Reform begins at (someone else’s) home - 31 March 2009 |
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As Popes go, Pope Alexander VI (aka Rodrigo Borgia) was about as bad as they get. Notorious for unprincipled abuse of power, greed and immorality, his elevation to the papacy evoked from one cleric the comment, ‘Flee, for we are in the hands of a wolf’ (p. 75).
Alexander was apparently a thoroughly competent administrator: ‘probably the ablest of the cardinals … there was nothing about the workings and opportunities of the papal bureaucracy that he did not grasp’ (p. 76). But competence is no substitute for godliness. The Dominican prior Girolama Savonarola protested loudly:
Popes and prelates speak against pride and ambition and they are plunged in it up to their ears. They preach chastity and keep mistresses, [making the church] a house of ill-fame … a prostitute who sits upon the throne of Solomon … whoever can pay enters and does what he wishes, but he who wishes for good is thrown out. (p. 83)
Eventually, Alexander was brought to his senses by the brutal murder of his son, Juan, whose body was found one morning floating in the Tiber. Resolved to reform the church and nation that had perpetrated such an outrage, he appointed a commission to curb the immorality of the clerical hierarchy.
The commission set to work, setting new rules for ‘greater restraint at table’, demanding that ‘musicians and actors’ were ‘to be replaced by reading of Holy Scriptures’, and that cardinals may no longer ‘employ miscellaneous “youths” as body servants’ (pp. 85-86).
However, perhaps realising that their own interests might be compromised by the reforms they were charged to enact, the members of the commission shrewdly added one final measure known to be close to the Popes own heart: ‘all concubines were to be dismissed within ten days of publication’ of their proposed report (p. 86).
Startled at the alarming notion that reform might, after all, begin at home, the Pope suddenly lost interest in cleansing the household of God.
The proposed Bull, In apostolicae sedis specula, was never issued and the subject of reform was dropped. (p. 86)
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Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Books, Minister's Blog, The March of Folly