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A letter written two years later from the Baths at Petriolo by Pius II to Roderigo when the latter was in Siena whither he had been sent by his Holiness to superintend the building of the Cathedral and the Episcopal and Piccolomini palaces is frequently cited by way of establishing the young prelate's dissolute ways.
"PETRIOLO, June 11, 1460." Such a letter is calculated to shock us in our modern notions of a churchman. In considering Roderigo's conduct, you are to consider as has been urged already the age in which he lived.
He angered Pius II by his excesses, and the first ray of light thrown upon Rodrigo's private life is an admonitory letter written by that pope, the eleventh of June, 1460, from the baths of Petriolo. Borgia was then twenty-nine years old. He was in beautiful and captivating Siena, where Piccolomini had passed his unholy youth.
We have always loved you and thought you worthy of our protection as a man of an earnest and modest character. Therefore, conduct yourself henceforth so that we may retain this our opinion of you, and may behold in you only the example of a well ordered life. Your years, which are not such as to preclude improvement, permit us to admonish you paternally. PETRIOLO, June 11, 1460.
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