Like other princes, the Borgias were human, and the same passions that prevail among the laity also rule among the priesthood. Theoretically the cardinals were the Pope’s advisers, an ecclesiastical senate, charged with the salvation of humanity, but actually they were a body of powerful and astute politicians, appointed by the Pope on his own initiative or at the request of some reigning sovereign or great family whose support his Holiness was anxious to secure. The cardinalate was bestowed in precisely the same way, and for the same reasons, as a minister’s portfolio is at the present time--that is, without any regard to the fitness of the beneficiary, and as a reward for services rendered or to come, and sometimes for even baser reasons: Alexander VI. raised Farnese to the purple in return for the complaisance of his sister, the beautiful Giulia. Youths were made cardinals at a tender age. Giovanni de’ Medici, a precocious prelate of eighteen years, on the conclusion of the conclave that elected Alexander VI. was wise enough to flee from Rome; and Caesar Borgia was seventeen when his father discovered he had need of his counsel in conducting the affairs of the Church. The great houses vied with each other for the honour, prestige, and power. It was no small matter to sit in the ecclesiastical senate and have a voice in directing the conscience of civilised humanity, at a time when the masses did not dare even to think; and to have a vote in the election of the greatest potentate on earth, who could make and unmake kings and emperors, and consign them to eternal punishment at will. The vast emoluments of the great office, the enormous revenues of the various prebends and livings the cardinals enjoyed need not be mentioned.