Guicciardini is to be read with the greatest caution and reserve when he deals with Rome. His bias against, and his enmity of, the Papacy are as obvious as they are notorious, and in his endeavours to bring it as much as possible into discredit he does not even spare his generous patrons, the Medicean Popes--Leo X and Clement VII. If he finds it impossible to restrain his invective against these Pontiffs, who heaped favours and honours upon him, what but virulence can be expected of him when he writes of Alexander VI? He is largely to blame for the flagrant exaggeration of many of the charges brought against the Borgias; that he hated them we know, and that when he wrote of them he dipped his golden Tuscan pen in vitriol and set down what he desired the world to believe rather than what contemporary documents would have revealed to him, we can prove here and now from that one statement of his which we have quoted. Who were the men who were filled with dismay, horror, or dread at Roderigo’s election? The Milanese? No. For we know that Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the Duke of Milan’s brother, was the most active worker in favour of Roderigo’s election, and that this same election was received and celebrated in Milan with public rejoicings. The Florentines? No. For the Medici were friendly to the House of Borgia, and we know that they welcomed the election, and that from Florence Manfredi--the Ferrarese ambassador--wrote home: “It is said he will be a glorious Pontiff” (“Dicesi che sará glorioso Pontefice”). Were Venice, Genoa, Mantua, Siena, or Lucca dismayed by this election? Surely not, if the superlatively laudatory congratulations of their various ambassadors are of any account. Venice confessed that “a better pastor could not have been found for the Church,” since he had proved himself “a chief full of experience and an excellent cardinal.” Genoa said that “his merit lay not in having been elected, but in having been desired.” Mantua declared that it “had long awaited the pontificate of one who, during forty years, had rendered himself, by his wisdom and justice, capable of any office.” Siena expressed its joy at seeing the summit of eminence attained by a Pope solely upon his merits--“Pervenuto alla dignitá pontificale meramente per meriti proprii.” Lucca praised the excellent choice made, and extolled the accomplishments, the wisdom, and experience of the Pontiff.