St Peter’s. Tetzel described the sufferings of the souls in purgatory eloquently. 12 pence from the son would secure his father’s release from agony. He was fond of  reciting the ditty:    

                                      When the coin in the coffers rings, A soul from the fire springs.

Martin Luther (1483-1546) [pictured left] was an Augustinian monk of peasant stock. He decided to take a stand against papal abuses. On the Feast of All Saints 1517, he nailed his 95 objections (theses) about indulgences on the door of Prince Albert’s church at Wittenburg.

One of the these read:

“The pope’s wealth far exceeds that of all other men. Why does he not build the Church of St Peter’s with his own money instead of the money of poor Christians?”

 

In 1518, Luther wrote to the German nobles:

“It is terrible to see the Head of Christendom who boasts of being the Vicar of Christ living in a pomp that no King or Emperor can equal; there is more worldliness in him, who calls himself most holy, than in the world itself.”

As expected, Pope Leo excommunicated Luther in 1520 who tore the document and denounced the pope as the ‘Anti-Christ’. Leo issued a second condemnation. Luther appealed to the General Council but was blocked by Leo and subsequent popes. Henry VIII of England came to the defence of the pope with an anti-Lutheran tract and was rewarded with the title Defender of the Faith, still used by British sovereigns.

 

  TABLE OF POPES  (213 to 219)

213) Alexander VI   1492-1503	214) Pius III        1503
215) Julius II           1503-13	216) Leo X          1513-21
217) Adrian VI         1522-23	218) Clement VII  1523-34
219) Paul III             1534-49

 When Henry failed to get his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled, he divorced her and married Anne Boleyn in 1533. Pope Paul III (brother of Alexander VI’s mistress, Giulia) excommunicated him in 1534 whereupon Henry installed himself as Head of the Church of England. The Reformation took root in Geneva In 1541 under Calvin and it soon spread to France, Holland etc. In 1542, Paul III set up the Roman Inquisition and in 1545 (a year before Luther’s death) called the Council of Trent to deal with the Protestant challenge. This Council was to last 18 years.

 

REFERENCES

1.    The Bad Popes, E Chamberlain (Barnes & Noble, 1993)

2.    Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa (Corgi 1994)

3.    Popes through the Ages, J Brusher (New Advent 1996)

4.    Chronicles of the Popes,  P  Maxwell-Stuart (Thomas & Hudson, 1997)