d this Remolino duly
established as a lecturer on canon law in the following year.

The letter is further of interest as showing Cesare's full consciousness
of the importance of his position; its tone and its signature--"your
brother, Cesar de Borgia, Elect of Valencia"--being such as were usual
between princes.

The two chief aims of Alexander VI, from the very beginning of his
pontificate, were to re-establish the power of the Church, which was
then the most despised of the temporal States of Italy, and to promote
the fortune of his children. Already on the very day of his coronation
he conferred upon Cesare the bishopric of Valencia, whose revenues
amounted to an annual yield of sixteen thousand ducats. For the time
being, however, he had his hands very full of other matters, and it
behoved him to move slowly at first and with the extremest caution.

The clouds of war were lowering heavily over Italy when Alexander came
to St. Peter's throne, and it was his first concern to find for himself
a safe position against the coming of the threatening storm. The chief
menace to the general peace was Lodovico Maria Sforza, surnamed Il
Moro,(1) who sat as regent for his nephew, Duke Gian Galeazzo, upon
the throne of Milan. That regency he had usurped from Gian Galeazzo's
mother, and he was now in a fair way to usurp the throne itself. He kept
his nephew virtually a prisoner in the Castle of Pavia, together with
his young bride, Isabella of Aragon, who had been sent thither by her
father, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the crown of Naples.

1 Touching Lodovico Maria's by-name of "Il Moro"--which is generally
translated as "The Moor," whilst in one writer we have found him
mentioned as "Black Lodovico," Benedetto Varchi's explanation (in his
Storia Fiorentina) may be of interest. He tells us that Lodovico was not
so called on account of any swarthiness of complexion, as is supposed by
Guicciardini, because, on the contrary, he was fair; nor yet on account
of his device, showing a Moorish squire, who, brush in hand, dusts the
gown of a young woman in regal apparel, with the motto, "Per Italia
nettar d'ogni bruttura"; this device of the Moor, he tells us, was a
rebus or pun upon the word "moro," which also means the mulberry, and
was so meant by Lodovico. The mulberry burgeons at the end of winter
and blossoms very early. Thus Lodovico symbolized his own prudence and
readiness to seize opportunity betimes.

Gian Galeazz