Roady:
Really? Keep in mind that the catholic church is built upon this man as successor to Peter:
Pope Alexander VI
(Removed link to anti-Catholic website as per
Forum Rules)
Sandra(I figured it was you Sandra…Misrepresenting Catholicism again.) When did you become impeccable? Are you now without sin so that you have the right to throw that first stone. One bad guy…and even your evidence is from a biased source.
BTW better re-read the
Forum Rules as links to anti-Catholic sites are not allowed.
The facts:
Alexander VI
So little have Catholic historians defended him that in the middle of the nineteenth century Cesare Cantu could write that Alexander VI was the only Pope who had never found an apologist. However, since that time some Catholic writers, both in books and periodicals, have attempted to defend him from the most grievous accusations of his contemporaries. Two in particular may be mentioned: the Dominican Ollivier, “Le Pape Alexandre VI et les Borgia” (Paris, 1870), of whose work only one volume appeared, dealing with the Pope’s cardinalate; and Leonetti “Papa Alessandro VI secondo documenti e carteggi del tempo” (3 vols., Bologna, 1880). These and other works were occasioned, partly by a laudable desire to remove a stigma from the good repute of the Catholic Church, and partly by the gross exaggerations of Victor Hugo and others who permitted themselves all licence in dealing with a name so helpless and detested. It cannot be said, however, that these works have corresponded to their authors’ zeal. Dr. Pastor ranks them all as failures. Such is the opinion of Henri de l’Epinois in the “Revue des questions historiques” (1881), XXIX, 147, a study that even Thuasne, the hostile editor of the Diary of Burchard, calls “the indispensable guide of all students of Borgia history”. It is also the opinion of the Bollandist Matagne, in the same review for 1870 and 1872 (IX, 466-475; XI, 181-198), and of Von Reumont, the Catholic historian of medieval Rome, in Bonn. Theol. Lit. Blatt (1870), V. 686. Dr. Pastor considers that the publication of the documents in the supplement to the third volume of Thuasne’s edition of the Diary of Burchard (Paris, 1883) renders “forever impossible” any attempts to save the reputation of Alexander VI. There is all the less reason, therefore, says Cardinal Hergenroether (op. cit., II, 583), for the false charges that have been added to his account, e. g. his attempt to poison Cardinal Adriano da Corneto and his incestuous relations with Lucrezia (Pastor, op. cit., III, 375, 450-451, 475). Other accusations, says the same writer, have been dealt with, not unsuccessfully, by Roscoe in his “Life of Leo the Tenth”; by Capefigue in his “Eglise pendant les quatre derniers siècles” (I, 41-46), and by Chantrel, “Le Pape Alexandre VI” (Paris, 1864). On the other hand, while immoral writers have made only too much capital out of the salacious paragraphs scattered through Burchard and Infessura, there is no more reason now than in the days of Raynaldus and Mansi for concealing or perverting the facts of history. “I am a Catholic”, says M. de l’Epinois (loc. cit.), “and a disciple of the God who hath a horror of lies. I seek the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth Although our weak eyes do not see at once the uses of it, or rather see damage and peril, we must proclaim it fearlessly.” The same good principle is set forth by Leo XIII in his Letter of 8 September, 1889, to Cardinals De Luca, Pitra, and Hergenroether on the study of Church History: “The historian of the Church has the duty to dissimulate none of the trials that the Church has had to suffer from the faults of her children, and even at times from those of her own ministers.” Long ago Leo the Great (440-461) declared, in his third homily for Christmas Day, that “the dignity of Peter suffers no diminution even in an unworthy successor” (cujus dignitas etiam in indigno haerede non deficit). The very indignation that the evil life of a great ecclesiastic rouses at all times (nobly expressed by Pius II in the above-mentioned letter to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia) is itself a tribute to the high spiritual ideal which for so long and on so broad a scale the Church has presented to the world in so many holy examples, and has therefore accustomed the latter to demand from priests. “The latter are forgiven nothing”, says De Maistre in his great work, “Du Pape”, “because everything is expected from them, wherefore the vices lightly passed over in a Louis XIV become most offensive and scandalous in an Alexander VI” (II, c. xiv).
