Innocent VIII consented to be gaoler to the fugitive Prince Djem, for a salary paid by the prisoner's brother Bajazet II, and Alexander VIsupported the steps taken by Lodovico il Moro in Constantinople to further a Turkish assault upon Venice (1498), whereupon the latter threatened him with a Council.It is clear that the notorious alliance between Francis I and Soliman II was nothing new or unheard of.
Indeed, we find instances of whole populations to whom it seemed no particular crime to go over bodily to the Turks.Even if it were held out as a threat to oppressive governments, this is at least a proof that the idea had become familiar.As early as 1480 Battista Mantovano gives us clearly to understand that most of the inhabitants of the Adriatic coast foresaw something o f this kind, and that Ancona in particular desired it.When Romagna was suffering from the oppressive government of Leo X, a deputy from Ravenna said openly to the Legate, Cardinal Giulio Medici: 'Monsignore, the honorable Republic of Venice will not have us, for fear of a dispute with the Holy See; but if the Turk comes to Ragusa we will put ourselves into his hands.'
It was a poor but not wholly groundless consolation for the enslavement of Italy then begun by the Spaniards, that the country was at least secured from the relapse into barbarism which would have awaited it under the Turkish rule.By itself, divided as it was, it could hardly have escaped this fate.