As a Cardinal he had given proof of his ability, but shown no signs of force or cruelty or fraud.
Nor were his morals worse than those of his colleagues.

If he was the father of several children, so was Giuliano della Rovere, and so had been Pope Innocent before him.

This mattered but little in an age when the Primate of Christendom had come to be regarded as a secular potentate, less fortunate than other princes inasmuch as his rule was not hereditary, but more fortunate in so far as he could wield the thunders and dispense the privileges of the Church.

A few men of discernment knew what had been done, and shuddered.

'The king of Naples,' says Guicciardini, 'though he dissembled his grief, told the queen, his wife, with tears--tears which he was wont to check even at the death of his own sons--that a Pope had been made who would prove most pestilent to the whole Christian commonwealth.' The young Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, again, showed his discernment of the situation by whispering in the Conclave to his kinsman Cibo: 'We are in the wolf's jaws; he will gulp us down, unless we make our flight good.' Besides, there was in Italy a widely spread repugnance to the Spanish intruders--Marrani, or renegade Moors, as they were properly called--who crowded the Vatican and threatened to possess the land of their adoption like conquerors.