The Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon is recorded to have astonished Rome with the splendour of the arras adorning the outside of his palace on the Festival of Corpus Domini, 1461. The buildings at Pienza occupied him through 1462. Of 1463 there is no history with which he is connected. In 1464 “an aged man, with head of snow and trembling limbs,” took the rose-red cross in the Basilica of St. Peter at Rome. This was no other than the Sovereign Pontiff, the Lord Pius P.P. II, unique in all history, Who, as an example to the apathetic potentates of Christendom, went, dying as He was, a crusader against the Muslim Infidel. Cardinal Rodrigo was in attendance upon His Holiness in that terrible journey in parching summer heat across Italy to the Adriatic; where, while waiting for the fleet, at Ancona, in August, the Lord Pius P.P. II died. Cardinal Rodrigo, stricken by fever there, unable to return to Rome for the Conclave, was obliged to forego his official privilege as Cardinal-Archdeacon, the crowning of the Lord Paul P.P. II on the sixteenth of September. This Pontiff (lately the Lord Pietro Barbo, Cardinal of Venice) wished, on His election, to take the name Formosus, in allusion to His handsome person. It was a naïve age, when men hid neither their vices nor their virtues; and the story possibly may be true: but it is very likely to be one of the spiteful little distortions of motive, which ecclesiastics of all ages are wont to ascribe each to other. The Popes, after the first six centuries, have never shown much originality in choosing Their pontifical names, and generally fall back upon the name of one of Their immediate predecessors. At present the changes are rung upon Pius, Leo, and Gregory; the fifteenth century had a wider range: but many of the lovely old names, such as Anacletus, Fabian, Felix, Silvester, Hadrian, Victor, Evaristus, were buried in oblivion. It is far more kind to suppose that the Lord Cardinal of Venice had the idea of reviving the beautiful name of the Lord Formosus P.P., Who reigned from 891 to 896, and was the hundred and twelfth Pope from the Lord St. Peter P.P. Persuaded against this course by the cardinals, He spent two hundred thousand fiorini d’oro on a triregno set with sapphires; built St. Mark’s Palace (Palazzo Venezia) at the end of the Corso in Rome; and instituted carnival races of riderless horses (called Bárberi, as a pun upon his name), and of Jews heavily clothed in garments of thick wool and stuffed to the throat with cake. In 1467 was born Madonna Girolama de Borja, bastard of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal-Archdeacon, by an unknown mother. The child was openly acknowledged and honourably reared. During this reign Cardinal Rodrigo remained in favour; and, on account of his fine presence and habitude to curial manners, he was chosen to receive, at Viterbo, Caesar Friedrich IV, The Pacific, coming on a state-visit to the Pope in 1469.