At the time of the Pope's death, five Cardinals were present, along with bishops, grooms, and members of his papal curia. Terrified, the cardinal surrendered the keys, whereupon the others entered the After some time, they squeezed the "semi-putrid" stuff from the mess, and made that into cantarella. It does explain why they felt the need to give the stuff such an excessively mellifluous name. Arsenic was a well-known rat poison even in the 1400s. These symptoms, at the time of the Borgias, could be any one of a dozen illnesses. How To Cite This Article: Burchard and a colleague dress the Pope's body and leave it in a Vatican courtyard. The sale of Cardinalships was a major source of cash, so too was the The Cardinal was supposed to be the only one who drank from the poisoned bottle, after which he would experience abdominal discomfort, confusion, and weakness. Pope Alexander VI was in constant need of money - to support his lavish life The pope's body was abandoned. With the help of three others, I took hold of the bier and moved it into a position between the high altar and the papal seat so that the pope's head was close to the altar. Pope Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, held a controversial status in life and in death. Later after five o'clock, the body was carried to the Chapel of Santa Maria della Febbre and placed in its coffin next to the wall in a corner by the altar. also unwell at the time, sent Michelotto with a large number of retainers to Supposedly they slaughtered and disemboweled pigs, tore out their entrails, sprinkled the entrails with arsenic, and let them sit there. close all the doors that gave access to the pope's room. By the fourth day of his illness, the Pope had already tried various medicines with little improvement. By late evening, he received his last rites and died shortly thereafter. The year 1503 was the last year of Pope Alexander VI's life, and so the Venetian cardinal's death was the end of a long series of happy coincidences for him. This was not the papacy's finest hour. His pursuit of political goals and unremitting efforts to aggrandize his family were seen as excessive. But Alexander VI's symptoms aligned with ones seen in malaria too, which spread through much of Rome at the time. of protocol and procedures for official ceremonies. Trying to rid Alexander VI of his illness and re-balance his humours, the doctors let his blood. They therefore started the response, 'Free me, 0 Lord,' but as they were chanting, some of the palace guards seized the tapers. By the dawn of the Renaissance, however, the mission of the papacy had been corrupted by the conflict between its sacred duties as the Vicar of Christ and its temporal responsibilities as head of the Papal States. Alexander VI and his son, Cesare, dined with Cardinal Adrian Cornetto the night before they became ill. In practice, this means weakness, confusion, vomiting, diarrhea, and intestinal pain. Fourteen years after his death, the corruption of the papacy that Alexander VI Arsenic disrupts the cell's energy cycle, causing cells to die. There we shut the bier in behind the choir. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century created a political and cultural vacuum that was filled, in part, by the Roman Catholic Church. A look behind the beautiful velvet robes, gold threads, marble statues, intoxicating incense, tasty body of Christ, and sinfully unforgiving dogma of the Catholic church. Most historians believe that it was a compound of arsenic. They die in such a way that the nearby phagocytes cannot and do not ingest the cell, meaning that it does not get cleared away and becomes dead, foreign material inside the body. for sins that had been committed, or in some cases, may be committed in the future. He therefore had the bier moved into the chapel entrance between the steps, with the pope's feet so close to the iron door that they could be touched through the grill. Already by four o'clock on that afternoon when I saw the corpse, again, its face had changed to the color of mulberry or the blackest cloth and it was covered in blue-black spots. by Fire: the medieval mind and the Renaissance : portrait of an age (1992). Alexander had his personal troops ride out to the estate of the late cardinal, collect 150,000 ducats, and drop off nine new cardinals to replace him. Much speculation arose that someone poisoned his Holiness; there were several theories about why someone would do that, but two of the most popular were the fact that he had many enemies and the fact that he, the head of the church, also poisoned many people. Arsenic poison, if dosed right, didn't kill instantly. exemplified - particularly the sale of indulgences - would prompt a young monk Alexander VI and his son Cesare Borgia emerged as two of the most feared and hated figures in Italy during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, leading some to believe Pope Alexander VI's cause of death was assassination. "The Death of Pope Alexander VI, 1503" EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com What was cantarella? Depending on the severity of this type of malaria, the Pope could have experienced convulsions, difficulty breathing, and blackwater fever - if he suffered from malaria at all.    Burchurad's account appears in: Burchard Johann, At the Court The collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century created a political and cultural vacuum that was filled, in part, by the Roman Catholic Church. References: If you wanted to be Pope (or stay Pope) in the 1400s, there was only one way to do it. The ebbs and flows in his fever caused his doctors to diagnose him with "tertian ague," or malaria, with symptoms reappearing every 48 hours. The most famous of his offspring were his son Cesare, noted for the murder of political rivals, and his daughter Lucrezia who was married off to a number of husbands for political gain. So often did they have need of this poison that it was said that the Pope's son, Cesare Borgia, kept a little supply of it in his ring. No wax tapers or lights were used, and no priests or any other persons attended to his body. For the next 1000 years the continuity of the Church of Rome provided a semblance of stability as Europe sank into barbarism. (2007). And why has it become infamous? In this way, the Pope received not only money from the death, but an opportunity to pack the local cardinals with people loyal to himself. 1483 to his death in 1506. We rejoin his story that evening as he enters the city of Rome accompanied by an armed guard: "I returned to the city after eight o'clock in the evening, accompanied by eight of the palace guards, and in the vice-chancellor's name I ordered Giovanni Caroli the messenger, on pain of losing his office, to go with his fellow messengers to inform all the clergy in Rome, secular priests and monks alike, that they must assemble early next morning at five o'clock in the papal palace for the funeral procession from the Sistine Chapel to the Basilica of St Peter's. style, to fill the coffers for his political bribes and to fund his various military of a church in Germany and launch the Protestant Reformation. sale of indulgences. His final illness, rumors surrounding his demise, and the aftermath of his death highlight the excess and intrigue of the Borgia family. It was common to suspend arsenic in animal or vegetable oils, so it's not an unbelievable story. Cantarella was the poison of choice for the Borgia family. out a dagger and threatened to cut Cardinal Casanova's throat and to throw him • Borja Papa, by Joan Francesc Mira, is an extensively researched fake memoir (written in Catalan) of Roderic Borja. Two hundred tapers were prepared for those who would assemble for the pope's funeral. On this we laid the body of the pontiff, with three of the cushions to support him and the old tapestry again as a coveting. There the body remained through the day, with the iron door firmly closed. He sired at least twelve children through a number of mistresses. In the meantime, the body of the pope had remained for a long time, as I have described, between the railings of the high altar. - for a fee - the individual (or his relatives) from punishment in the after-life These carried the body from the chapel straight into the middle of the Basilica. How lucky for him that the cardinal soon died of violent diarrhea and vomiting. . of his experiences that provides an insight into the papacy of the Borgias. He continued to vomit and excrete green substances, growing weaker and weaker. The Pope maintained this was coincidence. For the next 1000 years the continuity of the Church of Rome provided a semblance of stability as Europe sank into barbarism. Johann Burchard was a Papal Master of Ceremonies from An indulgence was a written proclamation that exonerated out of the window unless he handed over the keys to all the pope's treasure. The appearance of the face then was far more horrifying than anything that had ever been seen or reported before. "We poison people with rotten pig juice," isn't something a Pope should say. with two coffers containing about a hundred thousand ducats. The service was also attended by five cardinals - Serra, Francesco Borgia, Giovanni Castelar, Casanova and de Loris of Constantinople - to whom His Holiness stated that he felt ill. At the hour of Vespers he was given Extreme Unction by the Bishop of Carinola, and he expired in the presence of the datary, the bishop and the attendants standing by. By late evening, he received his last rites and died shortly thereafter. The year 1503 was the last year of Pope Alexander VI's life, and so the Venetian cardinal's death was the end of a long series of happy coincidences for him. "On Saturday morning, August 12th, the pope felt unwell, and at about three o'clock in the afternoon he became feverish. by the name of Martin Luther to nail a summary of his grievances on the door After he had made his own communion, he gave the pope the Host as he sat in his bed and then completed the Mass. During that period, the four wax candles next to it burned right down, and the complexion of the dead man became increasingly foul and black.

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