Alexander VI
From Philosopedia
Alexander VI [Rodrigo de Borja, Spanish; Rodrigo Borgia, Italian] (11 August 1431? - 18 August 1503)
Pope Alexander VI, the successor to Pope Innocent VIII, allegedly was the father of ten illegitimate children, four while he was Cardinal Borgia. One of his children, Lucrezia Borgia, inspired Victor Hugo’s drama and Donizetti’s opera. His youngest son, Cesare, was an important figure of the Italian Renaissance. His mother’s brother, Alfonso, was Pope Calixtus III. The lax moral tone of Renaissance Rome has made Alexander’s name symbolic of the worldly irreligion of Renaissance popes. Although he is known as a political strategist and church administrator, Alexander VI was severely criticized by Girolamo Savonarola. His name has become a symbol of the Renaissance popes’ worldly irreligion. According to Joseph McCabe, “Official documents establishing the birth of six of his children were published from the archives of the Duke of Ossuna, and the Vatican then admitted that it had copies of the same documents (birth-certificates, etc.), so that even Catholic writers have yielded.” William Manchester, in A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance, has described some of the Pope’s parties:
- Once he became Pope Alexander VI, Vatican parties already wild, grew wilder. . . . As guests approached the papal palace, they were excited by the spectacle of living statues: naked, guilded young men and women in erotic poses. . . . After the banquet dishes had been cleared away, the city’s fifty most beautiful whores danced with guests, “first clothed, then naked” [According to the diarist Johann Burchard]. The dancing over, the “ballet” began, with the pope and two of his children in the best seats.
Candelabra were set up on the floor; scattered among them were chestnuts, “which,” Burchard writes, “the courtesans had to pick up, crawling between the candles.” Then the serious sex started. Guests stripped and ran out on the floor, where they mounted, or were mounted by, the prostitutes. “The coupling took place,” according to Burchard, “in front of everyone present.” Servants kept score of each man’s orgasms, for the pope greatly admired virility and measured a man’s machismo by his ejaculative capacity. After everyone was exhausted, His Holiness distributed prizes—cloaks, boots, caps, and fine silken tunics. The winners, the diarist wrote, were those “who made love with those courtesans the greatest number of times.”
