Pope Alexander VI

Rodrigo de Borja was born near Valencia in 1431 into a family with a taste for preferment. He studied law in Bologna, was made a cardinal by his uncle, and spent decades in the Roman curia accumulating offices and wealth before he was elected pope in 1492.

As Alexander VI he pursued a policy of family advancement, promoting his son Cesare and marrying his daughter Lucrezia into the ruling houses of Italy. He drew lines of division between Spain and Portugal in the New World and worked to strengthen the papal states, but the means he used — simony, intrigue, and force — gave his reign a reputation it has never shed.

He was a patron of artists and a capable administrator, and his diplomacy kept Rome at the center of Italian affairs. He died in 1503, shortly after dining with a cardinal who also died, and the Borgia power collapsed within days. Later accounts turned him into a villain; the record is more mixed and more disturbing than the legend.

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