PONTIFEX MAXIMUS ALEXANDER VI 2J7
Don Paolo and Duke Francesco Orsini of Gravina suf-
fered merited death, due to the exigencies of civil war in
which they and their House were the aggressors.
There remain two other violent deaths to be accounted
for, which were not of sufficient importance to treat of in
the history of this pontificate, the case of Calderone Perotto,
and that of Messer Francesco Trocces.
It is said by Don Paolo Capello, the Orator of Venice,
in his Diarium, (or rather in that edition of the said
Diarium which was prepared forty years later by Don
Marino Sanuto,) that Calderon Perotto was a Spanish lad
of eighteen years, one of the Pontifical pages; and that he
was stabbed by Duke Cesare (detto Borgia) at the Pope's
feet. The fact is related without comment or explanation.
It would not be safe to attach much importance to the
statement, because Don Paolo Capello's original document
is not-forthcoming and Don Marino Sanuto's version of
what he wrote is the only version accessible. But the alleged
murder of the page Perotto is not, like other calumnies,
a posthumous invention; for it is mentioned in the atrocious
Letter to Silvio SavelH described on an earlier page. The
Pope is not, and was not blamed. The murder, if it were a
murder at all, is attributed to Duke Cesare (detto Borgia);
and it was not an unusual thing for a lord to slay a servant
in the Borgian Era. That was common enough; but to
do it in the presence of the Holiness of the Pope certainly
was sacrilege; and this last circumstance makes it probable
that the whole story is a pure invention; for the guilt of
sacrilege lightly was not incurred even by the most bloody
and abandoned villains: and Duke Cesare was not of that
species.
The other death, that of Messer Francesco Trocces is
more probable, and mentioned in several dispatches of
Orators. He was a papal chamberlain (confidential flunkey
of the cloak and sword,—minor situation dear to petite