The Borgia Testament — Nigel Balchin

Engrossing historical novel set in the time of the Italian Renaissance which is a study of two different types of man -- Cesare, the ruthless, cynical materialist, driven relentlessly on by an idea which he knows he cannot live to realise; and, his father, the Pope, worldly wise, highly conscious of human frailties and particularly of his own, a master of compromise in all spheres, moral and political.