iliar, Francesco
Romolini, to Piero for appointment as professor of canon law in Pisa.
The letter is signed, "Your brother, Cesar de Borja, Elector of
Valencia."[19]

By not allowing his son to come to Rome immediately, Alexander wished to
give public proof of what he had declared at the time of his election;
namely, that he would hold himself above all nepotism. Perhaps there was
a moment when the warning afforded by the examples of Calixtus, Sixtus,
and Innocent caused him to hesitate, and to resolve to moderate his love
for his offspring. However, the nomination of his son to a bishopric on
the day of his coronation shows that his resolution was not very
earnest. In October Caesar appeared in the Vatican, where the Borgias now
occupied the place which the pitiable Cibos had left.

On September 1st the Pope made the elder Giovanni Borgia, who was Bishop
of Monreale, a cardinal; he was the son of Alexander's sister Giovanna.
The Vatican was filled with Spaniards, kinsmen, or friends of the now
all-powerful house, who had eagerly hurried thither in quest of fortune
and honors. "Ten papacies would not be sufficient to satisfy this swarm
of relatives," wrote Gianandrea Boccaccio in November, 1492, to the Duke
of Ferrara. Of the close friends of Alexander, Juan Lopez was made his
chancellor; Pedro Caranza and Juan Marades his privy chamberlains;
Rodrigo Borgia, a nephew of the Pope, was made captain of the palace
guard, which hitherto had been commanded by a Doria.

Alexander immediately began to lay the plans for a more brilliant future
for his daughter. He would no longer listen to her marrying a Spanish
nobleman; nothing less than a prince should receive her hand. Ludovico
and Ascanio suggested their kinsman, Giovanni Sforza. The Pope accepted
him as son-in-law, for, although he was only Count of Cotognola and
vicar of Pesaro, he was an independent sovereign, and he belonged to the
illustrious house of Sforza. Alexander had entered early into such close
relations with the Sforza that Cardinal Ascanio became all-powerful in
Rome. Giovanni, an illegitimate son of Costanzo of Pesaro, and only by
the indulgence of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII his hereditary heir, was a
man of twenty-six, well formed and carefully educated, like most of the
lesser Italian despots. He had married Maddalena, the beautiful sister
of Elisabetta Gonzaga, in 1489, on the very day upon which the latter
was joined in wedlock to Duke Guidobaldo of U