Historically High - The Borgias

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

The Borgia were a noble family of Spanish origin who came to control the Catholic Church for a period of roughly 45 years. It began when Pope Callixtus III made his nephew Rodrigo the Vice Chancellor of the church at 27 years old, making him the most influential and powerful administrator in Christendom at the time. Throughout his tenure in the Papacy Rodrigo would lie, scheme, cheat, and murder to keep his position and the positions of his children...yes you heard that right he had many many children, safe. Rodrigo would eventually go on to become Pope Alexander VI in his later years after he had already used his position to make himself extremely wealthy, but he still wasn't satisfied. How did this corruption occur in the most holy institution on the planet...tune in a find out. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You want to know something funny about that? You know that little boop-whoop? Mm-hmm. That sounds every time I go to do an editing. Does it help? It doesn't help. It's just another little thing. Like when you listen to it, you're just like, oh, yeah, that's just, because that's the exact

bell we use that that thing. Is that your phone that makes the noise, or is it? It's our school clock. Oh, shit, really? It's our countdown clock. Okay, so it hasn't always been there. No, it's new. Newer.

We're back. We're back in, in, uh, another Catholic episode. We're back in Rome. We're back in the Vatican. We're ice skating again. Slick slope here. We got a wild episode today about the Borgia family.

You kind of sold this to me as a papal mob. I see it is nothing other than a papal mob anymore just because it all makes that much sense. This whole journey that we were going to go on with the Borga family is a situation of circumstance that was brought on at a time in the Catholic Church where Italy wasn't a thing. Italy was a conglomeration of city states that were warring and fighting between each other,

but this is pre-Reformation. So the Catholic Church is basically church beyond the Jews in the Islamic people for everybody else. Is the reformation for this kind of like before common era, after common era? I think there was still some bad stuff going on after the Reformation.

Yeah, but for what people claim and everything. I'm sure that it's certainly a way to say, well, they did some really bad stuff with our religion, but we can say that it was pre-Reformation. You have no idea how I was trying to merge together different names for organized crime to get it in also. I guess you could call it the Jesus Christenostra. Jesus Christenostra. Yeah, it's... And it certainly was a long time ago.

We're talking about the 15th century and the 16th century here. So I'm not hanging the Catholic Church with all of these misdeeds, but at the same time, you've got to know your history. I understand being somebody who got away from the Latter-day Saints Church, the Mormon Church, there's a lot of stuff that they don't talk about that happened a long time ago, blood atonements and things like that, that they don't like bringing up in the past. And there's a reason that a lot of religions don't like bringing up their past

is because there's usually some bad things that happened. I don't know how many religions wouldn't be able to bring up their past and not have anything. Yeah. Yeah. So everybody's got one of these. This just happens to be in a long line

of worthy word crusade seems to come up quite a bit as a fundraising opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, guys, we're needing to go. You want to fill the boot? We're going on another crusade.

You've got to be able to take this with just for what it is. every religion is at some point goes through their dirty shit things the further we get into history the more they get corporatized and everything like that and this is exactly what happens here so i guess the best way to describe it is the borgas are a family that from the outside they give off an aura of religion that religious belief piety yeah but they are literally just coming in to run this thing like a business. It really, there was no difference because back then, if you were the Pope, you also ruled the

papal states. So not only are you a part of the religion, but you kind of have like a kingdom. An army. Yeah. Yeah. Not a lot of religions had an army either. Which is so crazy because, yeah, you have an army, you have lands. But at the same time, everybody wants to be your friend. and kind of everybody kind of needs you to be their friend because you can do, I have such a

weird trying to reconcile with this whole thing. So the whole thing with monarchies, secession, inheritance, things like that is the whole thing that was sold is we've been, you know, touched by Jesus or the divine to rule in this position. That's always the claim for it. so they know that in order for the people to continue believing that the country and you as the ruler have to stay within the graces of the bat phone to God, which is essentially the Catholic Church, the Pope, whatever you want to say. But at what point do the rulers understand it's just bullshit that we tell people about this? Like we're just in position because this is where we've been and we're powerful enough and we have enough money that we can keep ourselves in this position. position. But all the fucking people need to think that it's God that has us here. And the only way they're going to think that is if I stay good with the church, which means sending money to the

church so they don't end up excommunicating me. Which basically cuts me off from the bat phone. And then everybody's like, well, we can't have an excommunicated ruler. And then the people overthrow me. The last thing that I need is for God to show us. with the French army at my door. This is also the time when there is the papal states and the Holy Roman Empire, which getting into the Holy Roman Empire, stuff like this just makes me want to get into that even more because I really have no clue what that was. Feels like a quagmire.

I think we pointed out before and somebody had said it to, the Holy Roman Empire isn't really Roman and it's not super holy. Do you feel like it's a Nazi situation where they picked national it was the National Socialist German Workers Party and they would do the thing where they made the word bigger depending on who they were talking to. So for the Holy Roman Empire, holy is always great. You got to throw that in front because right there it tells you.

It tells you war ordained. We're God, this has been our right given to us by God. We're Roman, hey, you guys all remember the Romans, huh? Huge empire. Gave us democracy and all that kind of stuff where the Greeks gave us democracy. But the Romans carried it over. And we're an empire.

So we're an empire, but it's the Holy Roman variety. I think that was just great branding. Yeah, and that's stories all this time is a company is only as good as it's branding. And guess what? The Borgias, honestly kind of wrapping it back around. The Borgias were excellent at their branding as far as kind of putting their stamp on not just the papacy, but Italy as a whole. and also kind of stretching out to Spain and some discoveries and things like that

they have this weird kind of touch that they're able to have their hands in kind of some pretty significant events seven minutes before the theme song remember guys Patreon WWW not god damn it's not it is WWWB you don't have to type that anymore it's just patreon.com slash historically high

bonus content I think we're kind of just at this point cranking it out every week as much as we can get out yep so most of the time you guys are going to get two bonus episodes, which we've tried to say we're going to have a timeline on those, but they keep going up in time. And then two of our little game shows. So every Friday, you guys will have something to listen to going into the weekend for less

than a cup of coffee. Keep up at the ratings. We're doing fantastic on Spotify with our ratings. Reviews, we love to hear them. Keep that subscriber number going. The only other thing that I would say is I'd love. so much all of the just blatant disrespect that

I get for not watching Band of Brothers. It makes me not want to watch it even more and I don't say that in a snarky mean way, but to keep up the illusion, it's almost funnier to not do it. Here's the deal, man. Depending on when this comes out, you have either already

learned everything about it or if it comes out after this one, you will be learning everything about it. Also, not to cashier to our listeners because we love all of you. But I do find it funny that everybody says, I can't believe Adam hasn't watched Band of Brothers yet. Not a lot of mention of reading the books, right?

Is that because they know me? They know that the books probably aren't going to help me? Well, I mean, I'm sure people, for the most part, know that it's based on a book. But compared to the show in the book, I mean, there are some parts that are left out as far as, like, the personal stories. It's really fucking close, man.

So, like, if you don't have, you're not getting, it's still awesome to read the book, of course, but you're not getting a ton more. of it. The series is pretty comprehensive. Well, maybe if I don't keep the illusion up, there will be an episode where I have to apologize. There could be.

Anyway, let's get into the Borgias. What do you think the last time was we introduced ourselves? How many episodes has been? It's been a minute, huh? It's been several months, probably. So if you didn't understand from that rambling to start this, I'm Adam.

Professor Chris is my co-host, or we're co-host. host together. There's, there's no ownership of this podcast. Son of a bitch. I get weird with that. I don't know. How else are you going to address me, though? That's what it is. It sounds weird. Yeah, it doesn't make you sound. When you call someone a co-host, it then automatically

makes you the other co-host. Yeah. But then there's like my show, our show. It's all our show. It's the people show is what it is. And today, nobody knows better about what the people want than the Borgia's. Because I didn't know I wanted this until we got into it. The Borgia legacy starts so long ago because, I guess not that long ago, but the fact that we have Aragon, not even Spain yet, because Spain hasn't been united. So the kingdom of Aragon inside of Spain produced a man named Alfonso de Borja. And this is B-O-R-J-A.

Now, they are from a place called Borja. and this was at a time when there weren't a ton of like you had to have station to have a surname. This is a Leonardo da Vinci type situation Leonardo from Vinci. Exactly. Like remember when we were doing the Shakespeare up soon you were talking about the coat

of arms? Yes. Like very prestigious to have that. You had to be able to like have some money to your name to be able to afford a surname. So a lot of people would just be Alfonso of Borgia and that was the town they lived in. Yeah. Alfonso

de Borja was a professor of law at the University of Yeda University this is before he began to serve as a diplomat for the King's of Aragon. He was made Bishop of Valencia after he facilitated a reconciliation

between King Alfonso the 5th and Pope Martine the 5th. I don't know what reconciliation they were going through with Aragon but judging by how the tenor of this episode is going to go with relationships with the church, it feels like this isn't an odd thing to happen back then.

Bishop of Valencia is pretty big deal. The reason that these titles start to hold so much weight is because once you get a title like Bishop, you're entitled to a share of the money that's brought in underneath you. Yeah. And as you get higher up and you start to accrue these titles, these bishoprics and other things like that, that's just more money that's flowing into your pocket.

There's still money flowing into the church, but at the same time you get a cut of it. So the hierarchy, at least at this point, is you got the people. These are baptized members of the church who live out their faith and share in its mission. You get the deacons who are clergy members ordained to assist in worship and charity and pastoral services. You then get priests, men ordained to serve the faithful administer sacraments. They lead parishes. Also most likely to be molesting boys. Then you get the bishops.

ordained leaders who receive the fullness of holy orders and they shepherd diocese. So more of like a spread out area. So you have kind of, you got a territory. Then we get to cardinals who are senior churchmen and these guys are advisors to the Pope. They also get together in the college of Cardinals to elect the new Pope. The conclave. You then get an archbishop. They govern a large metropolitan area.

these are called archdiocese. They basically oversee the bishops, the priests, and do all the transferring when priests ends up touching kids again and have to get them into a different location. They're in charge of that. A lot of paperwork. Then you get the Pope, the Big Cheese,

the papal powerhouse, the top dog to the top god, and Robs McBig Hat. It was the last one I had written down. Solid. Yeah. Robs McBigg had. I liked that a lot. So he's got some ways to go.

but at the same time this first shot as Bishop of Valencia is a pretty important role. 1444, Pope Eugene the 4th makes him a cardinal. His doctorate, and he had, I don't know if this was a separate doctorate or it covered both of them. He told him to say he had two doctrines. He had a doctorate in not only civil law, but a doctorate in canon law. So he understands the religious laws that he would need to move up to a situation with Cardinal. civil law is also very important at this time for the church to have his first papal conclave comes in 1447 it's the election of pope nicholas the fifth pretty cool these these papal conclaves aren't necessarily for all the cardinals it's more of uh who can show up

they usually take place a day or two after the death of the former pope well you got to get them together too because they can be kind of like spread out even if they're spread out just in italy they're going to take a few days to get the notification out. I think most of the time too, because we do talk in this episode about some sudden deaths of popes, if a pope gets sick, they're going to start calling them in. Like there's probably a guy that's like, hey, you have the best record on calling if this pope is sick enough to die, go in, take a look at him, and we'll see if we need to send out, you know, the flyers or the messengers to call everybody back into elect a new one.

Chances are if he's asking for his last rights, he knows he's all. on the doorstep. Or if he's not able to ask for the last rights. Yeah, so that's his first conclave. And these conclaves, when they happen, you need two-thirds majority of the Cardinals that are voting in this conclave to be elected the new Pope. April 8th, or April 18th, 1455, Alfonso is chosen as the compromise candidate because there are two families that are kind of controlling the way that these votes go.

One of the families is the Sforzas. We'll talk about Sforza's a lot just because they pop in and out of this story quite a bit. The Sforzas. The other one, they become kind of a thorn in the Borgias side for most of this. He, the Della, how do you pronounce it? Dela Rove. Della Rove, I think is how you pronounce it. So they control these voting blois.

And the Delaware has put forth their candidate, the Sforza's put forth their candidate, and they're deadlocked. There's nothing that they can do. So a lot of times in these situations, if they can't reach it, these conclaves are held over a number of days. And the situation that these cardinals are in is not good. No. They don't clean out the latrines because they understand that the longer they're there, the longer the church has to wait. So it's almost like they pressure them into making a decision faster. I feel like, too, there's like tactics that they run if someone's trying to rush it along and not give people time to negotiate.

Because a lot of this is also a negotiation between these two sides. And at this point in the church, kind of how it works is everybody kind of treats it like a family business. So if you get someone in the church and they're in a position high enough to assign other positions within the church, they are doing that to their family. They're trying to get them in positions where they can make money. They're getting them into positions of power and prestige. So if you're a cardinal or a bishop and you have your own diocese or you have your own church or parish or whatever you want to call it, you're filling that with priests that might be related to you. What you're also doing once you get up to that cardinal level or even higher is you're trying to

get guys up high enough and get in favor with the pope so the pope can assign the president. people that you've brought in as Cardinals again to then increase your voting power and the power of your family within the College of Cardinals. I don't feel like at this point in time, it's the piety and religious aspect of these people is in the first or second position of priority for getting these positions. Well, it also there is kind of a way that maybe it's just me trying to convince myself is there has to be an assumption that everybody is

highly religious. Everybody is super Catholic, everybody loves God because you almost have to tell yourself that if you're going to walk around in these robes and try to preach this, you almost have to convince yourself. I'm not saying that's true. I'm not saying that a lot of these people are very pious religious people.

At the same time, there's kind of this illusion that if you can get enough worthy cardinals in there, you will be protected when the next conclave comes. You'll have a larger voting block that then you can throw behind your preferred candidate of who you think is the highest

in this power. So Alfonso's chosen as his compromise candidate. The Sforzas end up swapping or pushing all their votes behind Alfonso. He ends up taking the name Calixtus the third. Why do they also pick him? Because didn't the previous

Pope kind of died suddenly, right? Yeah, so as a compromise candidate, he was the oldest, or he was the oldest cardinal. So they thought that his time wouldn't be long, but at the same time, it would be long enough for them to be able to load up a voting block behind that. Exactly. So when one pope ends up kicking it, suddenly, you don't have that campaign time, basically. When you know one is going to die, you can start getting that drummed up. Or when they reach a certain age like, hey, he's made it to 72, we should probably start spinning up the marketing wheels. This is a transitional quarterback while your salary cap recovered.

Exactly. So at 76 years old, they were like, Hey, he's going to be Pope for like two or three years. That's the perfect amount of time for us to start greasing some palms, figuring out how to get more of our guys in here. The other thing, too, is he was Spanish. They did that because both of the families or the ones that had the largest polar influence were both like Italian or from the Italy, what is now a unified Italy. Because this, again, is at a time when Italy is not unified.

Spain is not unified. This is Italy in the sense of having places like Genoa and Venice and all these kind of little city states like the kingdom of Naples taking up all of southern Italy. It's a popularity contest almost. It really feels like it. His reign is short. They were right. They called it pretty good. Three years he is reigning as Pope Calixtus III.

his reign of the papacy started like two years after the fall of Constantinople. So the Arabs took a very large Christian city. Yeah, so the Ottoman Turks end up taking. And he has to kind of try to reconcile and calm the masses who were very freaked out about the push of the Arabs. It's Istanbul now, right? Huh? It's, no, what city is it now? Istanbul.

It's Istanbul. Yeah. So going through that, he's trying to kind of calm the nerves of the church. He's trying to rally a crusade. Yeah. Another crazy thing that he does is he posthumously vindicates Joan of Arc. He brings her a new trial to basically declare her innocent of crimes. I don't know what that does for your candidacy.

What if it's one of those things where, like, you know, you write down, they have their last will and testament or whatever they want to do. and there's just like weird stuff that they never knew he was into. And they're like, did you know he was really into Joan of Arc? They're like, we had no idea. They're like, we found a bunch of books about it. And here in his last will, he was just like, make sure you guys pardoned to Joan of Arc. The hell is the Spanish guy talking about Joan of Arc farm makes sense. I guess we're going to do it.

Yeah. He also elevated nine new Cardinals. So in three years, nine new Cardinals, that's not a very big number. But the significance of that numbers, two of them were his nephews, Rodrigo and Luis. when they're doing that, because again, people aren't just like, it's not like, hey, you're getting really old, you're going to become Pope and then you're going to die. There are cardinals that are just simply dying because they're older and everything. When you're bringing in more people than are probably leaving, you know, leaving, you're also creating like, you're broadening the voting pool. Yeah.

Which means you got to have even more votes. So again, that's why it's even more important that if you're the Pope, you're kind of looking at your family. or who's going to vote on your side or owe you favors, and you're trying to get them to be, you know, into the end of the cardinship or whatever you want to call it. I'm sure he also realized, too, that if he can elevate more Spanish cardinals, it's going to be a lot tougher.

They're going to have more of a say in who becomes Pope in the future if there's more Spanish cardinals. So somebody who's a relative outsider when he started, as he becomes Calixtus, he can create more of an opportunity for Spanish cardinals to have influence and influence. power inside of the Vatican. His two nephews, Rodrigo and Luis, that were both made cardinals,

Robrigo had accepted quite a few of these positions within the church by the age of 14. Pretty quick. He moved to Rome in 1448 because Alfonso Calixtus had been able to get him in there. He was his sister's son. He ends up studying under this. tutor named Gaspar de Verona. He also studied law at Bologna University, I'm assuming, where he becomes doctor-in-law, just like his uncle.

Yeah. So he starts out, and again, because he is being raised essentially by Sixtus or Alphonsex. H? Calixtus. We'll just go with Alphonseo. There is, but there is a 60s coming up. That's why I get confused. So Alfonso, yeah.

So he ends up raising Rodrigo. from a pretty young age. And at 14, he's already within the employment, I guess you could call it, or service of the church. He's what's called a sacristan. And kind of sounds like a stock boy slash janitor slash priest support. Basically, like the holy relics or the stuff that they need for the actual performance of the like, you know, mass and things like that. Like you got all the robes that you're wearing in the ribbons and the things laid out. He was responsible for like polishing that shit up. it was before he became Pope, but Alfonso ends up going to the Pope and is like, hey, my nephew

would like to do this job, but we're going to have him do it in absentia. While he goes to Rome, he's still going to need to get paid for the job, but he's going to go to law school. How do you perform the stocking and cleaning and stuff like that in a completely different city, but still get paid like It's a good position to get if you can Like you're saying There's no way to do it But this whole in absentia is just

You're paying him for a job That he should be completing But he's actually trying to attain something higher Okay And here's what also was probably going to be One of the next things you're going to say He's a cardinal at 25 Oh before that though

Before he becomes a cardinal When Alfonso becomes Calixtus 1455 that same year Rodrigo becomes Bishop of Valencia, which was that title that was given to Alfonso previously before he became a cardinal. Now that's an inherited title. Weirdly enough, that happens when you're apparently

the bishop of an area, the next person of your family in line that's within the church, I'm guessing. It can't be just like Uncle Robert, who's like the shoemaker. But as long as they're in the church, they then automatically move into that bishop role. I think Alfonso handed that one to him.

I think he, because as you move up, to Pope all of these different titles that you have, you can then basically distribute out to people to vote for you. Yeah. It's a bribery scandal. It's not just positions either. You can hand out property in houses. Bishop Bricks. Yeah. All these money-making schemes. So as he becomes Bishop of Valencia, his uncle's former post, he's ordained to deacon the following year, 1457. Calixtus makes him the vice chancellor, which elevates him to, basically the leader of the Cardinals. He's...

He's second to the Pope. He's making a hell of a lot of money. He's Vice Pope. And the Vice Pope is basically responsible for like all of the administration of the church. He knows he's responsible for

making all of the... He produces all of the papal documents. He gets to negotiate on behalf of the church. Again, this is negotiating as both a... What am I trying to? say non-secular. So non-secular would be the church, right? Yep. Secular is just non-religious related, which is so weird. You think it should be the other way around. If something is non-something,

it should be the thing not related to it. Anyway, this is how the church operates. It operates within a secular and a non-secular type environment where its papal states are run like a government, but it in itself is a church. So he's negotiating on behalf of the church in regards to both the papal or papacy. Yes, both sides of it. He basically uses the position to get incredible amounts of wealth because, again, this is a situation when people are coming up and asking and being like, hey, can the church

do this for me? Hey, can the church? Or going up to somebody and being like, you know what would be really nice for you to be able to claim you're the Duke of this area or something, is to get a papal document or we can announce it as a papal bowl or something like that? As vice chancellor, this is one of those positions that when a new pope comes in, normally they will choose another vice chancellor. Rubrigo wheels and deals to be able to hold this position for 35 years. Which I think is why when he gets into that role, he knows exactly what to do.

He's been planning this for 35 years and just paying attention to kind of all of the workings. He's able to basically learn. if you were to just go from a cardinal or even archbishop of your own archdiocese or whatever and then you come in and all of a sudden now you're pope and you've never served in the VP role you've never served in the VP role you wouldn't really know what that role entails you might have an idea but you don't know the ins and outs and what the power of that role is yeah when you're in that roll for 35 years, you understand exactly what everybody does. You understand what people want. You understand what people need in different areas. And what I mean by that is, hey, why don't I just, you know,

your area is kind of small. Why don't I bump you up a little bit? Why don't I make you a cardinal? And then you can be in charge of all of the churches around there and you can have more of that money coming in. But you're going to need to make sure you remember that next time that college, next time that conclave comes around that I did this favor for you, my son. And three years, I mean, Colixis dies in 1458. So as we were just talking about, Rodriguez holding this position, he needs to keep this position. At the conclave of 1458, he looks to align himself

with a candidate that's going to be most likely to win and then throws his Spanish voting block behind whoever that candidate is. He's too young at this point to run to actually be the Pope. Yeah, child Pope, I don't think is a real thing. think it was just a movie or something like that. Well, what's crazy, dude? So Cardinal at 25, that sounds, that's still pretty insane because you have to go from

deacon, priest, bishop, then Cardinal. He makes a pretty big jump. And again, this is nepotism. Yeah, this is, the whole, the episode is nepotism. And I believe this is right around the time that that word is created. So Pope Leo, the 10th, who served from 1513 to 1521. So even to jump in head. This is just a fact.

It has nothing to do with Poplio. He was made a cardinal when he was 13. What has somebody done in your life? And in their 13 years to be like, you know what? This kid's got it. It's like going in, it's like a scout, going on and watching a little league kid who's throwing 75 mile an hour just junk balls. And they're like, we need to keep our eye on this kid.

He's got the goods. Yeah. It's. Except you don't have to wait. wait to draft him at a high school when he's 18. You can draft him at 13. When you can also see that thing, whereas this is just somebody talking about God. It's soccer.

It's over, it's European soccer because you have farm clubs that they're having kids play to try to develop them. Baseball is the same thing. I mean, they saw kids. Maybe. They got it from the church. 14, 15 year olds out of Central America and South America all the time. It's not too shocking.

So in doing kind of looking for. this next candidate that he can kind of latch on to and throw his votes behind, there's a split. During the split as they're trying to figure it out, somebody who he befriended, I think, is more of just

trying to figure this whole thing out. It was a carlin named Alina, Salivio, Bartolomo, Piccolomini. And Picolomini is in a situation where It's a more Piccolumini. The votes are pretty much

deadlocked. The guy that Rodriguez had thrown his support behind had promised the vice chancellery to somebody else before he had promised it to Rodriguez. And Piclamini is, Rodriguez is explaining why he's voting for this guy. Piclamini's like he promised that to somebody else. So Rodriguez is able to shift his voting block and he actually cast the winning vote for Piccolomini. In doing so, Piccolomini becomes Pope Pius the second. And Pope Pius a second rewards Rodrigo, with the vice-chancellorship a second time, gives him another lucrative position to go along with that. 1460, Rodrigo finally gets a little heat.

Rodrigo gets rebuked for attending a party that was said to have turned into an orgy. No. Now, I know what you're thinking, but Adam, Chris, they're married to the church. Why would they be doing that? They're supposed to... Married to the game. They're supposed to stay virgins their whole entire time. At this point in time.

Or at least, like, you know, you can't do it once you get in there. I don't think you can do it before. Oh, come on. You're saying, really? You had... I think you have to live a pretty chaste life. I don't think that was going to be the thing that stopped you from coming in. Yeah, I mean, regardless, as a cardinal, this is bad.

You know what? Regardless, it does not apply to these guys. No, and Pope Pius, actually, as he's reading out kind of the charges that were put forth against Rodrigo, there were points when he actually says some of these words I cannot repeat because they are a sin to even say them. Just what happens at this orgy. This certainly happened. Roddy. No doubt in my mind. What happened at the party?

Yep. I heard there were women. They were nude. Rod actually. Everything. Don't spare any details, but don't tell me the details. Rodin's up apologizing for this, but while apologizing, he denies that there was any orgy. There's no way that this orgy happens.

Your Excellency, there was no orgy, but if there was, I was so miscusi, miscozy, miscozy. Well, Rodrigo definitely getting his dick wet because he gets rebuked for this in 1460. 1462, Rodrigo's first son is born. A cardinal in the church has a son. And again, he's not the only one that's done this. This wasn't out of the ordinary back then. But I feel like this just is something odd. And we're going to get to a point to where he's the only pope that I think any of the experts that I listened to ever could really point down and say this is the first pope that's had a child while he was the pope.

Just a pretty interesting trend for this guy. So his first son, he ends up sending back to Spain to be raised by his family. Pius I second raised funds for a crusade before falling ill and dying in 1464. This is a very normal thing. Calixtus was raising money for a crusade in 1458 right before he died. You have the same thing that happens to Pius. Dying in 1464, we're going to have the conclave of 1464. And Rodriguez, I don't know why that name got me so bad again.

ends up throwing behind as much weight as he can behind a guy named or Pietro Barbaro or Barbo. He does end up getting him elected and he is given the vice chance to re a third time. He's got this ever-growing Spanish block. He's getting more and more Spanish cardinals in there. He also keeps out kind of this rival. His name was Gilorama de Estes.

Straubail. So Pietro or Barbo ends up being Pope Paul the second, right? Yes. Pope Paul the second is kind of a big deal because part of the messaging giving to try to beat out de Estaville was that he was French and he had the French voting block. We're not too far removed from a time when the Pope lived in Avenue in France and wasn't in the Vatican City. That was at a time when that was one of the things that Alfonso, who, what was the Pope, Colixis, when he was on the, you know, his upswing and everything before he was Pope, that was kind of one of the things he was set to do is to try to kind of bridge the gap between those two factions. Because I think one of them was in Gis, Avignon, right?

Yeah, that's going to come up too, is there's going to be people of Avignon. Yeah. So Pope Paul the second He was the nephew of Pope Eugene the 4th Who was 1431 to 1447 So he was I believe the Pope that made Alfonso a cardinal He ended a lot of the restraints

That had recently been put on the Pontiff's powers As far as like How many Cardinals you're allowed to elect They were trying to rein in a little bit of this nepotism But again It was enough to where the Pope could just walk in And be like yeah we're not doing that anymore 1471

Pope Paul the second may have died from a heart attack rumors say otherwise is that 71 or 72 1471 I believe because the conclave is 1471 as well okay so before

that I want to say Rodrigo actually catches the old plague oh yeah he catches him he gets a little bit of the plague he ends up recovering obviously but yeah it's going around Weren't the rumors that it was syphilis, but it wouldn't have been syphilis because syphilis hadn't made it from the new world yet. Siphilis had yet to make land for.

In Europe. I don't want to say something like that. Yeah, they're like, eh, said it was syphilis, like, not possible. Hadn't made its way over yet. For as crazy as the plague, Yersenia pest this episode that we did was, I can't believe you live through this. That's pretty surprising. I can't believe we can date back to when syphilis made it somewhere. Yeah, very true.

Pope Paul II The rumors about Paul Paul the second were that he actually died of apoplexy in the company of a young boy. Now, there's parts of these rumors that kind of lean

towards this making sense, and for all intents and purposes, because it doesn't matter what my opinion is, he definitely died this way. So there were not one, but many accounts that claim that the pontiff used to sit down at a setting. He used to eat two to three large chilled melons at a time.

Like, cantaloupe was his favorite thing. Can you imagine how bad your tummy would hurt after eating three cantalopes in one sitting? He didn't really die of eating too much melon. But the boy's name, I explain this to you. The boy's name was melon or something like that. And they're like, yeah, he was in there eating melon for two hours and he died. I just The fact that there's

This kid that he was fucking around with Probably ended up killing him And they can't be like Well how did he die They're like oh he got stabbed in the neck While he was molested in this kid Well that's the other kind of part of this story That he died of apoplexy

In the company of young boy Was that there was an alleged affair That he had covered up The he had with the mail page So between eating too much melon Which was confirmed At a time to where he had bad tummy eggs And then he might have hooked up

But how do you, listen, where is modern medicine at this point have you determining that he died from eating too much melon? Because his tummy hurt from melon? I've eaten a lot of stuff. This is before, this is like before Da Vinci is writing all the, like doing all the anatomical drawings. This is just someone being like, hey, my tummy hurts. And they're like, well, what have you been doing? I eat a lot of melon. They're like, well, maybe it's the melon making your tummy hurt. Doesn't mean it would kill him. At the same time. though how do you diagnose a heart attack before this i don't know there might be a sign from the heart you just or if they just died all of a sudden and there weren't certain i don't know skin markers or anything

like that they're like maybe his heart exploded maybe he just had a full tum-tum you don't know we talked about somebody dying of eating like too many cherries and milk together didn't we wasn't that like a roman guy yeah i can't remember but something along the ones right is that really the cause come on it's a fun story. So after Pope Paul the second dies, you have a fucking cover up is what it is. The 1471 conclave. Rodriguez's first chance kind of financially

to mount this bid for the papacy, he's got a lot of money. His issue was that the voting block of the conclave only included himself and two other non-Italian Cardinals. Yeah. So that's not going to help him out too much. He threw his efforts in his voting block

behind Francesco, delo rovere, or delovere, which is the same guy that Alfonso used his votes against. Yeah. To get his guy, or to get this Forsa man elected. Or actually to get him elected because it was Forsa and then that were going back and forth. This turns out to be something that works out because he becomes Pope 6th, this is the fourth. He uses his, the thing, you know what, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. he's made the deal with all of the other popes at this point,

hey, make me your VP, I'll make sure you get elected. They get elected, he's the VP. At this point, too, he's in a position where do you think if another person was brought in as the vice chancellor, they would be able to kind of tell what's been going on? Because they'd have access to all this stuff. They'd look through the records and be like,

the fuck has this guy been doing for like the last? last 10 years. Yeah, for sure. They're taking a look at the books and seeing what's been cooked. Yeah. So he's just able to sit here and continue like whatever he's got going on without anyone else kind of being the wiser. Yeah. Roddy retaining the vice chancery once again also gets the additional title of Cardinal Bishop of Valbano. I don't know if this is where Captain Liu was from, but at the same time, it's also another revenue flow that's coming in. getting that Cardinal Bishop, he was appointed also the papal legate for Spain to negotiate a piece between Castile and Aragon. He's also there to facilitate the marriage of Prince Ferdinand of Aragon and Princess Isabella of Castile. Now, those two, Ferdinand and Isabella, were the two that sponsored Christopher Columbus.

He was mostly Isabella. Yeah. I think Ferdinand was just like, oh, honey, do whatever you want. But at the same time, it's interesting to think that this guy, Rodrigo, played a part in world history by being able to make the marriage happen that then sponsors Christopher Columbus. He also plays a little role with that later. So in exchange for the unification of Spain, which would be Castile and Aragon marrying into one another, he asked for support for a new crusade. And the Spanish say, yeah, sure, we're in on that. Let's make it happen.

and it never happens because crusades are pretty much out of fashion at this point in time. Oh my God, we haven't crusaded in so long. But it's not like if you don't do a crusade, all the money that you've given goes back to you. It's kept by the church. It's kept in the coffers of the church. We're saving for a crusade or a new beach house. Once he gets back from Aragon, back in Rome, Rodrigo takes up a relationship with a woman named Vinoza del Cattini. He has to survive the trip back home, which he almost does not.

Because on the way home, he's going, I think it's his ship and another ship. They get caught in this big-ass storm. They're able to basically stay away from shore long enough for the storm to die down to make it through it. The ship they were with ends up getting smashed up on the rocks and sinks. And there were like 200 people in that ship. And they were all within like his, what they would consider his house. So that's basically like servants, people that help him and everything like that. But as far as like 200 people from like the house of Borgia.

a lot of people a lot of people except for you're going to have to jump on indeed after that happens and fill some positions no free ads so on a sponsored job search

search here Rodrigo and Vanosa end up having four children together they have one children that I believe didn't survive infancy and they had

Chessaray in 1475 they had Giovanni, who goes by Juan, this is weird. I'm assuming it's because of the illegitimacy of this. They don't know if Juan was born in 1474 or 1476. I'm going to bet probably 1476. Then you have Lucrezia born in 1480.

You think they ever called him Giovanni? Maybe. Giojana. And then you have Geoffrey in 1482. And it's spelled such a pretentious. Jeff, but it's spelled like the pretentious Jeff way is G-I-O-F-F-R-E. Jeff, it's Jeffrey is what it is. The annoying E in that way of spelling and has also changed with an I, so it's even worse.

God damn it. Geoffrey. 1480, 6thus legitimizes Ches Cesserae as a favor to Rodrigo. Now, here's the thing too, dude. Before he ends up with this long-term affair with this woman, he's had illegitimate kids up to this point. he has just not taken them with him and they're from mistresses and stuff this is kind of the first one that he

because he's not supposed to be married or having kids or sex or anything like that these kids are technically unable to be claimed they're illegitimate children but these four that we talk about Chesterai Juan Lucrezia or Lucretia and Jeff

they're kind of the ones history remembers the most he could have had as many as nine to ten children that they're able to track back a lot of kids but that's a huge huge thing to be able to be like, okay, your excellency or however they refer to your holiness, listen, here's what happened. So I've been having relations with a woman. Okay, so you're going to need to stop that. I mean, we all have temptations of the flesh, my son, but you're going to need to end that. Well, hold on, Padre, I need to actually tell you a little bit more. I've been having

relations with this woman for quite a while. And it has produced several children. Are you able to basically like make it to where my kid can be, I named him Caesar, very Roman, right? You know, Chesaday. Are you able to make him like my kid? But then also I get to keep my position where I'm not supposed to be having sex or marrying or having kids.

Like, can you do that? And he does it. It's only happened once, right? Ah, nine to ten times? That's so fucking crazy. Like, you're going into your boss's office and you're basically like, remember those like three things we're definitely not supposed to be doing? There's three rules. So like, I did them.

Okay, well, don't do them again. You're forgiven. Don't worry about it. No. I need you to take one of the kids I made and I need you to tell everybody, hey, this kid is mine. But then I don't get in trouble. after he legitimizes Chess Ray and he's walking out the Pope goes hey he turns over he looks over his shoulder and the Pope goes no more butt stuff or only butt stuff from now on it's not even just the fact that he's like okay and here's the thing this isn't the first time this has happened this is the way that this happens there's obviously a standard operating procedure for when something like this now in 1982 1482 the Pope begins 1482 sorry yeah I wrote down 1982 a lot of times before I had to backspace it on this 1418

the Pope begins to appoint a seven-year-old Cheseray to church positions. So not only is it just like, hey, you're not supposed to do this, but hey, the walking reminder of what you're not supposed to do is now going to start serving in church positions. But he's legitimized. He's legitimate now. That's, I think, the main difference is we've talked about so much of the royal families up in Western Europe. I'm not saying that they should be illegitimate children. Well, maybe in Cheseray's case, yes, there would be an argument for that.

what I'm saying is that how are you justifying that that's what I'm saying this comes at a time when there didn't have to be justification thin veil of justification on really any of this stuff like he told us the truth so now it's just like hey oh okay I also I think that he was a very good vice chancellor

yeah that's always helped here oh here's the thing too how would anyone know as long as everything looked good right yeah he was really good at admin he made the church a lot of money by what purposes or by what means or methods did he do that? And we're not really keen to look into it. Not only that, but what are the chances somebody asked a question about this?

Like, nobody's going to know. He's just going to be a Cardinal, right? He's not going to raise to the size of being like a leader of an army. Roderigo comes in. He's just like, you're lucky you're so good at counting. You're lucky you're such a good accountant. I have to now make your kid, your actual kid. Yeah, it's fascinating.

to me that in these kind of city states in the pre-Italy, illegitimate kids weren't that big of a deal. When we talk about that shit in the monarchy and everything that happens in England, illegitimate children are not treated well. They're second-class citizens, but they're hidden from

public view. In Italy, there's so many illegitimate children that are just like, eh, we'll figure out a way to make them legitimate if they become important enough. I think that's what it is. That's really all it comes down to. By 1483, Rodrigo had become the wealthiest cardinal in the church. Pretty fast ascent, but also he's put on a lot of time with the vice-chancery.

He's then made the dean of the College of the Cardinals. Don't know what that position is. Sounds like he's probably making more money, though. 1484, 6thus ends up dying. 1484 Conclave saw a very, very rich Rodrigo go head to head with 6thus' nephew. G It's Cardinal CBO C-I-B-O

No, no, no, no. Is that who they end up electing? He ends up going up against Sixth is his nephew who was Giuliano della Rovert. So we get the De La Rovert showing back up again.

Rivera had a large contingent of voters from his uncle's cardinal appointments, so that worked out pretty well. Not only did he have all those appointments, but Rivera threw his weight behind Giovanni Serbo, which is the guy that you were talking about, who comes to Rodrigo for his support in exchange for the continued vice-chancellor position. So now Della Rivera has said, we're going to back Cibo. Sebo's like, yeah, that's great. I would like Rodrigo to give me his votes, too, so we can just sweep the board

of this whole thing. I'm going to make him vice-chance. Yeah, because they don't have the three-quarters vote necessary with just that one faction. No, no, no, two-thirds, yeah, is what they're going for. So he cleans up and he beats out this popular cardinal. His name was Marco Barbo. He becomes Pope, Innocent, the Eighth. That's a lot of innocence. And for a guy who's Pope Innocent the Eighth, he starts a war against Naples.

That, of course, draws the ire of Milan in Florence and Aragon, because now, they're seeing Pope Innocent use the papal authority to attack Naples. Of course, they're all going to stand up against there. Rodrigo is opposing this war because he's looking at it. He's like, well, shit, that's not great. Also, Innocent is speaking with France, and Rodrigo knows that every time France gets involved with something, they have the greatest military force on land. Yeah, France is definitely the military powerhouse in Europe.

Yeah. They don't want that. So luckily, innocent doesn't end up nailing down the alliance with France. France has this claim that both them and Spain both have this claim to Naples that I don't really understand, but they feel like it's legitimate. So we just have to kind of go with it. And this is going to be just constant in this story. So at this point, too, because people are looking at this essential war against Naples that Pope Innocent kind of declares,

Milan, Florence, and Aragon choose to support Naples. And at the same time, within the College of Cardinals and within the church, you have Rodrigo, who's basically leading this faction opposing this war that the papal states are also doing. That really ends up paying off when the war that the Pope ends up starting, he's forced to capitulate in that war. So all of a sudden, now the Pope has lost. and Rodrigo was the one inside the church being like, wouldn't have done it. He was the cooler head. Yeah, exactly. That cooler head in 1489 hosted a wedding between Lord Orsino Orsini, tough name there, and Giuliano Farnese.

Now, Orsini was 16, Farnese was 15. Thank God those two were close in age. Shortly after, Giuliana becomes the mistress of a 58-year-old Rodrigo. So a 15-year-old is now the mistress of a 58-year-old that is a cardinal who is trying to ascend to the papacy. Yeah, but this new pope doesn't know that he's fucked up. So now new pope, you know, it resets the slate. So now he can just do fucked up shit again and then go tell the pope and be like, hey, look how much money I made us last year. Yeah.

And at this point, Innocent ends up dying in 1492. Rob Ravrigo is 61. He's finally kind of to this age where this, next conclave is going to kind of be a make or break deal for him. Yeah. So in 1492, Pope Innocent actually makes Valencia an archdiocese. What that basically does is you can't just make an arch pope. You just can't promote someone to Arch Pope. What you do is, is basically say, hey, this place that this current diocese is now a metropolitan area. By upgrading it to that, it's then turning that into an archdiocese. and whoever is currently the bishop of that into an archbishop.

16 days after that happens, that's when an innocent kicks it. Huh, interesting. I don't know if it was poison. Could have been poison. Sounds like it might have been a good time for poison. I mean, it seems coincidental. I'm not saying again, not saying it is, but literally 16 days later, after someone has just been put into the position that is literally like right under Pope

in kind of the rankings of past. power, that's also a huge, like, feather in your cap or whatever the giant Pope had is called. But you're trying to think what it is? Yeah. It'll come to me. But, yeah. So the timing seems pretty, pretty odd. But, yeah, like you said, now we have another conclave.

And actually, before we get to that, let's take a bathroom break. Okay. Well, hello. Listen, while we had to the restroom and get ourselves something to drink, why don't you do something nice for yourselves? Head on over to patreon.com slash historically high and get signed up for a little bonus content.

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high. If you have any recommendations, you want to get to us, just want to reach out and say hello. You can hit us up on our email at historically high podcast, higah podcast at gmail.com. All right. And with that said, let's get back to the good stuff. Okay. So it is shit or get off the Pope time, right? Yeah, man.

Rodrigo. 1492. Shit or get off the Pope. If he waits again. then he might be that compromise pope that they're just hoping holds a place for a year the next time he has a chance of doing it age-wise. Not to mention the 15th century, anything over 60, you've got to be. Borrowed time. Yep, pretty much.

So the 1492 conclaves are three horse race. You have Rodrigo, who has by far away the fattest pockets. You have the Milanese candidate who is Asconcio Forza. You're going to see that name a whole lot during this episode's Forza. and his old foe, Giuliano de la Rovere, Borja bribed the fuck out of the Cardinals. Oh God, this thing was bought and paid for 100%. Around the time of innocent, his death, of the 27 Cardinals alive, no fewer than 10 of them were what they considered Cardinal nephews.

So that's people brought in from family. So no fewer than 10, 10 minimum. Eight were crown nominees, which means like, the king of France is like, this guy should be a bishop. Like him. Exactly. Four were Roman nobles. And one was a compensation pick to a family for services to the Holy See. So they were just like, hey, we did something really good for the church. Our Uncle Tim would like to be a bishop.

And they're like, I guess you're fucking bishop now, Tim. Uncle Tim was a cardinal to be named later in a trade. Listen, here's the thing. Tim can't keep a fucking job to save his life, and the family's kind of embarrassed. We're going to go ahead and send him to be a bishop, at least then he can try to do some good for the family. Likes God. Borderline loves God.

You've got to give him this position. But it's not like Rodrigo's money was the only factor in this, because Rovere was rumored to be backed by 200,000 gold ducats from Charles the eighth. So you have France. I love episodes where we get to talk about is duckets. Duggets is pretty sweet. He also said, or was said to have had 100,000 ducats from the Republic of Genoa. 300,000 ducats is an insane amount of money back then. And Borgia, still up against the 300,000 ducat that Rivera had pulls this off. Well, he's able to do because here's the thing.

You're either liquid or you're making promises. And when it comes down to promises of this other guy that's being bankrolled by the French, by the Republic of Genoa, that's money that he's got to go get. Now, Borge is basically like, well, how much are they offering you? I can't offer you that much, but I can offer you that right now. Like right now, as in before we cast our vote, I will go ahead and be able to have that for you. and ends up, they said, during the night, to pay forza. Sforza, the other candidate, the third horse in this race. Mm-hmm.

During the night. Yes, is when he wants a, he's basically like, here's the price for the, here's the price for the hat. This is what it's going to cost. During the night, I think they said four mule loads of silver were secretly transported, which I don't understand how that happens. You got a mule. loaded down with silver that you're just walking through the streets? Not quiet.

No. Not quiet at all. Have you ever worn changed with cargo pants? Yeah, man. Sforza, just for being one of the leading candidates in this race, gets four mule loads of silver in order to basically look at everybody that's backing him and say, hey, Rob Rigo is going to give us some titles. What is he giving you?

Don't worry about it. He gave me four don't know. Oh, you got four donkeys, huh? It's handing out of titles of diocese positions within the church that are going to make these guys rich. Doesn't he give his house? Sforza also gets his house in Rome. One of them. Because he doesn't need it.

Because he's going to be living within the papal housing and everything. Yeah, and not only is he going to be living in there. He's moving the whole damn family. Oh, yeah, he's bringing him in. Everybody except for the mistresses. Yeah. They show up. He goes out for that.

Yeah. Yeah. He goes through the secret tunnels for that. So you can imagine Rivera was pissed when he found out about this. And he probably was double pissed, maybe not knowing about the four mule loads of silver. But when Rodrigo ends up winning the papacy, Sforza becomes his vice chancellor. Do you think this is a situation where they keep reading it and you just see, why can't pronounce it, Robert? Yeah.

You just see him listening to it. and you see Rodrigo being, what? No. Seriously, it's me? All these people that Rovere thinks that he's bribed, he just hears more votes. And he's sitting there, Kenney's like, wait, I bribed 25 people and he already has, oh, shit. Here's the thing. This isn't just us like guessing how this, this is how this went down. Completely bought the Pope, the highest position in the Catholic Church. is literally just a bidding war. How much can we strap to these fucking mules

and get to this guy's house before midnight? And so August 11th, Rodrigo Borgia is elected and he takes on the name Alexander the 6th. Now, I'm going to have a shitload of trouble with this and I'm pretty sure Professor Chris is too. I want to stick with Rodrigo, but Alexander the 6th is probably going to come out. So if you can, just try to remember that that's the same man.

Yes. Maybe Borgia is a good middle position. No, because then we have to talk about the kids and it's going to get too convoluted. Fair. Yeah. So he begins his rule by building out this organized government and he has a pretty strict administration of justice within the papal states. He's kind of by the book in the beginning. He's just like, okay, okay, don't fuck up, Roddy.

All right. I can't let no. I know you're excited. Can't show your hand too soon. Ah, yes. it is it time for mass I will come out and I will greet the people before he starts getting a little bit comfortable

in the driver's seat because before he's been behind the curtain no one's been really paying attention to him now of a sudden he's his he's the front facing guy and it doesn't take long like you're saying nepotism is going to be again a huge thing it's a theme of this

he makes Cheseray an archbishop of Valencia at 17 years old pretty quick What the fuck has a 17-year-old done that somehow... No, no, no. Formerly illegitimate became legitimate. He had to have done something to earn that legitimacy, right?

No. And now he's made the Archbishop. He had to have done something to earn that, right? It's a rags to Rich's story and inspiration for all the kids. In the 10 years between when he became legitimized, when he became... Are your parents not married? You too can be Archbishop. Did you get legitimized because your dad married your mom?

No, no, he became Pope. That's what did it. It's just like how blatant it is. It's not even like, hey, Chess Raid, be cool, man. Like I literally just got into this seat. I'm pretty healthy. Give it 10 years, man. Before I make your Archbishop.

He's like, no, you're not even. I, it makes, make it make sense. Chessaray got the absentia payment basically with the Archbishop of Valencia. He hasn't made him head of the military though, right? No, not yet. That's Juan. Juan goes first. Yeah, we got to get

another kid in there. Before we get to Juan, we got to talk about, we're going to talk about so much bad shit that this forces, or that that Rodriguez does. I got to point out a couple interesting things that he did. So, he actually handles the Spanish claim to the new world and the Portuguese discovery of the African route to Asia with the Treaty of Tortoise. Now, we've talked about the Treaty of Tortoise a couple times in these episodes.

I had no idea that it was this guy because it was just Alexander the 6th that did it. I didn't know this was Rodrigo. I didn't know the story of the Borgias or anything like that to know that this was so important. So he's actually the guy that splits the expiration with the treaty between the two. he splits it at 370 leagues 1,300 miles, 2,100 kilometers west of the Cape Verde Islands. Is that just, are you just from fucking dart to the board at that point?

How are you picking that? I assume so, because he screwed up bad enough that he didn't realize that that line that he drew, that longitudinal line, cut off Brazil and gave that to Portugal. I love it because that's the reason why people in Brazil speak Portuguese and everybody else spoke Spanish. I always wonder that's like, well, it makes sense.

Of course, Portugal had that. But then you're like, but how did they keep that? When Spain had everything else, like, I would think one of them would have pushed the other one out. It was like, no, there was an invisible Pope line that was right here that said, no, like this side, Portugal, this side, Spain. And then they did the same thing in the Philippines. Yeah, Spain kind of pulled a nasty move on that being like, okay, well, you guys got Brazil, so we're going to take the Philippines. There's got to be a line on the other side. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, very quick move. Well, here's the other thing, too. the focus was keeping Portugal and Spain happy because you're thinking about it and you're like there were probably some seafaring places in Italy maybe Naples something like that where it wasn't just too you had France France had a Navy so why aren't you trying to keep France happy and get French on this exactly so the focus on keeping Portugal and Spain happy was because those were the two countries the church had the most influence in and they were going to make so much money in the new world

and then China the thing too there is this thing too there is this weird we've talked about it during the royals episode and all that kind of stuff between the church and england and england's just kind of like do we need you're okay it seems like we can make a church you guys looking back in your history are you sure this thing's even a church a lot better to ask for forgiveness than permission it seems like when it comes to england and then at the same time is england just like hold on a second you gave what to who like where where were we yeah you know what Just go claim some stuff and we'll say it was okay. Yeah, they were kind of given Carplanche, considering all that Spain and Portugal were given.

But again, it's filling the church coffers to be able to do this. So not only does it benefit Rodrigo, but it's also just kind of a cool little piece of history that he's involved in, that he split those two. Along with this, he kind of takes France headlong. And we're going to jump back a little bit in time and go back here later. but just to talk about how this whole thing plays out to where Rodrigo kind of fools France a little bit. So Ferdinand I of Naples was backed by Gian for Sforza as the rightful Duke of Milan, along with Florence and Venice.

Now Florence, you have the Medici family that was currently running Florence at the time, but they had a little bit of an issue because the Medici's were run out of Florence by France and by this man whose name, he was a Franciscan friar. His last name was Savonarola. And Savonarola was a doom and gloom.

Kind of, the end is coming. We all need to be prepared for this. We need to sluff away the extra good things in life that are sinful. He was like an old, like, friar, what you would think of like a friar. He was more of what you think of the principles of what, like, a Catholic cardinal, would be now a minimalist life, not a lot of trappings, like living humbly. That's kind of the stuff he was pushing. Which feels like a very complete juxtaposition to what Alexander the 6th was. But again, exactly, but that again, if you're looking at, because this ends up being a huge thing

that comes around, I'm only going to just even mention the word, but the nepotism, the corruption, the disregard for, and just like the very obvious fact that no one is really fun. following along with the Bible. It's just the brand that they're using. The cross just becomes the symbol that they can put on the book or whatever. That ends up leading to this huge groundswell of opposition

that boiled over with the Reformation. Here, and not that, you know, in here maybe like, what, 20 years? 25 years, something like that. From now, yeah. Hey, it's Martin Luther looking at the church and being like, hey, this is bad.

At the same time, that's not all in Alexander. All of these popes were in line of doing some pretty bad shit. I think what happened was because when Alexander gets, you know, ends his popedom or whatever you want to call it. His papacy. His papacy. Um, he's kind of looked upon fondly until like one or two popes down the road. Julius the second. When they're able to look back and be like, oh shit. Because again, things don't move quickly, but you already have people dissenting against the way things are doing like this guy. Sevenarola.

Sevenerola. And then kind of the second coming of that guy would be Martin Luther. Or someone that just took his ideas when there was more support for it and ran with it. Yeah. People were just fed up. They were tired. That's why the Reformation took hold is because these people in Germany were like, they're fucking up in Venet, or in Vatican City.

Yeah. So Sevenerola and the French are on the same side. they helped kick the Medici's out of Florence, and Savonarola is kind of ruling that kingdom. You have Charles the 8th that was a product of incest that ran so deep. Charles the 8th had 12 toes. Charles the 8th had six toes on each foot. Part of me almost which is it was like seven on one side, five on the other.

So he had one boot that was extra thick and then another boat or a boot that was really skinny. The fact it's on both feet, though. shows you, I think that it's not just an anomaly. It's definitely imbreeding. It's bred into him, yeah. Charles X. 8th is looking dead at Naples, and he's thinking to himself, well, we have a claim to this. So Charles VIII, supported by the Milanese, Ludovico Sforza, they were kind of looking at this situation in Milan and saying, well, we have somebody who's illegitimate. in Ludovico, we have Naples, who is backing Gianzforza, who's the rightful Duke of Milan.

We got B from Milan. Ferdinand of Naples is pushing the rightful guy in Milan against our guy. We have a claim to Naples. We have this ancient claim to Naples, so we're going to go down and take it. We're going to stop Ferdinand in his tracks. That also will line us up to make sure that we get our guy in in Milan. So just to kind of paint a picture of how Italy is stitched together at this point, starting at the bottom and working our way up. So Sicily would be part of the kingdom of Aragon.

So we have France right there. That's also like... So sorry, Spain. Yeah, Avignon. There we go. Then you have the Kingdom of Naples, which takes up probably about half the boot of Italy. Then you have the papal states, which go from coast to coast. so from the, I guess, the Adriatic over to whatever the other side of it is, the Sardinia side.

And then stretches not too far up, but it covers the entire. It separates the Naples from the rest of the Italian city-states. Then you have Florence. I'm skipping over a couple. Then you have like the Duchies of Ferrari and Modena. Then up from that you have Venice. to like the top right, Milan kind of in the center, and then wrapped around the coast is the Republic of Genoa.

The bankers. Yes. So a lot of these places are buffers between like France and these other places and the papal states. Those are kind of sandwiched right in the middle of Italy. Then you have the wild lands of Romania above that that are. Yes. That need a...

Lawless. ...wipped in shape. So to get rid of France, Ferdinand Charles VIII needs to go down and take Naples. Gian, the guy that Ferdinand was backing, may have been poisoned by Ludo. The illegitimate heir to the Milanese throote dup. Ferdinand ends up dying in 1494. Charles decides to exercise his claim to Naples anyway.

He ends up marching his French expeditionary force down through Italy. As he's traveling through Italy, everybody realizes is that Charles VIII leading this group of French soldiers, nobody that anybody wants to mess with. So they pretty much let him through, let him through all the way to Rome. And Charles VIII becomes the first Frenchman to intervene in Italian politics

since all the way back to Charlemagne's time. Pretty long time to go back. It's a pretty big feather in his cap. He's sort of received by Alexander in Rome as he pulled up and the castle, the Vatican City back then all the doors were closed and he asked to see Alexander and Alexander didn't

come out so Charles commanded that they fire the cannons and through one cannon blast it basically... I'm up! I'm up! It disintegrates a wall. Oh my God! Charles? They did not tell me you were here? Yeah, dude he's got to come down and be like, oh, I was napping. I didn't hear you.

Thank God you fired that cannon and destroyed this wall. They just said someone was here to see me and you know, they had they said it was you, I would have been right out here. Charles. Canons? Those are new. Charles seeing Alexander wrapped

in the Pope robes and looking all celestial ends up falling to his knees. Pope garb. Yeah. Charles kisses his feet. Of course Alexander tells him to raise to his feet. They shake hands.

They speak. Charles is just twitter-pated by getting to meet Rodrigo as the Pope. he says we're headed down to go ahead and start a crusade on the way down to the crusade we're going to take over Naples because the French force is going to be very hard to handle and I'm going to need a lot of ducats to get through there I'm going to need you to go ahead and give me no less the 19 donkeys that are carrying satchels of ducats I don't know why 19 had to be it maybe he was shooting for 20 so he would agree to 19 he Here's why I have an issue with this story.

Whose story do you think this is? Who's telling this story? I don't know. Who tells the story of the king of France, seeing him in his robes, and getting down and kissing his feet? Yeah, it's the church. And then being like, oh, by the way, 19 donkeys of your finest jewels, please. I feel like this is a Borgia dog. or just story. I'm not saying that he didn't meet him and everything like that. I'm just saying

you got to include the thing about sending him with 19, you know, loaded donkeys with all of these riches on it. But how do you, how do you explain the swing? Like, oh yeah, he totally asked me for this and I gave it to him because it cleared out the coffers of the church, but he totally kissed my feet and was in complete awe when he came here. Yeah, it's probably a little. Here's the other thing too. He kissed my feet, but I also had to send my son Chessaray with him as a envoy slash hostage. Cheseray ends up making off with nine of those 19 donkeys.

The second night, he sneaks up. He dresses up like a stable hand or something and takes off with nine of them and gets back to Rome like the next day. He said that he slept there that night and then he left the city limits immediately the next day to not try to bring any basically shade back on his. dad. Yes. And then Charles was fucking pissed.

He's like, I have a whole army. I can't just turn back. I'll get him on the way back. Yeah. So they end up marching down into Naples where the new leader of Naples hears that Charles VIII is coming. He's like, shit. What do we do here?

I got to go. So he ends up abdicating the throne. He clears out the coffers and ends up taking off. So during this time, as Charles is on this march down there, and you see, I believe it was King Alfonso II, go ahead and piss off out of Naples. You have Sevenerola just preaching against Alexander heavily, or heavily. He's just talking about how Charles VIII is coming to cleanse the church and make it a better place

and take Alexander prisoner. None of this is happening, but Savonarola is preaching this in Florence, and he's kind of making some headway. Alexander, not a big fan of this, ends up telling Florence, hey, if you guys don't catch this savenorola guy, I will excommunicate you. Florence is like, eh, we're actually

believing what he's saying, so you excommunicating us isn't that really that much of a big deal. And he goes, okay. You're a false pope, so you can't technically do that anyway. That doesn't work. I will make sure to take all of your trade away from all the papal states and make sure that you cannot trade with anybody else in Italy. And

the people of Florence are like, and we got to Vinci. Yeah. You want to lose out on that Da Vinci shit? Can't do that. Florence is looking around, finally fights Savonarola and turns him over to Alexander, who Sevenerola had this square where he routinely had people bring, like, the trappings of the world. Right, I thought you said that they believed him.

The Florentine people? Yeah. They did, but they believed in their trade and making money more than they believed into the church stuff. Ah. So that was... Hold on. So you're saying that this was a monetary decision, not a faith-based decision? Absolutely.

So things aren't just happening like this in the church. Well, at that point in time, you have to think if all of the Cardinals in the church are rich, poor people don't get into heaven. Because you also, we'll talk about something else that they do. Indulgences? Yes. Yes, we'll talk about those here. I'm so glad you, yeah. That's going to be a later to talk about.

Here's the thing, too. So when they turn over seven to rule and everything like that, Charles ended up. having to kind of abandon the campaign for Naples, right, and turn around and go home. What was it the cause that I forgot? So he gets down into Naples. He sees that Alphonseau II is gone. He sees that his son also flees the city.

So Charles VIII basically walks into Naples and there's no ruler. He said that he was met with the cheers and adulation of the Neapolitan people. Neapolitan people? I want to say that the Naples, but that's not right. That's Nepal. Yeah. Either way, whatever the people of Naples are called. He needs to be crowned King of Naples by Alexander.

So he goes ahead and writes Alexander a letter and he says, hey, I'm going to need you to rush down here. I'll pay for your travel to come down here so you can crown me king of Naples. Get a stipend. Yeah. Put you up. Alexander, doesn't answer. He's radio silence. And the reason that he's radio silence is because Alexander is looking at the same.

situation, he knows that there's a pretty good chance that Charles isn't going down to start this crusade that he's talking about. And he's going to have to make it down to France a different way. So he creates something called the Holy League. And the Holy League was created to fight the Turks. But between Venice, Milan, Spain, and the papal troops, they're basically created to basically make a wall to stop Charles from getting back up to France. He's like, this is who we were going to fight the Crusades with, but we haven't had a tune-up game in a while, so we should probably have like a little pre-war war, because this is what's known as the first Italian war, right? I believe so.

So yeah, a little tune-up game. So let's go ahead. We've already waited. And here's the thing just from a strategy standpoint. France is right now being down in Naples is cut off by all of the papal states completely in southern Italy. All of the supply lines dry out. And on the other side, right next to the very tip of Naples, are the Spanish on Sicily.

If they find out that the French are trapped down there or something like that, they have people they can send over if they want to fuck with the French. And Charles knew. Charles, once he gets down there, he realizes that he doesn't have enough boats to transport all of his troops down to start the crusade. And it turns out the French troops are a little too hansy in Naples. They kind of start to turn their respect for the French into a little bit of hate. Charles says, well, Alexander's not coming down to Crown me. We can just do the coronation here.

As soon as we do that, we probably need to head back to France. Our supply lines have been cut, so probably they have something waiting for us up there. The faster we get through there, the better. Charles brought 30,000 troops, 30,000 French and Swiss guard troops down into Naples. he's returning with about 15,000 troops up that way. But those 15,000 troops are still the best troops in the world at that point in time. They have archers. They have everybody at their disposal.

Not to mention, they have like the most technologically sound cannons of the day. And it's not like he lost 15,000 guys on the way down there. He's leaving an occupation force because he's like, I still want this. This is still mine. I just don't want to have to be here. That's a thing. I want to go back to France, and this will just be the place that I can also collect money from. It's getting hot.

Getting hot down here. Don't really like it. So, Charles decides to head back up. He takes around 15,000 of these forces, and he ends up on May 15th. I believe this is 1495. Doesn't matter, because we'll be going back in history here a little bit. They leave Naples. They meet forces at the Battle of Fornovo.

and Battle of Fornovo sees 3 to 4,000 Holy League forces perish against anywhere from about 100 to 1,000 French losses. They get whacked. Not only do they get whacked, but half of these holy forces end up leaving to follow the French baggage train in hopes to score some of that sweet French silver

and maybe even some of the Pope's silver that he had given them to get down there. If any of you see me, The mules are the priority. Charles ends up making it back to France by November. And this is a time when he's going back to lick his wounds. We're going to flash to more of the Borja family stuff now for a little bit until we can get caught back up because there's a lot of Borja intrigue that goes into this family. It's not just robbery go.

You can't skip over this. This conflict is when we saw the first picture outbreak of syphilis. Ooh. Yeah. Okay, so the French, how did they get it? I guess when they were down there. So the Spanish had to have given it to the people in Naples. The people in Naples gave it to the French.

Maybe the people in Naples just had it, and they were just keeping that shit down there in Naples. And the French came down there, caught it, and then brought it back all the way across Italy and into France. It also saw, didn't this war see the overthrow of the Medici? That was Savonarola Okay Sevenerola was the one that kicked the Medici out

So that was how he got his influence in Florence Yeah It was just a very interesting time But at the same time Alexander kind of bowed up And was able to basically put a feather in his cap That he'd push the French out of Italy Even though it was more like Charles VIII

knew that he probably needed to get back home They still had control of Naples So that wasn't that big of a deal getting to the rest of the Borgia family it really starts to turn into a situation where Rodrigo is because of the situation that he's in and the family that he came from he doesn't have generational wealth

he doesn't have a kingdom or a thiefdom to be able to pass on so the difference between the Borgia family and say the Medici's that we've been talking about is that the Medici's were bankers they had enough money to be able to lend out to be able to get this power. There was always going to be basically a Medici war chest that was full of these gold buckets that they were just always going to have at their disposal. It was like, think of it in the sense of, I guess, of like when Pittsburgh was booming as a steel town,

you had like a family that was owned a lot of the steel mills and everything like that. Yeah, so they were the most powerful influential families in these areas. And so naturally, they would just be the, ones to be able to buy themselves or find themselves in positions of power. You also have families like, I want to say it's called the Orsino, or Orsino. Orsini. The Orsini, who was from another section. And so you do have these families who also have strong presence because, again, they want to have hands in the most influential places. You have family members that are actually in the College of Cardinals and within layers of the church. But they also have kingdoms that they can pass on as

generational wealth. Correct. The Borgias don't have generational wealth. All the lands been snatched up. Yeah. They have basically what the papacy provides them, but you can't generationally hand down the papacy. Not yet. Not yet.

But you need to be able to put the Borgias on the map. So once the papacy ends up leaving the Borgia line, you still have your own basically kingdom. So if you aren't in a position where you have established yourself within a certain area to rise to that position of prominence, you got to just kick the people of prominence out and end up taking their shit, right? Or you marry your 13-year-old daughter into their family. That's right.

So at the age of 13, Luchesa gets married off to Giovanni Sforza. That name Sforza is back again. Is it Lucrezia? Lucrezia, that sounds better. Lucrezia. She gets married off to Giovanni Sforza. This was to Forgeon. alliance with the Milanese people because this forces were in power in Milan.

October 26, 1496, son Juan is made the captain of the general papal army. Now, Juan was, I would say, probably Rodriguez's favorite child just because he didn't make him get into the church stuff. So that's going to be a pretty big part of it. Part of me wonders why he thinks that that's why there's that whole thing about like, was it 44 or not 44. 74, 76. Was he the first kid or was he the second kid?

Because you're like, I can totally see the first kid, him being like, oh, you're my, I know you don't want to do this. I'm not going to make you do it. And the second kid comes on, he's like, you're going to do it. I need you. You're going to do it. I'm going to need you in the church. Yeah. You're going to be in the church.

Your older or younger brother is going to be General of the Papal Army, which is something that Chesaire wanted. He wanted bad, but he got forced into the church at what, seven? So he didn't really have this choice. Whereas you have Juan that's made the general captain, but he was not a soldier. He performed poorly in leadership and battle, just really any sort of logistics. He wasn't good. It's the top, it's the most powerful position because you're in charge of the enforcement arm, basically, of the church that can be given to somebody that I think is not,

technically a I guess you say man of the cloth, right? Doesn't have to be. Well, then you probably don't want a man on the cloth leading mass murder. That doesn't look good. No, you do, because he end up making Cheseret at some point. Well, he has to walk away. Who do you think leads the armies

in like the Crusades? Those are kings and all ever, well, I guess those aren't popes, yeah. Yeah. That's the difference is you want to call him a king, but he's just not. Genocide's a royal gang. Of royal game. So being a bad leader

He gets propped up by all these other military leaders And these alliances There was a man named Guido Baldo De Montfero I love the fact Some of these names are awesome Guidobaldo is It's incredible

But Montferido is able to carry him In some of these battles Until Montferro gets wounded And hands them off to Juan And those usually end up in a loss But that didn't deter Because

What do I do? What do I do? There were victories that he wrote on the backs of some of these other great generals, and he let everybody know. He was just the most prideful dick about any of his achievements. And this was to anybody that would listen to the people that wouldn't. Not to mention, you have his brother Cheseray, who's having to listen to his brother talk about his military prowess and how good he is,

knowing that he's a shit military leader. He's not making friends outside of his family. He's not making friends inside of his family. And meanwhile, Rodrigo was looking. at him like he's the golden child. He's just sitting there talking to Chesbray. He's like, hey, have you ever had sex in public? Oh, that's right. You can't.

You should try it. It's so good. Chesbury's like, I get my dick wet too. You don't speak to me that way. I know my man in the class. That actually makes me cooler. You're a priest. I know you don't. You know you people can't do that. Well, that's where we run into Juan's untimely

demise. So on the night of June 14th, 1497, as they were leaving a family gathering. Juan ends up peeling off from his brother Cheseray and his men to, quote, unquote, go find some entertainment elsewhere. I think they were actually heading off for Rome. So after a party, Chesteray and... Were they in Rome?

I think they were somewhere else, like outside of Rome a couple days or something like that. Because they said that they rode with three guards. So they were going somewhere. And then, yeah, when they get there, the story is, Juan's just like, no, man, I'm just going to take off by myself. and, you know, just walk the town. He's going to get his dick wet. Yeah, that's what they said.

But, yeah, one doesn't show up the next day. It's a problem. Rodrigo sends out search parties looking for him. Basically, everybody is concerned because if the Pope's dead sun shows up in their neighborhood, there will be retribution. This was at a time, too, when, like, AC is not a thing, obviously. So what weather, what temperature it is, that's what temperature it is.

So times when it would get really hot, you would have the Pope going to different places. I think that's what the circumstance here is. It was at the time of the year while they were at their Pope vacation home or whatever you want to call it. And that's why they were going back to Rome. June was probably pretty warm in Rome, so they were probably trying to get out there. So Rodrigo ends up sending a bunch of these Spanish troops to Rome because he's Spanish. And so he has these just non, it's not all just... Italians, because again, that's the whole problem that he had getting elected was like they're not going to really like, he feels like the Spanish can protect him a little bit more, I guess. He just wants guys more loyal to him. I would want that too. And this also creates a lot of animosity because you have these guys that are like part of his personal security force that are Spanish that are coming in and either living within or around the Vatican. They have a certain authority that these Italian people just in Rome are like, you're not.

fucking from here. You're from Spain and you just think that you can do whatever you want here. So there is some animosity there. So seeing these Spanish troops come into Rome actually causes kind of a big deal because like you said, they're just like, fuck, if he finds his kid dead here, we're all going to pay for it.

Well, they didn't find him in a community. They didn't find him in a house. They actually had to fish his body out of the Tiber River. So he did get his dick wet. He did get his dick wet, yes. Immediately, people started questioning, looking for the perpetrator, there was actually a timber merchant that found his body. And as the timber merchant

was questioned, this is how you know that Rome was a pretty rough place. Timber merchant, obviously, he's floating big trees down the river. He's getting them off there. He's cutting up the wood and selling it. They asked the timber merchant why he didn't say anything sooner. And he said something along the lines of, do you know how many hundreds of bodies that I've seen floating down the Tiber River that were of no consequence to anybody? Why would this one of anybody be the one that I would try to point out in report. They're normally not so fancy. Yeah. That was his reasoning exactly. He's like, that's why

I actually dragged this one over. I saw something sparkle on it. Yeah. He wasn't wearing a silver bracelet, I promise. Yeah, he had just been stabbed repeatedly. Now, if you're thinking about this story, logically, the last person

to see him is probably the person that did it. Chester's like, yeah, I guess I was the last person to see him. but he was riding off by himself and I went that way these guys the work for me will tell you the tricky thing about Juan though was nobody liked him so the list of potential suspects

no Juan liked him the list of potential suspects is a mile long you have the husbands of the women that Juan had cheated with you have people in his own military that Juan was maybe handing out some punishments that weren't necessary. Can you describe the killer? Male. Somewhere between 5 foot 4 and 6 foot 6.

Somewhere between 110 to, I don't know, 215, 50 pounds. Well, that could describe almost anyone. Exactly. Which might have been pretty much everybody that wanted a shot at Juan. Now, it's never proven. They wanted him one-on-one. They wanted Juan gone. to kind of put a little bow on this because they end up never holding anybody accountable for Juan's death,

which in and of itself is the biggest clue that you're going to get that this was probably Cheseray that killed his brother. Because if the Pope's son, as weird as that is to say, ends up being found dead, there's going to be somebody that's blamed for it, right? Whether they did it or not, they're going to be blamed. I mean, and I get your point. Like someone's got to either it's something they got to cover up or somebody would definitely pay for this. Yeah. At the same time, who do you go after? Because you go after just a normal person that you know for a fact didn't do it.

What are you trying to go ahead and send a message for there? You already know it wasn't really one of these people that did it. And then you risk essentially causing some type of uproar or something happening. if you're the Pope and you're like, oh yeah, we're going to kill this guy. Also, your son was killed by your other son. Maybe we just let sleeping dogs lie and not charge anybody with this. It feels like kind of the open-ended point that this could be Cheseray that did it because nobody was convicted of doing it.

Yeah, just a very interesting way that that goes. To get back to Cheseray, he was a cardinal, as we talked about, and he became the first one to be relieved of the cloth that I think anybody really knew about. And part of the reason why he was relieved of the cloth is because the untimely death of Charles VIII. Do you know how Charles VIII died? Yes. He was walking through a stone archway or like doorframe and just like cracked his head really bad right up. He hit his head walking through a stone doorway and ended up dying from that. As Charles dies, you see the ascendancy of Louis X12th.

It takes the French throne. Now, Louis XIV was already married. But there was a Duchess of Brittany that had become available, and France would have liked to have had Brittany under their control. So his claim to Brittany would be marrying the Duchess of Brittany. In order to gain that territory, he had to request an annulment of his marriage, and then he had to request to be married to the Duchess of Brittany. Real quick before that, I can't believe I forgot this part.

So Cheseray ended up going down to Naples at some point here to crown the ruler of Frederico. And during that time, I guess that was something that he could have done as like, I don't know if you had to necessarily, maybe it was the best to have the Pope, but you could have like an archbishop do it too. It was the papal legate.

They sent him down there. Okay, that's right. So when he was down there, he tells Frederico, he's like, hey, like, so I should totally like marry your daughter, right? That way, like, I could then be king of Naples after you. Wouldn't that be awesome? And he's like, aren't you a cardinal? He's like, yeah.

And he's like, you guys, like, that's one of the things. Like, you guys aren't supposed to get married. What do you mean you want to marry my daughter? Not a lot of rules for you, fellas. That's one of them. Yeah, he's like, no. And he's like, listen, I'm sure we could work something out. So Frederico writes a letter to Alexander and is like, hey, your son was being kind of weird.

Basically, he was totally saying that he should marry my daughter. And Alexander's like, oh, that is great. But like, what if that was able to be done? Like, that would be great, right? Like, I'm the Pope. He can marry your daughter, King of Naples, all that kind of stuff. So Rodrigo, again, is looking at our, yeah, I keep switching between Alexander and Rodrigo. Rodrigo is looking at these ways to establish this Borgia power base, like you said, not being reliant on the church alone.

And Chesere was his way of doing that. So they do consider ways to try to do this. He goes in front of, because he has to go in front of the College of Cardinals, I think, to get this thing pushed through. You can't just be like, hey, I made you a Cardinals. I'm on making you a cardinal. It wasn't a Pope decision that could be done. So they end up voting against him. I mean like, no, because what you're trying to do is basically take the popeness or not popeness, but the bishopness or the title off of him. You're doing it because you don't want him to have it for this reason of him getting married. But if we give you this

ability, you can then use that on anybody to just simply remove that cardinal status, regardless of whatever reason you're wanting to do it. So they've, vote against it. It goes to a smaller tribunal of more, I guess, lenient popes that would end up agreeing on this. Before that happens, he is sent on another papal legate to go to France to deal with this Louis Xilth situation. In exchange for the annulment, he wanted a wife, like we were talking about. after his father would release him

after one's death he ends up being released from the papacy because they've, or not the papacy, but the cardinalship because they found this group of cardinals that was willing to do this. I'm sure because Alexander greased those wheels again. Yeah. Or they were already in his corridor side or whatever.

Gave more bishoprics, whatever they needed to make that money happen. So he ends up being stripped of that. along with later on taking Juan's position as the head of the papal forces, he ends up marrying this French princess named Charlotte de Albert. That's a pretty big deal

because he didn't get this marriage in Naples, but now he's married into the French monarchy. So he's basically you know, he needed Alexander to grant him or at least King Louis needed him to grant the divorce. Yeah.

So one of the conditions that he agreed to is if Louis actually becomes like a patron and supports his future future political plans. Didn't tell him what they were. Just as basically like, I need you to write me a favor, blank check. I'll call upon it when I need to. So he also win, and I don't, this wasn't the favor, but when Chesteray was a relief from being the cardinal, Alexander actually asked Louis to pressure. Frederico's daughter into marrying Chesiree. That wasn't Charlotte, right?

No, no, no, no. That wasn't Charlotte. Now, Cheseray also wants to marry, not Charlotte, it was someone else, but also wants to marry into the French court. So the woman that he was going after wasn't having it, was in love with someone else. So Cheseray is going to Louis, who, despite the fact that Cheseray's the guy that escaped Louis, to Louis a few years back and took off with... He escaped Louis' dad. Oh, that's right. Yeah, because Charles met his untimely ending.

That's right. Okay. The stone. He's like, didn't you escape? He's like, no, I don't know who that guy was, man. Definitely didn't do that to your dad. But he wants Louis to basically be like, hey, can you have this? You know, we're boys and everything.

Can you have her marry me? He's like, yeah, man, we don't really... I don't do that. I mean, my dad might have done that. I always thought it was a little weird. but I'm not going to force this woman to marry you, but I do have Charlotte whose mom was related to like you said, Anna Brittany.

Yeah, not a bad move. Not a bad second choice, I guess third choice at that point in time. So you have Cheseray, who's now a married man, an ex-cardinal who is now a married man, and he's the head of the papal forces. It's pretty good come up for Cheseray.

Well, and Louis also gave him command of this, like, elite branch of like French troops or something. I believe it was 300 cavalry and 400 or 4,000 Swiss infantry. Yeah. Pretty good numbers. If you want to go fuck some stuff up. Especially because again, not a United Italy where it's all these large forces. It's just what these little duchies can produce as defense forces. Yeah.

And you have again, what the French can do. They've established that they're the best fighting force. Want those guys on your side. 1497. Lucrezia or Lucrezia. had her marriage to Giovanni annulled by her father through a little bit of a loophole. The Milanese alliance just wasn't that important anymore. He had to figure out a way to basically take his daughter chess piece off of the board so it can be placed somewhere else.

And of course, Giovanni isn't too happy about this. Giovanni is, he's standing up for himself. He's saying, you can't do this, we're married, we love each other. you don't do this. Not Giovanni. He's dead. This is Giovanni that's married to this is Sforza. And Sforza is basically telling him, no, this isn't going to happen.

And Alexander's saying, well, yeah, well, I got to figure out how to do this. How do I annul this marriage? How do I make this marriage not happen? It's not consecrated. Consumated. Consumated. Consumated. Is it?

Consumated is like, if you like bless something, I thought. Consumate. Okay, consummated. If they didn't fuck, there you go. Then the marriage can't be held up. So he knows this marriage on the fact that it has been consummated.

Telling the world that Giovanni's dick does not work. He has to be like, listen, man, I'm going to need you to come out and say your dick doesn't work. It's like, what do you mean? He's like, I'm the Pope. Get out there and tell him your dick doesn't work. Or I'm going to do it.

If you tell him, maybe it'll stay kind of quiet. If the Pope says it, they're going to know it's true. In the three years you guys were married you didn't fuck my daughter once. No, no, I did it a bunch of times. It doesn't matter. That's not what you're telling everybody. Couldn't get hard. So, in response

to this, Giovanni starts spreading this rumor that the reason that he wants this marriage annulled is because Alexander wants his daughter for himself. And all of these rumors of incest just start flowing through Rome and flowing through Italy.

They already know this is like a corrupt system that they're working with in here and everything. Ancest isn't a bridge too far. No, it truly is not, especially when you're still looking back. You're like, did Cheseret kill Juan? And now we're worried about the Pope banging his own daughter. It kind of fits. It fits that lineup. And to give Lucreza credit, she didn't want this to happen.

I don't think she did. She doesn't seem to be too broken up when it does. but also at the same time, I'm sure being shuffled around as a woman wasn't out of the question back then. It was probably the norm. At the same time, you just want to probably find a little bit of stability. Yeah. You don't want to go back into that crazy man's court.

There's two ways that history kind of looks on Lucrez. And it's either one side or it's like a vastly different polar opposite. So one is like, was she in on all of this? Was she just another member of the family that was doing like poisoning? and all this kind of stuff was she basically like someone that they could never suspect, but she was also doing the dirty shit, or like most women were treated back then, what she used as a form of like a bargaining chip or a form of currency.

Based on kind of what she goes through, I don't really think that she would be in a position where she would want to do the family any favors based on what the family does to her. Yeah. Yeah. And after the marriage is an old Lucrezia moves back to Rome, and she takes up with Rodriguez Chamberlain, his name was Pedro Calderon. Calderon's body would then later be fished out of the Tiber River. They were sensing a trend.

Maybe Juan getting stabbed and thrown into the Tiber River, and then Pedro Calderon being killed and thrown into the Tiber River. Maybe the same person? I mean Could be Cheseray maybe So you're just saying that anyone that gets thrown into the Tiber Is an automatic victim of Chesteray That's like his calling card How did we know most of Ridgeway's kills

Or strangled to death He's got a signature move And that's kill and throw in the Tiber River This won't be the last time we visit the Tiber River For a death that's related to Chessaray So Seems like Chessaray is pretty protected of his sister after what happens to Calderon.

But Lucrezia is back on the market again. 1498, she marries the Neapolitan Duke, that must be it, because that's how I have it written down. So the Duke of Naples, Alfonso of Aragon. So we have Aragon, Spain. So Spain is in control of Naples. Sounds to me like that's where we are. They did kind of truly love each other.

I believe at this point in time Lucrezia was 18. He might have been 17, so they were pretty close in age, and I think they really did get along well enough to where Lucretti was pregnant twice. She ended up having one son with him with Alfonso. But there was a problem because Louis

not really a fan of the Spanish Duke of Naples, considering that he thinks his family has a claim on Naples. He ends up thinking that Alfonso is basically a Spanish spy that's sitting in their family, a Neapolitan spy in the family. In the Borgia family. Yes.

Louis had thrown Chessaray, that group of French soldiers for his personal use. After allowing that marriage, and that forged this strong relationship with the papacy, Louis's pretty much in the papacy's pocket or vice versa with the way that it works. It's just a weird working. It's strange bedfellows. Yeah, and with that happening, You can't have a Spanish Neapolitan person in the court. Louis's not going to allow Alonso to be married to Lucrezia.

Yeah, I don't necessarily think it was a situation where he obviously just doesn't want them to have any bargaining chip or have anything that could potentially take allies of his and make them not as likely to help them. he wants to take out any type of like what am I trying to say um claim it to the throne not claimant um man i can't i can't figure out why i can't think about this so had him and lucrezia their child would have the claim to that throne right yeah would have the claim to the throne in naples correct which would mean that they would be protected by the pope because it would be the pope's grandkid yeah just not good for business yes all the way around any way that you strike it it's bad for the French. Can't have the Pope having any biases towards something is what I was trying to get at.

And so, Alonso fucks off. He leaves town. He gets the hell out of there. Well, he's gone. Both Rod and Cheseret kind of have eyes that are turning to Romania. This is supposed to, Romagna, this

wild area, will be brought to tame by the Borgia family via Chesserae, and this will become kind of like the Borgia fiefdom. I want to say, kingdom, but they're planning on stealing it, so I feel like thiefdom's probably a better word to use.

They would need French support for this task. That means that Alfonso has to go. So he ends up fleeing, I believe I said, in 1499 after they lost their first child. He returns July 15th to 1500, and

he was promptly attacked by three hired killers on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. There was something that happened in France, I believe, because Cheseray, again, there's like trying to keep track of these people. They're not in the same place. So, like, Cheseray is moving all around, like trying to start shit and everything. Lucretia is just wants to fucking be married and do shit.

And her husbands have to keep getting driven off and everything. And then you have whatever Rodrigo's doing. So three different aspects, some of them a little more active than the others. But one of the things they do is Cheseret Marches on Milan. I believe he does that with Louis. That's a bad thing for the Sforza's, especially after they just lost Luce Tia. Mm-hmm. So Cheseray offers, this is where he first offers Da Vinci a job.

He ends up meeting him in Milan and offers him a job, and Da Vinci ends up declining. This is where after that, they then set their eyes because he's already up there in Milan, where they start talking about Romania. So Milan ends up getting secured. And then this is also when Cheser's... Ray's wife has a baby girl, but his wife again is French. So Louis's like, you know what? I'll go ahead and keep them up here with me.

That's right. Because you're a bored. And despite the fact that I like you, you're still fucking shady as fuck. And so they're going to go ahead and stay up in my court just so I can keep you in line. I like you. I don't trust you. Exactly. So yeah.

Lucretia's poor husband Alonzo stabbed literally in Vatican City. On the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. So he lives. He fights these guys off. He's in, I think, the royal apartments. It's a month later. He's still recovering from stab wounds. He's in bed. Lucretzi is with him and knock, knock at the door.

She goes to the door. There's this guy. I think it's one of Cheseret's. It's heavy. It's heavy. Micheletto Corrella And is basically like, hey, Cheseray needs to talk to you, he needs you to come down to see him. She's like, no, no, he can come up here or anything.

Alphonse was recovering. I'd like to stay close. He's like, no, you need to go down and talk to Chesreie. Basically forces her to go down there. And then he's like, I'll look after him. I'll make sure I keep an eye on him and proceeds to strangle this dude in his bed and killing him. apparently he thought that he was immune to stabbing, so he just decided to get his hands dirty.

And then what was the reason? Didn't Cheseray say something like he tried to attack me, or he tried to attack him? Yeah, the stab victim tried to attack the guy that was coming into his room. The heavy, yeah. It's convenient story. But now, you know, give or take,

what that's maybe three people under Cheseray's belt that are very close personal contact. Couldn't just let me throw you in the river after you died on the stab. Yeah, if they found Alfonso in the river, we would have had an answer to the first two murders. They tried to stab me by the river and throw me in. Huh, interesting. They chased me all the way back to the steps.

1,500 was a massive year for the payable budget, because 1,500 is the Jubilee. 1,500 years since the birth of Jesus Christ. It's also the year I think that Cheseret gets syphilis. everybody got something different out of the Jubilee but celebrating the Jubilee a little hard aren't you this uh this big grand celebration for the entire year is wrapped around an Easter sermon

that Rodrigo gives that they said an estimated 200,000 pilgrims made their way into Rome to listen to this thing and if you need to sponsor Chessoray to go in and take out Romagna, it's going to be good to have those papal coffers full. You're going to need a lot of money to go to war. And the Jubilee, Jesus basically provides all of this extra money for the church to be able to sponsor this.

And Rodriguez ends up eventually making a declaration that all the church aid. Huh? Like live aid. Yeah, church aid. He's going to walk on water. Everybody watch. Freddie Mercury actually did try to do. then. Well, I don't know if he's Jesus, but he was...

The voice of an angel. He did have the voice of an angel, that's for sure. In order to make this deal with Romaniwa work a little bit better, Rodrigo ends up making a declaration that all of the vicares of Romagna, basically all of the leaders in Romania of all these towns, villages, these kind of minor kings. Cough it up. Be deposed, or be deposed. Not disposed. Deposed. And may be disposed for some of them. depose them to dispose their money.

Exactly. Rodrigo sends Cheseray to capture the two towns of Amola and Forti. The area was ruled by this woman named Catarina Sforza. Katerina Sforza sounds like she could potentially be a candidate for Bad Bich's History. She looked like a fighter queen. And at this point in time, I mean, a woman ruler isn't exactly commonplace. so she probably had to do some things to earn that position. And she damn near gets Cheseray.

So they have surrounded her castle, her stronghold. And she walks out to speak to Cheseray, and Cheseray says, I promise you, if you surrender now, you will be safe. And basically, Sforza says, no. I won't be safe. why don't you come into my fortress and if you come into my fortress you and I can have a discussion about this

and we can figure out some terms to where I don't die by the guy who's strangled your brother-in-law let's go in and do this is there a river around here so Cheseray thinking well this is going to work out just fine ends up trying to ride his horse up into this fortress

as he's moving along the drawbridge he feels the drawbridge move and bails off of his horse. His horse gets pulled into the stronghold by the drawbridge. He ends up landing in the moat, hurts himself a little bit, ends up walking back to the French cannons that he has, just as give her hell, boys. And they end up lighting up this fortress to the point where Sforza just walks out. She's like, okay, the surrender deal is back on the table, right?

Take me in. You guys can have these two towns. Not so much. It's just a The way that this all happens He's Cheseray becomes probably the most interesting figure And one because he goes out

And he's a doer in a lot of this stuff But two He's got Machiavelli following him And documenting everything that he's doing And Machiavelli An interesting author Somebody that I'm sure will end up doing an episode on That'll probably have a fat portion

Of Cheseray knowledge in it but he doesn't know a whole lot about military prowess he he's in these situations where when he's writing about cheseray he sees him pulling off these daring capers and these captures and kind of outsmarting some of his people but cheseray's not the most apt leader he he tends to try to bluff a lot of people out of these positions to get a hold of some of these areas i think a lot of it too is he's just like again he's running a force of like trained french and like swiss troops he's got french cannons and things he's punching down in every single one of these engagements true very true um he does end up taking these two towns and after he ends up capturing sforza takes her fortress

he heads back to Rome soon as they're I believe this was during the Jubilee time is when he ends up going back for this spends a couple weeks down there and then Cicere with more money from the Jubilee ends up heading back up to Romagna

to fuck some stuff up do you feel like because there's the term like when someone describes something as Machiavellian so like it's an adjective cunning scheming unscrupulous especially in politics this is exactly what this is.

Is this where we get the inspiration for him to write these Machiavellian type, you know, stories? Well, I believe he writes the prince about Chesa Ray, and there's a couple of his books that he does that I think all kind of have similar themes to them. I don't know why Tupac named himself Machiavelli. I need to look into that a little bit more. We'll figure that out in that episode, I'm sure.

Either the Tupac episode or Mons. I was going to see which one, yeah. One of the two. both. He ends up setting back out to fuck up Romagna. Lucrezia's first husband, Giovanni, is ousted from Pizarro. Romini is then taken, and Fianza just goes ahead and surrenders. They don't want any of the heat. They just want to let it go.

The young Lord Manfredi that was running Fianza ends up being drowned in the Tiber River. Chasaray was the one that captured him, and he had up drowned in the Tiber River. Yeah. Am I laying that on enough? Yes, he likes to drown people. So we can agree that he killed his brother, right?

Yes, I did not, did I make it? No, I'm just, okay, yes. I want to clarify, he definitely got the guy that Lucrezia was banging the chamberlain, because he was found in the river too. And now he does it a third time. This is his strategy of killing these people. Chess Ray was crowned Duke of Romagna in May 15, no one by his father.

Now they have this area, this kingdom. He was then hired by Florence. And this is the second time that Cheseray ends up being in contact with Da Vinci. Da Vinci didn't hang on to him the first time. He wanted to stick around in Florence and see what was going on. Now that he's Duke of Romania and Florence hires him basically as a mercenary, he goes to DaVinci and he's like, would you like to be my military architect? And Da Vinci says, yes.

Da Vinci, this is, I believe, when we were talking about the bird's eye views, the birds birds eye maps that he was drawing in these towns. Yeah, and then also, like, wasn't this the situation where he, they couldn't get across, like, a little thing of water, and he built the bridge without any connecting joints or anything like that. It was just all held together by the weight of it. We had no idea when we were doing the Da Vinci episode. Yeah.

I think that he was building it for. Yeah, it was for Cheseray. He would end up building him a couple seed weapons that they would use later on, too. So Da Vinci was, the fact that he crosses into this episode more than once is pretty incredible. I mean, it's Rome and the Renaissance, so it shouldn't be that incredible. But it's cool to see him again. Looking to legitimize the Borgia family, Rodriguez, tries marrying Lucretza to a member of a prominent, upstanding Ferrara family, the Dei family.

And the Dei family had a very long lineage in Italy. they were well respected they were very rich they were pretty pious people and when the deistate people realized what Alexander was doing they all just looked at each other and said nah we don't want this stain on our family

I think he's also doing that too because the Romania or Romagna area being further up north that's where you're going to have to try to make you're going to try to get as far north as you can to start making allies and marry yourself into that because then you can support each other.

Ferrar in that area to try to protect your kingdom. Today's Day family wasn't having it. They knew the reputation of the Borgia family at this point. Also, somehow Alexander was trying to pass along that his daughter Lucrezia was still a virgin, which age-wise, I think she's pretty close, but the fact that she's been married two other times, I guess the first one you wipe off the map. I got a kid with the second guy, didn't she? Yeah.

I don't know how public that was. that that happened. Because it wasn't like they threw that on the front page right after they choked to death the husband. Yeah. The Dei family goes to France, to Louis, and they say, hey, how do we say no to the Pope? And Louis says, we'll make him an offer for a dowry

that he can't give you and that you can't refuse. Yeah, make it so outrageous that it'll be worth it if he says yes. And if not, then, you know, set that, at that bar high. Turns out. Roddy's game. Turns out Roddy threw this gigantic

dowry at the Deiastay family to the point where they just couldn't say no. He's like, I'm down to clown. Yeah. And this is a marriage that gets very, very weird from the start because December 30th, 1501, Lucrezia was married by proxy to Alfonso Deieste.

So not only is she marrying another Alfonso, like her second husband, she is marrying his brother in Rome is a proxy stand-in because her husband didn't want to travel to Rome to marry her. He's scared of fucking... What happened to the last Alfonso that was in Rome

that was married to her? But at the same time, you've got to think that Alexander was talking to Cheseret, like, hey, let's not choke this one out. This guy's a member of a pretty prestigious family. We can't just go along murdering folks. I think the other one was a member of a prestigious family, too, wasn't he? Yeah, fair.

You're right. I guess that didn't matter But after they're married by proxy Which is still confusing to me She ends up arriving in Ferrara on February 2nd You may now kiss your brother's husband Yeah She's still this virgin

Clad and white that shows up there And she would end up giving birth to six children With deistay She ends up giving them an heir She becomes a Duchess of Barrera in 1505. She had more than a few partners, as did Alonso or Alfonso. They both got along with the extra people in their marriage pretty well.

They stayed married the whole entire time. She becomes this crazy, industrious lady, where she starts shipping in water buffalo, I believe, from, like, Florence, and making a little mozzarella-making company. She's... Water buffalo? Buffalo. Buffalo milk to make the mozzarella.

I didn't not know that. Yeah, so whenever you see like Buffalo mozzarella, it's because it was made from Buffalo's milk. So they got Buffaloes from Africa, water buffalo. I think they came from somewhere else

in Italy, which they could have been imported in there from Africa. Have you had this type of cheese? Yeah, Buffalo mozzarella. It's not rare. It's, if you ever go to... There's just buffalo milking places?

Yeah, you don't milk the bowls. Obviously. Same thing applies with cows. Yeah, she starts her own little buffalo milk mozzarella business and I think is pretty well regarded by the people of Ferrara. And she doesn't play a whole big rest of the story, but we can just wrap her up by saying that she ends up outliving both her father and her brother. Well, and despite the fact, too,

so one of like the last times that they see each other as far as Chesire is concerned, it's during this time frame when you might be going back here at the same time so there's a little issue when Cheseray in all his little campaign happy movements starts to actually kind of wear on Louis because he's hitting some places that are supposed to be kind of like

French controlled French yeah French controlled and so word comes down the pipe to Cheseray he's like yeah Louis's kind of pissed off about this stuff he needs to go, instead of just sending a proxy or whatever, he goes to meet with Louis. Louis's like, hey man, like, I like you and everything. Like, what the fuck are you doing? They end up hashing it out.

Louis tells him, he's like, okay, listen, I know they're supposed to be protected by us, but they're kind of, you know, whatever. You can attack Bologna. You can totally take that one. And they're making these plans together, and Alexander's down in Rome and not really, you know, crazy about this

because he's like, listen, man, you need to be taking areas that we can have. They're supposed to be fulfilling the plan of like trying to find a way to develop this Borgia dynasty or this area that we're going to actually control. And at the same time, he's trying to find a way to transfer the inheritance of the position of Pope over to Cheseret as well. So he's like, I want to create because we still can control this. and we can control those other areas by making the Pope an inherited rule. So he's basically trying to turn the Pope, like you said, into a king.

I think that was the whole goal this entire time. No, it was. Okay, sorry, but getting back to Luceza and everything like that. So during his travels, he ends up meeting Luceza on his way up to meet Louis and then on his way back. She's sick. The last time he sees her, she's not doing good. She's been in and out of, like, a delirious state. At some point, she has her last rights read to her.

It kind of helps her and start to recover. And then when he leaves her, he just is kind of like, well, I guess we're done hanging out and ends up leaving while she's still not recovered or anything. You'll make it back. You'll make it better. She ends up doing that because she ends up living, outliving everybody. She lives until June 24th, 1519. So she...

What if when he came over, she's like, just fucking tell him I'm sick? And they're like, I can't. I don't want to, I don't fucking like him. I don't want to talk to him. He's weird. I don't want my kids around him. He comes in. She's like, oh, oh, I'm so delirious right now.

You better get out of here before maybe you get sick, too. Oh, my God. The priest is here to read me my last ride. So Cheseray is this mercenary for Florence. Commands his forces in sieges of Naples, because Naples just kind of seems to be getting the, ass end of every deal here and Capua. In 1502, he went out for more land in Marce.

He ends up capturing the cities of Urbino and Camerino. Got to be close to each other with those two names. He was headed to Bologna, as you were talking about, and he ends up getting wind that these other mercenary leaders and some of his commanders were hatching a plan to kill him. Rodrigo also catches word of this back home and out of fear for his son he just kind of go back

go back get the rest of your generals protect yourself as blessed you can and we can figure this out later Cesare or Cheseray being one step ahead of his father had recalled all of these loyal generals that he knew were rock solid

to protect him for the time being in the city of Amala on December 31st, 50-0-2, he calls for this reconciliation with all of these mercenary leaders. And as they walk into this city, you have these mercenary forces that are kind of amassing themselves in separate groups around the walls of the city. Yeah, the conspirators, basically. I think before they go into the city, they send word to him. and this city that they're in basically they're like

hey you know we know you went to go get your guys and everything they still of course have no clue that he's on to them or that he's gotten word about this they're like we've actually captured this area but the guy that's running it and I want to say it was fuck it started with an

S. Was it a Sforza? No no no the place started within Oh uh Senegalia yes so Senegal he's like We capture this place, but the guy will only give up to you. I mean, he's heard about the great, you know, Chesiree. So you need to come and actually accept to surrender. And he's like, all right, I'll go ahead and show up.

So he shows up. They said they meet outside of town. There's four of them, and they're supposed to be like five or six of these main conspirator guys. And he comes up to him and he hugs him. And he's like, hey, thanks for getting the town for me and everything. And he's like, go ahead and show us where we're supposed to be. show me where I'm going to be staying. And as he turns back to his guys who are still on their horseback and everything, he gives

him a wink. So as these guys lead them into the town, like Adam was saying, their forces are camped out on the outside of the wall. And there's probably like a moat or something because there's like one big gate and like a drawbridge to get across this moat. The guys ride in, Chesteray's guys ride in behind him, but then they keep riding in. He brings in like all the cavalry and then march. in a bunch of his infantry and basically just creates this not only they trapped in by the walls

now there's this you know hundreds if not thousands of troops in here he goes into a room with these guys and he's talking to him and they're like okay i mean are all the guys necessary i mean we need to be able to talk to our guys too and everything he's like you know what you guys are being crazy don't worry about let's talk about the campaign what are we going to do so they start making plans and everything and he's like you know what hold on just a second i actually need to to do something, walks out. And as he walks out, his guys walk in and just tie these guys up. I believe he said the equivalent of nature is calling.

Yes, something like that. He's like, I got to go take a piss. His guys walk in in in a very Capone-esque situation and end up taking all these guys' prisoner. His troops then move in and basically start picking off and taking all of these mercenary forces by storm. And all of these conspirators are. put to death. I believe each one of them

is strangled. So it was probably the same guy that strangled his brother-in-law. Yeah, so they're tortured to give up the other conspirators because there are other people that weren't on this planning, not just the main guys. And then after they give up the information and been tortured, yeah, they get the term was garotted.

Oh, that must be where the term garot comes from. Yeah. Or the item. Or is vice versa. You got the garot and you've garot someone so you've been garotted. Yeah. For Rodrigo's part, he ends up capturing a Cardinal that's related to this plot. Cardinal Orsini. Orsini has popped up

quite a few times. This is a very powerful family. And the Cardinal Orsini basically comes to Rodrigo. He says, oh, I've heard about this plot to take Cheseray. I hope he's okay. I hope everything goes all right. Rodriguez goes, well, we're going to throw some leg irons on you and we're going to throw you in the prison. And if he's not all right, we'll see what happens. didn't matter that Chessaray was alive and fine. Cardinal Lorsini ends up dying in the dungeon. So now he's just killing Cardinals. Like, straight up out in the open.

Well, and he's still kind of like pissing off Louis a little bit too because he just keeps going after towns. And then eventually, again, he hits, you know, an area that's supposed to be loyal or that's kind of protected by the French. I think it was Siena, actually. But he's telling Louis, he's like, listen, man, these guys tried to kill me. I heard one of the conspirators is totally. and control the city.

I'm just going in there to get that guy. We had him upside down. We were dunking his head in water, and he told us that Sienna was harboring. Louis writes Alexander a letter, and he's like, you need to get your boy in line because he's kind of running wild

all over the countryside. Alexander is kind of like, I've tried. He's like, I've sent him orders and everything. He's just kind of doing whatever at this point. And finally, I don't know kind of what prompts it, but Chesre realizes he needs to end up slowing it down because what he's doing is he's pissing off the people that once his dad is gone, it's not a given. I don't even know if Chesteray has any type of like desire to try to be the Pope. I think the amount of power that he has right now is probably what he's comfortable with.

I don't think he would know how to do the other thing. So there were rumors. And I mean, fuck, most of this is probably rumors, but this feels pretty unsubstantiated. Alexander and Cheseray were talking about ways that basically would put Cheseray in a position to,

once Alexander dies, he's able to basically suspend the conclave and make a claim for the Pope via military rule in a, very Caesar-esque way of taking the chancellery. Yes. I don't know if it's true. I don't know if this was the whole plan.

At the same time, you have Cheseray that starts to make some desperate moves and maybe starts to team up with some people that just seem like it's never going to work. It's like he doesn't understand the family histories. Yes. Whereas Alexander was like, I'll buy my way into this.

He's now having to look at Chesteray and been like, I got to kind of rely on his ability or his strength that he has militarily to put him in this seat. And then if they can do it under some type of weird emergency powers type thing, then by the time

there is any type of like resistance to him, he'll already be entrenched and they won't be able to get him out. And for his part, Cheseray comes back to Rome to help his father dismantle these rival families, the Orsini family and the Colonna family. They're laying siege to these strongholds and end up taking a fair amount of them. And then Alexander says, well, you guys can have these back, but you're going to have to pay for them.

And I'm going to keep a few for my own collection. You got to pay for what was yours already? Yeah, but Cheseray kind of seeing the writing on the wall as his father's getting older, he knows that he's going to probably have to take it easier on one of these two families. because even if he doesn't ascend to be Pope, which is a long shot, he still wants to stay head of the papal guard. Right now he is Cheseray. He has the French helping him. He has these mercenary groups.

And he has the backing of the Pope. Once the Pope is gone, two of these families could just team and be like, hey, do you want to take this asshole out? Then we can get back to fight each other. He's like, fantastic. He has no protection after that, unless he's in a position. like being the Pope. Wow.

So France and Spain are both angling. They're at war again for Naples. Because God damn Naples is always... It's beautiful down there. You ever been to the south of Italy? Yeah, it's beautiful, I'm sure. I can understand whether fighting over this. But you have Alexander that's sitting back

and kind of waiting in the wings to see... The tip is the best part. Huh? The tip is the best part. Yeah, that is true. Tip of the boot. Alexander is sitting back waiting to see who kind of takes control in this war because that's going to be the most beneficial side for the papacy to get on

through a wildly confusing series of double crosses in swearing his allegiance to Spain while writing a letter to Louis and saying we can flip and give this to you so the fighting goes into Spanish favor initially they end up taking Naples is both the name of the city and then the kingdom of Naples itself they end up taking the capital city

and while Alexander is backing the Spanish Cheseray is still technically on Louis side so now you have this split of the Pope on the Spanish side but the leader of the Pope's army kind of being loyal to the French guy because he also has his wife and kid So Louis ends up marching south after the Spanish kind of take over Naples with this huge force to take it back.

Now Alexander flip-flops writes to Louis and says, hey, come down through, like you can totally come down past through the papal states, march all your guys down here, all actually join up with you. We'll get Cheserese guys and everything. But what would really be cool because you're not going to want to stay in Naples, right? You want to get back up into Paris. It's so much nicer up there. Leave Chesiree in charge of Naples. Then you won't have to worry about losing it again. You can have a guy down there that you know that you can control because you got his wife and kid.

And then we'll be good. And at the same time, this is putting as much area as possible between Louis and France and the kingdom of Naples. That can technically be, even though it's. loyal or part of France, technically it will be run by the Borgas. And it is worth mentioning, again, none of this ownership matters to the church. Because regardless of who owns it,

as long as they're Catholic, the money is still flowing in... It's just a different bank. Yeah. The check is just drafted on a different bank account. Different routing numbers. That's really all this is. So as far as this looks from a religious point of view, doesn't matter.

As far as this looks from the Borgia business point of view, this is a kingdom that the Borgia family can then begin to pass down if it's not taken again by another force. Alexander then writes to like sends a message to Venice and is like, you know what we should do? We should totally drive the French out of Milan. So I don't know what he's trying to do in this sense of like is he trying to get, so he gets Louis,

down there. Louis beats the Spanish. Let's say everything goes to the plan. Cheseray ends up taking over in Naples. Is he then trying to stir shit up, back up in the north, to basically pull Louis back out of Naples to be like, listen, Chesare's got this. We'll make sure Pable States are right here. We'll take care of it.

You got to get up there and take care of that Milan thing. You run some diversion. You get Venice on the board to take away some of Louis's attention from. Naples. I don't know. I think that age might have been setting in a little bit heavy on Alexander. I do know that they said there was a pretty good possibility by this time that Chess Ray's mind started to succumb to the syphilis. Yeah, they said he had some really weird habits. He slept a lot of the day, did a lot of his business dealings at night. He would do this weird thing where he would only have one candle in the room so it would make him look all crazy and ominous, especially when the candlelight

would hit all the syphilis fucking scarring and shit on his face. But we talked about that during the Capone episode, like what that does to you mentally or what it can do to you. And at this point, he's had it for a pretty decent period of time. Yeah. Yeah, everything is kind of setting in on him. And this is that old world syphilis. This was Gen 1.

Yeah. This is that syphilis that might have come as an offshoot of the plague. Yeah, it came from the new world, I believe. I think that the Spanish brought up bad. So they had the Eustinia's pestis came from Europe or like Asian everything. We just had syphilis from the new world. Uh-huh.

We had them off. I think we talked about it. Your sinuous pestis came from the Americas. I think it came from... Everything fucking comes from. Oh, no, that was the potato blight. Yeah. Okay, yeah, no, your sinia pestis came from the Mongols.

That's right. God, we've done a lot of episodes. So, August 6th, 1503, you have Rodriguez and Chessaray. joining Cardinal Adriano Castellese for dinner. A couple days after this dinner, all three are taken ill. The Cardinal and Ciceroa would end up recovering. Unfortunately, Alexander being at an advanced age,

doesn't fight this off very well. In August 18th, 1503, Alexander the 6th, Rodrigo Borgia dies. So it's party for the new Cardinal, next day Roddy's sick. The next day, Chesserae's sick, and it takes six full days for Rodrigo to die. I guess during this time,

they were doing some crazy shit where they were dunking his body in ice cold water, and it had such an effect with whatever was going on with his body that his skin started to peel like off his body. That was just from shit. Maybe they were trying to put in the water or leaving him

submerged for long. I don't know. Oh, yeah, he got wrinkly. Yeah. So this is where we get another kind of Borgia throw in here where there's no real record of the Borgia's poisoning anybody to kill them. But for some reason, the myth of poisoning persists with the Borgias that they were big on this. And there's rumor said that Castellese had a lot of money. He was a very rich cardinal. and in order for all of that money to revert back to the church and to the Borgias, he needed to die.

So Chesire may have brought a big cask of tainted wine, and somehow in the serving of the tainted wine, the poisoned wine, you had all three of them get it. And unfortunately, it ended up killing the Pope instead of the intended target. I feel like it went the other way around and that it might have been. I feel like it could have been poison, but I feel like the intention. tended targets were probably Chessoray and the Pope. And the third guy was just because if, like, if I'm thinking about it from planning that, you're going to, do you get what I'm saying? Yeah, this is where you have to poison D along with the college kids and always sunny in

Philadelphia when they're playing flip cup. Yep. You got a poison D and then make her the first one so the rest of you guys don't get poisoned as well. Exactly. Yeah. Except for. Because I feel like it would be much easier to get poison wine to this guy's party.

Yeah. Than to try to provide poison wine that's coming. from like the Pope or something like that. Just a very odd situation. Regardless, couldn't it happen to better people. Well, the thing is, is history, being able to take a look at everything that happened afterwards, ends up taking a look at it differently. In 1503, there was an extremely hot summer.

We're talking to August 18th or August 6th. So the heat of Roman summer, you have all of these mosquitoes that are coming out from all of these wet areas around Rome. It was super common, they said. It turns out that all of the symptoms that Alexander and Rodrigo were displaying, or Alexander and Chesray were displaying, were pretty much textbook malaria. That's fast, though, right? I guess I don't know shit about malaria, but six days seems pretty quick. Yeah, I think it's one of those things where if it gets a hold of you, it's taking you down.

It's also an older guy, too. Yeah, there's going to be some flare-ups that happen. So you have the Pope, who's now passed away, and we need another conversation. enclave. So right after he dies, Cheseray actually sends his guys to rob the treasury. Apparently there was a treasury in the Pope's room that was like behind the bed in a room, sends his guys in, they threaten whoever is supposed to be in charge of protecting it. They clean it out, like the church coffers, they clean them out. Roderigo, or not Rodrigo, Cheseray couldn't even take part in the enclave because he was so sick.

Yeah. So he was trying to run interference and run this thing from, you know, kind of the bed to see who was going to get elected here because he essentially had to try to get someone elected that would still be kind of on their same. Yeah. Allow him to keep doing what he wanted to do. Yeah. And Cheseray for his part being bedridden kind of comes up on a stroke of luck when the Cardinals basically come to him like, hey, man, we need to have a conclave here. and your military forces are sitting inside the Sistine Chapel. You need to go ahead and pull them out, and Chessera goes,

yeah, I'll pull them out. I'm going to need a promise from you that I get to keep my position and I get to keep all of the possessions that we'd had before. And whoever the Cardinal College Dean was at that time says, that's not going to happen. and Chesa Rui realizes that he's got to do something so he ends up getting the favor of what was his name?

Pius the third Yeah so when this did you get the stuff about Rodrigo's body? I don't put a whole lot to it just because I feel like this was definitely history that was written by somebody else about like how they had to like shove it into the his body was so bloated that they had to beat him into the casket I don't know if they necessarily had to beat him

but I believe it's August a body with malaria they've probably done some shit to it trying to keep him healthy or something like that trying to save his life I think it's kind of I just mentioned it because I think it's kind of fitting just for the fact that like it's also

the body's just sitting out there and being displayed like I think they normally do it there's an argument near the body it knocks the body off. I don't know if the body gets damaged in the fall or anything, but they said it's so disgusting that no one wants to touch it. They have to unload it near the gravesite and drag it there with the rope because I don't know if it's splitting open or the smell or anything like that.

The coffin is too small. And again, the coffin, maybe they don't expect that kind of bloating because maybe they're able to have it, you know, quicker than it normal or was. Maybe also, can you imagine if like, they're like, well, that's why we get the Pope into the coffin so quickly and then get him buried within, like, a few days. Cheseret's stalling this thing and holding it up. So what if just by the fact of him holding that, they're like, this thing's fucking five, we have never run into a five-day-old body before. We don't know what this thing's going to do.

They're in the coffin usually by the time they start to swell up and in the ground. Yeah, I just, regardless at this point in time, he was still the Pope. I have to feel like there was a little bit more respect shown to this guy to be buried by members of the church. How many people did he still have that weren't in? This thing ends up getting elected when we run into these enclaves and everything for the voting. Conclave, yeah. Sorry, conclave. It's always very close and then someone has to turn somebody else.

So there are factions that just don't fucking like people. So I would imagine maybe it was just like, hey, you know, maybe it was the faction that didn't like. um Alexander possibly and as the conclave splits just like it did with Alfonso and they can't

figure out something um Cheseray is working his magic with this future Pius the third and he's kind of used as a transitional pope Cheseray knows that he needs to buy some time but he doesn't want somebody that's going to be in there for a long time because he

might still have eyes for the the papacy uh Pius the third ends up being chosen, of course, with a little bit of Cheseray's forces, maybe helping out. Well, they weren't doing anything else because literally as soon as Alexander

was gone, and Chesteray was kind of out of commission a little bit, the Venetians basically just went and invaded Romagna and took over all the area that they had taken over previously because the Papal Army wasn't there. And it wasn't like

that you were going to have the backing of the Pope to do this. Again, they were banking on someone else being in there that's like, yeah, Chesterra, you're out. He's down for the count, too. He's still not healed from his malaria. Yeah. So they're pretty weak at this point in time. Pope Pius wasn't supposed to last a long time.

He was here for a good time, not a long time. I don't think that anybody saw this coming, but Pope Pius was Pope for all of 26 days. I mean, in that 26 day period, somehow, Cheseray talks his way back into being in command of the papal army. Probably because he helped Pius get elected. Well, he initially fled.

And then Louis was like, hey, actually, because you do have a say in this, I need you to try to get my guy elected. There wasn't enough support for it. So that's where they had to find the compromise candidate, like you said for. And this was also what, this was another Piccolomiini, right?

Pius the third was another Piccolomini. Yeah. And that's why he chose Pius, the third because pious the second was also a picolomini. And he had to continue the pious name on. So somehow then talks his way back into it like you said for helping that guy get elected. And then the guy that agrees to it dies 26 days later. So fast. Doesn't even get a calendar month out of the way.

Just incredibly quick. So we get another conclave 26 days later. And old Rodrigo's rival. Giuliano del Rovere. And this is what we were talking about when I said that Cheseray did not do his family studying. Promises Cheseray many things to get him elected, all of which become disregarded as Rovert finally becomes Pope Julius II. Give me the Spanish votes. You're in control of a pretty large selection of Spanish votes.

You get me those and I'll take care of you. Yep. You get to stay in your position. Don't worry about it. Is Pope Julius the second ascents of the throne? and he basically looks at Chess Ray and says, sorry, man. You know all those lands that we talked about that you'd conquer it up in that Romagna territory? You're going to give those up now and return them?

You're ceding all of your power, the army. If you don't try to escape first and get away to where I'm going to have to come and catch you. Well, he does. Yep. Because he gets arrested in December 1503. In Naples. in the place that's always hotly contested by everybody the Spanish weren't too pumped

because obviously Cheseray working with the French that's not going to be anything good. Well, that's who was still in control Naples at the time, right? Yeah. And didn't Louis kind of let him, wasn't that kind of the planner? Did Louis put someone else in control?

Louis had kind of seen Cheseray's time. If you can make it back up to me, I'll protect you, but if you can't, you're kind of on your own. You've worn out your welcome. You pissed off DaVinci, my artist. If somebody takes you, they take you. Um, he ends up being held in prison for all sorts of different shit in Italy.

Namely, because they realized that a lot of the paypal funds were gone. Because he had robbed the, uh, the bank and they were trying to get that back. They had somehow come upon the understanding that the Borga family, Forge of Family had a bank account in Genoa. And this bank account in Genoa, they believed, had about 300,000 ducats sitting in there. And Chesiree was the only man that was still alive that had the password to be able to get these ducats. And Cheseray refused to give that up. So he gets arrested and they're like, give up all your shit.

He eventually agrees. So December 1503 gets arrested, gets released early. 1504 after agreeing to surrender not only the cities but probably a good portion of what their ill-gotten gains then gets arrested again in May of 1504 when the Pope kind of heard

some rumblings that he was maybe building up some forces to try to try to start some shit but that's not that's not going to keep him down you can't keep this guy locked up right well I guess you really can't no because he ends up escaping

in October of 1506 he doesn't Doesn't he like scale down the wall using a rope or something? So it gets transferred back to Spain because I believe this was Ferdin the second maybe back in Spain. He wanted to make sure that he was going to get locked up. Also, there was a chance that he might need a season general just in case he were to launch a campaign back against the French. So they were keeping him...

You're very familiar with Naples, right? Yeah. Been there before? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's where you ran to. So they're keeping him on kind of a tight leash over there. This plan ends up not happening.

I think Ferdinand might have died or something along those lines. And Cheseray ends up making enough friends inside of this prison that they bring him a length of rope. He ends up ripping up his bed sheets, tying them to the length of rope because there's no windows back then. They're just basically por holes. He throws the rope at the windows. He starts climbing down. and he gets, I want to say they said there was like a few yards. All these stories get told differently.

The guards realize what's going on. They come in, they cut the rope. He ends up falling down into a dry moat and hurts himself pretty good. The other conspirators gather them up, throw him on a horse. And he ends up being taken by boat up to Pamplona. I believe this was December 3rd, 1506. These dates are going to be different. But he gets taken to, it was his family.

I believe it was like a brother-in-law or a cousin, King John III of Navarre. And this is a pretty small kingdom up in northern Spain. But to pay back Navarre, he offers to become his military commander. Like I say, it's a small kingdom. It's not necessarily the highest of honors, but also he wasn't necessarily... It's not prison. Yeah, it's not prison. And also, he wasn't necessarily the best of generals.

At that point in time, his brain was so addled with syphilis that he was probably on a pretty... We got to hope he has a few more fights left in him. Get out there, Rock. His last fight that he has in him, March 11, 1507, Cheseray and his forces end up besieging this castle in a town called Vienna. Vienna, not Vienna, Vienna in northern Spain, there's a force that comes to try to relieve this castle. It's a rainy night. There's a breakout from the castle. All of these men on horseback end up leaving the castle. Chessaray jumps on his horse and gives chase, believing that at least a few more members of the army are following after him.

And eventually, I think he's in a riverbed or something like that. He turns around and he realized that not one. One soul followed him. And then there were three of these soldiers that would end up surrounding him. I believe he takes a lance underneath the arm. Ends up getting knocked off of his horse. And then they proceed to just stab the ever-living shit out of Cheseray's body. I want to say it was a documentary.

I think it said they found 23 stab wounds in his body. Is it ironic that he died in a... dry riverbed? Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to say, is it ironic, that a man named Chessaray was stabbed to death. Oh, there's that too. Yeah, a little Caesar tie back in. Then they stripped him, because apparently, being the military commander, he had a hell

of a set of armor on him. When his body was found, they said there was just a red drapery that covered up his junk, and that was, it was like dead in this riverbed. It all, this is sort of where the, the Borgia line is said to stop. There's still Borgia's in Spain. This family lineage has still continued on. Yeah. Well, because there were branches from like another uncle and things like that.

But to mention he had nine illegitimate kids, so there's a good chance that the rest of them that weren't involved in this weird. I'm not sure if they had the last name Borgia. Yeah, maybe not. If they were illegitimate, they probably didn't. But we're on kind of the edge. the precipice of the Reformation. Oh, I can't believe we forgot it up to this point. Oh, the chestnuts.

Oh, the chestnuts. How did we forget chestnuts? I don't know. Okay, we'll do chestnuts and then indulgences. You do chestnuts, I'll do indulgences. All right. So the banquet of the chestnuts. This happened a while back.

1501. 1501, okay. So the banquet of the chestnuts is one of these. things that people point to. And the reason that it's point to is because this was written down in a diary. The banquet master of ceremonies, Johann Bouchard, wrote this in his diary. And this banquet was something that people look at and they say, well, Bershard didn't really like Alexander. So he probably wrote this story to make him look bad later on. I don't know who would do that in a personal diary thinking that somebody else would see it. And the fact that this was like the only

instance of this means that it wasn't like, you don't got to justify it to me, buddy. I'm, I'm all on this. And here's what this is. If you made it all the way to the end of the episode, this is your treat. You get two treats. You get this one. You get another one. So, Rashard, who attended this party, the banquet, was a witness to what happened that night. In his diary entry, Bouchard mentioned 50 honest cortisans were present. They acted as dancers, entertainers, conversationalists, and servers. They have the finest cortisans. But as the night continued, according to Bouchard,

all their garments fell away with each passing hour until they were completely nude. Once their clothes were off, the games with chestnuts began. Bershard detailed how eager clergymen would throw chestnuts. on the floor for the naked cortisans to acquire. They would crawl on their hands and knees and pick up the chestnuts with their mouths. Then the sexual contest would begin with clergymen would have to endure sexual intercourse

and whoever lasted the longest was considered the orders. You got to endure this sex, man. That's the other reason why... Survive. I don't think it's bullshit partially because of that line. Endure intercourse to me sounds like... They had to have it. Yeah.

They didn't like it. They had to endure it. Well, not to mention the winner of the night was the guy that lasted the longest. Yeah. Which I'm sure it was probably a pretty short night considering... Had to be Alexander, of course. So it's just stuff like that where when you point to this Borgia family and you hear all of these rumors and about how bad these people were, they probably weren't necessarily too much worse.

on a regular level with other papal families. But then you get shit like this in the extra murders, not just the normal amount of murders that a papal family would do. This is beyond. I think it's this too. A lot of stuff within the papacy was corrupt. A lot of people were doing this, but they weren't doing also the kid that was leading the army

and conquering a bunch of places and all that kind of stuff. There wasn't a lot of like the war aspect to it. Okay, another genius money-making idea here, these indulgences. So an indulgence, the way I understand it, is basically it is like a forgiveness for a certain time of your sins. Like let's say you had 10 years worth of sin, and I gave you five years worth of indulgences. That would take five years off of your time spent in purgatory before you could then move on. the church began allowing the purchase of indulgences, which was already normal. People could actually purchase them for dead relatives.

So people that had already died, you could actually buy down their time in purgatory to get them in. Now, I don't know how the system worked, but can you imagine you're basically like, all right, all right, late night TV, you get an infomercial. Grandma still have 50 more years in purgatory. not if you have anything to say about it. Come buy down her indulgences and get Grandma up to the pearly gates even faster. Not to mention who has the time clock on how

many years Grandma has left in purgatory. How do you know? How are you also notifying it? It's like, oh yeah, what we do is we fill out an expense report. We throw it through one of the Costco tubes that sucks stuff up. They get it down in purgatory and they're like, oh my God, Ethel, you had four ears knocked off of your sentence.

Hey, God. Your grandson also says he misses you. God, Mary Vincenzo, you got her in purgatory. She has 15 years left. We just received 10,000 or 10 years worth of indulgence money for Mary on her behalf from her grandson. So could you inform her that she has five years left on her sentence? It's reverse grandparent gifting, like how like grandparents send you like a check for like $12 and everything. This is the same thing that they can turn right around and do for their grandparents.

Anybody that found out about this that was on their way out was definitely giving their grandkids more gifts. Oh yeah. They were trying to grease those wheels before they were sent to purgatory. But that's fucking insane. They said this thing was a huge moneymaker because people could come in if like the heads of their house had died or something like that. And that family was being shamed because they were. this person was in purgatory or some shit. Can you imagine you're in church and like the preachers up there, the priest is up there?

And he's like, I'd also like to give a special shout out to the Johnsons. The Johnsons have donated so much that they got Nana Johnson at a purgatory and into heaven. That was another one of my favorite stories that I heard about Alexander was whenever he would go to a service, like a Sunday sermon or whatever the Catholics did. he was pretty short on attention span. So they said when there would be a clergyman, when there would be a priest up there giving his diatribe, if it went too long,

you would just hear Alexander say, that's enough. Wrap it up. Yeah. He flips on the light back there. He's got a candle. And when the candle goes on, you just see him pull a tiny violin and start to play

like the playing out music like they used to at like a board shows. all this stuff that we just talked about along with a myriad of other popes is what led to this reformation and led to Martin Luther in Germany pushing for this reformation of the church and there was a lot of things that the church kind of had to reckon with not to say that they fixed them all but in order to try to maintain a little bit of relevance beyond what they we're still going to be able to keep that people didn't go along through Reformation, there did have to be changes that were made. And I texted you about it today.

One of the most maybe frustrating things about this was, I believe it was 1527. So this is post-Reformation. We have Henry VIII pleading his case with the Pope to nullify his marriage so he can then marry somebody else to create the legitimate male error. We just talked about from 1492 to 1503, Alexander nullifying marriages, killing people in order to nullify marriages. And less than three decades later,

the church tells Henry VIII, no. And then we get the English Reformation in the Church of England that goes on to terrorize Ireland in so many other places as the Catholics fought against the Protestants all because of a choice that somehow changed

in like a 30 year span to let Henry VIII divorce his wife. Yeah. It's crazy how when we also learn about this stuff how close it is to other stuff and how it leads in like we get a prequel without knowing

we're going to get the prequel to something. We get the explanation to a question of like, how did it even get to the Reformation? Well, it's shit like this that definitely started it. Just a, again, just a crazy, just piece of history. I don't know how else to describe it. It's one of those things where you're watching.

And there's a show on Showtime, I think, that was called The Borgias that's, of course, like, you know, dramatized and everything like that. It's made all sexy and everything. But watching that, you'd be like, this is just like a drama, placed within the Catholic. No, no, like, this shit actually, like, occurred and was allowed to occur and was kind of, like, normal until someone just went too far.

And then it was like, oh, now we've got to put a stop to it. Yeah, I think Julius II, the guy that ends up screwing over Cheseret is known as, like, the war pope. Yeah. There was still some bad stuff the popes were doing after. But this might have been the top of the mountain. Yeah. This is the guy that took the bulls. and ran with it, not for piety's sake,

not to try to be the best Catholic that he could be the best Pope ever. It was mainly for personal enrichment of his own family. I'm so glad that we don't have this kind of situation anymore because it's tough to really separate, kind of how this went down. I looked at this whole episode basically as this was a kingdom. It wasn't a church. It was a kingdom that was fighting against other countries instead of a church that was fighting against other countries that still owed loyalty to the church and paid them.

It was someone that came in that took over management of a church and ran it just like a totally corrupt business. And then the people that were still there like long-term employees were like, oh my God, they're going to burn down the whole company. eventually something had to happen and there had to be some type of overseeing body within like the Reformation to get into kind of clean up shop and for as bad as these people were

there were a couple really interesting things not that we're going to go on any longer but we forgot to mention the fact that there were times when Pope Alexander would leave to go to her areas and he would just leave his daughter basically in charge yeah like a woman

basically running Rome. I don't even know if it was in that sense. I think it was probably like, I've told her what to do in these situations. So all she has to do is just what I told her to do. Well, they said that she had the ability to open his mail and to respond to that. And then she also had... Just because he's sending mail to himself. Yeah. She also had the ability to call the Cardinals together. So she had some power and some sway. I wonder if that's also because it's like, if I send you something that has to have Cardinal approval, you go down. down there and you read them this until yeah still still in charge that it's still crazy but again this goes to show you that there was so much distrust of everyone else because of how they operated

that they could only it was like i can't trust another cardinal or anyone else to do this i have to trust my daughter to do this which is probably something he wouldn't have done had he had another choice or had his son not killed his other son yes correct and if cheseray would have if jeff wasn't a dead beat i don't even remember what happened to Jeff. Jeff? Yeah. The younger one. Juan? No. Oh, uh, Jofrey.

Yeah. Yeah, I think he was, he actually, I believe, ended up meeting up in Naples with Cessor, or Chessori towards the end. I think he probably realized that he wasn't. I just wanted Jeff to be a normal kid. He was the hairy in this family. They sent Jeff off to somewhere and he actually

found someone, he, he found out the one they were marrying to was really awesome and he was just like, no, I'm good. We're going to stay in your kingdom because if we go back to mine, they might kill you. Yep. My brother is going to drown me. All right. You got anything else?

No. Oh, yeah. So keep this episode in mind because we will be doing families like the Medici. Yeah. And being able to kind of compare and contrast how all this goes because the Medici. I believe they had a pope in their family too. Oh, yeah. So it's going to be an interesting take to kind of compare and contrast where a family of means,

it's able to put a pope in as opposed to a family that kind of built themselves up out of nothing. Yes. And then also be on the lookout for the Holy Roman Empire. Yeah. We're going to be doing that sometime. We've got to do that soon. We're going to have to figure that out. All right, everyone.

Well, thanks for joining us. We'll catch on the next one. Peace.