strikes a modern ear was not felt among the Italians at the time of his election.

The sentiment of hatred with which he was afterwards regarded arose partly from the crimes by which his Pontificate was rendered infamous, partly from the fear which his son Cesare inspired, and partly from the mysteries of his private life, which revolted even the corrupt conscience of the sixteenth century.
This sentiment of hatred had grown to universal execration at the date of his death.

In course of time, when the attention of the Northern nations had been directed to the iniquities of Rome, and when the glaring discrepancy between Alexander's pretension as a Pope and his conduct as a man had been apprehended, it inspired a legend which, like all legends, distorts the facts which it reflects.
Alexander was, in truth, a man eminently fitted to close an old age and to inaugurate a new, to demonstrate the paradoxical situation of the Popes by the inexorable logic of his practical impiety, and to fuse two conflicting world-forces in the cynicism of supreme corruption.

The Emperors of the Julian house had exhibited the extreme of sensual insolence in their autocracy.

What they desired of strange and sweet and terrible in the forbidden fruits of lust, they had enjoyed.