John Bond

“ Many have been the cases where the church has opened the graves of men posthumously condemned as heretics and has turned the mouldering bones over to the executioner that he might burn them and scatter the ashes to the winds. In principle the church then admits her power, perhaps her duty, to sit in judgment even on the dead. If the papacy is a good institution and a benefit to the church; if the majority of the popes have been good men, then the Church of Rome owes it to itself to annul the election of Alexander VI as an offense to God and to strike the name of Borgia from the list of popes. ”

“ Indeed, the man who, after a few months, followed him on the papal seat, Julius II, would not even live in his apartments because he was sick of seeing the face of "that wretch, that circumcised Jew," on the walls. ”

“ Why has the Roman church refused to do to Borgia what the Senate of Venice did to one of its faithless doges? A man who broke but one commandment seems a minor delinquent compared with Borgia. In the ducal palace of the old Republic among the pictures of its many rulers there appears a black space wherein are stated the shame and punishment of that unworthy servant of the people. Why does Rome not follow that impressive example?
The great gallery of popes, real and mythical, that adorns the walls of St. ”