Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia 1431-1503) paus 1492-1503. “Alexander VI died surrounded by an atmosphere of hatred an fear; a hatred so violent that Julius II and all his successors refused to occupy the Borgia apartments in the Vatican until the nineteenth century. It was this hatred which led the same Julius to torture confessions of crimes, supposedly committed at the command of the Borgias, out of Alexander’s servants, and to eradicate as far as possible every evidence of Borgia achievement. Julius, as Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, had been Alexander’s chief rival during his lifetime; first a rival in the [1492] papal election, and then the leader of those cardinals who sought to depose him with French help. He had passed most of Alexander’s pontificate in exile, stripped of many of his benefices, his boundless energy and ambition shackled by the success of his rival. It was Julius perhaps more than any other single person who set the tone of contemporary and later attitudes towards the Borgias. But what Julius with his anti-Borgia activities had started, the humanist propagandists of the Italian princes and the local chroniclers of the cities of the Papal States completed. There are few of the contemporary observers and early sixteenth century commentators, whose reports and writings form the narrative sources for an account of the … [Alexander VI] Borgia pontificate, who can be described as entirely objective.” (M. Mallett, The Borgias. The rise and fall of a Renaissance dynasty [London 1969], p. 3-5)