a lie; for though he succeeded to the avaricious Paul who had spent his time in amassing money which he did not use, he declared that he had only found 5,000 florins in the Papal treasury.  This assertion was proved false by the prodigality with which he lavished wealth immediately upon his nephews.  It is difficult even to hint at the horrible suspicions which were cast upon the birth of two of the Pope’s nephews and upon the nature of his weakness for them.  Yet the private life of Sixtus rendered the most monstrous stories plausible, while his public treatment of these men recalled to mind the partiality of Nero for Doryphorus.[1] We may, however, dwell upon the principal features of his nepotism; for Sixtus was the first Pontiff who deliberately organized a system for pillaging the Church in order to exalt his family to principalities.  The weakness of this policy has already been exposed[2]:  its justification, if there is any, lies in the exigencies of a dynasty which had no legitimate or hereditary succession.  The names of the Pope’s nephews were Lionardo, Giuliano, and Giovanni della Rovere, the three sons of his brother Raffaello; Pietro and Girolamo Riario, the two sons of his sister Jolanda; and Girolamo, the son of another sister married to Giovanni Basso.  With the notable exception of Giuliano della Rovere,[3] these young men had no claim to distinction beyond good looks and a certain martial spirit which ill suited with the ecclesiastical dignities thrust upon some of them.  Lionardo was made prefect of Rome and married to a natural daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples.  Giuliano received a Cardinal’s hat, and, after a tempestuous warfare with the intervening Popes, ascended the Holy Chair as Julius II.  Girolamo Basso was created Cardinal of San Crisogono in 1477, and died in 1507.  Girolamo Riario wedded Catherine, a natural daughter of Galeazzo Sforza.  For him the Pope in 1473 bought the town of Imola with money of the Church, and, after adding to it Forli, made Girolamo a Duke.  He was murdered by his subjects in the latter place in 1488, not, however, before he had founded a line of princes.  Pietro, another nephew of the Riario blood, or, as scandal then reported and Muratori has since believed, a son of the Pope himself, was elevated at the age of twenty-six to the dignities of Cardinal, Patriarch of Constantinople, and Archbishop of Florence.  He had no virtues, no abilities, nothing but his beauty, the scandalous affection of the Pope, and the extravagant profligacy of his own life to recommend him to the notice of posterity.  All Italy during two years rang with the noise of his debaucheries.  His official revenues were estimated at 60,000 golden florins; but in his short career of profligate magnificence he managed to squander a sum reckoned at not less than 200,000.  When Leonora of Aragon passed through Rome on her way to wed the Marquis of Ferrara, this fop of a Patriarch erected a pavilion in the Piazza de’ Santi Apostoli for