Far from Holy Fathers

It is curious that despite Spain’s immense services to the Roman Church — expelling Islam from Western Europe over half a millennium of hard fighting, then opening up the Western hemisphere to Catholicism — only two Spaniards have become pope, and both were Borgias (Alfonso de Borja, who reigned as Pope Calixtus III, 1455-8, spelt his family name the Spanish way). The year after his election, Calixtus gave his nephew Rodrigo Borgia, then aged 24, a cardinal’s hat and in 1457 made him vice-chancellor of the Holy See. As such, he played an important role in the election of four popes, Pius II, Paul II, Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, before becoming pope himself in 1492 and reigning 11 years as Alexander VI. In some ways the Borgias set the pattern for the pontificates that followed, up to the time of Pius V (1566-72), whom Gerard Noel calls the last of the Renaissance popes.