At the twenty-third hour the orator again wrote the Senate saying that the Pope’s physician, Scipio, had informed him that his Holiness could not survive the night. The physician--_omo excellente nell’ arte soa_--stated that the Pope’s illness, in his opinion, began with a stroke of apoplexy. He also said that the Duke was in no danger, that he had no fever and could leave his bed any time he desired so to do. For his own safety Valentino was preparing to remove that night to the Castle of St. Angelo, whither the two children, Giovanni, the Pope’s youngest son, and Rodrigo, Lucretia’s boy, had already been sent. Early that morning Caesar’s troops had been ordered to Rome with all speed and they had been pouring into the city all day. They had been massed in the Borgo and drummers had been sent about the city to call the guard to arms; the palace was entirely surrounded by troops, foot and horse.
At the first hour of the night Don Alvarotto di Alvarotis, a member of the household of the Cardinal of Santa Prassede, informed Giustinian that while he was with the cardinal the Duke’s chamberlain, Don Romolino, had come and told them that his Holiness had just passed away. The ambassador was also informed of the death of the Cardinal of Trani. The same morning, according to the messenger, Caesar had dispatched a courier to Prospero Colonna to ask his support and to offer to restore his estates to him.
Gregorovius inclines to the theory of poison, but Burchard records no such suspicion. The corpse was “monstrously swollen and discoloured--black, a most horrible thing to behold, and many suspected poison,” wrote Beltrando Costabili to his master, Ercole of Ferrara. “Never since the beginning of Christianity has there been seen such a terrible and horrible thing. It was the most bestial, monstrous, and horrible body, without the form or face of a man.” Wonderful were the stories told; while he lay ill Alexander had even seen the devil in the form of a monkey enter his room to bear his soul away.
The grounds for believing that the Pope had been poisoned are so slight that they may be disregarded. It is clear from the statements of Burchard and Giustinian, who was hostile to the Borgia, that Alexander VI. died of a tertian fever, or the plague, which in that year destroyed a vast number of people in Italy. The Pope was a fleshy man, well advanced in years, and the appearance of the corpse, even if it were as hideous as it was described, would not necessarily indicate that he had died of poison.
