Pope Alexander III

“ By these measures in the spiritual order Alexander exercised vast influence over the future of the Catholic Church, whilst by his nepotism he caused the Papacy to become a political power in Italy. His nepotism is commonly explained by his desire to enrich his kindred. But there was more than this. There was the desire to put in the place of almost independent feudatories a prince who represented the person, and could be trusted to do the will, of the Pope, and to strengthen and sustain the Papacy by the introduction of an hereditary element. ”

“ In 1176 at Venice the Emperor Frederick (Frederick Barbarossa) , knelt to Pope Alexander III and swore fealty to him.
The great power of the church in the beginning of the eleventh century lay in the wills and consciences of men. It failed to retain the moral prestige on which its power was based. In the opening decades of the fourteenth century it was discovered that the power of the Pope had evaporated. What was it that destroyed the naive confidence of the common people of Christendom in the church so that they would no longer rally to its appeal and serve its purposes? ”

“ To most, however, the experienced statesman and diligent man of business, genial and easy-tempered when not crossed, who knew how to combine magnificence with frugality, and whose deep dissimulation was the more dangerous from the perfect genuineness of the sanguine, jovial temperament beneath which it lay concealed, seemed precisely the Pope needed for restoring the Church's tarnished* dignity. Nor was it long before Alexander justified a portion of the hopes reposed in him by his energy in reestablishing public order and in reinvigorating the administration of justice. ”

“ The Conclave assembled at Naples and elected a nephew of Gregory IX., who took the name of Alexander IV. The new Pope was described by Matthew Paris as ‘kindly and pious, assiduous in prayer and strenuously ascetic, but easily moved by flatterers and inclined to avarice.’ He had not the inflexible will of his predecessor and (though he continued Innocent’s policy) he was not very successful in his efforts, despite the fact that it was easier to carry on the war against the Hohenstaufen now that the legitimate stock was almost extinct and Germany entirely isolated from Sicily. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the career of a man of letters as we know it to-day, a career at once honorable and independent, takes its rise from the life and work of Alexander Pope.
The long controversies that have raged about Pope's rank as a poet seem at last to be drawing to a close; and it has become possible to strike a balance between the exaggerated praise of his contemporaries and the reckless depreciation of romantic critics. That he is not a poet of the first order is plain, if for no other reason than that he never produced a work in any of the greatest forms of poetry. ”

“ Alexander IV. (Rinaldo) , pope from 1254 to 1261, was, like Innocent III. and Gregory IX., a member of the family of the counts of Segni. His uncle Gregory IX. made him cardinal deacon in 1227 and cardinal bishop of Ostia in 1231. On the death of Innocent IV. he was elected pope at Naples on the 12th of December 1254. He is described as a stout man, kindly, cheerful, but of no great brilliancy. ”

“ At last the Council of Pisa deposed both Popes, and the cardinals then elected Alexander V. in 1409. Both the deposed Popes claimed to be still Popes. And Alexander V., instead of carrying out the reforms that were expected, made lavish appointments to vacant offices, saying to all who complained that he was rich as a bishop, poor as a cardinal, but a beggar as Pope. ”

“ The next power with which Charles VIII had to deal was represented by a person in every way the opposite of the Dominican monk—Pope Alexander VI. After the troubles of the Great Schism and the councils, the popes had set to work to organize their possessions in central Italy into a compact principality. For a time they seemed to be little more than Italian princes. But they did not make rapid progress in their political enterprises because, in the first place, they were usually advanced in years before they came to power and so had little time to carry out their projects ”

“ Thus, "motionless and moanless," without a word about Christ—the slightest syllable of repentance—and with a scrap of heathen morality in his mouth, died the brilliant Alexander Pope. Who is ready to say, "May my last end be like his"? His favourite Martha Blount behaved, according to some accounts, with disgusting unconcern on the occasion. So true it is, "there is no friendship among the wicked," even although the heartless Bolingbroke, too, was by, and seems to have succeeded in squeezing out some crocodile tears, as he bent over the dying poet, and said, "O God! what is man?" ”

“ The Holy Synod in 1893, inspired by the Imperial Procurator, M. Pobiedonostseff—who, though a layman, wielded an absolute control over the Russian Church and was by his opponents nicknamed “Lay Pope”—demanded the suppression of Protestants, Roman Catholics, Mohammedans, Buddhists, and other dissenters throughout the Empire. The thirteen years of Alexander III.’s reign form one of the gloomiest pages in a history not remarkable for brightness. ”

“ He assured the Pope that the rest of the country could be reduced to order and peace by measures of exceeding rigour.
Reigning over subjects unaccustomed to obey, befriended by no Power in Europe except the Turk, surrounded by hostile cardinals, with a flaw in his title which invited defiance and contempt, Alexander found himself in a position of the utmost danger. In the natural course of things, a power so wrongfully acquired, and so ill secured would have fallen speedily; and the Papacy bearing the penalty of its corruption would have been subjugated. ”

“ Nothing could really compensate for the degradation of the Spiritual Power by its complicity in so infamous a transaction; but this was a consideration which did not strongly appeal to Alexander. It is only just to observe, however, that at bottom this humiliating action sprang from the great cause of humiliation which he was endeavouring to abolish,—the Pope's weakness as a temporal sovereign. This could not be remedied without foreign alliances, and they could not be had unless he was prepared to meet his allies half-way. ”

“ Early in 1256 he crossed over to Sicily, and soon subjected the whole of the island to his obedience. Alexander now found that there was no prospect of the promised English army and subsidies. In 4821257 the Pope’s difficulties were increased by a popular revolt in Rome, where the Senator Brancaleone drove him to take refuge in Viterbo, while a violent and sanguinary democracy lorded over the capital and entered into friendly relations with Manfred, to whom the Ghibelline towns now turned as their best protector against Pope and Clergy. ”

“ The aspiration of the Councils of Constance and Basel, the hope of honest reforms, had remained unsatisfied, and was kept up by the condition of the Roman Court during several pontificates. It was scarcely worse under Alexander than under his predecessors, and the zeal of the French Government was not attributable exclusively to disinterested motives of conscience. The flaw in his election was too tempting an instrument to be neglected. There was more to gain by practising on his fears than by deposing him. Neither Germany nor Spain was willing to accept a Pope created by the King of France. ”

“ The senators, elected yearly in September, had to swear fealty to the pope, and a certain proportion of nobles was included in their number. On his return to Rome, Alexander received a solemn welcome from all, but he had neither extinguished nor really subdued the republic. On the contrary, men's minds were more and more inflamed by the example of freedom displayed in the north of Italy. He died on the 30th of August 1181. The fact that between 1181 and 1187 there were three popes always living in exile proves that the republic was by no means crushed. ”

“ The mass of the people throughout Europe had hardly a conception of what was passing in Central Italy. The only moment which was really fraught with danger—when Charles VIII was in Italy—went by with unexpected fortune, and even then it was not the Papacy as such that was in peril, but Alexander, who risked being supplanted by a more respectable Pope. The great, permanent, and increasing danger for the Papacy lay in Alexander himself, and, above all, in his son Cesare Borgia. ”

“ In course of time, when the attention of the Northern nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects.
Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to411 close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption. ”

“ King Ferdinand continually impressed on Alexander that he heartily despised him. Gonzalvo of Cordova came to Rome and spoke out the indignation and horror of Europe. [22] A joint embassy was despatched by the Kings of Spain and Portugal to protest against the scandals of the papacy. [23] Alexander received the envoys in the presence of five cardinals. They represented the immediate necessity of a thorough reformation; they demanded that a Council should be assembled at the Lateran; they informed the Pope that all Italy could bear witness that his election was void. ”

“ The Pope shrieked with amazement, for, although the splendid Pontifical vestments had become ragged fur, in every other respect the kneeling figure was the counterpart of the painted one, and the painted one was Pinturicchio’s portrait of Pope Alexander the Sixth kneeling as a witness of the Resurrection.
Alexander the Eighth would fain have imitated his predecessor’s attitude, but terror bound him to his chair, and the adjuration of his patron St. Mark which struggled towards his lips never arrived there. ”

“ Della Rovere, feeling that Rome was a dangerous place for him, fortified himself in his bishopric of Ostia at the Tiber’s mouth, while Ferdinand allied himself with Florence, Milan, Venice, and the pope formed a league against Naples (April 25, 1493) and prepared for war. Ferdinand appealed to Spain for help; but Spain was anxious to be on good terms with the pope to obtain a title over the newly discovered continent of America and could not afford to quarrel with him.
Alexander meditated great marriages for his children. ”

“ Finally, a treaty was concluded by which Alexander ceded many of his possessions, and surrendered Prince Djem, while the king promised to recognise him as Pope, and to defend his rights, thus delivering him from his most imminent danger. The meeting of the Pope and king was arranged to take place, as if by accident, in the garden of the fortress. Charles knelt, and Alexander embraced him. The Pope bestowed the Cardinal’s hat on Briçonnet, a favourite of the king. ”

“ In 1497, Alexander decreed that the "Præfectus Sacrarii Pontificii", commonly called "Sacristan of the Pope", but virtually parish-priest of the Vatican and keeper of the Pope's conscience, should be permanently and exclusively a prelate chosen from the Augustinian Order, an arrangement that still endures. Alexander earned the enmity of Spain, the obloquy of many narrow minded contemporaries, and the gratitude of posterity, by his tolerant policy towards the Jews, whom he could not be coerced into banishing or molesting. ”

“ It is plain even from so slight a sketch as this that the common conception of Pope as "the wicked wasp of Twickenham," a bitter, jealous, and malignant spirit, is utterly out of accord with the facts of his life. Pope's faults of character lie on the surface, and the most perceptible is that which has done him most harm in the eyes of English-speaking men. ”

“ Besides, the advantages that had accrued to Virginio Orsini, Alexander's favourite, from his embassy to Naples had brought upon him the ill-will of Prospero and Fabrizio Colonna, who owned nearly all the villages round about Rome. Now the pope could not endure to live in the midst of such powerful enemies, and the most important matter was to deliver him from all of them, seeing that it was really of moment that he should be at peace who was the head and soul of the league whereof the others were only the body and limbs. ”

“ In order to dominate the Sacred College more completely he created twelve new cardinals, among them his own son Cesare, then only eighteen years old, and Alessandro Farnese, the brother of Giulia Bella, one of the pope’s mistresses, creations which caused much scandal. On the 25th of January 1494 Ferdinand died and was succeeded by his son Alphonso II. Charles of France now advanced formal claims on the kingdom, and Alexander drew him to his side and authorized him to pass through Rome ostensibly on a crusade against the Turks, without mentioning Naples. ”

“ He was the Pope's confidant and quite at home in all those political intrigues which later under Leo X brought ruin upon him. His book can only be regarded as a blow aimed at Julius II, Alexander's old enemy, who now wore the tiara and was preparing to glorify his pontificate by the highest effort of which Christian art was capable. Providence had granted him for the execution of his plans three of the greatest minds the world of art has ever known: never had a monarch three such men as Bramante, Michelangelo, and Raffaelle at once under his sway. ”