College of Cardinals

The College of Cardinals is the central ecclesiastical body through which control over the papacy becomes a practical political question. In the account of Cesare Borgia, it is not merely a religious institution but one of the principal arenas in which a new prince must secure allies, prevent enemies from gaining supreme authority, and convert temporary influence into durable power. Its importance lies in the fact that the election of a pope could either preserve the political order built by Pope Alexander VI or destroy it.

Political Structure and Sources of Influence

The College of Cardinals appears within a broader contrast between two forms of government. In one, a sole prince rules through servants whose authority derives from his favor; in the other, a prince is surrounded by barons whose rank rests on ancient blood and whose subjects possess a personal attachment to them. The College of Cardinals belongs to the ecclesiastical version of this problem: its members are individually powerful actors whose loyalties, injuries, connections, and calculations can shape the succession to the highest office of the Church.

The text therefore treats the College as a body that cannot be understood as politically neutral. Its members may act as instruments of a prince, but they also retain interests that can outlast a particular alliance. A ruler who relies on personal favor must recognize the difference between having influence over officials and having transformed the institution itself. The same political logic governs ministers: a prince’s judgment is revealed by the people around him, while a dependent official must be bound by honors, wealth, responsibility, and the knowledge that he cannot stand alone without his master’s support. Applied to the College, this means that influence must be organized before a crisis, not improvised after a hostile pope has been chosen.

Cesare Borgia’s Strategy

Cesare Borgia identified the College of Cardinals as one of four safeguards against the danger posed by the death of his father, Pope Alexander VI. He feared that a new head of the Church might be hostile to him and might attempt to strip him of the territories Alexander had granted. His response was therefore broader than military preparation. He sought to exterminate the relatives of dispossessed lords who might become tools of a new pope, win over the Roman nobility, bring the College of Cardinals as far as possible under his control, and establish his own authority strongly enough to withstand the first shock after Alexander’s death.

By the time Alexander died, Borgia had already achieved three of these measures and had nearly completed the fourth. He had killed all the dispossessed lords’ kinsmen whom he could reach, with very few escaping. He had gained the Roman nobility, and the majority in the College of Cardinals was on his side. The College thus formed part of a deliberate political architecture: military power in Romagna, alliances among Roman nobles, and ecclesiastical influence were meant to compensate for the instability of rule founded on a father’s patronage.

This strategy also reveals the administrative logic of Borgia’s wider conduct. After taking Romagna, he placed the province under Messer Remiro d’Orco, a stern governor who restored tranquillity and order from a condition of robbery, tumult, and outrage. Borgia then replaced unlimited authority with a civil tribunal whose president was distinguished and whose towns were represented by advocates. The College of Cardinals belongs to the same pattern of political management: personal power is first used to impose order, then redirected toward institutions and intermediaries that can make authority appear stable and legitimate.

The Fatal Election

Borgia’s decisive mistake was his role in the creation of Pope Julius II. The text argues that although he could not secure the election he wanted, he could have prevented the election of another candidate. He should never have consented to the elevation of a cardinal whom he had injured or who, on becoming pope, would have reason to fear him.

The warning is specific. Among those offended by Borgia were San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San Giorgio, and Ascanio. Apart from Georges d’Amboise and the Spanish cardinals, the other cardinals had grounds for fearing him. The Spanish cardinals were restrained by their connections and obligations, while Georges d’Amboise possessed power through his relations with the French Court. Borgia should therefore have worked first for the creation of a Spanish pope; failing that, he should have accepted Georges d’Amboise. The election of San Pietro ad Vincula, who became Pope Julius II, was the choice he ought to have prevented.

The political lesson is that recent benefits do not reliably erase old injuries. Borgia had accumulated influence within the College, but he failed to use that influence defensively at the moment when succession mattered most. The election converted latent resentment and fear into supreme authority. His error in the College’s decisive vote became the cause of his ultimate downfall, because the pope who emerged from it was not bound to preserve Borgia’s state.

The College and the Strength of the Papacy

The later development of the papacy shows that the College’s importance extended beyond Borgia’s personal fate. Pope Alexander VI used money, arms, the arrival of the French in Italy, and the actions of Duke Valentino to enlarge his son’s power. Although Alexander’s aim was to aggrandize the duke rather than the Church itself, the result strengthened the Church, which inherited the work after Alexander’s death and after Borgia had been removed.

Pope Julius II took over a Church strengthened by possession of all Romagna. He also inherited Roman barons whose power had been exhausted and whose factions had been shattered under Alexander’s blows, together with an opened path toward the accumulation of wealth. Julius used and expanded these advantages, conquering Bologna, overthrowing the Venetians, and expelling the French from Italy. Unlike Alexander, he did so for the strengthening of the Church rather than for the aggrandizement of a private person.

The College also affected the containment of the Orsini and Colonna factions. Julius kept these factions within the limits in which he found them, and two conditions helped restrain any remaining seeds of insubordination: the great power of the Church, which overawed them, and their lack of cardinals. The factions could not remain quiet when they possessed cardinals capable of fomenting dissension in Rome and beyond it, because the ambition of prelates drew the barons into wider tumult and discord. The removal or absence of such ecclesiastical patrons therefore reduced the political reach of factional conflict.

Political Significance

The College of Cardinals embodies the tension between personal rule and institutional continuity. It can be treated as a body to be controlled through patronage, but its members also carry memories of injury, family ties, factional loyalties, and independent calculations. A prince may command armies and reorganize provinces, yet still be undone by a succession decision within an institution whose members possess the authority to replace his protector with his enemy.

Its role in the narrative also clarifies the difference between conquest and retention. Borgia’s military and administrative achievements gave him Romagna, disciplined opposition, and a reputation for force and intelligence. But the College was part of the future he had to secure after Alexander’s death. Because he did not prevent the election of a pope who feared him, the institutional transition that followed Alexander became a political reversal. The College of Cardinals is consequently shown as both an instrument of papal power and a mechanism through which personal power can be dislodged.