Pope Alexander VI - Death

Death

Cesare was preparing for another expedition in August 1503 when, after he and his father had dined with Cardinal Adriano da Corneto on 6 August, they were taken ill with fever a few days later. Cesare, whose skin allegedly peeled off as a consequence of certain drastic measures to save him, eventually recovered; but the aged Pontiff apparently had little chance. Burchard's Diary provides a few details of the pope's final illness and death:

Saturday, the 12th of August, 1503, the Pope fell ill in the morning. After the hour of vespers, between six and seven o'clock a fever appeared and remained permanently. On the 15th of August thirteen ounces of blood were drawn from him and the tertian ague supervened. On Thursday, the 17th of August, at nine o'clock in the forenoon he took medicine. On Friday, the 18th, between nine and ten o'clock he confessed to the Bishop Gamboa of Carignola, who then read Mass to him. After his Communion he gave the Eucharist to the Pope who was sitting in bed. Then he ended the Mass at which were present five cardinals, Serra, Juan and Francesco Borgia, Casanova and Loris. The Pope told them that he felt very bad. At the hour of vespers after Gamboa had given him Extreme Unction, he died.

The pope was 72 years old.

As for his true faults, known only to his confessor, Pope Alexander VI apparently died genuinely repentant. The bishop of Gallipoli, Alexis Celadoni, spoke of the pontiff's contrition during his funeral oration to the electors of Alexander's successor, pope Pius III:

When at last the pope was suffering from a very severe sickness, he spontaneously requested, one after another, each of the last sacraments. He first made a very careful confession of his sins, with a contrite heart, and was affected even to the shedding of tears, I am told; then he received in Communion the most Sacred Body and Extreme Unction was administered to him.

The interregnum witnessed again the ancient "tradition" of violence and rioting. Cesare, too ill to attend to the business himself, sent Don Michelotto, his chief bravo, to seize the Pope's treasures before the death was publicly announced. The next day the body was exhibited to the people and clergy of Rome, but was covered by an "old tapestry" ("antiquo tapete"), having become greatly disfigured by the rapid but normal process of decomposition.

It has been suggested that, having taken into account the unusual level of decomposition, Alexander VI was accidentally poisoned to death by his son, Cesare, with cantarella (which had been prepared to eliminate Cardinal Adriano), although some commentaries doubt these stories and attribute the Pope's death to malaria, then prevalent in Rome, or to another such pestilence. The ambassador of Ferrara wrote to Duke Ercole that it was no wonder the Pope and the duke were sick because nearly everyone in Rome was ill because of bad air ("per la mala condictione de aere").

After a short stay, the body was removed from the crypts of St. Peter's and installed in a less well-known church, the Spanish national church of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli.