The boldest and the most capable of all the sovereigns of Italy, in these trying times, was the Spanish Pontiff, who by a singular fate has been made, as it were, the whipping boy for the wickedness of nineteen centuries of popes at Rome, and who is known to every schoolboy and every scribbler as the infamous Alexander VI. Roderic Lenzuoli, or Llançol, was the son of a wealthy Valencian gentleman, by Juana, a sister of the more distinguished Alfonso Borja, bishop of his native city of Valencia. Born at Valencia about 1431, Roderic gave evidence from his earliest years of a remarkable strength of character, and of uncommon intellectual powers. While still a youth, he won fame and fortune as an advocate. But his impatient nature chafed at the moderate restraint of a lawyer’s gown; and he was on the point of adopting a military career, when the election of his uncle to the Supreme Pontificate as Calixtus III. in 1455 opened for him the way to a more glorious future. At the instance of the new Pope, Roderic adopted his mother’s name, in the Italian form already so well known and distinguished at the court of Rome, and taking with him his beautiful mistress, Rosa Vanozza, whose mother he had formerly seduced, he turned his back upon his native Valencia, and sought the fortune that awaited him at the capital of the world. Unusually handsome in person, vigorous in mind and body, masterful, clever, eloquent, unscrupulous, absolutely regardless of all laws, human or divine, in the gratification of his passions and the accomplishment of his designs, Roderic, the Pope’s nephew, was a man made for success in the society in which he was to find himself at Rome. On his arrival at the Papal court in 1456 he was received with great kindness by his uncle, and was soon created Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal of St. Nicholas _in Carcere Tulliano_, and Vice-Chancellor of the Holy Roman Church. On the death of Calixtus in 1458, the Cardinal Roderic Borgia sank into comparative insignificance; and during the reigns of Pius II., Paul II., Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. we hear little of him but that he was distinguished for his amours, for his liberality in the disposal of his fortune, and for his attention to public business. Having thus secured the goodwill of many of the cardinals and the affection of the Roman people, he had no difficulty, on the death of Innocent VIII. in July, 1492, in making a bargain with a majority of the members of the Sacred College, in accordance with which he was elected Pope, and took the title of Alexander VI. on the 26th of August, 1492.