Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

conspirators bellissimo inganno - a "most lovely ruse." `051673

Isabella d'Este, playing safe, sent Caesar congratulations, and a

hundred masks to amuse him "after the fatigues and struggles of this

glorious expedition." Louis XII hailed the coup as "a deed worthy of

the great days of Rome." `051674

Alexander was now free to express his full rage at the conspiracy

against his son and the reclaimed cities of the Church. He claimed

to have evidence that Cardinal Orsini had plotted with his relatives

to assassinate Caesar; `051675 he had the Cardinal and several other

suspects arrested (January 3, 1503); he seized the Cardinal's

palace, and confiscated all his goods. The Cardinal died in prison

on February 22, probably through excitement and exhaustion; Rome

speculated that the Pope had had him poisoned. Alexander advised

Caesar to root out the Orsini completely from Rome and the Campagna.

Caesar was not so anxious; perhaps he too was exhausted; he delayed

returning to the capital, and then set out unwillingly `051676 to

besiege Giulio Orsini's mighty fortress at Ceri (March 14, 1503). In

this siege- perhaps in others- Borgia used some of Leonardo's war

machines; one was a movable tower holding three hundred men and

capable of being raised to the top of the enemy's walls. `051677

Giulio surrendered, and went with Caesar to the Vatican to ask for

peace; the Pope granted it on condition that all Orsini castles in

papal territory should be given up to the Church; it was done. In

the meantime Perugia and Fermo had quietly accepted the governors sent

them by Caesar. Bologna was still unredeemed, but Ferrara had joyfully

received Lucrezia Borgia as its duchess. Aside from these two major

principalities- which would occupy Alexander's successors- the

reconquest of the Papal States was complete, and Caesar Borgia, at

twenty-eight, found himself the governor of a realm equaled in size,

in the peninsula, only by the Kingdom of Naples. He was now by

common consent the most remarkable and powerful man in Italy.

For a time he remained in unwonted quiet at the Vatican. We should

have expected him at this point to send for his wife; he did not. He

had left her with her family in France, and she had borne him a

child during his wars; occasionally he wrote to her and sent her

gifts; but he never saw her again. The Duchesse de Valentinois lived a

modest and retired life in Bourges, or in the chateau de La

Motte-Feuilly in the Dauphine, waiting hopefully to be sent for, or to

have her husband come to her. When he was ruined and deserted she

tried to go to him; when he died she hung her house with black, and

remained in mourning for him until her death. Perhaps he would have

sent for her later, had he been given more than a few months of peace;

more likely he looked upon the marriage as purely political, and

felt no obligation to tenderness. There was apparently only a

modicum of tenderness in him, and he kept most of that for Lucrezia,

whom he loved as much as he could love a woman. Even when hurrying

from Urbino to Milan to circumvent his foes with Louis XII, he had

gone considerably out of his way to visit his sister at Ferrara,

then dangerously ill. Returning from Milan he stopped there again,

held her in his arms while physicians bled her, and stayed with her

till she was out of danger. `051678 Caesar was not made for

marriage; he had mistresses, but none for long; he was too consumed by

the will to power to let any woman enter possessively into his life.

In Rome he lived in privacy, almost in concealment. He worked at

night and was rarely seen by day. But he worked hard, even in this

period of seeming rest; he kept close watch on his appointees in the

States of the Church, punished those who misused their position, had

one appointee put to death for cruelty and exploitation, and always

found time to see men who needed his instructions on the government of

the Romagna or the maintenance of order in Rome. Those who knew him

respected his shrewd intelligence, his capacity for going directly

to the heart of the matter, for seizing every opportunity that

chance presented, and for taking quick, decisive, and effective

action. He was popular with his soldiers, who secretly admired the

saving severity of his discipline. They highly approved of the bribes,

stratagems, and deceits by which he reduced the number and persistence

of his enemies and the battles and casualties of his troops. `051679

Diplomats were chagrined to find that this swift-moving and fearless

young general could outthink them and outreason them in their

shrewdest subtleties, and could, at need, match all their charm and

tact and eloquence. `051680

His flair for secrecy made him an easy victim for the satirists of

Italy, and for the ugly rumors that hostile ambassadors or deposed

aristocrats might invent or spread; it is impossible today to separate

fact from fiction in these lurid reports. A favorite story was that

Alexander and his son made a practice of arresting rich

ecclesiastics on trumped up charges, and releasing them on the payment

of large ransoms or fines; so, it was alleged, the bishop of Cesena,

for a crime whose nature was not divulged, was cast into Sant' Angelo,

and was freed on paying 10,000 ducats to the Pope. `051681 We cannot

say whether this was justice or robbery; in fairness to Alexander we

should bear in mind that it was then the custom of both secular and

ecclesiastical courts to make crime pay the court by replacing

expensive imprisonment with lucrative fines. According to the Venetian

ambassador Giustiniani and the Florentine ambassador Vittorio

Soderini, Jews were frequently arrested on charges of heresy, and

could prove their orthodoxy only by substantial contributions to the

papal treasury. `051682 It is possible; but Rome was known for its

relatively decent treatment of the Jews, and no Jew was considered a

heretic- or was prosecuted by the Inquisition- for being a Jew.

Many rumors charged the Borgias with poisoning rich cardinals to

accelerate the reversion of their estates to the Church. Some such

casualties seemed so well attested- rather by repetition than by

evidence- that Protestant historians generally accepted them as late

as the judicious Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97); `051683 and the

Catholic historian Pastor believed it "extremely probable that

Caesar poisoned Cardinal Michiel in order to obtain the money that

he wanted." `051684 This conclusion was founded on the fact that under

Julius II (extremely hostile to Alexander) a subdeacon, Aquino da

Colloredo, being put to the torture, confessed that he had poisoned

Cardinal Michiel at the behest of Alexander and Caesar. `051685 A

twentieth-century historian may be excused for being skeptical of

confessions elicited by torture. An enterprising statistician has

shown that the death rate among cardinals was no higher in Alexander's

pontificate than before or afterward; `051686 but there is no doubt

that Rome, in the last three years of that reign, thought it dangerous

to be a cardinal and rich. `051687 Isabella d'Este wrote to her

husband to be careful what he said about Caesar, for "he does not

scruple to conspire against those of his own blood"; `051688

apparently she accepted the tale that he had killed the Duke of

Gandia. Roman gossip talked about a slow poison, cantarella, whose

base was arsenic, and which, dropped as a powder upon food or into

drink- even into the sacramental wine of the Mass- would produce a

leisurely death difficult to trace to its human cause. Historians

now generally reject the slow poisons of the Renaissance as legendary,

but believe that in one or two cases the Borgias poisoned rich

cardinals. `051689 *05041 Further research may reduce these cases to

zero.

Worse stories were told of Caesar. To amuse Alexander and

Lucrezia, we are assured, he released into a courtyard several

prisoners who had been sentenced to death, and, from a safe point,

showed his bowmanship by shooting fatal arrows into one after

another of the convicts as they sought some refuge from his

shafts. `051690 Our sole authority for this tale is the Venetian envoy

Capello; it is rather less probable that Caesar did this than that a

diplomat should lie. Much history of the Renaissance popes has been

written on the authority of war propaganda and diplomatic lies.

The most incredible of the Borgia horrors appears in the usually

reliable diary of Alexander's master of ceremonies, Burchard. Under

October 30, 1501, the Diarium describes a dinner in the apartment of

Caesar Borgia in the Vatican, at which nude courtesans chased

chestnuts scattered over the floor while Alexander and Lucrezia looked

on. `051691 The story appears also in the Perugian historian

Matarazzo, who took it not from Burchard (for the Diarium was

still secret) but from gossip that ranged out of Rome through Italy;

"the thing was known far and wide," he says. `051692 If so, it is

strange that the Ferrarese ambassador, who was in Rome at the time,

and was later commissioned to investigate the morals of Lucrezia and

her fitness to marry Alfonso, son of Duke Ercole, made no mention of

the story in his report, but (as we shall see) gave a most favorable

account of her; either he was bribed by Alexander, or he ignored

unverified gossip. But how did the story get into Burchard's diary? He

does not profess to have been present, and could hardly be, for he was

a man of sturdy morals. Normally he included in his notes only such

events as he had witnessed, or such as had been reported to him on

good authority. Was the story interpolated into the manuscript? Of the

original manuscript only twenty-six pages survive, all concerning

the period following Alexander's final illness. Of the remainder of

the Diarium only copies exist. All these copies carry the story.

It may have been interpolated by a hostile scribe who thought to liven

a dry chronicle with a juicy tale; or Burchard may for once have

allowed gossip to creep into his notes, or the original may have

marked it as gossip. Probably the story was based on an actual

banquet, and the lurid fringe was added by fancy or spite. The

Florentine ambassador Francesco Pepi, always hostile to the Borgias

since Florence was almost always at odds with them, reported, on the

morrow of the affair, that the Pope had stayed up till a late hour

in the apartments of Caesar the night before, and there had been

"dancing and laughter"; `051693 there is no mention of the courtesans.

It is incredible that a pope who was at this time making every

effort to marry his daughter to the heir of the duchy of Ferrara

should have risked the marriage and a vital diplomatic alliance by

allowing Lucrezia to witness such a spectacle. `051694

But let us look at Lucrezia.

V. LUCREZIA BORGIA: 1480-1519

-

Alexander admired, perhaps feared, his son, but he loved his

daughter with all the emotional intensity of his nature. He seems to

have taken profounder pleasure in her moderate beauty, in her long

golden hair (so heavy that it gave her headaches), in the rhythm of

her light form dancing, `051695 and in the filial devotion that she

gave him through all contumely and bereavements, than he had ever

derived from the charms of Vanozza or Giulia. She was not particularly

fair, but she was described in her youth as dolce ciera, sweet face;

and amid all the coarseness and looseness of her times and her

environment, through all the disillusionments of divorce and the

horror of seeing her husband murdered almost before her eyes, she kept

this "sweet face" to her pious end, for it was a frequent theme in

Ferrarese poetry. Pinturicchio's portrait of her, in the Borgia

apartment of the Vatican, agrees well with this description of her

in her youth.

Like all Italian girls who could afford it, she went to a convent

for her education. At an unknown age she passed from the house of

her mother Vanozza to that of Donna Adriana Mila, a cousin of

Alexander. There she formed a lifelong friendship with Adriana's

daughter-in-law Giulia Farnese, alleged mistress of her father.

Favored with every good fortune except legitimacy, Lucrezia grew up in

a gay and joyous girlhood, and Alexander was happy in her happiness.

This carefree youth was ended by marriage. Probably she was not

offended when her father chose a husband for her; that was then normal

procedure for all good girls, and produced no more unhappiness than

our own reliance on the selective wisdom of romantic love.

Alexander, like any ruler, thought that the marriages of his

children should advance the interests of the state; this too,

doubtless, seemed reasonable to Lucrezia. Naples was then hostile to

the papacy, and Milan was hostile to Naples; so her first marriage

bound her, at the age of thirteen, to Giovanni Sforza, aged

twenty-six, lord of Pesaro and nephew to Lodovico, regent of Milan

(1493). Alexander amused himself paternally by arranging a handsome

home for the couple in Cardinal Zeno's palace, close to the Vatican.

But Sforza had to live at Pesaro part of the time, and took his

young bride with him. She languished on those distant shores, far from

her doting father and the excitement and splendor of Rome; and after a

few months she returned to the capital. Later Giovanni joined her

there; but after Easter of 1497 he stayed at Pesaro and she at Rome.

On June 14 Alexander asked him to consent to an annulment on the

ground of the husband's impotence- the only ground recognized by canon

law for annulling a valid marriage. Lucrezia, whether in grief or in

shame, or to circumvent scandalmongers, retired to a

convent. `051696 A few days later her brother the Duke of Gandia was

slain, and the delicate wits of Rome suggested that he had been

murdered by agents of Sforza for attempting to seduce

Lucrezia. `051697 Her husband denied his impotence, and hinted that

Alexander was guilty of incest with his daughter. The Pope appointed a

committee, headed by two cardinals, to inquire into whether the

marriage had ever been consummated; Lucrezia took oath that it had

not, and they assured Alexander that she was still a virgin.

Lodovico proposed to Giovanni that he should demonstrate his potency

before a committee including the papal legate at Milan; Giovanni

forgivably refused. However, he signed a formal admission that the

marriage had not been consummated; he returned to Lucrezia her dowry

of 31,000 ducats; and on December 20, 1497, the marriage was annulled.

Lucrezia, who had borne no offspring to Giovanni, bore children to

both her later husbands; but Sforza's third wife, in 1505, gave

birth to a son presumably his own. `051698

It was formerly assumed that Alexander had broken the marriage in

order to make a politically more profitable marriage; there is no

evidence for this assumption; it is more likely that Lucrezia told the

pitiful truth of the matter. But Alexander could not let her remain

husbandless. Seeking a rapprochement with the papacy's bitter enemy,

Naples, he proposed to King Federigo the union of Lucrezia with Don

Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie, the bastard son of Federigo's heir Alfonso

II. The King agreed, and a formal betrothal was signed (June, 1498).

Federigo's proxy on this occasion was Cardinal Sforza, uncle to the

divorced Giovanni. Lodovico of Milan also had encouraged Federigo to

accept the plan. `051699 Apparently Giovanni's uncles felt no

resentment at the annulment of his marriage. In August the wedding was

celebrated in the Vatican.

Lucrezia facilitated matters by falling in love with her husband. It

helped that she could mother him, for she was eighteen now, and he was

a child of seventeen. But it was their misfortune to be important;

politics entered even their marriage bed. Caesar Borgia, rejected in

Naples, went to France for a bride (October, 1498); Alexander

entered into alliance with Louis XII, the declared enemy of Naples;

the young Duke of Bisceglie was increasingly ill at ease in a Rome

filling up with French agents; suddenly he fled to Naples. Lucrezia

was brokenhearted. To appease her and heal the breach, Alexander

appointed her regent of Spoleto (August, 1499); Alfonso rejoined her

there; Alexander visited them at Nepi, reassured the youth, and

brought them back to Rome. There Lucrezia was delivered of a son,

who was named Rodrigo after her father.

But again their happiness was brief. Whether because Alfonso was

uncontrollably high-strung, or because Caesar Borgia symbolized the

French alliance, Alfonso took a passionate dislike to him, which

Borgia disdainfully returned. On the night of July 15, 1500, some

bravos attacked Alfonso as he was leaving St. Peter's. He received

several wounds, but managed to reach the house of the Cardinal of

Santa Maria in Portico. Lucrezia, summoned to him, fainted on seeing

his condition; she soon recovered, and, with his sister Sancia, tended

him anxiously. Alexander sent a guard of sixteen men to protect him

from further injury. Alfonso slowly convalesced. One day he saw Caesar

walking in a nearby garden. Convinced that this was the man who had

hired his assassins, Alfonso seized bow and arrow, aimed at Caesar,

and shot to kill. The weapon narrowly missed its mark. Caesar was

not the man to give an enemy a second chance; he called his guards and

sent them up to Alfonso's room, apparently with orders to slay him;

they pressed a pillow upon his face until he died, perhaps under the

eyes of his sister and his wife. `0516100 Alexander accepted

Caesar's account of the matter, gave Alfonso a quiet burial, and did

what he could to console the inconsolable Lucrezia.

She retired to Nepi, and there signed her letters la

infelicissima principessa, "the most miserable princess," and ordered

Masses for the repose of Alfonso's soul. Strange to relate, Caesar

visited her at Nepi (October 1, 1499) only two and a half months after

Alfonso's death, and stayed overnight as her guest. Lucrezia was

malleable and patient; she seems to have looked upon the killing of

her husband as the natural reaction of her brother to an attempt

upon his life. She does not appear to have believed that Caesar had

hired the unsuccessful assassins of Alfonso, though this seems the

most probable explanation of another Renaissance mystery. During the

remainder of her life she gave many proofs that her love for her

brother had survived all trials. Perhaps because he too, like her

father, loved her with Spanish intensity, the wits of Rome, or

rather of hostile Naples, `0516101 continued to accuse her of

incest; one synoptic scribe called her "the Pope's daughter, wife, and

daughter-in-law." `0516102 This, too, she bore with quiet resignation.

All students of the epoch are now agreed that these charges were cruel

calumnies, `0516103 but such libels formed her fame for

centuries. *05042

That Caesar killed Alfonso with a view to remating her to better

political result is improbable. After a period of mourning she was

offered to an Orsini, then to a Colonna- matches hardly as

advantageous as that with the son of the heir to the Neapolitan

throne. Not till November, 1500, do we hear of Alexander proposing her

to Duke Ercole of Ferrara for Ercole's son Alfonso; `0516104 and not

till September, 1501, was she betrothed to him. Presumably Alexander

hoped that a Ferrara ruled by a son-in-law, and a Mantua long since

bound to Ferrara by marriage, would in effect be papal states; and

Caesar seconded the plan as offering greater security for his

conquests, and an elegant background for an attack upon Bologna.

Ercole and Alfonso hesitated, for reasons already retailed. Alfonso

had been offered the hand of the Countess of Angouleme, but

Alexander topped his offer with the pledge of an immense dowry, and

practical remission of the annual tribute that Ferrara had been paying

to the papacy. Even so, it is hardly credible that one of the oldest

and most prosperous ruling families in Europe would have received

Lucrezia as wife to the future duke had it believed the lurid

stories bandied about by the intellectual underworld of Rome. As

neither Ercole nor Alfonso had yet seen Lucrezia, they followed

customary procedure in such diplomatic matings, and asked the

Ferrarese ambassador in Rome to send them a report on her person,

her morals, and her accomplishments. He replied as follows:

-

Illustrious Master: Today after supper Don Gerardo Saraceni and I

betook ourselves to the Illustrious Madonna Lucrezia to pay our

respects in the name of Your Excellency and His Majesty Don Alfonso.

We had a long conversation regarding various matters. She is a most

intelligent and lovely, and also an exceedingly gracious, lady. Your

Excellency and the Illustrious Don Alfonso- so we were led to

conclude- will be highly pleased with her. Besides being extremely

graceful in every way, she is modest, lovable, and decorous. Moreover,

she is a devout and God-fearing Christian. Tomorrow she is going to

confession, and during Christmas week she will receive communion.

She is very beautiful, but her charm of manner is still more striking.

In short, her character is such that it is impossible to suspect

anything "sinister" of her; but on the contrary we look for only the

best... Rome, December 23, 1501...

Your Excellency's servant,

Joannes Lucas `0516105

-

The Excellent and Illustrious Estensi were convinced, and sent a

magnificent body of knights to escort the bride from Rome to

Ferrara. Caesar Borgia equipped two hundred cavaliers to accompany

her, and supplied musicians and buffoons to amuse the arduous travel

hours. Alexander, proud and happy, provided her with a retinue of

180 persons, including five bishops. Vehicles especially built for the

trip, and 150 mules, carried her trousseau; and this included a

dress valued at 15,000 ducats ($187,500?), a hat worth 10,000 and

200 bodices costing a hundred ducats each. `0516106 On January 6,

1502, having privately taken leave of her mother Vanozza, Lucrezia

began her bridal tour across Italy to join her fiance. Alexander,

after bidding her good-by, went from point to point on the line of

procession to catch another glimpse of her as she rode on her little

Spanish horse all caparisoned in harness of leather and gold; he

watched until she and her retinue of a thousand men and women were out

of sight. He suspected that he would never see her again.

Rome had probably never witnessed such an exit before, nor Ferrara

such an entry. After twenty-seven days of travel, Lucrezia was met

outside the city by Duke Ercole and Don Alfonso with a superb

cavalcade of nobles, professors, seventy-five mounted archers,

eighty trumpeters and fifers, and fourteen floats carrying highborn

ladies sumptuously dressed. When the procession reached the

cathedral two ropewalkers descended from its towers and addressed

compliments to Lucrezia. As the ducal palace was reached all prisoners

were given their liberty. The people rejoiced in the beauty and smiles

of their future duchess; and Alfonso was happy to have so splendid and

charming a bride. `0516107

VI. THE COLLAPSE OF THE BORGIA POWER

-

The final years of Alexander were apparently happy and prosperous.

His daughter was married into a ducal family, and was respected by all

Ferrara; his son had brilliantly accomplished his assignments as

general and administrator, and the Papal States were flourishing under

excellent government. The Venetian ambassador describes the Pope, in

those last years, as cheerful and active, apparently quite easy of

conscience; "nothing worries him." He was seventy years old on January

1, 1501, but, reported the ambassador, "he seems to grow younger every

day." `0516108

Durant W. The Renaissance. A History of Civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D

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