Conspicuous among nepotists was Alexander the Sixth, whose family name of Borgia is damned to fame. With him nepotism assumed its most brutal and barbarous development, reflecting the character of its pontifical author, who was without the smallest ray of good. Other Popes were less cruel and bloody, but not less determined in providing for their families. Paul the Third, who was of the great house of Farnese, would have had the estates of the Church a garden for the “lilies” which flourish on the escutcheon of his family.[72] It is related that when Urban the Eighth, who was a Barberini, began his historic reign, all his relations at a distance flew to Rome like the “bees” on the family arms, to suck the honey of the Church, but not leaving behind the sting with which they pricked while they sucked.[73] Whether lilies or bees, it was the same. The latter pontiff gave to nepotism fulness of power when he resolved “to have no business with any one not dependent upon his house.”[74] In the same spirit he excused himself from making a man cardinal because he had “always been the enemy of his nephews.”[75] Although nothing so positive is recorded of Paul the Fifth, who was a Borghese, his nepotism appears in the Roman saying, that, “while serving the Church as a good shepherd, he gave too much wool to his nephews.”[76] These instructive incidents, illustrating the pontifical pretension, reflect light on the history of palaces and galleries at Rome, now admired by the visitor from distant lands. If not created, they were at least enlarged by nepotism. It does not always appear how many relations a Pope endowed. Often it was all, as in the case of Gregory the Thirteenth, who, besides advancing a nephew actually at Rome, called thither all his nephews and grand-nephews, whether from brothers or sisters, and gave them offices, dignities, governments, lordships, prelacies, and abbacies.[77] Cæsar Borgia and his sister Lucretia were not the only relations of Alexander the Sixth. I do not find the number adopted by Sixtus, the founder of the system. Pius the Fourth, who was of the grasping Medicean family, favored no less than twenty-five.[78] Alexander the Seventh, of the Chigi family, had about him five nephews and one brother, which a contemporary characterized as “nepotism all complete.”[79] This pontiff began his reign by forbidding his relations to appear at Rome, which redounded at once to his credit throughout the Christian world, while the astonished people discoursed of his holiness and the purity of his life, expecting even to see miracles. In making the change, he yielded evidently to immoral pressure and the example of predecessors.