Financing the Basilica

The Chapel of Nicholas V in the Vatican

Palace

Let’s go back to the saga of building Saint Peter’s.  We had discussed in earlier blogs  (April 16, 2011)  that by the fifteenth century Constantine’s basilica was falling down—the north wall was totally out of plumb and in danger of collapse.  There had been plans to expand the old basilica and enlarge it under Nicholas V in the middle of the fifteenth century and the papal architect, Bernardo de Matteo Rossellino had actually begun building a new apse, but with the Nicholas’ death in 1455 the project came to nothing.  (One thing that does last to Nicholas’ everlasting credit—at least measured in earthly values, if not heavenly—is the exquisite chapel in the Vatican frescoed by Dominican friars, Fra Angelico. To my mind it is the most beautiful of all the churches and chapels in the Vatican—more than the Sistine Chapel or Saint Peter’s itself.  It is quite small—smaller than most bedrooms in a modest suburban American home—but exquisite for the sublime frescoes of Saints Laurence and Stephen.   O well, back to the Basilica (which I have always thought to be rather garish). 

Fra Angelico fresco of Saint Laurence

distributing alms

     Anyway, it was Julius II della Rovere who decided to tear down the old Basilica and construct a new one—a radical decision. (Imagine of Benedict decided to tear down the current Basilica and build a new one “in the modern style;” don’t you think that infallible or not his ass would be in a sling with all the neo-cons?  Well Julius had it no easier.  People were horrified.  Julius was called all sorts of things even by the Cardinals.  (I bet the biggest critics of any pope are from among the Cardinals though they keep their deprecations among their closest friends.)  Originally Julius’ motivation was he wanted the space to hold this new tomb that he had Michelangelo carving over 40 larger-than-life figures to adorn.  But Julius was a man with many irons in the fire.  Michelangelo was working on the tomb, Bramante on the basilica.  But the pope wanted to expand his palace.  First he didn’t want to live in the apartments of his predecessor, Alexander VI Borgia, whom he hated.  Alexander was an evil man, but that wasn’t what stopped Julius from liking him.  Julius understood weaknesses of the flesh as well as anyone.  It was just that the Borgias and the Della Roveres were the Hatfields and McCoys of fifteenth century Rome.   Each family had held the papacy at different times and tried to shut out the other family from power and influence in their turn.   So Julius had new apartments built and commissioned Raphael to fresco them. But that was only part of the remodeling project.  Innocent VIII had built a villa on a hill just north of the Vatican palace to which he could retire in the heat of Roman summers—the hill commanding refreshing breezes that missed the palace lying on lower ground.  The villa was named the Belvedere—“beautiful to see” or “beautiful views” because it gave lovely views of the meadows and orchards at the time lying between the Vatican and the Castle Sant’Angelo. Julius decided to connect the palace and the villa with two long narrow buildings, creating a massive courtyard between.  When one visits the Vatican Museum today you spend a lot of time in these wings that are wonderfully frescoed and which for years held the treasures of the Vatican Library.   Not only was Julius building basilicas and palaces and tombs, but everyone who was anyone in Rome was into building—palaces, churches, monuments.  With Julius, Rome had displaced Florence and become the center of the Renaissance.  Rome was swarming with artists, sculptors, architects, musicians, littérateurs, gold and silversmiths, all seeking patronage.  And the Church officials were only too happy to patronize them.  An essential part of the career path in the Church was liberality in patronizing the arts.  Prelates became known for the churches they were building or furnishing and for the opulent palaces in which they lived and the lavishness with which they entertained.  I make fun, as you know, of the clerical coxcombs who parade around in trains of scarlet silk and furred capes today—but it fit the espirit of the times. (Whether it fit the Gospel any better then than now is another question, but then I am sure Jesus has shed more tears over his Church than he ever did over Jerusalem of old.) This created huge employment—stone masons and carpenters, cooks, stewards, servants, mixers of paints, cutters of stone, hewers of trees, pages, vinters, brewers, bakers, chandlers, glass blowers, weavers,  tailors, grocers, stable hands, milliners, construction workers, brickmakers : Renaissances are not cheap.  As I mentioned in earlier blogs money was being drained from all over Europe to pay for the extravagance but at the same time—as Democrats know and Republicans fear—spending 

Ordination of Laurence as Deacon

creates jobs and Rome was abustle with work and employment means money and money means more jobs.  But how could it be kept being fueled?  Pope Julius had an excellent banker—we would refer to him today as a Finance Minister or Secretary of the Treasury, he didn’t stand behind a window counting out twenties.  His name was Agostino Chigi and he had an idea. “ Why not,” he asked Julius, “why not sell indulgences?”  indeed, why not?

History in the Making: Today's Need for Reformation I

The question of  what happens when the papacy itself needs reformation has created problems for the Church at several periods in history.  We have been looking at the turbid position in which the Church found itself in the tenth century during the so-called “pornacracy” or “rule of whores” when the papacy found itself a pawn in the hands of a ruthless family determined to exploit its wealth and power through the efforts of the notoriously lascivious Marozia and her mother, Theodora.  We will see in one of our next entries that the Emperors Otto I, II, and III came to the rescue and cleaned up the papal act.  And we will also see that there are times that the papacy will lead reform in the Church as typified in the aggressive programs of Gregory VII (11^th century) and Innocent III (13^th century). But there are other times when the Church stagnates because there is no one to call the leadership of the Church to account.    In the fourteenth century there was the Great Schism when the Church found itself divided among three rival claimants to the papacy.  In that situation the Emperor and the bishops tried to resolve the crisis and eventually met with success, at least in narrowing papal claimants to a manageable number, one.  The television series, The Borgias,  has made people aware of to just what depths the papacy sunk in the Renaissance period—and trust me, Alexander VI Borgia was only one of several wicked men to used the papacy to their own and their family’s advantages while leading thoroughly immoral lives.  This was the situation that provoked Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and others into the Protestant Reformation.  A papal led Catholic Reform did come about, but too late for the unity of the Church.  The damage had been done, and the papacy reduced to “the Whore of Babylon” in Protestant polemics. There have been other situations in which the lack of a counter-weight to the papacy has left the Church “naked unto her enemies.”  The captivities of Popes Pius VI and Pius VII by Napoleon left the Church with ineffective central leadership for a period of almost twenty years which, due to the relative independence of local bishops in pre-Vatican I era it could survive, but which today would paralyze Church administration.  Indeed, during the Second World
War Pius XII was well aware of the crisis that would befall the Church should he have been taken prisoner by Hitler.  He allegedly had plans to evacuate the papacy to either Lisbon or Dublin and, should that have failed and he been taken captive, had prepared a letter of abdication to be made public upon his arrest. 

It is unlikely that a pope today would be taken prisoner by a political leader, but that does not mean that the popes exercise their authority unimpeded.  The final years of the papacies of Pius XII and John Paul II presented some troubling questions over who was truly overseeing the Church at the time.   Much has been made of the influence of Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, the major-domo of Pius XII.  This German nun, often termed La Popessa, had organized Pius’ household for over forty years, beginning during his term as Papal Nuncio (ambassador) to Bavaria in 1917.  Always a strong influence on Pius, after his serious health decline of 1954 she had almost total control of access to him.  No one, even the Dean of the College of Cardinals—at that time the Vatican’s number 2 officer (Pius, serving as his own Secretary of State)—could have access to the pope unless she permitted it.  For the last four years of his life, all papers passed through her to the pope.  While the situation was never as grave as her detractors portrayed it—with her exercising papal authority in Pius’ name—it did create serious administrative issues and all but stalled Church administration.  Cardinals, bishops, and prominent laity found they could do an end-run around the Vatican bureaucracy by going directly to Mother Pasqualina.    In fact, the very first act of Eugène Tisserant as Cardinal Dean upon the death of Pius was to banish Mother Pasqualina from the Vatican—allegedly told to move out, bag and baggage, that very day. 

The situation toward the end of the pontificate of John Paul II was different.  There was no La Popessa here, no single person of influence.  Yet it was clear that the pope was increasingly incapacitated by the 1990’s.  Curial officials made use of the lack of oversight to expand their own powers and influence, often squabbling in rivalry with others over who had jurisdiction in particular instances. Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s chief private secretary, like Mother Pasqualina had total control of access to the Pope, and allegedly, unlike Mother Pasqualina “sold” that access—getting individuals access to private audiences or attendance at the Pope’s morning mass in his private chapel for sums up to $50,000.   Dziwisz was closely tied to Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was accused by numerous former seminarians of having sexually abused them.  Despite the number and credibility of allegations, neither Maciel nor the Legion of Christ were never held to accountability during the pontificate of John Paul, one of the most serious flaws in his papacy.   Only in the current pontificate have the charges of sexual and financial impropriety been duly investigated and been found to be even more outrageous than previously charged.   Another case in which John Paul’s incapacity resulted in the Curial “old boy” network triumphing over good judgment was the nomination of Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced archbishop of Boston, to a cushy position in Rome.  Law’s arrogance in defending clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse is what brought down the wrath of Americans—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—on the American Episcopate.  While the majority of American Catholics still seem to have great confidence in the clergy, particularly their own parish clergy, the American bishops have largely become shepherds without sheep.  The Catholic Church in America is prone to this problem in any event as our Protestant culture predisposes us to see the Church congregationally—that is to identify Church primarily with the local congregation to which we belong.  In fact, American Catholics tend to see the Church on two tiers: there is “the Church”—i.e. Rome; and there is their church—that is the parish community to which they belong.  Bishops seem only sort of middle-men; local agents of the central authority as it were.  If the American Catholic knew how much of his Sunday collection-plate dollar went to the bishop, he would be very unhappy.  But what little credibility bishops have in America has been all but destroyed in the sex-abuse crisis where so many bishops have not dealt effectively with pedophile clergy.  Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, is the poster boy for bad bishops.  It was not the protecting of accused clergy that did him in—it was the unmitigated arrogance with which he defended himself and his indefensible policies.  Finally forced to resign just to quiet the outrage, he was rescued from serving retired nuns as their chaplain in rural Maryland and installed in the palatial quarters of the Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.  And then, despite these being said to be the most luxurious cardinalatial apartments in the Eternal City, he undertook to renovate and expand his suites.  This is part of an old-boy system in Rome where they take care of their own.    It is not that they don’t care about the public-relations aspect of the Church; they honestly don’t understand that in today’s world they are being held accountable and their failure to be responsible seriously undermines the credibility of the Church and indeed dichotomy of what the Church teaches and how so many of its leaders function undermines the credibility of the Gospel itself in as that it reduces, or at least appears to reduce, the Gospel to snake-oil whose sale is only meant to enrich those who “sell” it. 

The papacy of John Paul II is one of the most paradoxical papacies in the history of the Church.  As one commentator for the BBC said, echoing Charles Dickens, when John Paul lay dying: it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.   John Paul’s policies gave the coup de grace to European communism and provided the restoration of democracy in the countries of Eastern Europe.  His internal policies in the Church were another matter with an ever deepening gap between progressives and conservatives.  This division was only aggravated as he aged and gradually lost power to the curial machine which took on a life of its own.

It was hoped that the election of a curial cardinal to the papacy would bring the curia and its various bureaucrats back under control.  Popes like Pius XII and Paul VI who had curial experience usually knew how to keep the Curia working for them rather than trying to run the Church their way in spite of the pope.  Popes whose previous experience had been as residential archbishops—popes like John XXIII and John Paul II—had more difficulty in managing the politics of the Curia.  So Joseph Ratzinger, having spent so many years in Rome as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, should have been able to bring the Curia back under papal control, but experience is showing that he can’t.  The recent controversy where Cardinal Bertone, the papal Secretary of State, blocked the nomination of Dr. Lesley-Anne Knight for a second term as General Secretary of Caritas Internationalis is one example of how the papal hands are tied.  Dr. Knight’s election to her first term met with a hostile reception in certain Vatican circles, apparently for no other reason than she was a woman.  The papal audience at which she and the rest of the executive committee were to be presented to Pope Benedict all but turned into a brawl when some Vatican monsignore just refused to believe that such an important person might possibly be a woman and tried to remove her from her reserved seat and force her to the back of the hall in the Apostolic Palace where the reception was being held.   It took a cadre of Caritas officials to put a protective ring around Dr. Knight in order for her to keep her assigned place.  Similar episodes have been reported at ecumenical welcomes when women bishops from various Protestant groups have been due to be presented to the pope.  Curial officials have long memories and before this year’s General Assembly of Caritas, Caritas was notified that the Vatican would not approve a second term for Dr. Knight.  When Cardinal  Rodriguez-Maradiaga, the president of Caritas Internationalis went to intervene with Pope Benedict the Pope supposedly threw his hands up in the air and said that he had no say in the matter.  It was beyond his power.  The decision had been made.  Incidentally, Bertone is one of six members of his religious congregation, the Salesians of Don Bosco, in the College of Cardinals.  ,    

The reputation of the Curia is far from good in other ways beyond their internal bickering and jockeying for power.  While Italians tend to take a more jaundiced eye than we Americans about the weaknesses of human nature—after all can you imagaine an American politician getting away with what Sylvio Berlascone gets away with?—and while most clerical misconduct goes unnoted in the press, it is not unknown to see a story in the Roman newspapers about some low-level Vatican official who has been caught picking up a transvestite prostitute or having sex in a public park.  A 1998 double murder/suicide involving two officers in the Swiss Guards, attributed to the one officer’s being refused a promotion, is rumored to involve a homosexual relationship between the two guards.  Vatican immorality may not be at the extravagance of the Borgia’s Banquet of the Chestnuts, but the Curia certainly aren’t the angelic choirs either and there seems to be no one to whom anyone is accountable.   

It would be good to think that a Gregory VII or an Innocent III could reform the Church from within but although Vatican II has brought many changes, and I believe changes for the good, it has not brought genuine reform or renewal.  A weakness of the current structure of Church leadership is that there is no person or group who has the authority to call the Church leadership to realign itself to the demands of the Gospel. 

St, Peter's Basilica: Roll over Peter, Julius needs a grave.

Julius II Della Rovere

Well, to pick up our saga of the popes and Old Saint Peter’s—Alexander VI, rotting even before they got him into his coffin—was laid to rest (temporarily) in Old St. Peter’s but his son, Caesare, was alive, well, and determined to control the papacy because his own power depended on papal patronage.  The very last thing he wanted was a pope from the Della Rovere faction among the Cardinals (the family of Sixtus IV—the guy who made the pretty-boy cardinals and built the Sistine Chapel) as the Della Roveres and the Borgias were mortal enemies.  You may remember that Caesare’s father, the dead and rapidly decomposing Alexander, beat out Giuliano della Rovere in the 1492 conclave despite Giuliano’s shelling out 300,000 ducats in “tokens of esteem” to the electors.  (Bribe is such a coarse term.)

It is hard to know from the sources what exactly Caesare’s role in the election was.  In fact Caesare himself was under the weather when his father died.  He and his father had both become ill after having dinner with Cardinal Adriano da Corno (aka Cornetto or dei Castelli).  Here is where the story gets even more confusing.  Adriano was a partisan of the Della Rovere faction and some say that the dinner was an attempt at reconciling with the Borgias.  Others say that Borgia—Father and Son—had accepted the invitation to have the opportunity to poison Adriano and the death of Alexander and illness of Caesare was due to the Borjas’ confusedly drinking from the cup they had “prepared” for the Cardinal.   While the state of Alexander’s body almost immediately after death—discolored, swollen, mouth black and  protruding, emitting gases and fluids—indicates poisoning, modern historians attribute the death of Alexander and the serious (but not fatal) illness of Caesare to malaria which was indeed the nemesis of many a Renaissance Roman.   I myself favor the poisoning theory except for the fact that I can’t figure out a motive of the Borjas trying to do away with Adriano.  He may have been a friend of the Della Roveres, but Alexander had made him a cardinal only the year before.  And if Caesare wanted him out of the way, he would have framed him with some accusation that would have enabled Caesare to seize his property—which was considerable.  The Cardinal had built the Palazzo Torolonia standing on what is today the Via della Conciliazione just outside the Vatican.  To my estimation it is one of the most beautiful palaces in Rome. If Adriano died naturally—or even by murder—his property would go to his heirs.  Perhaps Adriano was trying (successfully) to poison the Borjas.  Frankly it is just one of those things historians argue about.  Furthermore, when a della Rovere finally did come to the papal throne, the Cardinal fled Rome, so he probably had betrayed his Della Rovere allies and turned his loyalty to the Borjas and they, in turn, probably had malaria to blame for their problems.  Just with the Borjas and poison one never knows. 

Caesare may have been too sick to leave his bed, but he had troops at his command and they dominated the conclave of 1503.  Or, I should say, the first conclave of 1503 because the new pope, Pius III—a Piccolomini and nephew of Pius II Piccolomini (The pope who refashioned and renamed Pienza and used to write letters to Dracula—see April 17) only lasted 26 days on the papal throne.  He died either of an ulcerated leg or was poisoned on the orders of an old enemy from Siena.  It wasn’t easy being pope in those days—great perks and low expectations for moral character, but you better have your own chef and sommelier. 

Caesare wasn’t able to control the next conclave and the Cardinals thought it was time for a change.  Giuliano della Rovere finally got his chance.  The nephew of Sixtus IV, he had tried in three successive conclaves to get his uncle’s old job but had never made it.  He spent 300,000 ductats –again almost 50 million dollars in a vain attempt to be elected in 1492.  On November 1, 1503 he was elected on the first ballot  of the Conclave.  Now finally we have a pope who will decide to do something about the basilica that was all but falling down. 

It is Julius II who decided to build a new Saint Peter’s, but before you give him too much credit you need to know why.  It wasn’t that he decided to build a new shrine to the Apostle; it was that one of the first decisions he made was to build a tomb for himself and needed a church to hold it.  This was no ordinary tomb, no simple sarcophagus.  It was to be over 20 feet wide, 30 feet long, and twenty feet high.  it was to be free standing in the middle of a great space and Michelangelo was hired to carve the forty statues that were to adorn it.  All he needed was that great space in which it could stand.  This new Basilica was not to be a monument on the grave of Peter, but a monument over the grave of Julius.  You have to understand papal chutzpah.  More tomorrow.   By the way, don't give up hope just because the Church is going to be built--there is still plenty of sex in the Vatican left to tell you about

History of St. Peter's Basilica: Orgies, murders, and family fun in the Vatican

Alexander VI in one of his more pious moments

Well, if you read yesterday’s entry and heard about the pope who died while eating melons and being sodomized by a page boy or the pope with sixteen illegitimate children who was worried about witchcraft in Germany or the one who was a pen-pal of Dracula’s, you may have thought they represented an all time papal low, but never think it can’t be worse.  (Actually go back to the entry about Pope Formosus and the entry about the lovely mother-daughter team of papal harlots, Theodora and Marozia,  on January 24 and 15 respectively and you will find what must be the all time low in papal morals—not to mention pontifical weirdness.)  Nevertheless, the debauchery and violence of the 9^th and 10^th centuries didn’t discourage 15^th century popes from trying for the distinction as we will see today.   We had left off with Innocent VIII—Innocent of the sixteen bastards and paranoia about German warlocks. Well, Innocent—bad as he was—was succeeded by Alexander VI  Borgia.  Borgia!  Does the name ring a bell?

the lovely Lucrezia

Born in Spain in 1431, Rodrigo Llançol y Borja was brought to Italy to study by his maternal uncle, Alfons de Borja, who had been made a Cardinal by Eugene IV in gratitude for Borja’s diplomatic efforts with the King of Aragon.  When the uncle became pope Callistus III (we spoke of him yesterday—he was the pope who was pushing the Portuguese Slave Trade and posthumously retrying Joan of Arc), Rodrigo was made a bishop, then a Cardinal, and then named vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Church, vice being the operative word and any illusions that the Roman Church was holy were soon dispelled by this fellow.  After his uncle’s death, Cardinal Rodrigo served the next four popes—while acquiring vast power and making himself quite wealthy. No one knows quite how much he spread around in bribes in order to be elected pope in the 1492 conclave, but his arch-rival, Giuliano de Medici was bankrolled ( by the King of France and the Republic of Genoa) to the tune of 300,000 ducats (which is worth almost fifty million dollars in today’s gold).  O well, as they say it takes money to make money.  Borja was supported by various kings as well, notably Spain and Portugal and it was he who issued the Bull  Inter Caetera in 1493, dividing colonization rights in the newly discovered worlds of Asia and the Americas between Spain and Portugal—which did not make the English, French, or others very happy.  

Alexander (Rodrigo’s’s regnal name as pope) had had a long-time lady friend, Vanozza dei Cattani, who lived just around the corner from the Borja palace and there raised his four children: Juan, Caesare, Lucrezia, and Gioffre.  They were real darlings—as we will see.  By the way you can still see both Vanozza’s home in the Piazza Sforza Caesarini and Rodrigo’s palace in the courtyard of the palazzo just the other side of the Via Sforza Caesarinni today.  Juan, the oldest son, was made Duke of Gandia in Spain—though he continued to live in Rome and was also given various fiefs in Italy.  Caesare was made a Cardinal, a singularly inappropriate choice for a budding young satyr with sociopathic tendencies.  Alexander carved out fiefs from the papal domain and stole others fromm neighboring states not only for the Duke of Gandia but for his youngest son, Gioffre as well.  Lucrezia was subjected to a series of political marriages. The first of her marriages, to an illegitimate scion of the Sforza family—rulers of Milan—ended in divorce and annulment when the husband proved to be a political liability.  Caesare didn’t want to bother with an annulment; murders were easier to arrange and much less expensive, but someone warned the husband (possibly Lucrezia) and he fled.  The second marriage ended with the husband murdered, presumably by his brother-in-law, Caesare, who was jealous because his sister was happy in the marriage and he, Caesare felt displaced in her affections.  He was such a sensitive soul!  The third marriage with the Duke of Ferrara lasted and she became a respectable Renaissance Duchess, though never a faithful wife, carrying on with a number of men—all men of quality, of course—she was a Duchess not a tramp.  Of course her being such a fine lady never dispelled allegations of incest between Lucrezia and both her father, the pope, and her brother Caesare.   The former are probably untrue, the affair with her brother—well, I wouldn’t rule it out.  When it comes to the Borja’s you can’t rule anything out.     

Caesare Borja was a first class sociopath. (By the way, the name in Italian is Borgia.)  A rageaholic, Caesare could make even his father quake in fear.   Named a bishop at 15 and a Cardinal at 18, both he and his brother Juan were lovers of the third brothers’ wife—Sancha of Aragon.  She was another one of those easy-going women in the family.  When Juan was murdered in 1497, Caesare was suspected of fratricide (because of his reputed jealousy of Juan for both his political power and the affections of sister-in-law Sancha).  The charges were never followed through; Caesare was protected by his father—whose favorite child he seemed to have been, although Alexander was way over-indulgent with each of his children.  Similarly if he were the father of a child born in 1497 and rumored to be Lucrezia’s illegitimate son, that too was covered up. Alexander acknowledged paternity of the child though Lucrezia’s maternity was not acknowledged.  It was also Caesare who organized the Banquet of the Chestnuts on October 30, 1501—a dinner in the Vatican palace where the diners were entertained by having the clothes of fifty prostitutes auctioned off their backs and then cheering on the same ladies—naked—as they scrambled along the floor of the banquet room in the Vatican for chestnuts thrown them by the guests.  The entire event turned—by design—into a huge orgy where prizes of expensive clothing and other gifts where handed out to those guests who showed the most sexual proficiency.   This was the jolly side of Caesare—far worse was the angry and vengeful side that caused a series of murders and disappearances among the Roman nobility and hierarchy with Caesare seizing their estates to finance his various plots and plans.   

At the same time Alexander was giving his children free reign for debauchery, fratricide, sacrilege, and murder, he was also busy trying to expand papal power in Italy by playing the French off against the Aragonese in Naples.  It was a disastrous policy.  The pope was not above handing out divorces and annulments to various royals and nobles in return for support in his military policies. All it ever led to was bloodshed, war, and violence.  When the Florentine Dominican, Girolamo Savonarola called for Reform of the Church, Alexander excommunicated the preacher and then turned on Florence and demanded the death of the critic.  Florence complied rather than risk war. 

In his papal years, Alexander dumped Vanozza dei Cattani for Giula (Giula Bella) Farnese—said to be the most beautiful woman in Rome, making her brother, Allesandro, a cardinal.  He would later reign as Paul III—one of the reforming popes, though he only became a reformer after a long life of decadence.  We will look at him some other time.

When Alexander died his body immediately began to rot in the most noxious fashion with gasses and foul smelling fluids emitting from every orifice.  The corpse swell so much that the papal master of ceremonies, John Burchard,  recorded in his diary that he had to jump on the body to squeeze it into its coffin.  The canons of St. Peter’s Basilica—the old basilica, still falling down—refused to allow the body to be brought into the church for burial.  The papal troops had to force their way into the church with the corpse.  His successor, Pius III, forbad masses to be said for the dead pope since he was “already damned.”  One good thing that can be said about the pope is that when the Jews were expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, Alexander welcomed them to Rome and gave them freedom to practice their religion without harassment.  Of course that was good business practice, but he was one of the few rulers in Europe to treat the Jews fairly.  And through all the naked courtesans, rolling chestnuts, poisoned rings, unsolved murders, simonical bishops—the old Basilica kept crumbling down.    

De Maistre, the Savoyard philosopher-historian wrote the opinion that we only judge Alexander so harshly because he was a pope and had he been a secular prince his vices would be overlooked.  The popes, he wrote, “are forgiven nothing, because everything is expected from them, wherefore the vices lightly passed over in a Louis XIV become most offensive and scandalous in an Alexander VI.”  Well De Maistre would make a gentle confessor indeed and perhaps we are wrong to overlook vices in kings and presidents (I am going to do a Henry VIII series soon), but at the end of the day while we should expect more of our civic rulers than we do—except for Bill Clinton, of course—I do think it is fair to expect the pope to have some higher standards than we found with ol’ Al Borja.   At least he could have patched up that tumbling town church next door.    

How the Vatican came to be the Pope's home

When the papacy left Avignon and returned to Rome in 1377 the papal court found the old Lateran palace which had been the official papal residence adjoining the pope’s cathedral, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, in such ruin that it was not habitable so they took up residence in a warren of buildings adjoining the basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican. You may remember from earlier blogs (January 17 and 18) that Constantine had built basilicas over the tombs of the Apostle Paul (on the Via Ostia) and the Apostle Peter (on the Vatican hill) and that the popes kept a residence at the Vatican for those occasions when they were presiding at ceremonies in that church so that they did not have to journey from the Lateran to the Vatican or return to the Lateran the same day. Innocent III had modernized (well, "modern" for the thirteenth century) the buildings to the north of the basilica and it was here that the popes settled. Well, some of the popes settled, others preferred a variety of palaces around Rome. Paul II Barbo, for example, had rebuilt the residence of the Cardinal Priest of the Basilica of Saint Mark just north of the Capitoline Hill and made it into a splendid renaissance palace. When he was elected pope in 1474, he preferred to remain in his Palazzo Venezia than live in the Vatican and so it served as a papal residence for a number of years, (It also later served as Mussolini’s official headquarters.) Allesandro Farnese, a man who owed his cardinal’s hat to his sister (the so-called Giulia Bella –beautiful Giulia) being the mistress of Pope Alexander VI Borgia, built a magnificent palace –to my mind the most beautiful building in Rome—called the Palazzo Farnese and when he was elected Paul III he too opted to live in this palace even though it was still undergoing its “finishing touches.” This doesn’t mean that the Vatican Palace was being neglected Nicholas V (1447-1455) did a substantial renovation of the older buildings and Alexander VI Borgia constructed new apartments for himself during his reign (1492-1503). Nicholas V’s private chapel was frescoed by Fra Angelico with scenes of the lives of Saints Stephen and Laurence and is—to my mind—the most exquisitely beautiful room in the Vatican Palace—or at least those parts of the palace that we mere mortals get to see. It is a small room that can hold probably no more than ten or twelve people, but the aforementioned frescoes are windows into another world. The Borgia apartment, on the other hand, is a heavy construction—massive and powerful and today houses the Paul VI collection of contemporary (20th century) art. Alexander VI Borgia’s successor, Julius II, despised Alexander and would not live in his apartments so he had apartments of his own constructed directly over them and decorated by Raphael. Like the Borgia apartments, they are today part of the Vatican Museums.
Julius’s uncle, Sixtus IV, (pope 1471-1484) had built the Sistine (named after Sixtus) Chapel between 1473 and 1482. This chapel was built on the site of and to replace an earlier Cappella maggiore (Greater Chapel) which was used for the semi-public papal ceremonies. It apparently was built to the same dimensions of this earlier chapel 134’ by 44’—said to be the dimensions of the temple of Solomon. It would be Julius who would see the decoration of the chapel however, hiring Michelangelo to paint the vault.
Although Paul III Farnese preferred his family palace, he did not ignore his official residence and had the architect Antonio Sangallo the younger—who at the time was serving as the architect of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica that was being built— build the greast reception room—the Sala Regia—and the Pauline chapel in the Vatican Palace. Sangallo also built the Scala Regia to connect the papal apartments with St. Peter’s Basilica. This staircase would later be restored into today’s majestic staircase by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini. (You really do need to go and see all this beauty for yourself.) in the last of the sixteenth century Gregory XIII (reigned 1572-1585) and his successor, Sixtus V (reigned 1585-1590 and one of my favorite popes) built the block of the palace overlooking Saint Peter’s Square where the actual papal apartments are located. This is ironic in as that Gregory had another building project which would result in those apartments sitting empty most nights for several centuries. But more on that in a few weeks. Enough of papal residences. I want to get back to Anti-Catholicism in America, the building of the Vatican Basilica, and those troublesome American nuns that the Vatican wants to “investigate.” Maybe somebody needs to investigate the Vatican. Hmmm.

Today's image is the Diaconal Ordination of Saint Laurence by Fra Angelico, Chapel of Nicholas V