etary to the old duke-antipope Felix.
But he afterwards made his peace by doing great services to Eugenius,
and then he rose step by step, until at the death of Calixtus he was
elected pope. Pius was a man of very great ability in many ways; but his
health was so much shaken before he became pope, that he was not able to
do all that he might have done if he had been in the fulness of his
strength. He took up the crusade with great zeal, but found no hearty
support from others. A meeting which he held at Mantua for the purpose
had little effect. At last, although suffering from gout and fever, the
pope made his way from Rome to Ancona, on the Adriatic, where he
expected to find both land and sea forces ready for the crusade. But on
the way he fell in with some of the troops which had been collected for
the purpose, and they turned out to be such wretched creatures, and so
utterly unfit for the hardships of war, that he could only give them his
blessing and tell them to go back to their homes. And, although, after
reaching Ancona, he had the pleasure of seeing twenty-four Venetian
ships enter the harbour for his service, he was so worn out by sickness
that he died on the next day but one (Aug. 14, 1464). And after his
death the crusade, on which he had so much set his heart, came to
nothing.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JEROME SAVONAROLA.

A.D. 1452-1498.

PART I.

There is not much to tell about the popes after Pius II. until we come
to Alexander VI., who was a Spaniard named Roderick Borgia, and was pope
from 1492 to 1503. And the story of Alexander is too shocking to be told
here; for there is hardly anything in all history so bad as the accounts
which we have of him and of his family. He is supposed to have died of
drinking, by mistake, some poison which he had prepared for a rich
cardinal whose wealth he wished to get into his hands.

Instead, therefore, of telling you about the popes of this time, I shall
give some account of a man who became very famous as a preacher--Jerome
Savonarola.

Savonarola was born in 1452 at Ferrara, where his grandfather had been
physician to the duke; and his family wished him to follow the same
profession. But Jerome was set on becoming a monk, and from this nothing
could move him. He therefore joined the Dominican friars, and after a
while he was removed to St. Mark's, at Florence, a famous convent of his
order. He found things in a bad state there; but he was chosen prior (or