R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

Sixtus IV had succeeded well in promoting the interests of his house. Imola and Forli made an excellent establishment for one nephew, Girolamo Riario; another, Giuliano della Rovere, was one of the most commanding figures in the College of Cardinals. In every other point of view the policy of Sixtus had been a failure; he had lowered the moral authority of the Papacy without any compensating gain in the secular sphere, and had only bequeathed an example destined to remain for a while inoperative. The election of his successor Innocent VIII (August, 1484) was blamed by contemporaries, and pronounced by the Notary Infessura worse even than that of Sixtus, in which bribery had a notorious share. The Notary’s charges, notwithstanding, are wanting in definite-ness; and it seems needless to look beyond the natural inclination of powerful competitors, neither of whom could achieve the Papacy for himself, to agree upon some generally acceptable person. It is also generally observed that, as the human frailties which in some shape must beset every Pope are especially manifest at the time of his decease, the choice naturally tends towards someone apparently exempt from these particular failings, and hence towards a person different in some sort from his predecessor. As Calixtus had been unlike Nicholas, and Pius unlike Calixtus, and Paul unlike Pius, and Sixtus unlike Paul, it was but in accordance with precedent that the passionate imperious unscrupulous Franciscan should give place to a successor who might have sat for the portrait of an abbe in Gil Bias. On August 29, 1484, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cibo became Pope under the name of Innocent VIII. There was probably no more colourless figure in the Sacred College. He had owed the Cardinalate, which he had enjoyed for eleven years, to his Genoese origin and his episcopate over the city of Savona, Sixtus’s birthplace. The same circumstances recommended him to the nephew of Sixtus, the able and powerful Cardinal della Rovere, who naturally wished to see one of his uncle’s creatures seated on the papal throne; and when two such potent Cardinals as he and the Vice-Chancellor Borgia had agreed, there was but little need for illegitimate modes of action beyond the bestowal of legations and palaces,—almost indispensable concomitants of a papal election in that age. The arrangements thus made, which are enumerated in the despatches of the Florentine envoy Vespucci, were mostly regulated directly or indirectly by Cardinal della Rovere, who found his account in becoming Papa et plusquam Papa. The new Pope, indeed, as described by Vespucci, hardly appeared the man to stand by himself. “He has little experience in affairs of State, and little learning, but is not wholly ignorant.” As Cardinal he had been distinguished by his affability, and was thought to have let down the dignity of the office. His morals had not been irreproachable, but the attacks of the epigrammatists are gross exaggerations, and, save for a too public manifestation of his affection for his daughter, more criticised by posterity than by contemporaries, his conduct as Pope appears to have been perfectly decorous.

Innocent’s part in the evolution which made the Bishop of Rome a powerful temporal sovereign was not conspicuous or glorious, but it was important. It consisted in the demonstration of the absolute necessity of a great extension and fortification of the papal authority, if the Pope was to enjoy the respect of Christendom, or was even to continue at Rome. Never was anarchy more prevalent, or contempt for justice more universal; and the cause was the number of independent jurisdictions, from principalities like Forli or Faenza down to petty barons established at the gates of Rome,—none of them too petty not to be able to set the Pope at defiance. The general confusion reacted upon the finances, and chronic insolvency accredited the accusations, in all probability calumnious, brought against the Pope “of conniving at the flight of malefactors who paid him money, and granting licenses for sins before their commission.” The Pope himself was conscious of his discreditable position, and in a remarkable speech to the Florentine ambassador pronounced by anticipation the apology of his vigorous and unscrupulous successors. “If,” he said, “none would aid him against the violence of the King of Naples, he would betake himself abroad, where he would be received with open arms, and where he would be assisted to recover his own, to the shame and scathe of the disloyal princes and peoples of Italy. He could not remain in Italy, if deprived of the dignity befitting a Pope; but neither was he able, if abandoned by the otfier Italian States, to resist the King, by reason both of the slender military resources of the Church and on account of the unruly Roman barons, who would rejoice to see him in distress. He should therefore deem himself entirely justified in seeking refuge abroad, should nothing less avail to preserve the dignity of the Holy See. Other Popes had done the like, and had returned with fame and honour.”

If such was the situation,—and Innocent certainly did not exaggerate it,—the Popes of his day are clearly not to be censured for endeavouring to put it upon a different footing. It might indeed be said that they ought to have renounced the Temporal Power altogether, and gone forth scripless into the world in the fashion of the Apostles; but in their age such a proceeding would have been impracticable, nor could the thought of it have hardly so much as entered their minds. The incurable vice of their position was, that the mutation in things temporal absolutely necessary for the safety and well-being of the Church could not be brought about by means befitting a Christian pastor. The best of men could, upon the papal throne, have effected nothing without violence and treachery. Innocent’s successors were not good men, and recourse to means which would have shocked a good man cost them nothing. But they were indisputably the men for the time.

The mission which we have attributed to Innocent of practically demonstrating the need for a strong man in the chair of St Peter, was worked out through a troubled and inglorious pontificate, whose incidents are too remotely connected with the history of the Temporal Power to justify any fulness of treatment in this place. They turn principally upon his relations with Naples and Florence. Having in 1485 entered upon an unnecessary war with Naples, Innocent soon became intimidated, and made peace in 1486. This led to the temporary disgrace of Cardinal della Rovere; and the marriage of the Pope’s illegitimate son to the daughter of Lorenzo de’ Medici brought him under the influence of the Florentine ruler. It was the best thing that could have happened for the tranquillity of Italy. Lorenzo was a miniature Augustus, intent, indeed, on personal ends in the first instance, but with a genuine fibre of patriotism, and not insatiable or even rapacious. Alone among the rulers of Italy he had the wisdom to discern when acquisition had reached its safe limits, and thenceforth to dedicate his energies to preservation. Hence he was the friend of peace, and the influence he had obtained with the Pope and the King of Naples was devoted to keeping them on amicable terms. In pursuance of this policy he prevented the Pope from allying himself with Venice, and successfully laboured to induce the King to pay to Rome the tribute which he had endeavoured to withhold. No wonder that a course so conducive to the material prosperity of Italy earned Lorenzo her thanks and blessings: yet the unity of Italy, in the last resort her only safety, could only have sprung from national strife. During the generally uneventful decade of 1480-90 the power of France and Spain was growing fast, and a land partitioned between petty principalities and petty republics was lost so soon as two great ambitious Powers agreed to make her their battlefield.