Chronicles of the House of Borgia
9781465517456
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Once upon a time, Caesars were masters of the world; and the genius of Divus Julius, of Divus Augustus, was worshipped everywhere on altars. There are Cesarini at this day in Rome, cosa grande ch’ il sole, masters of wide domains, but not of empires. Once upon time, Buonaparte held Europe in its grip. Buonaparte at this day keeps exile in Muscovy or Flanders. Once upon a time, the Sforza were sovereigns-regnant; and of their daughters were made an empress and a queen. There are Sforza at this day at Santafiora and at Rome; peers of princes only, not of kings. Once upon a time, Borgia was supreme in Christendom. There are Borgia at this day, peers of France; or patricians whose names are written in the Golden Book of Rome. In little more than a century, from 1455 to 1572, Borgia sprang to the pedestal of fame; leaping at a bound, from little bishoprics and cardinalates, to the terrible altitude of Peter’s Throne; producing, in those few years, two Popes, and a Saint and General of Jesuits. It is true that there died, in the nineteenth century, another Borgia of renown,—the Lord Stefano Borgia, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Clemente—a great and good man, admirable by Englishmen for a certain gracious deed which is not yet written in English History; and who preferred a second place to that giddy pre-eminence on which his kin formerly had played their part. The history of the House of Borgia is the history of the healing of the Great Schism; of the Renascence of letters and the arts; of the Invention of Printing; of the Muslim Invasion of Europe; of the consolidation of that Pontifical Sovereignty which endured till 1870; the history of the Discovery of a World; the history of the Discovery, by man, of Man. “To penetrate the abyss of any human personality is impossible. No man truly sees his living neighbour’s, brother’s, wife’s,—nay, even his own, soul.” (John Addington Symonds.) Much more obscure must be his friend’s; and darker still, his enemy’s;—and these alive. What, then, can be known of personalities, who are but distant, perhaps uninteresting, mere names? Chronicles there are, and chroniclers; and no more reliance can be placed in those, than in modern morning and evening newspapers. The same defect is common to both,—the personal equation, the human nature of the writer, historian, journalist. Cardinal Bartolomeo Sacchi (detto Platina) was “a heathen, and a bad one.” He had to stand his trial on a charge of worshipping false gods, was acquitted for want of evidence, and departed this life in the Odour of Sanctity. Modern discoveries, in the secret recesses of the catacombs, have proved that he was used to carry on his nefarious practices there, with a handful of other extravagant athenians of like kidney. He wrote a History of the Popes, which fairly deserves to be called veracious: but he had a personal grudge against the Lord Paul P.P. II. Who had put him to trial for paganism and grieved him with the torture called The Question; wherefore, he got even with His Holiness when he wrote His life, and a more singular example of truth untruly told would be hard to find. Platina died in the reign of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV; and his History of the Popes was continued by Onofrio Panvinii, who, according to Sir Paul Rycaut, gravely states that, in 1489, the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII permitted mass to be said without wine, in Norway; because, that country being cold and the distance far, the wine either was frozen, or was turned to vinegar, before it could be brought thither. Obviously, Platina and Panvinii require credible corroboration.
