CHAPTER ELEVEN
OF ECCLESIASTICAL PRINCIPALITIES

All that remains now is to consider ecclesiastical principalities. The difficulties they present all occur before they are acquired, for while they are acquired either by skill or by Fortune, they are maintained without the one or the other. This is because ecclesiastical principalities are sustained by age-old religious institutions, which are so strong and efficacious that these principalities will maintain their princes in power regardless of how they live or what they do. Their princes are the only ones who have states they do not defend, and subjects they do not govern. Although such states are undefended, they are not taken away from these princes, and the subjects, although they are un-governed, remain unconcerned, and neither think of, nor are able to estrange themselves from, these princes. Thus these are the only principalities that are secure and successful. But since they are under the guidance of a superior power that the mind of man cannot fathom, I will not discuss them. For, as they are exalted and maintained by God, it would be the act of a presumptuous and audacious man to do so. Nevertheless, one might ask how it is that the Church has gained so much temporal power, since up to the time of Pope Alexander VI, Italian rulers (and here I include every baron and lord, however minor) had little regard for the pope’s temporal power, though now, even the King of France trembles before it since it managed to expel him from Italy and ruin the Venetians. In this sense, it does not seem to me redundant to commit the essentials of this situation to memory.

Italy, before King Charles of France⁴⁰ arrived, was under the power of the pope, the Venetians, the King of Naples, the Duke of Milan, and the Florentines. These rulers had two primary concerns: to prevent a foreigner from entering Italy with an army, and to prevent any single ruler among them from growing in strength by occupying more states. The pope and the Venetians worried the others most. In order to keep the Venetians in check, all the other rulers united (as happened in the defense of Ferrara),⁴¹ and to keep the pope in check, they manipulated the barons of Rome, who were divided into the Orsini and Colonna factions, which were always fighting each other. Eyeing the pope with weapons drawn, they kept him weak and on unsteady ground. From time to time a spirited pope did emerge—like Sixtus IV—but neither Fortune nor ingenuity could free him from these warring factions. The brevity of a pope’s tenure in office was also a factor, because in the ten years that his pontificate might last, he could not be expected to subdue either faction. If, for instance, one pope managed to crush the Colonna, another pope, who might be an enemy of the Orsini, would see to it that the Colonna resurged, but he in turn would not hold office long enough to see the Orsini crushed. As a result, the pope’s temporal power was not held in high esteem in Italy.

Then came Pope Alexander VI, who of all the popes in history demonstrated the extent to which a pope could succeed with the help of money and arms. By way of his son, Cesare Borgia, and the invasion of the French, Alexander did all the things I have already discussed.⁴² And though his intent was to make Cesare Borgia great and not the Church, his actions ultimately resulted in the greatness of the Church, which, after his and Cesare’s deaths, became the beneficiary of all his efforts. Then came Pope Julius. He found the Church powerful and in possession of the whole of the Romagna, with the barons of Rome destroyed and their factions crushed by Pope Alexander. He also found the way open to accumulating money in ways that had never before been possible. Pope Julius not only took advantage of these opportunities but added to them. He set out to gain Bologna, destroy the Venetians, and drive the French out of Italy. In all this he succeeded, and he is worthy of even more praise since he did everything in order to strengthen the Church and not any of his own people. He also kept the Orsini and Colonna factions in the weakened condition in which he found them. Though there were leaders among these families ready to cause trouble, two factors kept them in check: the power of the Church, and the fact that they no longer had any cardinals in the College of Cardinals, which is where many of the troubles in the past had begun. Neither faction would have remained subdued had they had their cardinals in place, because it is these cardinals who incite the different factions, and the barons of the Orsini and the Colonna families are then forced to defend themselves. It is from the ambitions of the prelates of the Church that discord and tumult has always arisen among the barons.

Hence, His Holiness Pope Leo has found the pontificate in a most powerful condition, which leads one to hope that whereas the other popes made it great with the help of arms, he will make it even greater and more revered through his goodness and his many other virtues.

40. Charles VIII invaded Italy in 1494.

41. Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara fought an alliance of the Republic of Venice and Pope Sixtus IV from 1482 to 1484.

42. See chapter 7.