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February 1 - July 25, 2020
“This is the law we know; but we do not accept your interpretation of it.”
But you have done so . . . to give yourself once more to that stallion. We order you, under pain of eternal damnation, never again to go to Bassanello.
The arrival of the French, moreover, coincided with the first dramatic epidemic of syphilis, which was known as the “morbo gallico” or “mal francese” by the Italians, and as “le mal de Napoli” by the French.
Despite his taste for lavish surroundings, Alexander VI was notoriously frugal at mealtimes, rarely having more than one course, according to the Ferrarese ambassador Giovanni Boccaccio,
many are assisted by fortune without being endowed with the necessary talent,
“Here they made helmets and swords out of chalices,” he wrote of Rome at this time. They sell the blood of Christ by bucketfuls And cross and thorns are lances and shields And even Christ all patience loses But let him come no more to these city streets For here his blood would flow up to the very stars Now that in Rome they sell his skin And they have closed the roads to all goodness.
“I must trust myself wholly to Him who chooses the weak things of this world to confound the strong. Your Holiness is well advised to make immediate provisions for your own salvation.”
Cesare spent most of this money on “jewels, stuffs, cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver, silks and other luxurious goods, much of them imported at considerable expense from Venice.” For his use on the journey to France, he commissioned a commode for his personal use, “covered with gold brocade outside and scarlet inside, with silver vessels within the silver urinals.”
WTF!
After their private talks, d’Aubigny went to the Sala del Pappagallo, where, Burchard reported, “all the cardinals permitted him the honour of kissing them on the mouth,” before taking his leave and rejoining his troops on the road south to Naples.
The next day gruesome stories were spread about the city: The dead pope had been heard in conversation with Satan; he had bought the papacy for the price of his soul; he had struck a bargain with the devil and had agreed to wear the papal crown for eleven years and had done so for that period of time plus seven days. At the end, so it was rumoured, water had boiled in his mouth, causing steam to fill the room in which he died, and that, in the words of a macabre jest, when rigor mortis set in, “in death as in life, he remained erect.”
Machiavelli recorded, in verse, how “the soul of Alexander was brought to rest, glorious among the blessed,” and following in “the Pope’s saintly footsteps came his three servants and beloved handmaidens, extravagance, simony and cruelty.”
A tall, rough, impulsive, and handsome man, talkative, arrogant, and restless, he had a fiercely commanding expression and a very short temper. He habitually carried a stick with which he beat men who annoyed or provoked him, and he would hurl anything at hand, including his spectacles, at messengers who brought him unwelcome news. He had had many mistresses in the past, from one of whom he had contracted syphilis, and as a cardinal he had fathered three daughters.
