Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope throughout his life.[1] This, together with his almost insane weakness for his children, whereby he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all the crimes which he committed.  At the same time, though sensual, Alexander was not gluttonous.  Boccaccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador, remarks:  ’The Pope eats only of one dish.  It is, therefore, disagreeable to have to dine with him.’  In this respect he may be favorably contrasted with the Roman prelates of the age of Leo.  His relations to Vannozza Catanei, the titular wife first of Giorgio de Croce, and then of Carlo Canale, and to Giulia Farnese,[2] surnamed La Bella, the titular wife of Orsino Orsini, were open and acknowledged.  These two sultanas ruled him during the greater portion of his career, conniving meanwhile at the harem, which, after truly Oriental fashion, he maintained in the Vatican.  An incident which happened during the French invasion of 1494 brings the domestic circumstances of a Pope of the Renaissance vividly before us.  Monseigneur d’Allegre caught the ladies Giulia and Girolama Farnese, together with the lady Adriana de Mila, who was employed as their duenna, near Capodimonte, on November 29, and carried them to Montefiascone.  The sum fixed for their ransom was 3,000 ducats.  This the Pope paid, and on December 1 they were released.  Alexander met them outside Rome, attired like a layman in a black jerkin trimmed with gold brocade, and fastened round his waist by a Spanish girdle, from which hung his dagger.  Lodovico Sforza, when he heard what had happened, remarked that it was weak to release these ladies, who were ‘the very eyes and heart’ of his Holiness, for so small a ransom—­if 50,000 ducats had been demanded, they would have been paid.  This and a few similar jokes, uttered at the Pope’s expense, make us understand to what extent the Italians were accustomed to regard their high priest as a secular prince.  Even the pageant of Alexander seated in S. Peter’s, with his daughter Lucrezia on one side of his throne and his daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other, moved no moral indignation; nor were the Romans astonished when Lucrezia was appointed Governor of Spoleto, and plenipotentiary Regent of the Vatican in her father’s absence.  These scandals, however, created a very different impression in the north, and prepared the way for the Reformation.

[1] Guicciardini (St. Fior. cap. 27) writes:  ’Fu lussoriosissimo nell’ uno e nell’ altro sesso, tenendo publicamente femine e garzoni, ma piu ancora nelle femine.’  A notion of the public disorders connected with his dissolute life may be gained from this passage in Sanuto’s Diary (Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, p. 88):  ’Da Roma per le lettere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private persone cossa assai abominevole in le chiesa di Dio, che al papa erra nato un fiolo di una dona romana maritata, ch’ el padre l’ havea rufianata,