The Grandmaster transferred his prisoner, in A.D. 1489, to the pope. Innocent rewarded him with a cardinalate, and Bajazet promised the pope not only continual peace, but a yearly tribute of 40,000 ducats. He also voluntarily presented his holiness with the spear which pierced the Saviour’s side. All this, however, did not prevent the pope from repeatedly but ineffectually seeking to rouse Christendom to a crusade against the Turks. To this pope also belongs the odium of familiarizing Europe with witch prosecutions (§ 117, 4).[327] § 110.12. =Alexander VI., A.D. 1492-1503.=--The Spanish cardinal Roderick Borgia, sister’s son of Calixtus III., purchased the tiara by bribing his colleagues. In him as Alexander VI. we have a pope whose government presents a scene of unparalleled infamy, riotous immorality, and unmentionable crimes, of cruel despotism, fraud, faithlessness, and murder, and a barefaced nepotism, such as even the city of the popes had never witnessed before. He had already before his election five children by a concubine, Rosa Vanossa, four sons and one daughter, Lucretia, and his one care was for their advancement. His favourite son was Giovanni, for whom while cardinal he had purchased the rank of a Spanish grandee, with the title Duke of Gandia, and when pope he bestowed on him, in A.D. 1497, the hereditary dukedom of Benevento. But eight days after his corpse with dagger wounds upon it was taken out of the Tiber. The pope exclaimed, “I know the murderer.” Suspicion fell first upon Giovanni Sforsa of Pesaro, Lucretia’s husband, who had charged the murdered man with committing incest with his sister, but afterwards upon Cardinal Cæsar Borgia, the pope’s second son, who was jealous of his brother because of the favour shown him by Lucretia and by her father. Alexander’s grief knew no bounds, but sought escape from it by redoubled love to the suspected son. In A.D. 1498 the papal bastard resigned the cardinalate as an intolerable burden, married a French princess, and was made hereditary duke of Romagna. Suddenly at the same time, and in the same manner, in A.D. 1503, father and son took ill. The father died after a few days, but the vigour of youth aided the son’s recovery. Cæsar Borgia was at a later period cast into prison by Julius II., and fell in A.D. 1507 in the service of his brother-in-law, the king of Navarre. It was generally believed that Alexander died of poisoned wine prepared by his son to secure the removal of a rich cardinal. The father as well as the two brothers were suspected of incest with Lucretia. This pope, too, did not hesitate to intrigue with the Turkish sultan against Charles VIII. of France. With unexampled assumption, during the contention of Portugal and Spain about the American discoveries, he presented Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1493 with all islands and continents that had been discovered or might