Giustiniani the Orator of Venice, to whom the Borgia were intensely antipathetic, and who neglected no opportunity of relating rumours detrimental to them, sent to his government a dispatch dated the twentieth of July 1502, stating, that the Most Illustrious Lord Giambattista Ferrari, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Crisogono, vulgarly called the Cardinal of Modena, had died; that, in accordance with his testament, his goods and benefices had been distributed; that his archbishopric of Capua had been given to the young and lusty Lord Cardinal Prince Ippolito d’Este (now of the age of twenty-four years and a person of fashion;) that his bishopric of Modena had been given to his brother; that the greater part of his goods had been given to his secretary Messer Sebastiano Pinzoni; that this last bequest was called “the price of blood” for the secretary had envenomed his master, to have his goods; that the Pope had endowed the said secretary with a canonry in Padua, the prefecture of Sant’ Agata in Cremona, a benefice in Rome, another in Mantua valued at five hundred ducats, and had received him _inter familiares_. Now there is no word in that dispatch which implicates Duke Cesare. We learn that Messer Sebastiano Pinzoni, secretary to the Cardinal of Modena, was said, by rumour, to have envenomed his master in order to profit thereby; and also that the said secretary had been patronised by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. That is all. It would be unpleasant to think of the Pope’s Holiness as the patron of a murderer: yet that would be the obvious conclusion, if the matter ended here. But it does not. There is further record of Messer Sebastiano Pinzoni, which makes it clear that his crime at first was unknown to the Pope; and that on its discovery he was forced to take refuge in flight. It is Monsignor Burchard who records in his Diarum under date Wednesday the twentieth of November 1504, that the Ruota (the supreme secular tribunal of the Holy Roman Church) delivered sentence against Sebastiano Pinzoni, Apostolic Scribe, who was contumacious and absent, depriving him of all benefices and offices, for that he had slain with venom the Lord Cardinal of Modena his patron who had raised him from the dung-hill.[70] Ciacconi says that the Cardinal of Modena was envenomed by Sebastiano Pinzoni, his gentleman-of-the-bedchamber; who, being imprisoned on another charge in the reign of the Lord Leo P.P. X, when put to the Question, confessed this crime, which he before had denied.