Nexus - 1402 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

The Criminal History of the Papacy Continued from page 77 pope's personal beliefs were not that of | Giovanni murdered out of jealousy, and in Christian orthodoxy 1500 organised the murder of T.ucrezia's pope's personal beliefs were not that of Christian orthodoxy. This remark, buried away in a collection of once-suppressed papal pronouncements called Anecdota Ecclesiastica or "Secret Church Histories" (Vienta, Paris, 1822 reprint of 1731 ed.) and confirmed in Diderot's Encyclopédie reveals what Pope Alexander VI really thought of Christianity: "Almighty God! How long will this superstitious sect of Christians, and this upstart invention, endure?" We may set aside as negligible gossip the charge of his enemies that Alexander VI made liberal use of poison in his later years, for in serious academic history the claim is reduced to only two disputed deaths. But the cover-ups and support for the vile murders committed by Cesare Borgia, "a coldly inhumane monster", argue for a totally unprincipled character who made his name more malodorous than that of Nero. "That such accusations were made against the Borgia pope and that they managed to survive, together indicate the fear and hatred which he and his son aroused" (The Popes, op. cit., p. 324). In 1497, Cesare Borgia had his brother Giovanni murdered out of jealousy, and in 1500 organised the murder of Lucrezia's husband, Alfonso of Aragon, because he wanted her to contract an alliance of greater political advantage. Giovanni "...was fished out of the Tiber with his throat cut... [Alexander] took it as a warning from heaven to repent, and no one felt it more keenly than the pope himself. He spoke of resigning, and proclaimed his determination to set about that reform of the Church 'in Head and members' for which the world had so long been clamoring" (Catholic Encyclopedia, xiv, 32, 33). But his grief was assuaged by the attentions of his lady loves, notably pretty Guilia Farnese, the fifteen-year-old sister of the "petticoat cardinal" Alessandro Farnese and whose picture as the Virgin Mary adorns one of the great frescoes of the Vatican. Her brother later became Pope Paul III, and we should not be surprised to read in Burchard's Diarium that Guilia's daughter Laura was fathered by Pope Alexander VI. It was this same pope who had the ascetic Italian religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) and his two "Don Cesare, Donna Lucrezia and the Pope later each took a partner of their liking for further dalliances." (Diarium of Burchard) Against this backdrop, and because of his debauched lifestyle, Alexander VI could not escape the satirists, pamphleteers and other wits who sold or distributed their deadly epigrams to his opponents. After the release in 1501 of a Latin- language broadsheet bearing an illustration of Pope Alexander as the Devil and Antichrist, the city of Rome shook with cynical laughter. This broadsheet speaks of Alexander dabbling in black magic and other pagan rituals, of having a Venus emblem inlaid in his personal emerald Christian cross and of having an "offensive" painting of a naked Isis hanging in the papal bedroom (Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Milan, 1907 reprint). At that time, witchcraft was an ecclesiastical rather than a civil concern, and the documentation reveals that the 78 = NEXUS www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY — MARCH 2007