You have seen him, when he realized the failure of an attempt which had made Rome too dangerous for him and compelled him to remain in exile, suddenly veering round to fawn and flatter and win the friendship of one whom his enmity could not touch.
This man who, as Julius II, was presently to succeed Pius III, has been accounted a shining light of virtue amid the dark turpitude of the Church in the Renaissance.

An ignis fatuus, perhaps; a Jack-o'-lanthorn begotten of putrescence.

Surely no more than that.
Dr.Jacob Burckhardt, in that able work of his to which reference already has been made, follows the well-worn path of unrestrained invective against the Borgias, giving to the usual empty assertions the place which should be assigned to evidence and argument.

Like his predecessors along that path, he causes Giuliano della Rovere to shine heroically by contrast--a foil to throw into greater relief the blackness of Alexander.

But he carries assertion rather further than do others when he says of Cardinal della Rovere that "He ascended the steps of St.Peter's Chair without simony and amid general applause, and with him ceased, at all events, the undisguised traffic in the highest offices of the Church." Other writers in plenty have suggested this, but none has quite so plainly and resoundingly thrown down the gauntlet, which we will make bold to lift.
That Dr.Burckhardt wrote in other than good faith is not to be imputed.