Prince Djem had taken some
of it in a sweet draught, before Alexander surrendered him to Charles
VIII (1495), and at the end of their career father and son poisoned
themselves with the same powder by accidentally tasting a sweetmeat
intended for a wealthy cardinal. The official epitomizer of the history
of the Popes, Onofrio Panvinio, mentions three cardinals, Orsini,
Ferrerio and Michiel, whom Alexander caused to be poisoned, and hints
at a fourth, Giovanni Borgia, whom Cesare took into his own charge--
though probably wealthy prelates seldom died in Rome at that time
without giving rise to suspicions of this sort. Even tranquil scholars
who had withdrawn to some provincial town were not out of reach of the
merciless poison. A secret horror seemed to hang about the Pope; storms
and thunderbolts, crushing in walls and chambers, had in earlier times
often visited and alarmed him; in the year I 500, when these phenomena
were repeated, they were held to be 'cosa diabolica.' The report of
these events seems at last, through the well-attended jubilee of 1500,
to have been carried far and wide throughout the countries of Europe,
and the infamous traffic in indulgences did what else was needed to
draw all eyes upon Rome. Besides the returning pilgrims, strange white-
robed penitents came from Italy to the North, among them disguised
fugitives from the Papal State, who are not likely to have been silent.
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