tipped the indulgence business from a service into a scandal was, at root, simple greed. In the 1470s Pope Sixtus IV, the notorious and extravagantly nepotistic pontiff whose enemies accused him of all manner of sexual predation, and whispered that he handed out cardinals’ hats to boys he fancied, found that his expenses were running away with him. The Italian wars demanded a program of castle building in the Papal States.
