How wonderful is his tranquil bearing! And how noble his faultless face! His glance, how frank! How greatly does the honor which we feel for him increase when we behold his beauty and vigor of body!" Alexander the Great would have been described in just such terms by Ferno.

This was the idolatry which was always accorded the papacy, and no one asked what was the inner and personal life of the glittering idol.
On the occasion of his coronation Alexander appointed his son Caesar, a youth of sixteen, Bishop of Valencia.

This he did without being sure of the sanction of Ferdinand the Catholic, who, in fact, for a long time did endeavor to withhold it; but he finally yielded, and the Borgias consequently got the first bishopric in Spain into their hereditary possession.

Caesar was not in Rome at the time his father received the tiara.

On the twenty-second of August, eleven days after Alexander's election, Manfredi, ambassador from Ferrara to Florence, wrote the Duchess Eleonora d'Este: "The Pope's son, the Bishop of Pamplona, who has been attending the University of Pisa, left there by the Pope's orders yesterday morning, and has gone to the castle of Spoleto." The fifth of October Caesar was still there, for on that date he wrote a letter to Piero de' Medici from that place.