“A mistress, while he was a cardinal.”
No, many mistresses, he just had one who was his favorite. Pope Pius II had to admonish him when he was a cardinal to stop engaging in public orgies! Of course he never actually stopped, he continued those excesses even as Pope.
“And those families attacked him (the Orsini are even rumored to have killed his brother!). The Sforzas (specifically, Caterina) tried to poison him!”
You find nothing the least bit unseemly that the so-called “Vicar of Christ” was throwing the military power of your church against his family’s enemies? Even if there was provocation, there was provocation in both directions in those feuds going back generations. I wasn’t aware the Pope was supposed to use his temporal power for revenge and personal squabbles, but I guess you learn something new everyday.
“He just tried to unite the Papal States and return them to their proper function, much like Pope Julius II did.”
Sure, it had nothing to do with securing power and privilege for his family, right?
Sorry, but it’s well established that he was a corrupt nepotist, more concerned with his family’s and his own personal power than the church. He bought his way into the papacy, and appointed his illegitimate children and other relatives into all sorts of positions of power, so your defense of him is nothing short of ludicrous.
I think one of his contemporary’s eulogy of him after his death sums him up quite well:
“Hardness and falseness, madness and hate, rage, lustful desire,
Thirsty for blood and for gold, a sponge that can never be filled,
Alexander the sixth, here I lie; Roma rejoice thee
Free now at last; for my death was to mean new life for you.
Alexander the sixth has smothered the world in carnage,
Pius revives it again, worthy in name and indeed,
Alexander has sold the altars and crosses and Christum:
What he had gotten before, now he distributes again.”