Pope Callixtus III (1455-1458)

The First Borgia Pope

Before it became a name synonymous with Renaissance scandal, Borgia was the name of an upright Valencian jurist and a pope of duty. Alfonso de Borja is the founder of the family's Roman fortune: he transplanted the Borjas from Spain to Rome, raised his nephew Rodrigo to the cardinalate, and therefore made possible Alexander VI, Cesare, and Lucrezia Borgia.^[10] The irony of history is that the first Borgia was the most irreproachable: even his opponents admitted that his private life was spotless.^[11]

The Pope of the Crusade Against the Ottomans

Callixtus III was the pope who took the Turkish threat seriously, almost to the point of obsession, while the rest of Europe preferred to ignore it. Where Christian princes paid with words, he committed the money, men, and credit of the papacy. The relief of Belgrade — the lock of the Danube and the gate of Hungary — was, in large part, his indirect work: his legate, his propaganda, and his subsidies made possible the victory of John Hunyadi and Saint John of Capistrano on 22 July 1456.^[12][13]

The Pope Who Rehabilitated Joan of Arc

Twenty-five years after the stake at Rouen, it was under Callixtus III that the Catholic Church solemnly annulled Joan of Arc's condemnation. The nullity trial, opened by his decision in 1455, ended on 7 July 1456 with a sentence declaring the 1431 trial tainted by fraud and calumny.^[14] The act did not merely erase a judicial injustice: in the very long term, it prepared the canonization of 1920.

The Pope of the Noon Bell

The bell that today marks the noon Angelus throughout the world goes back, in its universal scope, to a bull of Callixtus III in the summer of 1456: he ordered bells to be rung and prayers to be said for the crusaders defending Belgrade.^[15][16] A wartime prayer became a prayer of peace: few popes have left such a daily and discreet spiritual inheritance.

Callixtus III is a well-documented pope: his diplomatic correspondence, crusade bulls, and contemporary chronicles — especially those of his successor Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, the future Pius II — make it possible to reconstruct his action with precision. Modern scholarship also has Ludwig von Pastor's great History of the Popes and recent work on the Borgia family.

Table of Sources

The following table distinguishes the nature of each source used in this article: reference encyclopedia entries, a specialized academic source, and the official notice of the Holy See.

A Life in a Few Dates

A Valencian Birth (1378)

Alfonso de Borja was born on 31 December 1378 at the Torre de Canals, a hamlet near Xàtiva (Játiva), in the Kingdom of Valencia, then part of the Crown of Aragon.^[25][26] The Borja family belonged to the lower nobility; nothing in this modest and provincial origin suggested either a tiara or the dynasty that would emerge from it.

The Jurist of Lleida

The young Borja studied civil and canon law at the University of Lleida, where he received the doctorate in utroque jure — in both laws — and then taught.^[27] This formation as a canonist marked the whole man: his contemporaries saw in him a methodical, cold, scrupulous mind, more comfortable with the handling of law than with the arts.

"This calm and cold jurisconsult." — J. de la Servière, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, on the character of Callixtus III^[28]

In the Service of Alfonso V of Aragon

His legal learning quickly brought him into the service of King Alfonso V of Aragon, called the Magnanimous, whose secretary and intimate adviser he became.^[29] For years he served the king as a diplomat, gaining experience in European affairs — Aragon, Castile, Naples, the papacy — that would later serve him in Rome.

Ending the Schism: The Abdication of Clement VIII (1429)

Borja's most decisive service was to extinguish the last embers of the Western Schism. After the Council of Constance and the election of Martin V, one last antipope, Clement VIII (Gil Sánchez Muñoz), remained at Peñíscola under Aragonese protection. Borja negotiated and obtained his abdication in 1429, thus bringing the Aragonese obedience back to the legitimate pope.^[30][31] This diplomatic success revealed him as a leading churchman.

Bishop of Valencia, Then Cardinal (1429-1444)

As a reward for this reconciliation, Borja was appointed Bishop of Valencia in 1429.^[32] Fifteen years later, Pope Eugene IV, grateful for his services at the moment when Alfonso V was definitively reconciled with Rome, created him cardinal in 1444.^[33][34] Established in the Curia, the old Valencian jurist led a retired and reputedly irreproachable life — until the conclave of 1455.

The Death of Nicholas V and the April 1455 Conclave

Nicholas V, the humanist pope who founded the Vatican Library, died on 25 March 1455. The conclave that opened was dominated by the rivalry of the two great Roman families, the Colonna and the Orsini, neither of which would accept a pope from the opposing clan.^[35]

Colonna Against Orsini: The Choice of a Neutral Old Man

In this deadlock, Cardinal Borja appeared the ideal candidate: foreign to the Roman factions (he was neither Roman nor even Italian), very old, and therefore expected to have a short reign. On 8 April 1455, after a few days of conclave, he was elected — each side thinking it had chosen a transitional pope.^[36][37] He took the name Callixtus III, in memory of Saint Callixtus I.

The Program: Crusade Above All

The new pope immediately disappointed these calculations: far from merely managing an interim, he declared that all his energy would go to the crusade. The memory of Constantinople, fallen two years earlier, haunted him; he made the reconquest and defense of Christendom the central, almost sole, business of his pontificate.^[38][39]

The Context: Constantinople Fallen (1453)

On 29 May 1453, Constantinople, the thousand-year capital of the Christian empire of the East, fell into the hands of Mehmed II. The shock wave crossed the West: the Balkan road lay open, Hungary was exposed, and behind it Italy and Central Europe. It was in this climate of alarm that Callixtus III ascended the throne — and he would be one of the few to turn emotion into action.^[40]

Financing the Holy War: Austerity and Sacrifice

To pay for the crusade, Callixtus III reversed his predecessor's priorities. Where Nicholas V had spent lavishly on manuscripts, artists, and buildings, the old canonist interrupted the great humanist program, levied tithes on the clergy, and did not hesitate to alienate goods of the papal court to arm the fleet.^[41][42] This contempt for splendor — he hated pomp and lived simply — shocked Roman humanists as much as it reveals the sincerity of his commitment.

The Papal Fleet of Ludovico Trevisan

Callixtus III had a true papal fleet built in Rome. In December 1455, he entrusted its command to Cardinal Ludovico Trevisan (sometimes called Scarampo), appointed apostolic legate and captain-general of the sea.^[43] The fleet reached the Aegean Sea and won successes there against the Turks in 1457, notably off Mytilene.^[44] It was one of the rare naval successes of the medieval papacy.

The Legate Carvajal and Hungary

On land, the pope focused on the Danubian front. He sent the cardinal-legate Juan de Carvajal and the Franciscan John of Capistrano to Hungary, charged with preaching the crusade and organizing resistance around the great captain John Hunyadi.^[45][46] Papal preaching, money, and indulgences gathered a popular army, poorly equipped but numerous.

The Victory of Belgrade (22 July 1456)

In July 1456, Mehmed II besieged Belgrade, the lock of the Danube. Against all expectation, the Christian army improvised by Hunyadi and galvanized by Capistrano's sermons broke the siege on 22 July 1456 and routed the Ottoman army.^[47][48] The sultan himself was wounded. It was the greatest Christian victory of the decade — and it halted the Turkish advance into Central Europe for nearly seventy years. Hunyadi died soon afterward of the plague, and Capistrano in the autumn of the same year.

Diplomatic Isolation

The glory of Belgrade must not hide a deeper failure: Callixtus III was almost alone. The great Christian powers, asked to unite their forces, slipped away.

"The Emperor, the kings of France and Naples, opulent Venice were content with vague replies." — Raphaël Carrasco, La famille Borgia^[49]

This contrast — an obstinate pope, a lukewarm Christendom — is what makes Callixtus III, in one historian's phrase, the isolated crusader.^[50] Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, a witness at the Curia, summed up the pope's obsession by saying that he "speaks and thinks of nothing but the crusade."^[51]

The Bull of June 1456 and the Noon Prayer

Understanding that war is also won by prayer, Callixtus III ordered, by a bull of 29 June 1456, that throughout Christendom bells be rung and prayers said for the defenders of Belgrade.^[52][53] The bull granted one hundred days' indulgence to those who, at the sound of the bell, between None and Vespers, recited three Pater and three Ave.

"Between None and Vespers, at the sound of the bell, as is already done for the evening Angelic Salutation, three Paters and three Aves." — formula of the bull of Callixtus III, cited by the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique^[54]

It is from this ordinance that tradition largely derives the universal use of the noon Angelus, completing the morning and evening Angelus.^[55]

6 August: The Transfiguration in Memory of Belgrade

News of the victory reached Rome at the beginning of August 1456. To perpetuate its memory, Callixtus III raised in 1457 the feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord to the rank of a universal feast of the Church, fixed on 6 August.^[56][57][58] By a striking coincidence, exactly two years later, on 6 August 1458, the pope died — on the very day of the feast he had instituted.

The Legend of the "Excommunicated" Comet (1456)

A persistent legend claims that Callixtus III "excommunicated" Halley's comet, which appeared in 1456, taking it for a Turkish omen. This story is apocryphal: no contemporary primary source attests it, and it seems to have been forged much later, in an age fond of mocking medieval "superstition."^[59] What the pope actually ordered was public prayer against the Turks — the comet does not appear in it. The anecdote is a good example of an anti-clerical legend that must be corrected: it attributes to the Middle Ages a credulity that, in this case, belongs above all to the imagination of later centuries.

The Canonization of Saint Vincent Ferrer (1455)

In his first year, Callixtus III canonized the great Valencian Dominican preacher Saint Vincent Ferrer, who had died in 1419.^[60] The gesture was also an act of personal piety: Borja was Valencian like the saint, and tradition reports that Ferrer himself had foretold to the young cleric that he would one day ascend the throne of Peter.^[61] The canonization was pronounced on 29 June 1455.^[62]

The Rehabilitation of Joan of Arc (1455-1456)

At the request of Isabelle Romée, mother of Joan of Arc, and of Joan's brothers, Callixtus III authorized on 10 June 1455 the revision of the 1431 trial.^[63] He entrusted the inquiry to the Archbishop of Reims and the Bishops of Paris and Bayeux. On 7 July 1456, these judges issued a solemn sentence annulling the condemnation of Rouen.

"[The judges] said, pronounced, and judged that the said trials and sentences, tainted by fraud, calumny, iniquity... were, must be regarded as and are null and void, without value, without force and of no effect." — sentence rehabilitating Joan of Arc, 7 July 1456, cited by the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique^[64]

Joan was vindicated. Her beatification would not come until 1909 and her canonization until 1920, but the verdict of 1456, obtained under Callixtus III, was the first and indispensable step.

Other Acts

The canonist pope also attended to the ordinary government of the Church: he canonized Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, on 1 January 1457 — one of the rare medieval English canonizations.^[65][66] Yet the main thrust of his administration remained directed toward the single goal of the crusade, to the point that he was reproached for neglecting the patronage and embellishment of Rome dear to his predecessor.^[67]

Rodrigo and Luis Juan, Cardinals Too Young

The great weakness of Callixtus III was nepotism. In the consistory of 20 February 1456, he created two of his nephews cardinals: Luis Juan del Milà and, above all, Rodrigo de Borja, then about twenty-five years old — the future Alexander VI.^[68][69] The promotion provoked protests, even from the King of Aragon, who reproached the pope for wanting to advance his relatives so quickly.^[70]

Pedro Luis de Borja, Captain-General

Soon after his election, Callixtus III had already placed another nephew, Pedro Luis de Borja, at the head of the papal forces as captain-general of the Church, and had entrusted him with lordships in the Papal States.^[71][72] The Valencian pope, isolated in a Rome that regarded him as a foreigner, surrounded himself with men faithful to his own house — a logic of political survival as much as family weakness.^[73]

The Severe Judgment of History

Historians, including Catholic ones, have not spared this fault.

"Never perhaps was the vice [of nepotism] pushed as far as by him." — J. de la Servière, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique^[74]

The judgment must nevertheless be nuanced. On the one hand, the personal life of Callixtus III remained irreproachable, which radically distinguishes him from his nephew Alexander VI.^[75] On the other hand, his family strategy obeyed a political necessity: as a foreign pope without Roman support, he needed reliable men.^[76] It remains true that this promotion opened the Roman way to the Borgias — and therefore, indirectly, to the scandals that would tarnish the name a generation later.

Death on the Day of the Transfiguration

Callixtus III died on 6 August 1458, in Rome, in his eightieth year — on the very day of the feast of the Transfiguration that he had raised to universal rank. His will still left funds for the war against the Turks: to the end, the crusade remained his one great thought.^[77]

The Anti-Catalan Reaction in Rome

No sooner had the Valencian pope died than the accumulated hatred of a humiliated Rome — humiliated at having been governed by "Catalans" — erupted against his people. The city fell into violence.

"Scarcely a day passed without murder or quarrel [...], one could not take two steps without meeting Catalans." — an observer cited by Raphaël Carrasco^[78]

Driven by the Orsini and the Colonna, Romans plundered the houses of Borgia supporters; governors were massacred in papal towns.^[79] The episode shows how deeply the reign of Callixtus III had been felt as a foreign domination.

Callixtus III, Founder of the Borgia Fortune

And yet the Borgia house survived. Remaining beside the dying pope when all had abandoned him, the young cardinal Rodrigo de Borja made himself indispensable: Callixtus's successor, Pius II, confirmed him in his office as vice-chancellor of the Church — a rare decision heavy with consequences.^[80] Thirty-four years later, Rodrigo would become Alexander VI. In this sense, Callixtus III is, despite himself, the true founder of the Roman fortune of the Borgias.

What Should We Remember About Callixtus III?

Callixtus III was a paradoxical pope: elected as an interim figure, he gave his short reign a single and obstinate direction; an old man without illusions, he believed to the end in a crusade no one wanted; a cold jurist, he left warm spiritual inheritances — the noon Angelus, the feast of the Transfiguration, the whitened memory of Joan of Arc. His great failure — the apathy of Christendom — cannot be blamed on him; his great fault — nepotism — opened the door to the worst excesses of the Renaissance.

The Spiritual Lesson: Ringing for Those Who Fight

The most lasting legacy of Callixtus III is neither a battle nor a dynasty, but a bell. By ordering all Christendom to pray at noon for the fighters at Belgrade, he transformed a wartime measure into a reflex of prayer that has lasted for five centuries. This is the right image of his pontificate: a lonely old man, convinced that prayer supports the sword, and that the Church defends herself on her knees as much as with arms.

• Pope Nicholas V — his predecessor, the humanist pope who founded the Vatican Library.
• Pope Pius II — his successor, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who continued the crusade project.
• Pope Alexander VI — his nephew Rodrigo de Borja, second Borgia pope.
• The fall of Constantinople (1453) — the event that determined his entire pontificate.
• Pope Callixtus II — the previous pope of the same name, in the 12th century.