DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.71556#0227
POPE ALEXANDER VI.
187
sermon, took occasion to say in a most impressive
manner, that could he conceive the offer of a red
hat to be made to him as the price of his inte-
grity, he would reply, that the only red hat to
which he aspired was one dyed red in the blood of
his own martyrdom. When this reply was re-
ported to the pope by his agent, he is said to have
exclaimed, " This man, after all, must be a true
servant of God."
Roderic Borgia, from whose lips these words are
said to have escaped, and who now wore the triple
crown under the title of Alexander VI., united
great talents to shameless profligacy. The vices
of his immediate predecessors Sixtus IV. and In-
nocent VIII. had been sufficiently notorious. It
remained for him to acquire a name almost un-
paralleled in the annals of infamy. Plausible and
insinuating, but faithless and vindictive, insatiable
of power and wealth, but reckless of the means of
acquiring them, his time and thoughts were divided
between schemes of unbounded ambition and of
the grossest sensuality. Raised to the papacy by
notorious simoniacal acts*, he habitually practised
them by the open sale of indulgences, and by dis-
posing of ecclesiastical dignities and benefices with-
out reserve to the highest bidders. By means like
* In all which relates to the career of Savonarola, and to his
tragical death, I have resorted with much confidence to what
appears to me the honest testimony of Jacopo Nardi, the Flo-
rentine historian.
187
sermon, took occasion to say in a most impressive
manner, that could he conceive the offer of a red
hat to be made to him as the price of his inte-
grity, he would reply, that the only red hat to
which he aspired was one dyed red in the blood of
his own martyrdom. When this reply was re-
ported to the pope by his agent, he is said to have
exclaimed, " This man, after all, must be a true
servant of God."
Roderic Borgia, from whose lips these words are
said to have escaped, and who now wore the triple
crown under the title of Alexander VI., united
great talents to shameless profligacy. The vices
of his immediate predecessors Sixtus IV. and In-
nocent VIII. had been sufficiently notorious. It
remained for him to acquire a name almost un-
paralleled in the annals of infamy. Plausible and
insinuating, but faithless and vindictive, insatiable
of power and wealth, but reckless of the means of
acquiring them, his time and thoughts were divided
between schemes of unbounded ambition and of
the grossest sensuality. Raised to the papacy by
notorious simoniacal acts*, he habitually practised
them by the open sale of indulgences, and by dis-
posing of ecclesiastical dignities and benefices with-
out reserve to the highest bidders. By means like
* In all which relates to the career of Savonarola, and to his
tragical death, I have resorted with much confidence to what
appears to me the honest testimony of Jacopo Nardi, the Flo-
rentine historian.