ion of indexes of all
works containing anything hurtful to religion, and pronounced a ban of
excommunication against all who should peruse the books so indexed.

Thus Alexander invented the Index Expurgatorius.

There is abundant evidence that he was a fervid celebrant, and of his
extreme devotion to the Blessed Virgin--in whose honour he revived the
ringing of the Angelus Bell--shall be considered later.

Whatever his private life, it is idle to seek to show that his public
career was other than devoted to the upholding of the dignity and honour
of the Church.

CHAPTER III. THE ROMAN BARONS

Having driven Charles VIII out of Italy, it still remained for the
allies to remove all traces of his passage from Naples and to restore
the rule of the House of Aragon. In this they had the aid of Ferdinand
and Isabella, who sent an army under the command of that distinguished
soldier Gonzalo de Cordoba, known in his day as the Great Captain.

He landed in Calabria in the spring of 1496, and war broke out afresh
through that already sorely devastated land. The Spaniards were joined
by the allied forces of Venice and the Church under the condotta of the
Marquis Gonzaga of Mantua, the leader of the Italians at Fornovo.

Lodovico had detached himself from the league, and again made terms
with France for his own safety's sake. But his cousin, Giovanni Sforza,
Tyrant of Pesaro--the husband of Lucrezia Borgia--continued in the
pontifical army at the head of a condotta of 600 lances. Another command
in the same ranks was one of 700 lances under the youthful Giuffredo
Borgia, now Prince of Squillace and the husband of Dona Sancia of
Aragon, a lady of exceedingly loose morals, who had brought to Rome the
habits acquired in the most licentious Court of that licentious age.

The French lost Naples even more easily than they had conquered it, and
by July 7 Ferdinand II was able to reenter his capital and reascend
his throne. D'Aubigny, the French general, withdrew to France, whilst
Montpensier, the Viceroy, retired to Pozzuoli, where he died in the
following year.

Nothing could better have suited the purposes of Alexander than the
state of things which now prevailed, affording him, as it did, the means
to break the power of the insolent Roman barons, who already had so
vexed and troubled him. So in the Consistory of June 1 he published
a Bull whereby Gentile Virginio Orsini, Giangiordano Orsini, and his
bastard Paolo Orsini