The Borgias (21 page)

What he would be a long time learning was the difficulty, seemingly the near impossibility, of ruling successfully and bringing a reign to a satisfying conclusion. Almost the whole history of the papacy could have been drawn upon as evidence that the institution was a poisoned chalice and that whoever drank from it was doomed to disillusionment, failure, and grief. Such words describe the fate of Calixtus III and of Pius II and of earlier pontiffs beyond numbering. That intelligent men
continued to fight for such an office is testimony both to the human hunger for power and, less often, to the price some good men were willing to pay in order to extract the Church from its recurrent calamities.

The cardinals present at the conclave of 1464 were for the most part concerned not with great issues but with extracting themselves from their own predicament and concluding their business at the earliest possible moment. Their predicament was the sense of being trapped in a dangerous situation in a dangerous place. Their hurry was propelled by fear: of the Roman mob, which was using the death of a Tuscan pope as an excuse to ransack the homes and businesses of the city’s Tuscan residents; of Pius’s ambitious nephew Antonio, recently elevated to duke of Amalfi, who remained captain-general of the papal army and seemed poised to interfere in the election; of the very office the cardinals had come together to fill.

The last-mentioned fear is, paradoxically, the one that gripped the conclave most fiercely. The cardinals could and did extract from Duke Antonio a pledge that he would surrender both his office and the Castel Sant’Angelo as soon as the election was concluded and that he would meanwhile do what he could to maintain some measure of order in the streets of Rome. The contest between papacy and Sacred College was a far more worrisome matter and not so easily resolved. Many of the cardinals were uneasy, to say the least, about the extent to which the power of the popes had been growing at their expense.
Therefore they made it their first order of business to draw up a list of the most challenging capitulations ever adopted by a conclave. With one obscure exception, every cardinal affixed his signature to this list, thereby pledging to do the following if elected:

Convene a general council of the Church to meet three years after the election (it being understood that the purpose of this council would be to put constraints on the pope).

Limit the Sacred College to twenty-four members (so as not to dilute the power of individual members).

Appoint no cardinal under the age of thirty.

Appoint only one nephew.

And appoint only “learned men.”

Additionally, and far more radically, the capitulations stipulated that
without the approval of the college the pope could thenceforth appoint no cardinals, enter into no political alliances, declare no wars, and dispose of no Church territory.

Finally, and least controversially, there was a pledge to make war on the Turks.

These capitulations were intended to effect a profound change in the character of the papacy and the constitution of the Church. They amounted to a blunt rejection of the notion that the pope was not only a monarch but an absolute monarch, and that he ruled
over
, rather than
with
, the Sacred College. For those who rejected the monarchical principle, the acceptance of the capitulations by every cardinal with any chance of being elected must have seemed to presage a long-sought, epic victory: the demotion of the pope to a kind of chairman of the board, presiding over but not dictating to an oligarchy of cardinals.

This accomplished, the conclave got down to the business of voting. A first ballot, in which each cardinal was permitted to cast three votes, produced seven for the fierce old warrior Scarampo, nine for the tirelessly self-promoting Estouteville, and eleven for the colorless but unobjectionable Pietro Barbo of Venice. This Barbo was the same nephew of Pope Eugenius IV who in 1455 had been put forward as the candidate of the Orsini only to be blocked by Prospero Colonna. Prospero, however, was now in his tomb, the Sacred College was for the time being without a Colonna, and Barbo had reached an age, forty-seven, at which he could be considered marginally ready to receive the papal crown. Still in a hurry to be finished, sensing that a conclusion had come within reach, the cardinals immediately moved on to the process of accession. Barbo had no difficulty in securing the additional votes needed for election—in fact he quickly had fifteen of the nineteen votes cast—and it was done. The conclave had lasted little more than forty-eight hours.

It is reasonable to surmise that Rodrigo must have voted for Barbo at the end and was probably doing so from the beginning. The two were friends of long standing (the reader will recall that it was Cardinal Barbo who had helped Rodrigo spirit Pedro Luis Borgia out of Rome as Calixtus III lay dying), and Barbo’s actions after his election do not suggest that Rodrigo had done anything to damage the relationship. Be all that as it may, there was nothing startling about how the election turned out and no evident reason for anyone to be alarmed. Though
not particularly distinguished intellectually or extravagantly well endowed with political connections, Barbo was an attractive enough candidate, tall and handsome with a dignified demeanor, known for his kindness, gentleness, and generosity. He was honest as well, and though somewhat chilly in demeanor had never shown much appetite for conflict. Apart from indulging a passion for ancient coins and precious stones and spending huge sums on transforming the Roman residence of Venice’s cardinals into the city’s first great Renaissance palace, he had always lived simply and kept himself free of scandal.

After the failure of his candidacy in 1455, Barbo had remained sufficiently well thought of to again receive notable support in the conclave of 1458. The factor that made the difference in 1464 was his Venetian birth. Venice by this juncture was enmeshed in a costly and open-ended war with the Turks and therefore was eager for an alliance with Rome and almost desperately enthusiastic about the idea of a great pan-European crusade. Thus the Roman faction in the Sacred College had reason to regard Venice as a friend rather than as a nuisance unwilling to admit the gravity of the Ottoman menace. The cardinals could now expect a pope whose family was rooted in Venice to pursue the fight against the Turks with all possible vigor.

One thing, however, could not possibly have been understood within the conclave or Barbo would never have been elected. The new pope carried within him an uncompromising belief in the papacy as supreme, in the pope as sovereign over cardinals, councils, emperors, and all other challengers. Like many and probably most of his fellow cardinals, he had signed the capitulations without any intention of honoring them if he became pope. This became clear almost immediately after his election, when three days passed without his publishing—as the capitulations themselves required—a bull confirming everything that had been pledged. The new Pope Paul II did, however, go to some lengths to soften his betrayal. (
If betrayal it was; not only had capitulations been regularly ignored by Paul’s predecessors, but it was not difficult to find scholars who declared them to be so fundamentally invalid as to have no binding force.) It was Paul who introduced the practice of dressing cardinals in silken red robes and officially elevated them to the status of “princes of the Church,” the equals of dukes and lower than no one except popes (of course) and hereditary royalty. He ordered that
cardinals when in public should always be surrounded by platoons of retainers and conferred generous stipends on those lacking independent means. An implicit bargain was being struck: the cardinals could be among the most exalted personages in all Europe, but only by acknowledging that the pope was their master. Appointment to the Sacred College would be a guarantee of wealth, influence, and a life of privilege, but only by providing access to the one man empowered to dispense such prizes. This proved an effective strategy. It became a prototype for the process by which, generations later, secular rulers such as Louis XIV of France would seduce once-dangerous nobles into submitting to central—meaning royal—authority.

For Cardinal Rodrigo, Paul II’s reign became an advanced course in just how poisonous the papacy could be even for a well-intended pope, and how much bitterness and humiliation the fates could heap upon those who won the throne. Paul’s exalted view of his office embroiled him in conflicts of many kinds: with the baronial clans in and near Rome, with the warlords who ruled the more distant Papal States, with the leading Italian princes, and even with his fellow monarchs beyond the Italian peninsula. This is one reason why history has not dealt kindly with him, but there are other reasons as well. Biographers never fail to note that his motives in embarking on an ecclesiastical career had been unedifying if not really ignoble. He had been a youth of good family preparing for a life as a Venetian trader—in fact was about to leave home for a position overseas—when news reached Venice that Cardinal Gabriele Condulmer had been elected pope. Condulmer being his mother’s brother, young Pietro decided that his prospects would be brighter in the Church than in business and so took holy orders. He was not wrong in his calculations, becoming a cardinal when scarcely more than a boy, but the authenticity of his religious vocation was always open to question.

As pope he alienated his former colleagues by not only ignoring the capitulations but flouting one of their key provisions, appointing three young nephews to the Sacred College. That the three in the course of long careers would prove themselves worthy of their high positions could of course not be known at the time of their appointment, and so it did nothing to ease the annoyance of the men who had elected their uncle. Paul also raised eyebrows with the eccentric lifestyle he adopted
upon taking office, sleeping during the day and granting audiences in the middle of the night only. It seems possible, in light of his compassionate nature and the seriousness with which he embraced his new responsibilities, that his upside-down schedule was intended to reduce the number of supplicants coming to ask favors, thereby sparing him the pain of having to say no. Whatever the motive, his schedule was a headache for those with business that required his attention. It was also unhealthy for the pope himself, increasing his isolation and aggravating his inclination to be distrustful.

Long after his death, historians would depict Paul II as an egomaniac, neurotically hungry to aggrandize himself, insistent on excessive display, and draping himself in flamboyant attire on ceremonial occasions. Such complaints are true enough as far as they go—Paul certainly went to extremes in demanding that his ceremonies be splendid—but it is also possible to see his behavior less as frivolous waste than as a political technique. In Renaissance Europe no less than in the Middle Ages, power had to be
displayed
to be credible. Even in distant England, a ruler as parsimonious as Henry VII would spend lavishly on grand palaces and grandiose courtly displays and would do so for baldly political reasons. Much the same can be said of the increasing elaboration of the Church’s ceremonies and celebrations in the same century: susceptible to being depicted as disgraceful, explainable as a cost of doing business.

Even as a young man Pietro Barbo had struck people who did not know him as haughty, even cold. A story often told about him is that, upon being elected pope, he declared his intention to take the name Formosus, not in honor of a ninth-century predecessor of that name but because it meant “good-looking.” The cardinals, it is said, had to argue hard to dissuade him from this frivolous display of self-love. The truth is that Barbo was complicated in ways bound to produce misunderstanding, an introvert whose stony demeanor concealed a soft heart. All his life he had been openhanded with his wealth, funding hospitals for the needy and the distribution of free medicines. He continued these benefactions as pope, giving particular attention to widows, invalids, and displaced persons. He was repulsed by violence of whatever kind, war and lawful executions included, and throughout his papacy he would be an active supporter of monastic reform. He attacked official
corruption by forbidding legates, governors, and judges to accept gifts and applied the prohibition to himself.

In short, Paul made a serious and sustained effort to be everything he thought a good pope should be. Even his critics—who have always been legion and have rarely stopped short of hinting at an irregular sexual orientation—uniformly acknowledge that he maintained high standards in choosing his associates and distributing favors. They concede also that during his reign offices and benefices were awarded on the basis of merit rather than cronyism or bribery. It reveals a certain largeness of spirit that the cardinals who became his closest confidants and advisers were his former rivals for the papacy, Bessarion and Carvajal. The two were universally recognized as among the finest churchmen of the time, not only untouched by any hint of corruption but unwilling to keep silent about corruption when they encountered it. That they became and remained central figures in Paul’s administration is a point to be taken into account when judging the character of his reign. Similarly, his attitude toward the vice-chancellor is the best clue we have to what kind of life Cardinal Borgia was living as he approached age forty. Paul like Pius and Calixtus displayed high confidence in Rodrigo, significantly expanding his responsibilities and authority, increasing the number of Curial offices he was empowered to fill, and conferring upon him a number of benefices (all of them in Spain, to avoid angering the Italians). Everything we know about Paul II makes it difficult to believe that he could have shown so much favor to a subordinate whom he so much as suspected of inappropriate conduct.

Neither high standards nor worthy companions, however, were sufficient to make Paul a successful or even a popular pope. The opposition he aroused in asserting his own supremacy was simply too substantial to be overcome. He began, logically enough, with the Papal States, it being his belief that he had not only the right but the duty to make himself their ruler in fact as much as in principle. And things went reasonably well in the early going. In the Romagna, after experiencing some early setbacks, he had had the good sense or good luck to employ the services of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, who quickly broke the power of the rebellious Malatesta of Rimini.