This led to Giovanni de’ Medici receiving a Cardinal’s hat at the age of thirteen, and thus the Medicean interest in Rome was founded; in the course of a few years the Medici gave two Popes to the Holy See, and by their ecclesiastical influence riveted the chains of Florence fast.[3] The traffic which Innocent and Franceschetto carried on in theft and murder filled the Campagna with brigands and assassins.[4] Travelers and pilgrims and ambassadors were stripped and murdered on their way to Rome; and in the city itself more than two hundred people were publicly assassinated with impunity during the last months of the Pope’s life.  He was gradually dozing off into his last long sleep, and Franceschetto was planning how to carry off his ducats.  While the Holy Father still hovered between life and death, a Jewish doctor proposed to reinvigorate him by the transfusion of young blood into his torpid veins.  Three boys throbbing with the elixir of early youth were sacrificed in vain.  Each boy, says Infessura, received one ducat.  He adds, not without grim humor:  ’Et paulo post mortui sunt; Judaeus quidem aufugit, et Papa non sanatus est.’  The epitaph of this poor old Pope reads like a rather clever but blasphemous witticism:  ’Ego autem in Innocentia mea ingressus sum.’

[1] ’Primus pontificum filios filiasque palam ostentavit, primus eorum apertas fecit nuptias, primus domesticos hymenaeos celebravit.’  Egidius of Viterbo, quoted by Greg. Stadt Rom, vol. vii. p. 274, note.

[2] Infessura says he heard the Vice-chancellor, when asked why criminals were allowed to pay instead of being punished, answer:  ’God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should pay and live.’  Dominico di Viterbo, Apostolic Scribe, forged bulls by which the Pope granted indulgences for the commission of the worst scandals.  His father tried to buy him off for 5,000 ducats.  Innocent replied that, as his honor was concerned, he must have 6,000.  The poor father could not scrape so much money together; so the bargain fell through, and Dominico was executed.  A Roman who had killed two of his own daughters bought his pardon for 800 ducats.

[3] Guicciardini, i. 1., points out that Lorenzo, having the Pope for his ally, was able to create that balance of power in Italy which it was his chief political merit to have maintained until his death.

    [4] It is only by reading the pages of Infessura’s Diary
    (Eccardus vol. ii. pp. 2003-2005) that any notion of the mixed
    debauchery and violence of Rome at this time can be formed.