not be levelled
and established.

Consider that by his election to the Pontificate his Archbishoprics,
offices, nay, his very house itself--which at the time of which we write
it was customary to abandon to pillage--are vacated; and remember that,
as Pope, they are now in his gift and that they must of necessity be
bestowed upon somebody. In a time in which Pontiffs are imbued with a
spiritual sense of their office and duties, they will naturally make
such bestowals upon those whom they consider best fitted to use them
for the greater honour and glory of God. But we are dealing with no such
spiritual golden age as that when we deal with the Cinquecento, as we
have already seen; and, therefore, all that we can expect of a Pope is
that he should bestow the preferment he has vacated upon those among
the cardinals whom he believes to be devoted to himself. Considering his
election in a temporal sense, it is natural that he should behave as any
other temporal prince; that he should remember those to whom he owes
the Pontificate, and that he should reward them suitably. Alexander
VI certainly pursued such a course, and the greatest profit from his
election was derived by the Cardinal Sforza who--as Roderigo himself
admitted--had certainly exerted all his influence with the Sacred
College to gain him the Pontificate. Alexander gave him the vacated
Vice-Chancellorship (for which, when all is said, Ascanio Sforza was
excellently fitted), his vacated palace on Banchi Vecchi, the town of
Nepi, and the bishopric of Agri.

To Orsini he gave the Church of Carthage and the legation of Marche; to
Colonna the Abbey of Subiaco; to Savelli the legation of Perugia (from
which he afterwards recalled him, not finding him suited to so difficult
a charge); to Raffaele Riario went Spanish benefices worth four thousand
ducats yearly; to Sanseverino Roderigo's house in Milan, whilst he
consented that Sanseverino's nephew--known as Fracassa--should enter
the service of the Church with a condotta of a hundred men-at-arms and a
stipend of thirteen thousand ducats yearly.

Guicciardini says of all this that Ascanio Sforza induced many of the
cardinals "to that abominable contract, and not only by request and
persuasion, but by example; because, corrupt and of an insatiable
appetite for riches, he bargained for himself, as the reward of so much
turpitude, the Vice-Chancellorships, churches, fortresses [the very
plurals betray the frenzy of exaggera