It was not without reason that Pius II preferred to reside
anywhere rather than in Rome, and even Paul II was exposed to no small
anxiety through a plot formed by some discharged abbreviators, who,
under the command of Platina, besieged the Vatican for twenty days. The
Papacy must sooner or later have fallen a victim to such enterprises,
if it had not stamped out the aristocratic factions under whose
protection these bands of robbers grew to a head.
This task was undertaken by the terrible Sixtus IV. He was the first
Pope who had Rome and the neighbourhood thoroughly under his control,
especially after his successful attack on the House of Colonna, and
consequently, both in his Italian policy and in the internal affairs of
the Church, he could venture to act with a defiant audacity, and to set
at nought the complaints and threats to summon a council which arose
from all parts of Europe. He supplied himself with the necessary funds
by simony, which suddenly grew to unheard-of proportions, and which
extended from the appointment of cardinals down to the granting of the
smallest favours. Sixtus himself had not obtained the papal dignity
without recourse to the same means.
A corruption so universal might sooner or later bring disastrous
consequences on the Holy See, but they lay in the uncertain future.
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