‘All sat in their places, silent and pale, as though they had been struck senseless. No one spoke for some time, no one so much as moved a muscle apart from his eyes which glanced first to one side, then to the other. The silence was astonishing. Suddenly the young Rodrigo Borgia stood up: “I accede to the Cardinal of Siena,” he announced.’ But after this declaration, all fell into silence once more, until two cardinals, reluctant to commit themselves, hurriedly left the others, ‘pleading the calls of nature.’
Then another cardinal rose to announce his support for Piccolomini. Yet even this did not secure the necessary two-thirds majority. One more vote was still required. No one spoke; no one moved. At length the aged Prospero Colonna rose unsteadily to his feet and ‘was about to pronounce his vote’ for the cardinal of Siena when ‘he was seized about the waist’ by the wily, ambitious Frenchman Guillaume d’Estouteville, archbishop of Rouen, and by Cardinal Bessarion, who still entertained hopes of being elected himself. They rebuked Cardinal Colonna harshly; and when he persisted in his intention to vote for Piccolomini, they tried to remove him from the room by force. Provoked by this indignity, Colonna, who had voted for d’Estouteville in the scrutiny, now called out in loud protest, ‘I also accede to Siena and I make him Pope.’
‘Your Holiness, we are thankful for your election and we have no doubts that it is of God,’ Cardinal Bessarion equivocated, after the election had been ratified according to custom. ‘The reason we did not vote for you was your illness; we thought that your gout would be a handicap for the Church which stands in much need of an active man with physical strength,’ he explained. ‘You, on the other hand, need rest.’ Piccolomini responded with dignity: ‘What is done by two-thirds of the Sacred College is surely the work of the Holy Spirit,’ he said, before removing his cardinal’s red robes and donning the ‘white tunic of Christ.’ When he was asked by what name he wished to be known, he announced ‘Pius,’ and his election was proclaimed to the crowds gathered in the piazza in front of St Peter’s.
That night of August 19, 1458, there was great rejoicing in the streets and piazzas of Rome, as men and women celebrated the news that an Italian had been chosen rather than a Frenchman or another Spaniard:
There was laughter and joy everywhere and voices crying ‘Siena! Siena! Oh, fortunate Siena! Viva Siena!’… As night fell, bonfires blazed at every crossroads… men sang in the streets; neighbour feasted neighbour; there was not a place where horns and trumpets did not sound, nor a quarter of the city that was not alive with public joy. The older men said they had never seen such popular rejoicings in Rome before.
Piccolomini, prematurely old at fifty-three, had up until now led a more or less dissolute life. He was the father of several bastards and had distinguished himself as a diplomat, orator, and writer rather than as a churchman; he was the author of, among other works, a widely read novel, Euryalus and Lucretia; a distinguished series of biographies, On Famous Men; his own memoirs; a book on the correct way to educate young boys; and a history of Bohemia — this last work he wrote while resting at the famous baths at Viterbo, where he hoped to ease his gout ‘but not expecting a cure, because this illness, once it has become chronic and firmly rooted, is only ended by death.’
He had received his cardinal’s hat at Christmas 1456 and just over eighteen months later had entered the conclave with quiet confidence that he would be elected; and while prepared to promote the interests of friends and family, and to indulge their whims, in the manner of so many of his predecessors, he was also determined to become a worthy occupant of his holy office. He undertook to bear always in mind the words he had spoken to a friend when he was ordained deacon and had accepted that the chastity he confessed to dread must now replace his former licentiousness. ‘I do not deny my past. I have been a great wanderer from what is right, but at least I know it and hope that the knowledge has not come too late.’
Like his predecessor, he had the same overriding ambition: ‘Of all the intentions he had at heart, there was none so dear as that of inciting Christians against the Turks and declaring war on them.’ He discussed at length the means of achieving the organization of a crusade that could resist the advance of the Turks into Europe with Rodrigo Borgia, whose position as vice-chancellor of the Church Pius II had confirmed within hours of his election, in grateful thanks for Rodrigo’s support in the conclave.
— CHAPTER 3 — A Man of Endless Virility
‘THE DANCES WERE IMMODEST AND THE SEDUCTION OF LOVE BEYOND BOUNDS’
THE MOST TALENTED of Calixtus III’s nephews, Rodrigo Borgia had been created a cardinal at the age of twenty-five. He had made a brief study of canon law at Bologna University, where he took his degree after less than a year’s residence, which, since the normal course of study was five years, led to a widespread supposition that money had exchanged hands, a not unusual occurrence.
Nor did Rodrigo Borgia’s appointment to the influential and lucrative position of vice-chancellor at the age of twenty-seven, after an equally brief military career, pass without angry complaint; nor had his appointment to his uncle’s valuable see of Valencia. Yet it had to be conceded that while nepotism had been largely responsible for these appointments, Rodrigo was a highly competent administrator, ‘an extraordinarily able man,’ as Pius II commented, and that if indeed he did take immoderate care to ensure that his tenure in the office of vice-chancellor was an extremely profitable one — thanks to the bribes he readily accepted for all manner of favours, from the arranging of divorces to the licensing of incestuous marriages by means of forged documents — it could not be denied that he performed the duties of the post conscientiously. He was enormously rich, with a taste for extravagance; as Jacopo Gherardi da Volterra commented:
Borgia’s various offices, his numerous abbeys in Italy and Spain, and his three bishoprics of Valencia, Porto and Cartagena yield him a vast fortune; and it is said that that the office of Vice-Chancellor alone brings him in 8,000 gold florins. His plate, his pearls, his clothes embroidered with silk and gold, and his books in every department of learning are very numerous, and all are magnificent. I need not mention the innumerable bed-hangings, the trappings of his horses… the gold embroideries, the richness of his beds, his tapestries in silver and silk, nor his magnificent clothes, nor the immense amount of gold he possesses.
‘Beautiful women are attracted to him in a most remarkable way, more powerfully than iron is drawn to the magnet,’ wrote one observer. He was also, in the guarded words of Johannes Burchard, who later became his master of ceremonies, a man of ‘endless virility.’ It was well known that his sexual appetite was consuming and that attractive women who came to him for advice or favours were more than likely to take part in such orgies as those that were brought to the notice of Pius II, who thus admonished his vice-chancellor in these terms: