August 11 it was announced that Roderigo Borgia
was elected Pope, and we have it on the word of Valori that the election
was unanimous, for he wrote on the morrow to the Council of Eight (the
Signory of Florence) that after long contention Alexander VI was created
"omnium consensum--ne li manco un solo voto."

The subject of this election is one with which we rarely find an author
dealing temperately or with a proper and sane restraint. To vituperate
in superlatives seems common to most who have taken in hand this and
other episodes in the history of the Borgias. Every fresh writer who
comes to the task appears to be mainly inspired by a desire to emulate
his forerunners, allowing his pen to riot zestfully in the accumulation
of scandalous matter, and seeking to increase if possible its lurid
quality by a degree or two. As a rule there is not even an attempt made
to put forward evidence in substantiation of anything that is alleged.
Wild and sweeping statement takes the place that should be held by calm
deduction and reasoned comment.

"He was the worst Pontiff that ever filled St. Peter's Chair," is one
of these sweeping statements, culled from the pages of an able, modern,
Italian author, whose writings, sound in all that concerns other
matters, are strewn with the most foolish extravagances and flagrant
inaccuracies in connection with Alexander VI and his family.

To say of him, as that writer says, that "he was the worst Pontiff
that ever filled St. Peter's Chair," can only be justified by an utter
ignorance of papal history. You have but to compare him calmly and
honestly--your mind stripped of preconceptions--with the wretched
and wholly contemptible Innocent VIII whom he succeeded, or with the
latter's precursor, the terrible Sixtus IV.

That he was better than these men, morally or ecclesiastically, is
not to be pretended; that he was worse--measuring achievement by
opportunity--is strenuously to be denied. For the rest, that he was
infinitely more gifted and infinitely more a man of affairs is not to be
gainsaid by any impartial critic.

If we take him out of the background of history in which he is set, and
judge him singly and individually, we behold a man who, as a churchman
and Christ's Vicar, fills us with horror and loathing, as a scandalous
exception from what we are justified in supposing from his office must
have been the rule. Therefore, that he may be judged by the standard of
his own time if h