A Franciscan Pope and a Franciscan Cardinal.—A notable illustration of the proverb concerning mendicant's rides.—The Nemesis of Despotism.

The first news that reached the Court of Milan, after the return of the Duke, full of gratified vanity and glorification from his progress, was that of the death of Pope Paul II.,—that superb old man, who, if he had none other of the qualities befitting the head of the Church, yet at least looked every inch a Pope; of whom one of the chroniclers of the time says, that not having succeeded very well in his attempts at literary culture, "he determined to make his pontificate reputable by ornamental pomp, in which his majestic presence, and pre-eminently tall and noble person helped him not a little, giving him, as it did, the appearance of a new Aaron, venerable and reverend beyond that of any other Pontiff."

And the tidings of the death of this magnificent lay-figure Pope were very shortly followed by the yet more interesting news of the election of his successor, on the 9th of August, 1471.

This successor was Francesco della Rovere, who had risen from the cell of a Franciscan friar by his merit as a scholar and theologian, and by his eloquence as a preacher, to be first, General of his order, then Cardinal; and now reached, as Sixtus IV., the highest aim of an ecclesiastic's ambition. He was the son of a poor fisherman of the coast near Savona. For the fiction of the heralds, who found for him a place in the genealogy of the noble family of the same name, was an afterthought of the time, when such a relationship was acceptable to all the parties concerned. For though the Borghesi decidedly objected, as we have seen, to own any connection with a roturiere saint, the Della Rovere were well pleased enough to find a kinsman in a Pope, whose greatness manifested an immediate tendency to take a quite terrestrial and tangible shape.

For this barefooted mendicant friar—the vowed disciple of that St. Francis whom no degree of poverty would satisfy short of meeting his death naked and destitute on the bare earth—this monk, sworn to practise an humility abject in the excess of its utter self-abnegation, was the first of a series of popes who one after the other sacrificed every interest of the Church, waded mitre deep in crime and bloodshed, and plunged Italy into war and misery, for the sake of founding a princely family of their name.

It is curious to observe, that generally throughout the pontifical history, scandalously infamous popes and tolerably decent popes, are found in bunches, or series of six or eight in succession; a striking proof of the fact that when they have been of the better sort, the amelioration has been due to some force of circumstance operative from without. Never were they worse, with perhaps one or two exceptions, than during the century which preceded the first quickly-crushed efforts of the Reformation in Italy—from about 1450, that is to say, down to 1550. Competing Protestantism then began to act on the Roman Church exactly as competing Methodism acted on the Anglican Church three centuries later; and a series of Popes of a different sort was the result.

But the conduct of the great family-founding popes, which strikes us, looking at it through the moral atmosphere of the nineteenth century, as so monstrous, wore a very different aspect even to the gravest censors among their contemporaries. The Italian historians of the time tell us of the "royal-mindedness" and "noble spirit" of this ambitious Franciscan, Pope Sixtus, in a tone of evident admiration. And the gross worldliness, the low ambition, and the unscrupulous baseness, of which he may fairly be accused, did not seem even to Du Plessis Mornai,[53] and the French Protestant writers of that stamp, to be sufficient ground for denouncing him and the system which produced him. Otherwise they would not have disgraced themselves and their cause by asserting that he was guilty of hideous and nameless atrocities, for which, as the less zealous but more candid Bayle[54] has sufficiently shown, there is no foundation either in fact or probability.

The new Pope lost no time in turning the papacy to the best possible account, in the manner which had for him the greatest attractions. And it so happened that he was singularly well supplied with the raw material from which the edifice of family greatness he was bent on raising was to be furnished forth. He had no less than nine nephews: five of them the sons of his three brothers, and four the sons of his three sisters!—a field for nepotism sufficiently extensive to satisfy the "high-spirited" ambition of even a Sixtus IV. But among all this wealth of nephews, the two sons of his eldest sister, Girolamo and Pietro Riario, were distinguished by him so pre-eminently, that a great many contemporary writers, thinking it strange that he should prefer them to those of his own name, have asserted that these young men were in fact his sons.[55] Giuliano della Rovere, the eldest of all the nine, who received a cardinal's hat from his uncle, but could obtain from him no further favour, was nevertheless destined, as Pope Julius II., to become by far the most important pillar of the family greatness. The course of Catherine's fortunes, however, will justify the present reader in confining his attention, as all Rome was doing in the year 1472, to the two fortunate young men on whom the pontifical sun shone brightest.

Peter Riario was, like his uncle, a Franciscan monk, and was twenty-six years old when the latter was elected. Within a very few months he became Bishop of Treviso, Cardinal-Archbishop of Seville, Patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop of Valentia, and Archbishop of Florence! From his humble cell, from his ascetic board, from his girdle of rope and woollen frock renewed yearly, and baked occasionally to destroy the vermin bred in its holy filth, this poverty-vowed mendicant suddenly became possessed of revenues so enormous, that his income is said to have been larger than that of all the other members of the Sacred College put together! The stories which have been preserved[56] of his reckless and unprecedented expenditure at Rome, would seem almost incredible were they not corroborated by the fact that he had in a very short time, besides dissipating the enormous wealth assigned to him, incurred debts to the amount of sixty thousand florins! He gave a banquet to the French ambassadors which cost twenty thousand crowns, a sum equal to more than ten times the same nominal amount at the present day. "Never," says the Cardinal of Pavia, "had pagan antiquity seen anything like it. The whole country was drained of all that was rare and precious; and the object of all was to make a display, such as posterity might never be able to surpass.[57] The extent of the preparations, their variety, the number of the dishes, the price of the viands served up, were all registered by inspectors, and were put into verse, of which copies were profusely circulated, not only in Rome, but throughout Italy, and even beyond the Alps."

Girolamo, the brother of this spendthrift monk, and equally a favourite of his uncle, was a layman; and the process of enriching and aggrandising him was necessarily a somewhat slower one. Not even a fifteenth-century pope could accomplish so monstrous an iniquity and insult to humanity as the promotion of Peter Riario in any other branch or department of human affairs save the Church! Girolamo, however, who was, we are told, "not literate," was at once made Captain-General of the pontifical troops, and Governor of the Castle of St. Angelo. And for his further advancement measures were adopted, which, among other advantages, have conferred upon him that of occupying a prominent place in these pages.

For it so happened, that the elevation of Sixtus IV. to the papal throne turned out to be the "slip" which dashed from poor Guidazzo's lips the cup he was waiting for in the shape of the bride, who was to bring back to him as her dower his lost principality of Imola. The tidings from Rome, which were astonishing all history with accounts of the wonderful and unprecedented "greatness" achieved by the Riario brothers, produced a prodigious sensation at the court of Milan. Here was evidently a rising sun worth a little worship! And now, how valuable became our little "legitimatised" Kate, as a means of hooking on our ducal fortunes to the career of this "high-spirited" Pope, and the magnificent nephews so evidently marked out for high destinies! What was Guidazzo and his little state of Imola in comparison to the favourite nephew of a "high-spirited" Pope? And besides, there is no reason to give up Imola, because we give up Guidazzo. Imola is in our own hands, and will make a dower for our daughter by no means unworthy of the consideration of a Franciscan monk's reputed son, about to start on his career of sovereign prince. So Guidazzo may go whistle for his patrimony!

The gorgeous accounts of the Cardinal Peter Riario's unprecedented splendour and reckless prodigality especially touched a sympathetic chord of admiration in the bosom of Maria Galeazzo. The splendid Duke, who lavished on upholstery, festivals, and courtezans, the substance wrung from a groaning people, recognised a kindred spirit in the princely churchman, who expended the revenues of a dozen sees on a banquet and revel. The spirit of noble rivalry, too, was awakened in the Ducal bosom. Here was a man in whose eyes it was worth while to shine, and whose admiration would confer real glory.

It was to the Cardinal, accordingly, that Galeazzo caused the first cautious overtures to be made; and the reception of them was such as to encourage him to entreat his Eminence to honour his poor court with a visit. The Cardinal was nothing loth to accept the invitation. He, too, recognised in the Duke of Milan that "greatness" which was most calculated to excite his sympathy and admiration. He, too, felt, that here was a spirit of his own calibre,—one with whom he would willingly pull together in the arduous work of furthering their mutual fortunes, and vie in the ostentation of magnificence.

The Cardinal's visit to Milan was accordingly arranged with as little delay as possible. He left Rome with a train more like that of the most magnificent of popes, say the chroniclers, than what might befit a cardinal, and reached Milan on the 12th of September, 1473.[58] Great were the preparations made to receive him, and bitter were the groans of the magnificent Duke's hapless subjects under the new extortions necessitated by their master's gorgeous "hospitality." The glittering cavalcade of the lay prince met the no less glittering cavalcade of the ecclesiastical prince at the gates of the city; and, as those were "ages of faith," both proceeded at once to the cathedral to inaugurate the pleasure and business of the meeting by a solemn "Te Deum." So thoroughly did the sanctifying influences of religion, as has been often remarked, pervade every affair of life in those happy times!

All Milan was witness to the festal doings on this notable meeting,—the processioning, revelling, tailoring, gilding, and reckless profusion, which marked the noble rivalry between these two great men. This friendly emulation was pushed to an intensity, which seems unhappily to have led the lay champion in the generous contest to have recourse to disloyal arms against his rival. For a tell-tale gossip of the pestilent race of scribblers has recorded that the great Galeazzo purchased secretly a quantity of imitation gems, and passed them off for real;[59] an anecdote extremely creditable to the fifteenth century artificers in that line. In all the ordinary pastimes and pleasures of the princes of that day, of whatever sort, the splendid Cardinal, though so recently a mendicant friar, was able and willing to run neck and neck with his secular host. But some of Maria Galeazzo's favourite enjoyments were not ordinary. He was ever an avid eye-witness of the executions, tortures, and mutilations, which his duty as a sovereign obliged him frequently to inflict on his subjects. We have indeed on record a sufficient number of instances of princes who had this taste, to justify our deeming it part of a despotic ruler's natural idiosyncrasy. But Galeazzo had stranger, if less maleficent, propensities. He revelled in the sight of death, and human decay. Some strange touch of that insanity, which so frequently, and with such salutary warning, develops itself in minds exposed to the poison that wells out from the possession of unchecked power, influenced, as in such cases it is apt to do, his moral rather than his intellectual nature. He would cause himself to be brought into the presence of the suffering, the dying, and the dead, for the mere pleasure of witnessing pain and destruction. He would rifle graves to gaze on the process of corruption, and haunted charnel-houses, impelled by the instinct of the ghoul, rather than by any touch of that sentiment, which impels the morbid fanatic to seek in such contemplatio a moving sermon on the vanity of human wishes. This man, whose wishes, hopes, and ambitions were as unbridled in their violence as low and vain in their aims and scope, would hurry from the death-chamber to the revel, and from the charnel-house hasten to plot long-sighted intrigues in the council-hall.

For the latter the pleasure-loving Cardinal was as ready as for gala making and revelry. Long conferences were held between the host and his guest in the secrecy of the Duke's private chambers. But princes are more than other men subjected to the vigilant surveillance of those who form their pomp or minister to their service. And their secrets, therefore, are rarely absolutely secret. Accordingly, Corio, the page, chamberlain, and annalist—a dangerous pluralism for better sovereigns than Galeazzo Sforza!—Corio informs us, though qualifying his assertion with a cautious "si dice," that these prolonged discussions had for their object the terms of a bargain between the Duke and the Cardinal, by virtue of which the former was to be exalted into King of Lombardy by the acquisition of sundry provinces from the smaller princes around him, and especially by the conquest of the terra-firma possessions of Venice; while the latter was to be insured the succession to his uncle on the papal throne. This statement of the chamberlain and page has been believed by most subsequent historians. Verri, without any qualification, writes that such was the fact. Rosmini contents himself with saying that such is believed to have been the case.

But alas! for the short span which should forbid such long-sighted hopes. To men who live such lives as his Eminence the Cardinal Riario, the span is apt to be especially short. And as for the Duke ... there are Cola Montano the scholar, and his three young pupils, all the time of this splendid revelry in Milan, reading Roman history harder than ever!

Meanwhile the other business, which had to be settled between the high contracting powers—the marriage of Catherine to Girolamo Riario—though not unattended with those difficulties which naturally arise between parties intent on driving a hard bargain, was at length brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The Duke was to give his daughter the city and territory of Imola, and sixteen thousand ducats, besides certain estates in the Milanese for her separate use. The Pope was to give Girolamo forty thousand ducats, and "expectations;" which, in the case of such a nephew of such a Pope, might fairly be reckoned at a high figure.

The youthful bride, just past her eleventh birthday, was accordingly betrothed publicly to Girolamo Riario, who performed his part of the ceremony by proxy. The young couple had never seen each other; but we are told much of the mutual admiration of the future brother and sister-in-law for each other. The Cardinal was loud in his praises of the beauty, grace, and accomplishments of the hot-house forced child, who was to be made so important a stepping-stone to his brother's fortunes. And she was dazzled and delighted with his magnificence and splendour, and especially charmed, we are assured,[60] by his eloquence!

The luxuriously-nurtured little lady, it may be fancied, would not have appreciated so highly the "eloquence" of the mendicant friar, had he presented himself to her notice in his garb of some three years previously. But when grave historians[61] assure us, that the fortunate monk on his elevation "put on a lofty and imperial spirit," and when all Italy was admiringly marvelling at his cost-despising splendour, a little girl, and she the daughter of Galeazzo Sforza, may be excused for being captivated by one, who appeared to possess in a higher degree than any other man, all that her experience of life had taught her to value.

When these matters had thus been satisfactorily settled, the Cardinal prepared to bring his visit to a conclusion, and informed his host of his intention to pass a short time at Venice before returning to Rome. The Duke strongly urged him to abandon any such idea. The secret schemes which they had been engaged in concocting, were mainly based on the intended spoliation of the great republic. Uneasy suspicions, as the chroniclers mention, had already been aroused in various courts by the prolonged conferences of the Duke and his guest. The Signory of Venice had proverbially long ears, and unscrupulous arms at its command. It might well be, urged the Duke, that at the present conjuncture, Venice might not be so safe a place of sojourn for his Eminence as could be wished. Probably, also, Sforza had jealous suspicions that Riario's business at Venice might possibly be to play a double game,—to throw him over in case contingencies might arise to make such a policy expedient,—and to prepare his way with the Signory for any such eventualities.

At all events his representations and endeavours were in vain. The Cardinal was bent on visiting Venice; and to Venice he went. In all probability his leading motive was to exhibit his magnificence to the nobles of perhaps the richest and most pleasure-loving capital in Italy. Nowhere did that taste for show and festive pomp, which was so especially his own, prevail to so insane a degree as among the money-making nobles of the Queen of the Adriatic.

The celebrated "Compagnia della Calza," or Guild of the Stocking, was flourishing there, and distinguishing itself by extravagances altogether in the taste of the brilliant Franciscan Cardinal. This stocking brotherhood, which derived its name from the circumstance of each member wearing parti-coloured hose, differently quartered with brilliant colours, was instituted by the wealthy young nobles,—the jeunesse dorÉe of pleasure-loving Venice—for the avowed purpose of encouraging magnificence in dress, and of providing opportunities for the exhibition of it by organising those gala spectacles and pomps, which so many of the gorgeous artists of the republic have perpetuated on their glowing canvas. The description[62] given us of their costume is made up of velvet, satin, embroidery, cloth of gold, brocade and jewels. On the long pointed hood which hung at their backs, was embroidered the heraldic cognisance of each man's family; which was repeated on that part of the black or red cap, which hung pendant over the ear. The hair, which was kept as long and as abundant as possible, was tied up with a cord of silk. The doublets generally of velvet, were worn with slashed sleeves showing a portion of fine linen underneath, and tied with silken cords ornamented with tassels of solid gold. In the hand it was the mode to carry a ball containing perfumes.

The Cardinal, Archbishop of so many churches, was ambitious of exhibiting his magnificence among these illustrious youths, and taking a part in their gorgeous revels. Despite the prognostications of the Duke of Milan, he was received with all honour by the Venetians, hailed as a worthy compeer by the heroes of the parti-coloured stocking, fÊted to his heart's content, and taken leave of, when towards the end of the year he started on his return to Rome, with every demonstration of respect and friendship.

But there were ancient Senators in Venice, very gravely sitting in one of those thick-walled smaller chambers on the second floor of the Ducal palace, reading despatches in cypher from secret agents, taking secret counsel together, and making secret provision for the safety of the republic, while the jeunesse dorÉe and the gay and gallant guest, who had so recently been plotting against the Queen of the Adriatic, were dazzling the citizens with their gilding and parti-coloured hose.... And it did so happen, that the young Cardinal died from some cause or other, a few days after his arrival in Rome.

Mnemosyne says nothing; since she knows nothing on the subject, beyond the facts here set down. But she may be permitted to observe, on the one hand, that fifteenth-century dissipation was particularly destructive of human life, and that the Cardinal had evidently for some time past been leading a life to kill any man;—and on the other hand, that as a specimen of the good old times, the very general contemporary suspicion that St. Mark's lion had stretched out on this occasion a long and stealthy paw, comes much to the same thing as evidence of character, as if the deed itself were chronicled.[63]

The Cardinal died on the 5th of January, 1474, to the great grief of Pope Sixtus, says Corio,[64] and to the infinite delight of the whole college of Cardinals. The indignation caused by the accumulation of so many scandalous vices, and so many rich benefices on one pair of purple shoulders, manifested itself after the wonted fashion of the eternal city in a volley of epigrams and satirical epitaphs more savage than witty. One somewhat to the following effect,[65] was found placarded on the monument raised over his remains by the afflicted Pope:

"Once more let worth, and long lost virtue reign,
And vice be banish'd from its throne in Rome!

Rogues, wretches, profligates, and all their train
No more shall find on Latian soil their home;

For he, the plague-spot of our church and state,
Peter, is gone to meet in hell his fate."

Orthodox Burriel, however, assures us, that all the malicious outpourings of envious hate were silenced and put to shame by the following victorious couplet in the genuine decorous tombstone style.

"Sage in his prime!—'tis that has caused our tears;
Death from his virtues deemed him full of years."

Among the select minority, who truly mourned the premature death of this youthful sage, the Duke of Milan and his daughter may be safely reckoned. The marriage arranged wholly by him might very possibly run risk of being broken off. And in any case the Duke's ulterior and more ambitious schemes were nipped in the bud.

Catherine was, however, as her biographer assures us, "infinitely rejoiced and comforted" by an early courier from Rome, bearing assurances, that her unseen bridegroom and his august kinsman had no intention of allowing the Cardinal's death to make any difference in the arrangements for the marriage.

Let the reader's mind dwell a moment on the "infinite rejoicing and comfort" of this eleven-year-old princess, at the news that she was not after all to lose her marriage with an unseen stranger;—remembering the while that, making allowance for longitude and latitude, we Northerns may for "eleven" read thirteen or fourteen.

The Duke prudently hastened to make peace with his powerful and dangerous neighbours, the Venetians, and having accomplished this, soothed his disappointment by giving a magnificent reception to some envoys sent to him by the Sultan of Egypt; a circumstance so novel in Europe, as greatly to exalt, we are told, the name and glory of the house of Sforza among neighbouring, and even among transalpine, courts and princes; and which naturally and necessarily required, in order to do due honour to the occasion, new taxes on the subjects of a dynasty so distinguished, new pretexts for compelling rich citizens to purchase pardon for imaginary offences, and new perversions of law for the purpose of colouring confiscations.

These, however, were little matters, which passed in the shade fitted for such things. The broad sunlight of prosperity shone gloriously on the house of Sforza, on its apparently durably established fortunes, and on the gala doings in the gay streets of sunny Milan. The poor might grumble low down in the social depths out of hearing about scarcity and dearness of bread; a few citizens might groan over ducats or lands abstracted, or wives or daughters abducted for the needs or pleasures of their gracious sovereign; but the admirable principles of civil and religious duty and subordination, which prevailed in those ages of faith, were such, that in all probability the great Galeazzo might have continued to preserve order, and save society in Milan, had not those gloomy students, whom we have from time to time caught sight of poring over their crabbed folios, while the merry city was gazing at some brilliant and costly pageant or other, brought their studies to a conclusion towards the end of the year 1476. For though it did so happen,[66] that two out of Cola Montano's three pupils owed to the Duke's profligacy a sister's shame, while the family of the third had been unjustly deprived by him of an inheritance, yet the historians, who have recorded the facts, seem to be unanimously of opinion, that had it not been for those pernicious historical readings, they would have borne these misfortunes as meekly as hundreds of their fellow-citizens did similar mishaps, instead of posting themselves at the door of the cathedral on St. Stephen's day in December of the year 1476, and there stabbing to death their sovereign lord in the midst of his guards, and of the assembled crowd.

The names of these misled youths were Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, Girolamo Olgiato, and Carlo Visconti. The first was killed by one of the Duke's attendants immediately after the commission of his crime. Visconti was arrested, and ordered to immediate execution by being quartered. Olgiato escaped from the church, and fled to his father's house. But father and brothers alike refused to afford him any shelter. His mother alone found means to persuade a certain priest to hide the murderer in his house. After three days' concealment, the unhappy youth crept forth to ascertain the aspect of the city, and the feelings of the citizens thus liberated from their tyrant. The first sight that met his eyes was the corpse of his friend and fellow criminal Lampugnani, dragged through the streets by an exulting and ferocious rabble. This horrible proof of the futility of all his hopes, and of the judgment passed upon his deed by his fellow-citizens, so drove him to despair, that he at once gave himself up into the hands of justice. On his trial for the crime, seeing that none were left alive who could be injured by the recital, he gave a full account of the whole conspiracy. And from this document are drawn the narratives of the historians. He was condemned to be torn to pieces by iron pincers, "tanagliato;"—that being the proper juridical term to indicate a by no means unprecedented mode of punishment.

"Stabit vetus memoria facti" were the last words uttered by the dying regicide, as the living flesh was being rent from the quivering muscles. And indeed the sad story has been made the subject of a tragedy much praised by Milanese[67] writers; but which does not seem, unfortunately, to have so moralised the tale, as to make it likely that it should at present be represented in the theatres of that city.

And, truly, when we find a man in the position, and of the character of Verri, writing a grave and learned history at the close of the last century, and representing in its well-considered pages the deed of Girolamo Olgiato as similar in kind to that of Oliver Cromwell, we cannot but become sensible how wholly and irreconcileably different the views and moral judgments of a law-respecting Anglo-Saxon on such subjects, must needs be from those of a people, to whom, for centuries, LAW has been presented only as the expression of a despot's will. To the inmost heart of nations so trained amiss, we may be sure, that "the wild justice of revenge" will commend itself with a force of honest conviction, proportioned ever to the amount of wrong suffered, and not to the heinousness of wrong done, by those who, at their own risk and peril, take upon themselves the execution of it.

Thus died at the age of thirty-two years the magnificent Maria Galeazzo Sforza, our heroine's father. Did these pages profess to give a biography of him instead of his daughter, it would be necessary to follow the chroniclers of his time through the long and sickening list of his cruelties and abominations. This we may spare ourselves. For the purpose of showing what tendencies and dispositions his daughter may be supposed to have inherited, and what were the manners and habits of the home in which, and from which, she received her early impressions and education, it will be sufficient, in addition to what has been already said, to mention one or two of the facts which history has put on record against this man.

There is every reason to believe that he murdered his mother by poison. All the authorities concur in representing her as an excellent and very able princess, whose wisdom and energy ensured his quiet succession to his father's throne. He very soon became jealous of her authority; drove her by his ill treatment from Milan; and is believed to have poisoned her at the first halting-place of her journey from that capital towards her own dower city, Cremona. His guilt was very generally credited by his contemporaries, and subsequent writers concur in thinking their suspicions in all probability just.

Enough has probably been said in previous pages to give the reader some idea of the profligate debauchery which marked the whole course of his life. It is unnecessary to transfer to an English page the details of cynical immorality, mingled with a ferocious cruelty, which seems to mark them to a certain degree with the character of insanity, as recorded by the old writers,[68] especially by Corio, his own personal attendant. It is sufficient to have drawn attention to the influences which must have been exercised by the moral atmosphere of such a court, and such a home on the young bride, who is about to step from it to a court of her own.