The Papal Election of 1492: Rodrigo Borgia and the Conclave that Made him Pope Alexander VI
01/04/21 • 89 min
Elections Series. Episode #1 of 4. On the morning of August 11, 1492, Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope, taking the name Alexander VI and yelling “I am Pope! I am Pope!” The throngs of Romans in the Piazza di San Pietro shared in his excitement. But for some, the Papal Election of 1492 seemed to indicate the downfall of the papacy, if not the end of days. Giovanni de Medici is recorded as saying, “Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious, perhaps that this world has ever seen; and if we do not flee, he will infallibly devour us.” Gian Andrea Boccaccio wrote in a letter to the Duke of Ferrara, “ten Papacies would not suffice to satisfy the greed of all his kindred.” Ferrante, King of Naples, purportedly told his wife, “This election will not only undermine the peace of Italy, but that of the whole of Christendom.” The priest and prognosticator Girolamo Savonarola would spend the last year of his life trying to render the 1492 Papal election void due to simony, a campaign that resulted in his excommunication, torture, and execution. What was it about the Papal Election of 1492 and its resultant Pontiff, Alexander VI, that elicited such a dramatic range of reactions? As it turns out, this question is difficult to answer but it involves assassination, simony, nepotism, accusations of poison, coercion, abuse, incest, wildly debauched orgies, and political corruption.
Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org
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Elections Series. Episode #1 of 4. On the morning of August 11, 1492, Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope, taking the name Alexander VI and yelling “I am Pope! I am Pope!” The throngs of Romans in the Piazza di San Pietro shared in his excitement. But for some, the Papal Election of 1492 seemed to indicate the downfall of the papacy, if not the end of days. Giovanni de Medici is recorded as saying, “Now we are in the power of a wolf, the most rapacious, perhaps that this world has ever seen; and if we do not flee, he will infallibly devour us.” Gian Andrea Boccaccio wrote in a letter to the Duke of Ferrara, “ten Papacies would not suffice to satisfy the greed of all his kindred.” Ferrante, King of Naples, purportedly told his wife, “This election will not only undermine the peace of Italy, but that of the whole of Christendom.” The priest and prognosticator Girolamo Savonarola would spend the last year of his life trying to render the 1492 Papal election void due to simony, a campaign that resulted in his excommunication, torture, and execution. What was it about the Papal Election of 1492 and its resultant Pontiff, Alexander VI, that elicited such a dramatic range of reactions? As it turns out, this question is difficult to answer but it involves assassination, simony, nepotism, accusations of poison, coercion, abuse, incest, wildly debauched orgies, and political corruption.
Find show notes and transcripts here: www.digpodcast.org
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Previous Episode
Mother’s Little Helper: Psychiatry, Gender, and the Rise of Psychopharmaceuticals
Drugs Episode #4 of 4. For centuries, psychiatrists searched for the cure to mental illness, frustrated that medical doctors seemed to be able to find the “magic bullet” medications to fight disease and infection. In the mid 20th century, though, a series of new major and minor tranquilizers revolutionized the world of psychiatry. Doctors doled out Miltown, Librium, and Valium to stressed businessmen and frazzled housewives, using ad men to market these psychiatric wonder drugs to just about every ailment imaginable. In the process, psychopharmaceuticals became intertwined with the women’s rights movement, enflamed mid-century gender politics, and changed the way Americans thought about mental illness. Get the transcript at digpodcast.org
Bibliography & Further ReadingDavid Herzberg, Happy Pills in America: From Miltown to Prozac. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and teh Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010.
David Healy, The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Jonathan Metzl, Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
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Next Episode
Race, Politics, and Chaos in the Capitol: The Election of 1876
Election Series, Episode #2 of 4. The consequences of 1876 were enormous. To end the the election limbo, Democratic and Republican politicians worked out a shadowy deal in which Rutherford Hayes was declared the president (by one electoral vote!) and the Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction in the former Confederacy. The results of the “Compromise of 1877” were a total abandonment of the process of reforming the South from a land ruled by white supremacy and defined by slavery to one of freedom and equal rights. The federal government effectively washed its hands of Reconstruction and left the South to its own devices. The result was ... not good. As one freedman, Henry Adams, described it: “The whole South – every state in the South – had got into the hands of the very men that held us as slaves.” Today, as part of our series on elections, we’re talking about 1876, the election that ended Reconstruction, upended the accomplishments of the Civil War era, derailed civil rights, and allowed for the reign of Jim Crow.
Bibliography
DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: The Free Press, 1998.
Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. New York: Harper Collins, 1990.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1865-1877. New York: Harper Collins, 1988.
Holt, Michael F. By One Vote: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. Lawrence: Kansas State University Press, 2008.
Rehnquist, William H. Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876. New York: Knopf, 2004.
Woodward, C. Vann. Reunion & Reaction: The Compromise of 1877 and the End of Reconstruction. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1951.
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