fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its ground, in spite of the immense progress made by the human race in knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.”*

But let us observe how this church, scandalized by the worst of men, in the worst of all ages of its history, emerged from its degradation at the close of the career of Leo the Tenth. An account has been given of that renovation by an eminent Protestant historian. We find the great work promoted by a pontiff, namely, Paul the Fourth, who was one of the subscribing cardinals to that singular report which has been previously referred to. That cardinal was John Peter Caraffa, a monk of the Theatine order.

"It is not, therefore," says Macaulay, says Macaulay, "strange that the effect of the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part of Christendom should have been to produce an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in another. Two reformations were pushed on at once with equal energy and effect-a reformation of doctrine in the North, a reformation of manners and discipline in the South. In the course of a single generation, the whole spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a change. From the halls of the Vatican to the most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the great revival was everywhere felt and seen. All the institutions anciently devised for the propagation and defence of the faith were furbished up and made efficient. Fresh engines of still more formidable power were constructed. Every where old religious communities were remodelled, and new religious communities called into existence. Within a year after the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was purified. The Capuchins restored the old Franciscan discipline, the midnight prayer and the life of silence. The Barnabites and the society of Somasca devoted themselves to the relief and education of the poor. To the Theatine order a still higher interest belongs. Its great object was the same with that of our early Methodists, namely to supply the deficiences of the parochial clergy. The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church of England, gave *Macaulay, Ranke's Lives. Ed. Rev.

every countenance to the good work. The members of the new brotherhood preached to great multitudes in the streets and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, administered the last sacraments to the dying. Foremost among them in zeal and devotion was Gian. Pietro Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul the Fourth.'

*Macaulay on Ranke's Hist. of the Popes. Repub. by Longman,

p. 19.

CHAPTER VII.

RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE, AND THEIR INFLUENCES IN THE PONTIFICATE OF ALEXANDER THE SIXTH.-CAREER OF CÆSAR BORGIA AFTER THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CARDINAL INTO THE CAPTAIN GENERAL.-HIS EXPLOITS.-DEATH OF ALEXANDER THE SIXTH.

So ferocious and infuriate was the soul of Cacus. He left not a species of crime, wickedness, treachery, or fraud, unattempted or untried."VIR. En. lib. vii.

Lo! Alexander sits in Peter's chair,

And ev'ry vice enthroned now triumphs there;

While "The True Monk" of Florence meets with death,
In all its direst terrors, for the faith.

It was not till after the death of Savonarola that Cæsar Borgia began to aspire to an Italian sovereignty, and to make himself lord of Romagna, with the army of the church and the treasures of the pontiff.

The Cardinal Valentino did not imbrue his hands in his brother's blood without a motive for the murder.

He abandoned the church, and exchanged the red hat for a ducal coronet.

The cardinal was transformed into the Duke Valentino, the churchman into a rapacious soldier, sanguinary, ruthless, perfidious, and ferocious.

Cæsar Borgia, from the hour of his brother's death, let all his passions loose, but, above all, gave a free course to his measureless ambition, cupidity, and vindictiveness; and from that time it seemed as if the destiny of his father was bound up with his

own.

The worst qualities of Alexander's nature now burst forth, and the unworthy pontiff seemed to live for no other purpose than to promote the wicked objects of his son, and to profit by them.

Cæsar suddenly became a great military chief, a terror of the pope's enemies in all the ecclesiastical states, and of the noble families of those adverse cardinals who had excited Alexander's jealousy, or of those whose possessions bordered on the papal

states.

The Italian princes had good reason to look with apprehension and dismay on the new power that was springing up behind the chair of St. Peter.

From the pontiff there was neither truth, justice, nor fidelity to any engagement to expect; and from Cæsar there was only perfidy and simulation to count on.

"El proverbio allora correa, che il Papa non facea mai, quello che diceva; ed il Valentino non dicea mai quella che facea."*

The power of Cæsar was the more formidable, from his having all the temporal resources and spiritual powers of the see of Rome at his command.

"In this year," (1500), says Guicciardini, "Alexander, shewing the correspondence of all his acts, and the one aim by which they were directed, having made a most scandalous creation of twelve cardinals, not of such persons as possessed most merit, but of those who made the largest offers of money for that dignity,--not to leave any means of getting money untried throughout all Italy and in foreign countries, he had the jubilee published, which had been already celebrated at Rome, and with the presence of a vast number of strangers, conceding even privileges of it to those who had not been able on that occasion to visit Rome, for certain pecuniary considerations. The sums of money thus amassed, together with all other means which could be obtained in any manner from the

*Muratori, Ann. 1503, tom. xiv. p. 19.

spiritual treasury, and from the resources of the temporal dominions of the church, he remitted to his son, the Duke of Valentino, who had taken up his winter quarters, and was preparing all things necessary for the siege of Faenza, as soon as the season of the year permitted."*

It is not denied, I believe, by any historian of the affairs of Italy in the fifteenth century, that the Duke of Valentino derived the means chiefly from his father, which enabled him to ravage Italy, to carry fire and sword into many of its provinces, to overrun the whole of Romagna, to seize on towns and cities, to put to death members of the most illustrious houses in Italy, to make a trade of war, and derive a princely revenue from the sacking of towns and castles, to make a system of rapine, and a speculation of murder and robbery on a grand scale.

The pontiff had vast resources at his command to supply his son with money to meet all the exigencies of war, wherever that man-monster, in his mad lust and the headlong fury of his rage for blood, was pleased to carry it.

The sinews of war came from Alexander. The unholy practice of hoarding wealth derived from a traffic in sacred things, and from revenues of temporal possessions nominally held for spiritual purposes, enabled Alexander to subsidize a son who had gone to war with humanity, and in whose track there was a realization of the horrors of which we read in Josephus.

"The war-cry of the Roman legions rushing to conquest, and the shouts of the factions surrounded with fire and sword, were heard aloud. There was no mercy for age; nor could dignity find any respect. Wasted and gaunt with famine, they bellowed forth their groans and lamentations. All the Peræa and the neighbouring hills resounded, and made the tone deeper and deeper. The calamities and sufferings occasioned by this war were more formidable than the strife itself."+

"In 1501," says Muratori, "the Duke Valentino attacked the * Guicciardini, Historia de Italia, lib. v. p. 132.

Joseph. Hist., Lib. vi. sect. 5, p. 1282.-Ed. Hudson. Oxon.