Arthur Griffiths

Growth of the Papacy—Popes gain territory and wealth—Gregory the Great—Boniface subsequently erected the chapel of St. Angelo—Rome the centre of conflict—The Leonine city and Leo IV—Castle frequently changed hands—Theodora and Marozia—Romans, maddened by misgovernment, entrust power to Crescentius—He is murdered—Three popes in Rome at the same time—Cencius—Castle much strengthened—Constant fighting for St. Angelo—Rome a prey to violence and crime—An epidemic of murder—Pope Alexander VI—A reign of terror—St. Angelo the scene of dire atrocities.

The growth of the papacy steadily progressed as the empire declined and a long hierarchy of elected priests, beginning with St. Peter, occupied the episcopal chair from generation to generation. The first popes were the chiefs of a secret society of believers in a new cult which was to transform the world, and by their undying courage, willing martyrs to their faith, fought on till the Christian Church won an independent position as the spiritual leader of many peoples. Their pious converts continually endowed the Church with estates and treasures until the bishop of Rome became the largest landowner in the empire, and as early as the fifth century began to exercise material influence in the city. While the city of Rome was impoverished, the Church grew more and more wealthy and the pope-bishop was far richer than the patriarch of Constantinople or Alexandria. The head of the Church in the West was a personage of much authority. His power was also extended to the East; he was backed by the Gothic kings of Italy and was by degrees recognised as the head of all Catholic Christendom. When the right of arbitration between clergy and laity was conceded to the pope, the political power of the papacy was finally established.

The election of Gregory, called the Great, at the end of the sixth century, came at a time when Rome was at her lowest ebb and opened the way to the consolidation of the temporal power of the popes. Gregory was a faithful steward of the revenues of the Church and his charities were unceasing to all classes, noble and pauper. The city was ravaged by famine and pestilence, but the latter was averted, says tradition, by the pious intercession of Gregory. The answer came to him from heaven as he headed a vast penitential procession. The whole populace joined, divided into seven groups according to age and class, each starting from their own quarter, abbots and monks and presbyters, nuns and widows, all bound for the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. As they marched through the ruins of the deserted city, they filled every echo with their solemn chants, while the pestilence still raged and deaths occurred on the road. When passing the mausoleum of Hadrian, so the legend runs, the Pope looked up and saw the figure of the Archangel Michael, surrounded by the holy choir, with a flaming sword which he sheathed significantly as he alighted upon the pinnacle of the monument. Gregory interpreted the heavenly vision as a promise that the plague would cease, and indeed it presently began to abate. The incident was of special interest to the monument, for in gratitude, another pope, Boniface, probably the fourth, founded a chapel on the highest part of the mausoleum, which he dedicated to St. Michael, and it was afterward known as the chapel of St. Angelo, inter nubes, or inter caelos. Of course the whole story is purely apocryphal and it is not mentioned by either of the pope’s biographers. A bronze statue of St. Michael, erected by Pope Benedict XIV, about 1740, to this day hovers over the castle with outstretched wings.

The energy and pertinacity with which the early popes asserted their dignity and authority won the respect and devotion of the inhabitants of Rome, who relied upon them as their best protectors and defenders against the incursive barbarians. To this the papacy owed its strong position as the years went on, and its power to hold its own was more fully recognised by the nominal rulers of the people. Kings and emperors further endowed it with cities; Pepin gave it Rimini, Ravenna, and Urbino; Charlemagne, his son, was no less liberal; the Normans enlarged the papal dominions, and before the end of the thirteenth century many free states acknowledged the papal authority.

As the centuries passed Rome was still a constant centre of conflict. Other invaders, both Franks and Vandals, had succeeded to the Goths. The Lombards, in the eighth century, besieged the castle of St. Angelo, but the city was preserved by the defences of Gregory the Great. Next, the Saracens attacked it but recoiled before the fortifications of Pope Leo IV, who created the Leonine city by enclosing the Vatican with a long wall, which began at St. Angelo and ran round St. Peter’s, turned then to the left and completed the circuit by regaining the river below the gate of S. Spirito. The wall was forty feet high and nineteen feet thick, built with forty-one towers. It was pierced by three gates, a small one near St. Angelo, a larger one, the St. Peregrini, afterwards the Porta Vindaria, and a third at S. Spirito. The castle itself was reconstructed and strengthened and became the key to the whole line. It was closed at one end by an iron chain across the Tiber. When finished, the work was solemnly dedicated to heaven and the blessings of all the angels and apostles were invoked upon the new Rome, with a fervent prayer that it might be preserved ever pure and impregnable.

This Leonine city was to become the stronghold of the popes, a constant bone of contention, fought for by many masters and passing through many hands. Its history has been stirring and eventful, and it would be interesting, were it possible, to record the many strange vicissitudes through which it passed, and to describe at length the notable persons, famous and infamous, who ruled it from time to time. A very cursory glance will suffice to indicate their leading characteristics, their rare virtues and vices; the good they did, and also the evil; their great ambition for the Church and themselves, which frequently led them to take desperate measures to gain their ends. Factions and dissensions were ever rife; rivals forever struggled for the supreme power,—such as the renegade pope, Stephen VI, who dared to produce the corpse of his deceased predecessor, Formosus, for trial on a trumped-up charge. The body was disinterred eight months after burial, dressed in pontifical robes and publicly arraigned for usurping the See of Rome. As there could be no defence, sentence was passed in default, the corpse was decapitated, the three fingers of the right hand used in consecration were cut off and the remains cast into the Tiber. Stephen himself was soon called to account after a brief reign of three months, was dethroned and cast into prison.

At this period the papal city fell under female rule, that of the mysterious, but undoubtedly notorious Theodora, who wielded the power gained by her beauty, wealth and cleverness, of absolute queen of Rome. Her husband was a certain Theophylactus, a consul, senator and patrician of Rome, and she had two daughters, Marozia and Theodora, both of whom emulated their mother in wickedness. The chief interest attaching to these infamous women is that they made St. Angelo their chief residence and the principal theatre of their misdeeds. The elder daughter, Theodora, after the death of her husband, favoured a young ecclesiastic whom she brought to Rome; and eventually she procured his election as pope, bequeathing him the castle of St. Angelo at her death. Marozia hated him, drove him forth, became chatelaine and in her turn ruler of Rome. When Marozia lost her first husband she married a second, Guido, duke of Tuscany, associated with whom she was guilty of many crimes. She had two sons; one she made pope as John XI, and the other, Alberic, conspired against her. Being by this time a widow, she married a third husband, Hugo of Provence, king of Italy, and the nuptials were celebrated with great pomp in St. Angelo, in the vault where the porphyry sarcophagus of the Emperor Hadrian still stood. Alberic soon quarrelled with his stepfather and summoning the Roman people to his aid he upbraided them for submitting to the tyranny of a woman and stranger; he incited them to storm the castle, whence Hugo escaped by letting himself down by a rope from the walls and Marozia fled to a convent where she died.

The original purport of the castle was all but forgotten, and it was to serve for centuries as a fortress, the very strongest part of Rome. It is described at this period by a contemporary writer as “of marvellous workmanship and strength, standing at the very entrance to Rome, commanding the splendid bridge over the Tiber, over which all must pass with the goodwill of the garrison if they desire to enter or leave the city.” It was still an imposing edifice and retained most of its first marble panelling; the inscriptions to the buried emperors were still legible, although few of the fine statues and stately colonnades remained. Pope John XI, Marozia’s son, administered the affairs of the Church with wisdom and justice, and he was succeeded by John XII, Alberic’s son, who assumed the tiara at eighteen years of age and lived to earn the reputation of being one of the most infamous popes who had ever reigned. John entered into an alliance with Otho, Emperor of Germany, broke all his pledges and was attacked by Otho in the castle, which fell into the enemy’s hands, while he himself escaped. Although absent he was put upon his trial before the council of cardinals and charged with a long list of terrible crimes. “You have been accused,” said the indictment, “of homicide, perjury, sacrilege, incest: you have drunk to the health of the devil; when playing at dice you have implored the help of Jupiter, Venus and various demons.” John refused to answer to these charges and threatened to excommunicate any one who should attempt to nominate a new pontiff. He was, however, deposed, but waiting his opportunity, surprised the castle when it was weakly garrisoned, took possession of it and revenged himself. He cut off the right hand of one cardinal deacon; he mutilated several other great ecclesiastics by slicing their noses, cutting out their tongues and depriving them of their forefingers. A violent death, however, soon overtook him: he was stabbed just outside the gates when concerned in some intrigue.

When Roffredo, prefect of Rome, seized and imprisoned Pope John XIII and the scale presently turned, the emperor, at the pope’s request, took summary vengeance on Roffredo and after his death, disinterred the body and flung the corpse into the drains. The reigning prefect was handed over to the pope, who ordered that his beard should be cut off, that he should be hung by his hair to the statue of Marcus Aurelius, and that he should then be stripped, mounted backwards on an ass and driven ignominiously through the streets. The two successive popes, Boniface VII and John XIV, alternately disputed the throne; Boniface cast John into the dungeons of St. Angelo, where he was either strangled or starved to death, while Boniface himself, after a short reign, was overthrown and his dead body subjected to nameless indignities.

At last the Romans, maddened by misgovernment, chose a noble citizen of high character, by name Crescentius, to act as consul and for some few years the city enjoyed peace and tranquillity. Again the wheel turned, and when Crescentius nominated another pope, John XVI, the emperor seized the wretched pontiff and barbarously misused him by tearing out his eyes and tongue and cutting off his nose. Crescentius himself was besieged in St. Angelo but made so stout a resistance that the place could only be gained by treachery. He had little prospect of beating off Otho but was sturdily defiant when summoned to surrender. The castle with its many towers and innumerable battlements was deemed impregnable, but siege was laid in due form and the attack assisted by the huge military engines or wooden towers in use at the time. Eventually it was taken by assault, Crescentius was beheaded on the battlements, and his remains, after horrible mutilation, were thrown down and hung on a gallows below Monte Mario. He left a widow Stephania who vowed to avenge her husband even at the cost of becoming Otho’s mistress, whom she presently put to death by administering poison to him.

This was the saddest period of ecclesiastical history; pope followed pope, all ineffectively striving to maintain order and St. Angelo was sometimes their sanctuary, sometimes their prison house. One or two of the popes who were most unworthy to wear the sacred insignia may be mentioned, such as Benedict IX, who was elected at the callow age of ten. Another pope writing of him fifty years later said, “I have horror to describe the life of Benedict, how shameful, corrupt and execrable it was.” After he had long tormented the Romans by his injustice and cruelty, they would no longer tolerate him, but rose and expelled him from the pontifical seat. He soon returned, and deposing his successor, sold the throne to an archpriest, who took the name of Gregory VI. Benedict thereupon retired into St. Angelo. There were then three popes in Rome, and the emperor appearing on the scene, nominated a fourth. A conflict at once arose with the emperor, Henry IV, and his nominee was attacked, but saved by Cencius, the son of the prefect, who now held St. Angelo and who kept him there safely for two years.

Cencius built a high tower on the bridge opposite St. Angelo and made all who would pass it pay toll to him; but the pope, the famous Hildebrand who was Gregory VII, excommunicated him. He was forcibly seized at the altar and imprisoned until the people came to his rescue. Gregory next fell foul of the emperor and there was a fresh struggle in which the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, a powerful princess, sided with and supported the pope. In the end Henry triumphed, Gregory withdrew into St. Angelo, and from its battlements saw the city sacked and set on fire. Several popes and antipopes then held the castle in turn; it was a constant bone of contention between the powerful factions, and its fortifications were continually strengthened so that whoever was in possession generally dominated the city.

Toward the end of the twelfth century a pure spirit, that of Arnold of Brescia, arose to denounce the outrageous misconduct of many of the clerical hierarchy, from the supreme head down to the lesser members of the priesthood; and he exposed in vigorous language their profligacy, reckless ambition and tyranny. The high character and unimpeachable virtue of Arnold gave him much influence and the Church rallied all its weight to crush him, but for some time in vain. He fought strenuously for the revival of the old liberties and to exclude the popes from civil government, but the Emperor Frederick with his army made Arnold prisoner, and he was cast into the dungeon of St. Angelo to leave it only to be hanged in the square before the castle. A fierce struggle now ensued between the emperor and the praetors of the Roman senate recently reconstituted. The battle ground was the Leonine city, in front of and around St. Angelo. Victory inclined in turn to each side.

At this epoch Rome was terrorised by the nobles. Issuing from their strongholds—the palaces which they had converted into fortresses—they robbed and pillaged on all sides and forcibly seized citizens whom they held for ransom. The city was depopulated; whole districts lay in ruins, vineyards and vegetable gardens were planted round the Pantheon and the Porta del Popolo. Every one fought for his own. The senate barricaded itself in the Capitol; the pope was not safe outside his castle of St. Angelo; the great nobles, representing powerful families, claimed their independence and relied upon their strength. The Frangipani were established upon the island in the Tiber and held the Colosseum, the arches of Titus, Constantine and Janus, and the Circus Maximus; the Orsini were masters of the quarter surrounding the Vatican; the Savelli held the district where the Cancelleria now stands; the Pierleoni occupied the theatre of Marcellus and the quarter of the Gheto; the Colonna were supreme in the district between the Piazza del Popolo and the Quirinal and were also fortified in the mausoleum of Augustus; on the slopes of the Quirinal were the Pandolfi, the Capocci and the Conti.

The cruel oppression and lawlessness of the nobles at last moved the Romans to entrust absolute power to one strong hand acting in their defence. A certain Brancaleone was appointed senator and dictator, with absolute power to insure the peace and quiet of the city by the stern repression of all law-breakers. He governed justly but with a strong, firm hand. He attacked the turbulent nobles in their fortresses and brought them into submission, visiting them with prompt penalties when they dared to set his authority at defiance. Many he hung from their windows or threw over their battlements. He brought the pope himself into subjection, and when he fled from the city, summoned him peremptorily to return to the Holy See of which he was the pastor and “wander no more like a vagabond and proscribed person”; and the pope humbly obeyed the order.

It is worthy of note that throughout this long period of dissension and unrest the papal power steadily increased and wielded an authority which was widely respected and obeyed abroad however much it might be resisted at home. The pope never abated his pretensions, and claimed a sovereignty on equal terms with that of the emperor. It often cost him serious reprisals. The pope for the time being might find himself deposed and imprisoned, his life might be endangered and no safety appear but in flight and voluntary exile, but he steadfastly maintained his claims and, in the end, made emperors and kings bow before him, helpless and submissive in face of the formidable weapons of excommunication and interdiction. The pope was “God’s vicegerent upon earth to whom was entrusted the government not only of the whole church but of the whole world;” whose power was based upon divine right and by whose delegation and permission alone all other rulers held their authority. The pope settled disputed titles, decided between the rival pretensions of claimants to thrones; his fiat was accepted, his opinion deemed final.

The culminating period of this extensive and unquestioned sovereignty was in the thirteenth century during the first half of which the pope’s supremacy was universally acknowledged in Europe. But evil days were at hand. The bitter struggle began between the pope and the emperor, Frederick II, who was the first to shake the foundations of the papal throne. The downward movement began with Boniface VIII in 1294, who was cruel and tyrannical and one of the chief causes contributory to the Reformation, through his misuse of the indulgences. After him the power of the popes declined. Benedict IX, his successor, was unable to vindicate the independence of the Holy See against France. The papal court was removed to Avignon, where a succession of popes reigned, while a second set of popes were still elected in Rome, exercising only nominal rule and constantly the prey of contending factions.

The Roman pontiff at this time was without authority, and nothing existed in the city that could fairly be called a government. Warring families still distracted Italy with their dissensions; the Orsini and Colonne continually fought with each other inside Rome and the Guelfs and the Ghibellines beyond it. A brief truce was patched up between parties from time to time, but hostilities were always renewed at every fresh papal election. Anarchy prevailed in Rome and the surrounding country. Robbers and freebooters infested the Campagna, industry and commerce were at a standstill. Week after week St. Angelo was attacked by one party or another. This was the moment when the celebrated tribune, Rienzi, began his remarkable career, ruling at first with moderation and justice but soon aiming at supreme power and usurping all the attributes of a king. He conducted himself with so little decency, and wasted so much time in idle shows and ceremonies, that he disgusted his followers and his influence crumbled away. With a small but devoted band of men he took refuge in St. Angelo, where he entrenched himself and held the fortress for six months. Then he fled to Civita Vecchia, to return for a brief space and conceal himself in the castle, whence he again fled to Naples. Once more he returned to Rome and was at first received with enthusiasm, but sedition soon broke out, and he was attacked on all sides. A crowd surrounded him and some one plunged a pike into his breast so that he fell fatally wounded. The wild mob rushed upon his corpse and barbarously mutilated it; his head was cut from his body, which was dragged through the streets. At last his lifeless remains, having suffered every indignity, were carried to the mausoleum of Augustus and there burned to ashes.

When the papal court finally left Avignon and was reËstablished in Rome in 1377, the keys of St. Angelo were formally handed to the pope, then Gregory XI. He died within the year and the conclave for the next election met at the castle. The choice fell upon Cardinal Prignani, a Neapolitan, who became Urban VI. The people wanted a Roman and at first opposed him. The conclave, however, persisted in naming Urban VI, whom the people finally accepted, and who was formally installed at the Vatican. Whereupon the French cardinals in opposition elected an anti-pope and put a Frenchman with a French garrison in charge of St. Angelo. There was now a fierce conflict between the papal and anti-papal party. The French at St. Angelo were reinforced and withstood a sharp siege, holding out for a whole year against an attack, supported by artillery,—the first time that guns were used against the fortress. But it fell at last under the pressure of famine. It was in a sorry plight; immense damage had been done during the siege; some parts had been utterly demolished and all its marbles destroyed. The Roman people, furious at the long resistance it had offered, now wished to raze it to the ground, determined that it should be no longer a refuge for their enemies. Already its earlier decorations had disappeared and the outer casing of marble was torn off, but the solid interior of massive peperino resisted all attempts at destruction. A contemporary writer describes it as impossible to demolish. Ten years later another pope, Boniface IX, more a soldier than a priest, fully convinced of its value, set himself to repair and fortify it anew. An edict was issued forbidding the removal of stone and building material from “Hadrian’s Mole,” and Boniface, backed up by the fortress, secured order and obedience in the city for some years.

In the first half of the fifteenth century St. Angelo constantly changed hands—now it was retained, now lost, by succeeding popes. The turbulence of the people was uncontrollable and fresh fighting broke out every few weeks. The clash of arms was outdone by the fury of the elements: the tremors of earthquakes shook the city; fierce tempests ravaged it; and great rains fell, followed by disastrous inundations; the peoples’ hearts failed them for fear; eclipses, comets, and other sky portents were frequently to be seen, and close in the wake of these terrors came the dreadful scourges of famine and pestilence. The first ray of hope dawned upon the once splendid city, now little more than an insignificant village, when Pope Nicholaus V was elected in 1447. The annals of the time bear witness to his energy in restoring and embellishing the ruined city of Rome. He cleared out many of the shattered houses, erected churches and palaces, founded the Vatican library, and more particularly devoted himself to the strengthening of St. Angelo. The round towers added to the three angles of the ancient square foundation were his work. He began the brickwork curtain of the circular part of the castle; he gave flanking defence to the entrance of the castle from the bridge of St. Angelo, and he made good the damage done to that bridge by the pressure of the crowd on the occasion of the jubilee commemoration in 1450. Other popes carried on the work; among them Calixtus III, the first of the Borgias, who came to the papal chair in 1455, and Sixtus IV, who employed the celebrated architect and military engineer Antonio da Sangallo to convert the castle into an important and almost impregnable stronghold. Plans and drawings are still extant showing it as it was then, encircled by bastions and massive towers with a line of works joining the defences of the bridge. A fine picture by Carpaccio in the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice has preserved, no doubt faithfully, the aspect of the castle at this time. “Above the circle of the ancient tomb rises a high machicolated square tower occupying almost its entire diameter, and again above this is a second and smaller tower, also machicolated, on the top of which is the figure of the winged angel, the whole surrounded by massive walls, with round towers at each corner. Along the bastions soldiers are blowing trumpets, and flags are flying from the towers. Behind the castle is seen a tall spiral column, on the summit of which stands a naked figure, with a spear and shield, and near it is an octagonal church, surmounted by a narrow dome, both of which, if they ever had an existence out of the mind of the artist, have since utterly disappeared. Ships are also seen lying beyond in the Tiber, from which, apparently, the train of St. Orsola and her bridegroom have just landed. It is marching from them in procession to the broad terrace in front, where the noble couple are kneeling to receive the benediction of the pope who stands in the foreground under his baldacchino, his robes held up behind by his acolytes, and his train of cardinals and bishops, in white mitres, stretching behind him, the last of them just issuing from a tall turreted gateway in the walls.”

Some of the popes of this early period were men of violent and vindictive temper, such as Urban VI, who kept the dungeons full, and when he suspected his cardinals of treachery, put them on the rack to extort confession; or, like Sixtus II, whose chief pleasure was to see his soldiers fight out a challenge to the death; or like Innocent VIII, who was manifestly ill-named. The condition of Rome continued to be dreadful. There were daily turmoils; the soldiers entered the city by night and carried off with violence the most respectable maidens and young married women—taking the latter from their husbands; they poured in and attacked the castle of St. Angelo, plundered it, killed the garrison and abducted labourers employed upon it; again they went forth in battle array and returned with their prisoners taken in fight or seized on suspicion, and all alike were put to the torture. There is no crime with which the annals of the time do not abound. The record is one of perpetual violence, murder, rape and battle. “The whole city,” says Infessura, “is filled with villains ... and the homicides of which they are guilty are considered as nothing. On the Tor di Nona, close by the castle, bodies of persons are constantly found suspended, of whom nobody knows the names, or cares to know. Executions within the castle are of constant occurrence and they occasion neither surprise nor remark.... Every now and then an arm, a hand, a foot, a head, a leg, or some part of a corpse, is nailed up on the wall of the castle to mark the fact of an execution performed; but this is so common that nobody pays any attention to it, unless, indeed, it relate to a person of importance, or to some one engaged in a popular crime,—as was the case of Macrino di Castagno, who agreed with Bajazet to poison his brother Zemi in Rome, and, having been discovered, was executed, quartered and nailed outside the wall.” Any one who committed such an ordinary crime as murder, rape or parricide had only to pay and go free. One instance is related by Infessura, which he witnessed, of a man brought before the vice-chamberlain accused of having killed his two daughters and a servant, who was immediately set free by the vice-chamberlain on condition that he should pay a ransom.

It is recorded that 220 people were assassinated between the date of the death of Innocent VIII in 1492 and the accession of his successor Rodrigo Borgia, who took the name of Alexander VI. The clergy under Innocent were wicked beyond measure, as may be gathered from the edict issued against them, prohibiting them from keeping shambles, inns, gaming houses and low resorts of the worst kind. Innocent himself was responsible for a triple murder. The treatment last prescribed for him by his Jewish physician was the transfusion of the blood of three young boys of ten years of age into his unwholesome veins, a cruel operation which did not save him and killed the poor children.

Alexander VI gained his election by bribery. Being possessed of immense wealth from the offices he held under his uncle Calixtus III he bought up nearly the whole college of cardinals and overcame all opposition in the conclave. He was weak, irresolute, and cowardly in character; and the condition of Rome, far from improving under his guidance, sank if possible into more complete degradation. There was no safety anywhere from assassination and debauchery, and the state was tormented by constant war. It was a reign of terror. The castle of St. Angelo was crammed with unhappy prisoners, arbitrarily seized, and its walls echoed constantly with their shrieks while undergoing torture, or when put to death by strangulation, poisoning, decapitation and quartering.

“There is nothing so wicked or so criminal,” says a contemporary writer in 1502, “as not to be done publicly at Rome.” Alexander had no policy but that dictated by vacillation; he first sought the aid of the French King, Charles VIII, then formed a league against him; and when the king appeared in person, bent upon taking Rome, the pope tried conciliation again. Once more, however, he changed front, and treacherously seized the king’s envoys, whom he threw into the prison of the castle. Charles steadily continued to advance upon Rome and entered it in triumph at the head of a grand army, horse, foot and many guns. The pope fled for his life and took refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. King Charles summoned him to surrender and brought his artillery to bear upon the castle. At last the city rose in tumult, the pope yielded, conditions of peace were arranged and the French king kissed the pope’s hands at the Vatican, after which he withdrew with his army to Naples. Alexander VI was outdone in wickedness by his son CÆsar Borgia, the notorious duke of Valentino, handsome and capable, of determined character and many resources, but withal cruel, treacherous, vicious, hypocritical and totally unprincipled. Between father and son there was little safety in Rome. Unjustifiable arrest was followed by secret poison or the rope. Cardinals and great nobles were done to death, and in the midst of this St. Angelo was almost destroyed as though by the act of God. One day a flash of lightning struck one of the powder magazines which instantly exploded, shattering the upper part of the fortress, blowing the great marble angel from the top and flinging great pieces of the ruin to a considerable distance. It was once more necessary to repair the castle and Alexander undertook it, recalling the same famous architect Sangallo to execute the work.

Alexander completely restored, if he did not entirely rebuild, the rotunda of the keep upon its ancient masonry; and on the summit he erected a square tower, which still remains, though much hidden. Besides these restorations, he completed the passage, about three thousand feet in length, leading to the Vatican, which had been begun many years before by John XXIII and left unfinished. He also strengthened the fortifications of the castle in other ways, adding bulwarks of travertine between it and the bridge, cutting ditches and making it stronger than before the explosion. Sangallo also opened the inclined passage within the round central chamber, which led to the upper story opening into the so-called Oil Court. Close to this Alexander VI had constructed five formidable prison cells, using them at times as repositories for grain and oil, and a cistern, all of which are still in existence. He likewise began the erection of the papal apartment, completing some of the rooms with the assistance of Pinturicchio. A deep fosse was cut around the castle, which so increased its strength that CÆsar Borgia and his adherents were enabled to withstand an attack of the Roman barons and people who sought to slay him during the vacancy of the pontifical see.

Pope Alexander and his son CÆsar fell victims to a snare they had laid for another. They invited a cardinal to supper at a garden near the Vatican, meaning to poison him while entertaining him hospitably. CÆsar entrusted the poisoned wine to an attendant with orders to take it to the garden but to allow no one to touch it until he came. The pope arrived before the appointed time, and being overcome with heat and thirst, asked for wine. The attendant gave him that supplied by CÆsar Borgia, conceiving that as it was especially fine, it was intended for the pope’s drinking. The duke on arrival also consumed a quantity of it, without suspicion. He escaped the fatal effects of the poison, but the pope succumbed in great agony.

It was the age of poisoning. Pius III, a Piccolomini, Alexander’s successor, was poisoned within twenty-five days of his election. Leo X, the next pope, nearly fell a victim to a supposed conspiracy by which his surgeon was induced to poison an ulcer while dressing it. Leo escaped then but died five years later of poison, as it was strongly believed. This dastardly crime was greatly practised in Italy and was always much facilitated and encouraged. To a somewhat later date belongs the deadly acquatofana so much used in Naples, and later throughout Europe to terrorise and ravage society. This fatal poison was invented by an old beldame in Naples, who was at last discovered and put to death. Akin to the infamous “succession powder,” the noxious drug was especially dear to great ladies tired of their husbands, and lay on their

dressing tables beside their perfumes and cosmetics, ready for instant administration. During the pontificate of Alexander VII there existed an association among ladies of quality in Rome, pledged to make away with their husbands by poison. Although proofs existed in plenty, the law did not dare to touch such high and mighty dames as the Princess Vitelleschi, the Duchess of Ceri and many others. By and by this system of poisoning extended even to the lower orders, and five women were hanged for having prepared bottles of distilled water containing arsenic by means of which many persons had poisoned their husbands and parents. Several of these were punished by being walled up alive in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and others were publicly beheaded. On the day of the execution a vast crowd gathered in the Campo di Fiori to see the horrible sight. One of the women, a certain Cecilla Bossi Verzellini, who had incited her daughter to poison her husband, was accompanied to the scaffold by a prince Barberini as a member of the confraternity of St. Giovanni Decollato, which confraternity had the sad privilege of attending the condemned in their last moments and of carrying out their last wishes. The prince, pitying the woman, urged the executioner to make haste, whereupon the man replied insolently that perhaps the prince could discharge the task better than he. The execution was left to an assistant, and the hangman was arrested immediately by order of the governor of Rome, whipped round the city and sent to the galleys. The severe measures used finally effected the suppression of this atrocious crime, if not its abolishment.