How does borgia pope die

After he had made his own communion, he gave the pope the Host as he sat in his bed and then completed the Mass. At the hour of Vespers he was given Extreme Unction by the Bishop of Carinola, and he expired in the presence of the datary, the bishop and the attendants standing by. Terrified, the cardinal surrendered the keys, whereupon the others entered the room next to the papal apartment and seized all the silver that they found, together with two coffers containing about a hundred thousand ducats.

In the meantime, valets took what had been left behind in the wardrobe and the apartments, and nothing of value remained except the papal chairs, some cushions and the tapestries on the walls.

We rejoin his story that evening as he enters the city of Rome accompanied by an armed guard:. On this we laid the body of the pontiff, with three of the cushions to support him and the old tapestry again as a coveting. These carried the body from the chapel straight into the middle of the Basilica.. The clergy defended themselves, but stopped chanting and fled to the sacristy when the soldiers began to use their weapons.

There we shut the bier in behind the choir. The Bishop of Sessa, however, wondered if the ordinary people might not climb up to the body there, which would cause a great scandal and perhaps allow somebody who had been wronged by the pope to get his revenge. There the body remained through the day, with the iron door firmly closed. After dining, the cardinals appointed for the task and with the aid of the Chamber clergy made an inventory of the valuables and the more precious movable goods that had belonged to Alexander.

They found the crown and two precious tiaras, all the rings which the pope wore for Mass, the credence-vessels for his use in celebrating and enough indeed to fill eight coffers.

There were also found many documents, the oaths of the cardinals, the bull for the investiture of the King of Naples, and a great number of other bulls. In the meantime, the body of the pope had remained for a long time, as I have described, between the railings of the high altar.

During that period, the four wax candles next to it burned right down, and the complexion of the dead man became increasingly foul and black. The nose was swollen, the mouth distended where the tongue was doubled over, and the lips seemed to fill everything. The appearance of the face then was far more horrifying than anything that had ever been seen or reported before.

Six laborers or porters, making blasphemous jokes about the pope or in contempt of his corpse, together with two master carpenters, performed this task. But Alexander VI's symptoms aligned with ones seen in malaria too, which spread through much of Rome at the time. The Cardinal, the wealthiest member of the College of Cardinals, was rumored to be wanted dead by the Pope and his son. Alexander and Cesare allegedly spiked the wine with cantarella , a poison akin to arsenic and the go-to choice of the Borgias.

The Cardinal was supposed to be the only one who drank from the poisoned bottle, after which he would experience abdominal discomfort, confusion, and weakness. Whether or not Alexander and Cesare drank the poison remains unknown but they both sported fevers shortly after the meal.

Cardinal Cornetto got sick, too, which fueled rumors of a poisoning gone wrong. Trying to rid Alexander VI of his illness and re-balance his humours, the doctors let his blood. According to sources, the doctors marveled at how much blood flowed freely from the Pope's body, up to 13 ounces. The ebbs and flows in his fever caused his doctors to diagnose him with " tertian ague ," or malaria, with symptoms reappearing every 48 hours.

Depending on the severity of this type of malaria , the Pope could have experienced convulsions, difficulty breathing, and blackwater fever - if he suffered from malaria at all.

By the fourth day of his illness, the Pope had already tried various medicines with little improvement. He continued to vomit and excrete green substances , growing weaker and weaker. On the fifth day, August 18 , Alexander VI confessed, heard mass from his bed, took the Eucharist, and then lost consciousness.

By late evening, he received his last rites and died shortly thereafter. At the time of the Pope's death, five Cardinals were present, along with bishops, grooms, and members of his papal curia. Right before the Pope died, an order was issued that declared no one could leave the Vatican.

Regardless, many people managed to leave, taking valuable treasures with them, including Cesare's right-hand man, Don Michelotto. On Cesare's orders, Michelotto and his men drew daggers upon the Cardinals and forced them to open the cabinets where the papal riches lay. They seized chests of money and as much silver as they could carry. Because they left the cabinets open, others began to take items after Michelotto and his men departed.

Servants took clothes and anything they found, leaving only a few chairs, pillows, and rugs behind. As he was dying, Alexander VI never called out for any of his children, including his son Cesare and his daughter Lucretia - sources vary on the exact reason why, but it was likely due to his sick delirium or generally selfish personality. Brave, daring and determined, he was insatiably power-hungry and entirely ruthless. He was considered the handsomest man in Italy, there were inevitably rumours of incest with his sister Lucrezia and he had syphilis from his early twenties.

His father put Cesare in command of the papal army in , when he was still only about twenty. In alliance with the French the two of them set out to bring the central Italian cities back under direct papal control and carve out an Italian kingdom for Cesare himself.

The doctors sank him in a huge jar of iced water as a cure and he somehow survived the shock, but the cardinals chose as the new pope a dedicated enemy of the Borgias, Giuliano della Rovere, who succeeded as Julius II.

When Italy was at last united in the nineteenth century, Cesare could be hailed as a forerunner of Italian unity, though his motives were entirely self-interested. He was now arrested and packed off to prison in Spain.

He managed to escape and took service with his brother-in-law, King John of Navarre. He planned to return to Italy before long, but meanwhile there was a rebellion against King John to contend with and Cesare took command of a 5,strong Basque army to deal with the rebels.