to the Spanish
intruders--Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called--who
crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption
like conquerors. 'Ten Papacies would not suffice to satiate the greed of
all this kindred,' wrote Giannandrea Boccaccio to the Duke of Ferrara in
1492: and events proved that these apprehensions were justified; for
during the Pontificate of Alexander eighteen Spanish Cardinals were
created, five of whom belonged to the house of the Borgias.

[1] See Michael Fernus, quoted by Greg. _Lucrezia Borgia_, p.
45.

[2] Jason Mainus, quoted by Greg, _Stadt Rom._ p. 314, note.

[3] Gasp. Ver., quoted by Greg. _Stadt Rom._ p. 208, note.

It is certain, however, that the profound horror with which the name of
Alexander VI. strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at
the time of his election. The sentiment of hatred with which he was
afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his
Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son
Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life,
which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century.
This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date
of his death. In course of time, when the attention of the Northern
nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the
glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his
conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like
all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects.

Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and
to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the
Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two
conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. The
Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual
insolence in their autocracy. What they desired of strange and sweet and
terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed. The Popes of
the Middle Ages--Hildebrand and Boniface--had displayed the extreme of
spiritual insolence in their theocracy. What they desired of tyrannous
and forceful in the exercise of an usurped despotism over souls, they
had enjoyed. The Borgia combined both impulses toward the illimitable.
To describe him as the Genius of Evil, whose sensualities, as
unrestrained as Nero's, were rel