Pope Alexander VI - Election

Election

On the death of Pope Innocent VIII on 25 July 1492, the three likely candidates for the Papacy were cardinals Borgia, seen as an independent candidate, Ascanio Sforza for the Milanese, and Giuliano della Rovere seen as a pro-French candidate. It was rumoured but not substantiated that Borgia succeeded in buying the largest number of votes and Sforza, in particular, was bribed with four mule-loads of silver. This was portrayed in the Showtime TV series The Borgias (2011) but is a popular falsehood about Pope Alexander. Mallett shows that Borgia was in the lead from the start and that the rumours of simony began after the election with the distribution of benefices, and that Sforza and della Rovere were just as willing and able to bribe as anyone else. The benefices and offices granted Sforza, moreover, would be worth considerably more than four mule-loads of silver. Johann Burchard, the conclave's master of ceremonies and a leading figure of the papal household under several popes, recorded in his diary that the 1492 conclave was a particularly expensive campaign. Della Rovere was bankrolled to the cost of 200,000 gold ducats by King Charles VIII of France, with another 100,000 supplied by the Republic of Genoa. Borgia was elected on 11 August 1492, assuming the name of Alexander VI (due to confusion about the status of Pope Alexander V elected by the Council of Pisa). Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (later Pope Leo X) is rumored to have sharply criticized the election and issued the much quoted warning:

Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious perhaps that this world has ever seen. And if we do not flee, he will inevitably devour us all.

This is a popular misquotation. What Medici is actually said to have stated is;

Flee, we are in the clutches of the world.

Such a criticism however, particularly by the very youthful Giovanni, is believed to be highly unlikely: "Precocious though he was, the cardinal would scarcely have made this observation when sixteen years of age."

In contrast to the preceding pontificate, Pope Alexander VI adhered initially to strict administration of justice and orderly government. Before long, however, he began endowing his relatives at the church's and at his neighbours' expense. Cesare Borgia, his son, while a youth of seventeen and a student at Pisa, was made Archbishop of Valencia, and Giovanni Borgia inherited the Spanish Dukedom of Gandia, the Borgias' ancestral home in Spain. For the Duke of Gandia and for Gioffre, also known as Goffredo, the Pope proposed to carve fiefs out of the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. Among the fiefs destined for the duke of Gandia were Cerveteri and Anguillara, lately acquired by Virginio Orsini, head of that powerful house. This policy brought Ferdinand I, King of Naples, into conflict with Pope Alexander VI, who was also opposed by Cardinal della Rovere, whose candidature for the papacy had been backed by Ferdinand. Della Rovere fortified himself in his bishopic of Ostia at the Tiber's mouth as Pope Alexander VI formed a league against Naples (25 April 1493) and prepared for war.

Ferdinand allied himself with Florence, Milan, and Venice. He also appealed to Spain for help, but Spain was eager to be on good terms with the papacy to obtain the title to the recently discovered New World. Pope Alexander VI, in the bull Inter Caetera, 4 May 1493, divided the title between Spain and Portugal along a demarcation line. (This and other related bulls are known collectively as the Bulls of Donation.)