jects, under pain of perpetual banishment, to go to Rome to purchase any benefice."*

These were our reasons for not wishing to have anything to do with the vindication or rehabilitation of Alexander VI. Still, as the gentleman desirous of becoming his vindicator so earnestly claims a hearing before our readers, we make room for his defence in its integrity, only repeating the remark that no Catholic has any more reason to blush for the conduct of Roderick Borgia than he has to blush for the conduct of Judas Iscariot. If the disciples of Christ were nothing the worse for having had a Judas amongst them, neither were the popes anything the worse for having had a Roderick amongst them. Surely, none have the less esteem or veneration for Pope Pius IX., or for any of his predecessors who have led a life equally good and exemplary, because they know that Alexander VI. was much more like Nero than like St. Peter, or any other saint worthy of the name.

Having thus given our views, though necessarily only in a hurried way, in the interest of the truth and justice of history -history, too, as written by archbishops and cardinals who have confessedly led a blameless life-at the same time disclaiming all intention of wounding the religious susceptibilities of any one, we allow our contributor to make the best of his case, and disprove, if he can, even one of the principal charges made by archbishops and cardinals, as well as monks of unimpeachable character:

"Vendit Alexander claves, altaria, Christum."

PERHAPS few studies in ancient times have afforded more striking or more important results than that of history and biography in their original sources. It need hardly be re

marked that the effect of this has been to reverse several opinions which, for a long time, were received as settled historical facts. The researches in this field have, as yet, only begun; but, judging from the success of those who have only partially traversed it, the student who will still more explore

*Hist. Venet. Bembo, vol. ii, p. 210.

and minutely reëxamine it, who will in truth cultivate it, will reap from it a harvest of imperishable laurels.

The original sources of biography are various; indeed it may be examined from different stand-points, but one of these is the examination, not so much into the facts or occurrences related, as into the characters of the merits of the original narrators who have recorded them; or, in other words, it is an examination of their moral characters, and consequently of their truthfulness, or the contrary-for it need scarcely be remarked that the testimony of an enemy, or of a suborned witness, is commonly, if not always, worthless.

It was by a study of the kind just referred to—that is to say, by the diligent examination and collation of original Spanish and Italian documents, and of the moral character of certain writers--that Rosilly De Lorgues, in his "Life of Columbus," shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the several accusations made against the illustrious discoverer of the New World, and particularly the one of his not being married to the mother of his son Fernando, are sheer calumnies, wholly destitute of any original support.

To utter the name of Alexander VI. is it not at once to recall a series of crimes and infamies upon which the most prudent course for a Catholic writer who values his reputation, would be to observe what may be called a dignified silence? To try to defend the infamous Borgia, is it not to undertake a task as culpable as it is vain and nugatory?—or rather is it not like stirring up certain matters which the more they are stirred the more offensive they become to the olfactories? State, if you will, some of our Catholic friends will say to us, that the crimes of Alexander VI. cannot justly be attributed to the Church or even to the Papacy, because the vices of the private man do not nullify the sacred character of the Pontiff; state further, if you have the desire to do so, that the divineness of the promises made to the Church are found precisely confirmed by this miracle, for it is nothing less than a miracle that she has been able to withstand and overcome so much infamy and perversity; but do not endeavor to rehabilitate a name and memory justly doomed to eternal dishonor!

These counsels, however well meant, shall not stop us. Above all things, it is the truth that we love, and that claims our homage and devotion; it is the truth that we wish to defend and vindicate, and we trust we shall not permit ourselves to be swayed from doing so, either by prejudice or by fear. Like M. Chantrel, whose name appears at the heading of this article, and most others who flattered themselves that they were fully conversant with the subject, in early life we conceived a hearty detestation for the memory of Alexander VI. Leaving to the enemies of the Catholic church the enjoyment of the luxury caused by this hideous blemish on the Papacy, we lamented with deep regret the scandal, but consoled ourselves with the reflection that Christ had predicted that scandals should come, and even taught or indicated their necessity. But in 1859 a total change took place in our ideas regarding this pope, in consequence of having read, in the January No. of the Dublin Review for that year, an article entitled "History in Fiction;" the burden of which was the shameful injustice done to the memory of that pontiff. Later in life, from thoughtful reflection and a more extended course of studies, and seeing that, by diligent and thorough investigation, the greater part of the scandalous charges with which certain writers filled what they were pleased to designate as histories of the papacy, began one by one to disappear; and further, seeing the memories of some greatly calumniated sovereign pontiffs gloriously rehabilitated, by Protestant historians, such as Hunter, Voight, Roscoe, Ranke, and some others, we asked ourselves the question, Was it possible that the fifteenth century could have endured for eleven years a Pope so depraved, so odiously infamous, as Alexander VI. is reported to have been? A doubt, which no sincere person will pronounce to have been ill-founded, took possession of our mind, and soon after the doubt came the full conviction that the scandals, if there were any at all, were at least grossly exaggerated. M. Chantrel states that even Voltaire, who was by no means sparing of the character of Alexander, justified these doubts in relation to him, by reproaching Guicardini with having "deceived the whole of Europe” in regard to the

death of that pope, and with having too easily believed "the inspirations of his own envenomed hatred."

The doubt referred to having taken possession of our mind, it became in some sense a necessity for us to seek for a solution of the extraordinary historical problem that here presented itself. We made what we considered the necessary researches. We found Roscoe generously and nobly engaged in the work of vindicating this much-maligned pontiff, in rectifying a large number of errors connected with him, and in repelling or dissipating a large number of calumnies circulated of him. Further, ascending to primitive sources, we found that all the accusations made against Alexander came originally from persons who were notoriously his enemies, or who were hired to defame him; and that many of these accusations mutually contradicted or invalidated each other. On an attentive perusal of the famous Diarium of Burchardt (if he was the author of it), which is so often referred to as testimony against Alexander, one will be surprised to find that he drops as untenable a large number of the charges preferred against that pontiff by his other accusers.

M. Chantrel, the writer to whom we are most indebted for the matter of this article, and who, like ourselves, was once, as already stated, a hearty detester of Alexander, mentions among the incidents of his own conversion to the cause of that pontiff, the following one: "A recent pamphlet written by an enemy (of Alexander's), but who still forced himself to be just, completed our conversion, or conviction." Such certainly was not the object of the author, M. la Rochelle, when he wrote his pamphlet, Sur les Droits du Saint-Siége ; Alexander VI. et César Borgia; but seeing that this enemy of the popes and of their temporal sovereignty was forced to acknowledge that Cæsar Borgia endeared himself to and was beloved by the people whom he had delivered from their tyrants, and further, nobly avowed that most of the crimes with which Alexander VI. has been charged never had any existence at all, we felt sustained and strengthened in our change of opinion.

Our own conviction on this subject is fully and, we may

say, irrevocably formed. We believe that henceforward nobody can sincerely represent Alexander VI. as a monster, as a second Nero encircled with the tiara, or as an assassin or a debauchec. We fully believe that he was a worthy pontiff and a great temporal prince, and that Catholics have no real cause to blush at his name. And as his memory will appear more and more untarnished in proportion as we study more attentively and impartially his history, and that of his times (we mean their real history), and study more carefully the circumstances amid which he acted, we by no means despair of seeing one day the gravest historians repeat, in accordance with the Dublin Review, that Alexander VI. has been calumniated in almost everything, as was the case before him with St. Gregory VII., Innocent III., and Boniface VIII., with this sole difference, that he has been more thoroughly and persistently thus dealt with than they were.

In our times a reference is often made to the pontificate of Alexander VI. The enemies of the papacy, who would destroy its temporal sovereignty, in order the more surely to undermine its spiritual authority, pretend that the temporal Sovereignty ascends really only to this pontiff, and that this is a sorry origin for a power which the Catholics hold or pretend to be sacred. To this charge Catholics may well and truthfully reply, that they have seen this sovereignty in germ. in the apostolic times, show itself plainly under the first Christian emperors, and become still more developed under the iconoclast emperors, to become completely established in the eighth century, by a growth slow but sure, which Catholics would deem a mark of the divine will, but which those who reject the idea of a Providence would call the march of events. This temporal sovereignty having become enfeebled in the course of time, Alexander VI. only prepared the way for its consolidation, by rendering powerless the petty tyrants who, like Victor Emanuel of the present day, seized on and oppressed the States of the Church. Julius II. finished what Alexander had begun, and henceforth was consolidated that monarchy which gave a tranquility of three centuries' duration to the Romans.

VOL. XXVI.-NO. LI.

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