all.
The affair is the occasion of another of the calumnies which have been
cast upon the House of Borgia. Not one word is said by contemporaries
implicating Borgia in this crime: yet the modern fiction-monger or
quoad-historian who without hesitation did not place it to Borgia’s
debit would consider himself guilty of dereliction of duty.
The statements of the Venetian and the German, quoted above, will not
bear examination in the light of common sense. A rational and
unprejudiced observer will have noticed that Giustiniani does not speak
of having seen with his own eyes. He is not imparting official
information: he reports a mere _on dit_. But Burchard’s account is a
miracle of Teutonic completeness at all costs, and lack of sense of the
ridiculous. He does not say that he has seen the show. He gives no
authority for his statements. But he adds, to Don Astorgio and Don
Gianevangelista, a youth of twenty-five, a certain woman, and several
others! Is any reliance to be placed on Burchard, uncorroborated and
unashamed? He says that the corpse of Don Astorgio had a stone at his
neck, yet he was floating on Tiber in the sight of all! How can a
cadaver float when weighted with a stone? The density of Tiber is not
like that of the Dead Sea or Droitwich Brine Baths. Also, Tiber
notoriously is a swift current, far too turbid to permit a crowd of
corpses placidly to float in the sight of all. Also, Tiber exclusively
was used for drinking and household purposes, and constantly by all
Romans, high and low, for swimming: the heraklean Lord Cardinal Prince
Ippolito d’Este swam there. Also, the Borgia were pre-eminently
clever—cunning, their calumniators say. Then, is it probable that men of
any common sense would offer a hecatomb of assassinations to Tiber, and
to the sight of all, weighted only by Burchard’s single stone? Finally,
how is it that in the history of Faenza, and of the relations of these
young lords, there is not a single allusion to the manner of their
death? The learned Padre Leonetti justly contends that the story of the
murder is a mere fabrication; that the scribes, with Burchard and
Giustiniani, have seen no floating bodies; but that they have contented
themselves, according to their custom, with fresh vilifications of the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI and of Duke Cesare de Valentinois.
Let it be remembered that Don Astorgio Manfredi was “un puto mal san,” a
sickly or strumous lad. Let it be remembered how extremely easy it is to
kill strong boys off, between their fourteenth and their eighteenth
year, simply by depriving them of hope and joy. Let the most pathetic
history of Don Astorgio Manfredi, of which the barest briefest extract
has been given, let his situation, and that of his young brother Don
Gianevangelista, be realized with care; and the humanly natural
supposition will arise, that these two died natural deaths due to
constitutional defects aggravated by hopeless imprisonment in the Mola
of Hadrian.
It would be hard, however, if the enemies of Borgia could find nothing
worse to say; and the abominable Messer Francesco Guicciardini of
Florence, pandar of France, minion of Ghibelline Colonna, does not fail
to make use of that curiously common and invariably inconsequent calumny
which mediocrity, in all ages, hurls at genius. He writes, “Astorgio was
not deprived of life before having first been used, _they say_, to
satiate the passions of a certain person.” Under the pen of historians
who followed Guicciardini, this “certain person” quite naturally has
become the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. It is on the authority of this
Guicciardini that writers, far from the scene, and long after the deed,
have allowed them to assail an old man, a priest, the Head of the
Church, with a shameful and execrable accusation. Did Guicciardini make
the very difficult examinations of this problematic corpse which
medical-law ordains? He was inspired, and very badly, by his hatred. He
has not proved the crimes of the Pope. He has only exhibited the
fertility of a monstrously unclean and salacious imagination, the
dévergondage of a mind stuffed with reminiscences of Tiberius, of Nero,
of Elagabalus! (_Réné, Comte de Maricourt._)
* * * * *
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI had now reached the summit of His magnificent
pontificate. With the States of the Church slowly but surely being
brought under domination by the splendid gains of Duke Cesare de
Valentinois, with the interested support of the Christian King of France
and the Catholic King of Spain, (for the latter had the sense to cease
from annoying a powerful pontiff), and with His neighbour the Regno
under its weak King Don Federigo of no importance, there was nothing
that He might not do for the enrichment of the Papacy or the
aggrandisement of the House of Borgia. His policy was beginning to take
shape. The enormous and magnificent project, which appears to have
dictated all His actions, was assuming a concrete form. Difficulties of
every kind had beset Him from the beginning; and difficulties, He
doubtless knew, would be His constant portion: but by patience, agility
of mind, diplomatic skill, singleness of purpose, and His invincible
indomitable will, He had beaten down His opponents one by one, or had
turned their opposition into support which now enabled Him to act
independently and upon His own initiative.
He made short work with the rebellious barons of Rome. He blasted Don
Pierfrancesco Colonna with excommunication. He confiscated the fiefs of
the Houses of Colonna and Savelli, both of the Ghibelline faction, who
had defied Him by secession to Charles VIII and the unmitigable Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere in 1494. He distributed the titles and estates so
acquired among members of the House of Borgia.
On the first of September 1501, He issued a Brief legitimating that
bastard of Duke Cesare de Valentinois and a Roman spinster, who had been
born in 1498, and was known as Infans Romanus; to whom He gave the name
Giovanni, after His favourite son the murdered Duke of Gandia, as well
as the duchy of Nepi. But, by a second Brief of the same date (in the
Archives of Modena) He declares this Don Giovanni Borgia to be the son
_not of the aforesaid Duke (Cesare) but of_ US _and the said
spinster_.[46]
There exists no explanation of the contradiction in these two Briefs. It
is, however, certain that no human temptation could induce a Pope to
publish such a statement as that of the second, unless the thing were
true; and, in the case of a Pope as powerful as the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI, there was no superior power which could force Him against His will.
As to one of the Briefs being truth and the other falsehood, it may be
remembered that there is a general law, a Necessary Proposition, “The
lesser is contained in the greater.” The thing was true. The Lord
Alexander P.P. VI, at the age of sixty-seven years, was the father of
Don Giovanni Borgia, whom He created Duke of Nepi in 1501.
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was a very great man; guilty of hiding none
of his human weakness: and on this account a Terror to hypocrites of all
ensuing ages. Nothing in the world is so unpleasant, so disconcerting,
so utterly abhorred, as the plain and naked truth.
* * * * *
After the spoliation of the Houses of Colonna and Savelli—an act which
reduced them from that of premier barons of the Holy See to a position
of such insignificance that they no more appear in the history of this
pontificate,—the Pope’s Holiness married Madonna Lucrezia Borgia to Don
Alfonso d’Este, the heir of Duke Ercole of Ferrara. This was after her
year of widowhood. She was now the wife of royalty, with a near prospect
of a throne, worshipped by the poor for her boundless and sympathetic
charity, by the learned for her intelligence, by her kin for her loving
loyalty, by her husband for her perfect wifehood and motherhood, by all
for her transcendent beauty and her spotless name. Why it has pleased
modern writers and painters to depict this pearl among women as a
“poison-bearing maenad” a “veneficous bacchante” stained with revolting
and unnatural turpitude, is one of those riddles to which there is no
key. If physiognomy be an index to character, the most superficial
inspection of the effigy of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia must put her
calumniators to endless shame. In that simple profile, of features
clean-cut, delicate, refined; in those chaste contours so gently
rounded, so sweetly fresh and feminine; in the carriage of that flavian
head well-poised and nobly frank, there can lurk no taint of decadent
degeneracy. In the Ambrosian Library at Milan, is a long tress of her
beautiful yellow hair, shining and pale; with her scholarly letters to a
learned poet and cardinal the Lord Pietro Bembo, who had dedicated to
her a genial Dialogue on platonics in Italian; an Elegy in Latin, in
praise of her singing and recitation,
“_quicquid agis, quicquid loqueris, delectat: et omnes
“praecedunt Charites, subsequiturque decor_;
with an Epigram on a gold serpent bracelet that she wore,
ARMILLA AUREA LUCRETIAE BORGIAE FERRARIAE DUCIS IN SERPENTIS EFFIGIEM
FORMATA
“_Dypsas eram: sum facta, Tago dum perluor, aurum
“tortile nympharum manibus decus; at memor dim
“Eridani, auditaque tua Lucretia forma,
“Eliadum ne te caperent electra tuarum,
“gestandum carae fluvius transmisit alumnae._”
Another poet of even greater fame, the limpid Ariosto, praised Madonna
Lucrezia as “a second Lucrece, brighter for her virtues than the star of
regal Rome.” And even a modern writer of the eminence of John Addington
Symonds, (who, in his “Renascence” habitually credits calumnies against
Borgia in his text, half-heartedly refuting the same in footnotes,)—even
he says, “Were they (the calumnies) true, or were they a malevolent lie?
Physiological speculation will help but little. _Lucrezia shewed all
signs of a clear conscience._” Precisely. Then it is right and
reasonable to presume that this much-maligned lady had a clear
conscience; and to surcease from shouting any longer in the ordure which
has been cast upon, and falls from, her fair memory. Let the fact that
Herr Gregorovius, brilliant writer, painstaking scholar, German
Protestant, fierce and unscrupulous foe of the papacy and of the House
of Borgia, has destroyed all accusations against Madonna Lucrezia,
silence all suspicion. In his huge work,[47] devoted entirely to her
history he has shewn her to be the victim of inventions due to the paid
pens of her Father’s enemies.
* * * * *
It would be contrary to human nature, had Colonna and Savelli meekly
submitted to the confiscation of their fiefs. Armed resistance was out
of the question. The heads of those Houses only saved their lives by
flight into exile in discontented Germany: but they were not left
without one weapon, the last refuge of the unscrupulous. The anonymous
libellous pamphlet or epigram lay to their hands.
[Illustration: _Lucrezia Borgia Duchess of Ferrara_]
In the Region of Monti, (the largest district of Rome, including three
of the seven hills, Quirinal, Esquiline, Caelian,) which was inhabited
by the faction of Colonna, there stood an antique statue of some
river-god whom the Romans called Marforio. In the Region of Parione by
Piazza Navona, which was the heart of the mediæval City, near Palazzo
Braschi, there stood another antique statue whom the Romans called
Pasquino and said that under him the Book of Wisdom for all time was
buried. And it was the fashion to pretend that these two statues
conversed on current topics, emitting epigrams in the darkness of the
night, which were found in writing on their pedestals in the morning.
All persons who had an axe to grind at an enemy’s expense made use of
this convention: and a folio volume would not contain the witty caustic
cynical pasquinades (ecce nomen,) which from the Fifteenth to the
Twentieth Century have been found at Pasquino and Marforio. This method
of spleen-splitting was not neglected by Colonna and Savelli. Pasquino
became loquacious, bitter, oh and smart—but, smart! One epigram may be
quoted as a specimen of the railing accusations brought against the
Holiness of the Pope by way of reflection on His alleged simoniacal
election, at times when He levied taxes or forced loans for the Crusade,
or gave no remission of the chancery fees on promotion to fiefs and
benefices.
“ALEXANDER SELLS THE KEYS, THE ALTARS, CHRIST.
“HE BOUGHT THEM; AND HE HAS THE RIGHT TO SELL.
But the most virulent of all anonymous attacks, was a pamphlet called _A
Letter to Silvio Savelli_ which pretended to have come from the Spanish
camp at Taranto. It proclaimed to the Elect-Emperor Maximilian and the
sovereigns of Europe the crimes which were said to have been committed
by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Duke Cesare de Valentinois and Madonna
Lucrezia Borgia d’Este: perfidy, carnage, rapine, adultery, incest, the
heresy of Bulgaria, simony, assassination. Men who have noticed the
rabid inconsequence, the grotesque impossibility and filthiness, which
characterises certain foreign abuse of England at the present time, will
understand the extent to which envious rage will go. Men of the
Twenty-fifth Century, who read that degenerate literature, may attach to
it an importance as undeserved as that which the Twentieth Century
attaches to the _Letter to Silvio Savelli_ of the Fifteenth. Humanity,
with slight external differences, is identical in all ages. The Borgia
were only men and women, boys and girls, when all is said; and the
charges made against them are infinitely too monstrously inhuman to be
true. Nature terribly would have avenged Herself on such infringements
of Her law.
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI read the _Letter to Silvio Savelli_. It is
recorded that His Holiness deigned heartily to laugh with His courtiers
over the exaggerated absurdity of the satire. As for its coarseness—the
Romans always value _simplicitas_ and _urbanitas_ of speech, _i.e._,
hideous grossness and brutal jest. As for taking offence—well, Consul
Caius Julius Caesar laughed at the crabbed little couplet of Caius
Valerius Catullus, and invited him to supper; and the Lord Alexander
P.P. VI had lived too many years in Italy not to have taken the correct
measure of Milanese, Florentines, Venetians, Neapolitans; and He was
well able to apportion its just value to extravagance of praise or to
extravagance of blame. With His magnificent dignity of temper, He said
that in Rome there was liberty of speech: and that He cared nothing for
libels against Himself. (Costabili to Duke of Ferrara, 1 Feb. 1502).
They amused Him, if they were witty; they pleased Him, if their language
shewed distinction: and that was all.
Duke Cesare de Valentinois was not of so gracious a humour. Towards the
end of November after the publication of the _Letter to Silvio Savelli_,
a certain Messer Girolamo Manciani, a Neapolitan, was taken in the
Region of Borgo on a charge of publishing calumnious epigrams against
the Duke which proved him to be the author of the famous _Letter_. His
right hand and tongue were promptly cut off and out. Two other defamers
employed by the Aragonese Dynasty (as Pontano had been, and Sannazar
“the Christian Vergil” was) to flout the Borgia underwent a similar
mutilation; and when the Orator of Ferrara spoke of them to the Pope, it
is said that He answered, “What can We do? The Duke means well; but he
does not know how to bear insults. We often have advised him to follow
Our ensample, and to let the mob say what it will: but he answered Us
with choler that he intended to give those scribblers a lesson in good
manners.” The good heart of the Pope spoke there. The Duke was only
carrying out the law by this severity; laws, which it would ill-become
the Lawgiver to set aside. Still, the offence being against the person
of that Lawgiver, it was open to Him privately to recommend leniency:
and that He did. No man could do more.
* * * * *
Florence, having cast off the despotic rule of the House of Medici, and
settled herself as a true republic, was at peace with the Holy See.
After the capitulation of Faenza Duke Cesare de Valentinois was created
Duke of the Romagna. King Don Federigo of Naples, apprehensive of danger
from the alliance of the Papacy and France set abroad the rumour that
the Duke intended to conquer Florence and add it to the pontifical
state; and, to curry favour with the Holiness of the Pope, he suggested
that Tuscany should be erected into a kingdom, with Duke Cesare de
Valentinois della Romagna as its crowned king. This attempt to deflect
the wave of conquest into North Italy, and away from his own dominions,
met with no success. If Duke Cesare ever had entertained the notion of
proceeding against Tuscany, he made no efforts whatever in that
direction. On the contrary, it was the Regno that was the object of
attention. Chance after chance had been given, alliances diplomatic and
matrimonial had been made with it: but it continued to be as a thorn in
the eye of the papacy, its sovereigns vicious, treacherous, its people
dangerous, degenerate. It was cankered to the core; and its time was
come. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI signed a treaty with the Christian and
Catholic Kings of France and Spain for the division of Naples. The three
signatories each had a claim of sorts: the Pope’s Holiness as suzerain
of certain fiefs and tyrannies, such as Benevento and Tarracina; the
Christian King Louis XII as representative of the Angevin dynasty; the
Catholic King Don Hernando as legitimate head of the House of Aragon.
And incontinently King Don Federigo de Aragona fled into exile, while
his kingdom was divided and given to France and Spain.
In 1502 the plans of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI for the defence of
Christendom met with success and rebuff. The Elect-Emperor Maximilian
sulkily withdrew his prohibition; and Cardinal Raymond Perauld, as Papal
Legate, passed through the Empire preaching the Crusade. But Hungary
played traitor to the League which she had formed with Venice and the
Papacy a year before; and the Majesty of England, King Henry VII Tudor,
refused to help. The last perhaps may be explained by the uneasy
condition which the realm owed to rebellions fomented by Burgundy for
the affliction of the House of Tudor—those of Lambert Simnel in 1487 and
Duke Richard Plantagenet of York (vulgarly called Perkyn Werbecke) in
1494–1499.
The movement in the direction of ecclesiastical reform slowly
progressed. Germany was still reiterating the cry which, as long ago as
the reign of the Lord Calixtus P.P. III, she had raised anent the
extortions of the Papal Chancery; and not by any means without some
reason. But then, as now, the cry for reform arose from tainted sources.
It was not genuine, or sincere; but only a species of blackmail. However
the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was willing enough and he gave the idea due
consideration, by the advice of Cardinal Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini.
But, remembering that this Most Illustrious Lord was a nephew of the
Lord Pius P.P. II (who, in His earlier years, had assisted at the
Council of Basilea); and had the reputation of being a “concilionista,”
i.e., one whose remedy for ecclesiastical ills is not a Pope, but a
Council; the Supreme Pontiff resolved to delay, until that He should see
His way more clearly. In a sense the Pope’s Holiness deceived Himself;
for Cardinal Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini (who succeeded Him as the Lord
Pius P.P. III) was, as Caesar’s wife was not, “above suspicion.” In
ordinary matters, when suitable advice is not forthcoming, a Pope is
liable to hesitate. Of course, in matters of teaching, His position is
secure; but, as has been said, in worldly affairs the Pope-well-advised
is superior to the Pope-ill-advised. Seeing no present method of
securing permanent reform, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI waited. The fruit
was not ripe. The psychological moment had not come. It was well to
wait; and to let the movement shape itself: for, later, when the hour of
reform sounded there arose the majestic Council of Trent. To the Borgia
the world greatly owes the Tridentine Decrees—decrees that govern the
Church at this day.
* * * * *
In this year 1502, Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna escorted the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI to Piombino when he made a state-progress through
the conquered states; shewing Him that from that city He could threaten
the Republics of Venice, Siena, and Florence, with the tyrannies of
Bologna and Ravenna, the last with its interminable feud of the Sforza
and the Pasolini dell’ Onda.[48] The chief independent states paid
tribute to him. By hideous treachery, he captured the duchies of Urbino
and Camerino, drove the Duke into exile, proclaimed an amnesty, and
observed it against his worst enemies: but he hanged all those who
betrayed to him, loving the treachery, hating the traitors.[49] The
duchy of Camerino was conferred upon the four-year-old Duke Giovanni
Borgia of Nepi and Camerino.
The Christian King Louis XII had a spasm of envy this year, in
consequence of Duke Cesare’s phenomenal triumphs; and shewed some signs
of interrupting the policy of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI with cries for
a General Council. A model of his, bearing his effigy with the lilies of
France and the legend _Perdam Babylonis Nomen_, made a great sensation
in Rome.[50] But French motives never are disinterested. The moment
another Power wins a success by expenditure of blood and treasure, that
is the time for pretentious incompetent France, _cane che abbaia non
morde_, to clamour for a share of what she never won, never could hope
to win,—for what, with inconsequent impertinence, she calls
“compensation”! The Holy Roman Church was not worse off, under the rule
of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, but better off than it had been before:
but the election of His Holiness was always useful as a means of
blackmail. However, Duke Cesare was Generalissimo of an enormous army.
In addition to the four thousand condottieri and three hundred lancers
with which he had begun the campaign, he had enlisted the many thousand
mercenaries of the Tyrants whom he had dispossessed, and also recruited
far and wide throughout Italy, where all the temperamental fighters
gladly took service under the most successful general. And to these he
added a foreign battalion of three thousand five hundred fantassini
(infantry), pikemen and arbalisters, all Frenchmen, of whose quality the
Christian King was well aware; and, therefore, sensible enough to
refrain himself before a worse thing happened to him. Indeed, such was
his anxiety to give evidence of his desire for peace that he actually
offered,—he, the Christian King of France, the representative of the
Angevin dynasty, offered to resign his claim to the kingdom of Naples in
favour of Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna. He was painfully
anxious not to purchase a General Council at the cost of the conquest of
France; and preferred that a Borgia sovereign, (if such a personage were
to be,) should reign in Naples rather than in Paris.
The Romagna immensely was benefited by a strong and decent government
where law—martial law, certainly; but law—at last was observed. Duke
Cesare’s army was the only great Italian army. He, representing the
Pope, was absolute in Central Italy, where no Pope had had direct
authority for centuries. He was hated; hated by the great baronial
Houses which he had ruined, whose heirs he had slain: but he was not
even disliked by the people whom he ruled.[51] It was not extraordinary;
for the mob always adores the strong bowelless man, the rigid fearless
despot, the conquering autocrat who brings peace with security. He took
no different measures against rebellious vassals than those taken by his
contemporaries, Louis XII of France, Hernando of Spain, Henry VII Tudor
of England. He was more precise, more systematic: that is all. All the
sovereigns who were his contemporaries congratulated him. The Duke was
cruel; almost as cruel as his splendid parallel of the Nineteenth
Century; and as fervently disliked and decried: but he was just, with a
justice as far above the mawkish humanitarian system of compromise,
(which, nowadays it is the mode to applaud,) as the sun is above the
stars. Through the length and breadth of his dominions he continually
went, to oversee the restoration of order, to consolidate his victories.
The slightest spark of opposition he relentlessly crushed out. It was a
hundred-headed hydra with which he had to deal. As he passed from city
to city of his provinces, he left governours in charge of each, bloody
men, ruthless giants, equal to the work in hand; for the work was
dangerous; and men, whose hearts were triply-cased in hardened bronze,
were needed, where each man’s life was in his own hands until it was in
his enemy’s. Messer Lionardo da Vinci, that “scientific sceptic,” was
his engineer in chief and designer of fortifications: and Messer Niccolo
Machiavelli said that, of all Princes, he could discover no ensample
more blooming and more vigorous than Duke Cesare. The headquarters of
the Duke were at Cesena; and that same Messer Niccolo Machiavelli—the
only man who ever knew the real Cesare (detto Borgia) naked face to
naked face, naked soul to naked soul,—advised the Signoria of Florence
that an Orator kept at Cesena would profit the republic more than an
Orator at Rome.[52] In his absences from headquarters, Duke Cesare left
Messer Ramiro d’Orco there as governor. Cesena was a nest of would-be
brigands. Messer Ramiro d’Orco was a governor who made these quail with
the steel of his garrison and his own iron will.
It was the winter of 1502. Snow lay deeply round Cesena. In the Citadel
the governor was at supper by the hearth, where huge logs blazed and
crackled. Halberdiers were standing in attendance; and, on the walls wax
torches flamed in their sockets, for the sun was set and the first hour
of the night was come. Messer Ramiro d’Orco called for wine; and a page
brought a fresh flagon from the buffet. He stumbled among the rushes on
the floor in coming, tripped over the feet of a guard; and the falling
flagon spilled the wine on the ankle of Messer Ramiro d’Orco. That
monster made no more ado. He took the lad by the belt, and slung him
into the fire, seizing the nearest halberd and pinning the twitching
body to the flaming logs. The hair, in a flash, was gone. The slim legs
violently writhed outward, and fell still. Hose and leathern jerkin
peeled, and the white flesh hissed and blackened. Then, naught but small
ash showed where a boy had died; and the smell of roasted human flesh
mingled with the smell of the meats. Again, Messer Ramiro d’Orco called
for wine, unmoved, only inconvenienced. He was the governor of Cesena:
he had but punished a clumsy serving-boy.
That is the kind of man who could rule in the Romagna: and it easily
will be understood that acting in this way, armed with plenipotentiary
authority, Messer Ramiro d’Orco froze his district into a state of
comparative tranquillity—a state which gave him the opportunity of
looking further afield, and, so it happened, fatally for himself. A very
little cruelty of this callosity goes far. Even truculent Cesena grew
faint with horror of this fiend.
Duke Cesare acted upon the principle that it is better to be feared than
loved—_if one must choose_: but he knew that there is a point beyond
which no wise ruler goes: he knew the supreme art of making an end.
Murmured rumours of atrocities reached his ears. Sooner or later he
would have to bear the odium of the ill-deeds of his deputy. He never
shirked responsibility. To shine in the reflected glare of Messer Ramiro
d’Orco’s evil fame would not suit his purpose. And there were other
things.
On the twenty-second of December, when the setting sun cast long
blood-red lights across the snow, without warning Duke Cesare gallopped
into Cesena with an armed escort of lancers. The cowed Cesenesi, turning
out of doors to do him reverence, caught bare glimpses of flashing mail
and the bull-bannerols of Borgia passing over the drawbridge of the
citadel. Presently, from that citadel came Messer Cipriano di Numai, the
Duke’s secretary, to the house of Messer Domenico d’Ugolini, the
treasurer; seeking the governor in the city. Messer Ramiro d’Orco was
arrested, and conducted to the presence of his chief.
Surmise that night was rife as to the import of these acts. New
vengeance? New taxes? New horror? None could say.
The next morning, letters-patent went to all cities of the Romagna
proclaiming that Duke Cesare had arrested his governor Messer Ramiro
d’Orco, on the charge of numberless frauds, illegal cruelties, and other
crimes. The plaints of the oppressed had grieved the Duke, natural enemy
of exaction, avarice, and cruelty, who, having freed the citizens from
the ancient terror, wished to impose no new charges on them. The
letters-patent concluded, “for the doing of justice to Ourself and to
all persons who have been injured, and for a salutary example to all Our
servants present and future, Messer Ramiro d’Orco will stand his trial
on depositions against him collected.”
The trial was not a long one. Legally put to the Torture of the
Question, that frightful ruffian admitted the truth of the said
depositions; and, chiefly he accused himself of having sold the store of
corn belonging to the province, applying the price to his own purposes,
to such an extent that Duke Cesare only averted a famine by importing a
fresh supply from foreign countries. Lastly, Messer Ramiro d’Orco
confessed that he was conspiring with the Orsini to betray to them the
city of Cesena; and with Don Vitellozzo Vitelli, Tyrant of Citta di
Castello, and Don Oliverotto da Fermo, to pose an arbalister[53] to
assassinate Duke Cesare with a bolt from his arbalist.[54] Citizens of
Cesena who passed the little square before the citadel, going to the
dawn-mass of Christmas Day, saw a joyful sight—the Justice of the Duke.
They saw a glittering axe, fixed in a block upon the snow. They saw on
the one side a headless body in rich garments, exposed on a
blood-stained mat upon the snow. They saw on the other side the bodiless
head of Messer Ramiro d’Orco on a pike.
All chroniclers of the period congratulate Duke Cesare on having
delivered his subjects from a tyrannous subaltern as cruel as he was
rapacious; and Machiavelli records that His Excellency was pleased to
shew that he had the power to make men—and to mar them. Duke Cesare in
teaching made use of the sense of sight. He made the peoples of the
Romagna see his power, see his justice, see his ever-present
indefatigable energy. What wonder then that he was looked upon as
superhuman. In the citadel of Cesena a milder governor reigned.
Leaving Cesena on the Festival of St. Stephen, Duke Cesare reached
Pesaro on the twenty-eighth of December, where he learned that the
conspirators whom Messer Ramiro d’Orco had betrayed, (except the
Baglioni of Perugia, and Don Giulio and Don Giovanni Orsini who were in
Rome with Cardinal Giambattista Orsini and other prelates of their
faction) were at Sinigaglia, which place they were supposed to be
besieging on the Duke’s behalf; and they sent to him to announce that
they had captured the city, but that the governor refused to surrender
the citadel save to the Generalissimo in person. Duke Cesare sent avant
couriers heralding his arrival with artillery.
At dawn on the Festival of St. Sylvester, the thirty-first of December,
he appeared before Sinigaglia. His trusty confidant and captain Don
Michelotto led the van with two hundred lancers. Behind these Duke
Cesare rode, accompanied by three and a half thousand Italian
condottieri and as many foreigners. At the city-gate, Don Michelotto
halted his cavalry on the bridge, and the infantry defiled between their
ranks, entering the city where the forces of Don Oliverotto da Fermo
were paraded. Don Paolo and Don Francesco Orsini, Duke of Gravina, also
were present, with Don Vitellozzo Vitelli who wore an ermine mantle and
rode a mule like any cardinal. Duke Cesare appeared to be pleased at
seeing them and allowed them to kiss his hand in the French style. The
atrocious character of these brigands already has been described.
Duke Cesare engaged them in conversation, siding with Don Francesco
Orsini and Don Vitellozzo Vitelli. When they reached the palace which he
was to occupy, the four prepared to take their leave; but he begged them
to stay and dine, and to assist him in certain deliberations. As soon as
they had crossed the threshold, the Duke’s gentlemen made them
prisoners.
Messer Niccolo Machiavelli, the official representative of the Signoria
of Florence on the staff of Duke Cesare, (a capacity equivalent to that
of foreign attaché with an army in the field,) reached Sinigaglia later
in the day; and found the city filled with the Ducal mercenaries, who
were engaged in stripping the troops of the conspirators and in doing a
little pillage of some Venetian merchants. He was going to the palace to
get the news, when Duke Cesare, rode out, armed cap-à-pie, and said to
him, “I have had a chance, and I have taken it; and I have done a
service that should cause your Signoria to rejoice.” Then he rode away
and reduced his turbulent troops to order.
During the night the fate of the conspirators was decided. In deference
to their rank, the two Orsini were to be sent to Rome and judged there
according to law: meanwhile they were detained at the palace of
Sinigaglia under guard. The trial of the others began at once. Put to
the Torture of the Question in the usual manner, they soon shewed of
what poor stuff they were made. The lily-livered assassin Don Oliverotto
da Fermo wept and groaned and reproached Don Vitellozzo Vitelli with
having led him—innocent lamb as he was—into mischief by inducing him to
intrigue against Duke Cesare. On the first day of the new year 1503, at
four o’clock in the morning, they were ceremonially strangled in the
courtyard of the palace. While Don Vitellozzo was struggling with the
carnefex, dying by slow degrees, with blackening face and bulging eyes,
he screamed continually to Duke Cesare begging hard that he would
implore the Lord Alexander P.P. VI to grant him absolution after death
and a plenary indulgence, until the red cord (which was his baronial
privilege) cut into his gullet, and stilled his swollen tongue.
An ensample of this kind can leave no doubt in the mind but that, in
spite of all to the contrary, the Pontifex Maximus of Rome, simoniacally
elected or not, implicitly and explicitly was regarded then as God’s
Vicegerent, as Earthly Vicar of Christ, by the most flagitious of men.
Then what can be thought of the good and clean-living majority?
The bodies were buried in the chapel of the hospice of the Misericordia,
the Brotherhood of Pity, one of whose obligations is the care of
criminals condemned on the capital charge.
This account of the _colpo-di-stato_ of Sinigaglia differs from that to
which the world is accustomed. It is said that, when Messer Niccolo
Machiavelli returned to Florence, he was induced to make a different
statement to the one which he previously had made from personal
observation in his first dispatches. According to this second version,
there was no conspiracy; and the brigands Vitelli and da Fermo were
simply massacred by order of Duke Cesare. It is the execrable Messer
Francesco Guicciardini who has prostituted his golden pen to record this
so-called version of Machiavelli, which has come to be regarded as
veracious history.
“Duke Cesare de Valentinois, acknowledged sovereign of the Romagna,
judged his subjects who were guilty of high treason: as chief of the
State, he condemned the assassins who sought his life: as
generalissimo, he punished treacherous and rebellious subalterns. It
is known from other sources, that these two barons were only brigands
stained with murders, and that their death was a deliverance for
Italy. Without insisting on this point, and if it be said that the
procedure of Duke Cesare was odious,—the capture by a ruse and the
summary execution,—it may be pointed out that everywhere and in all
ages criminals are taken by whatever method may be possible, and that
military tribunals have never wasted time in long formalities. There
was accusation, trial, and execution, all in regular though rapid
form. We well may call the action of Duke Cesare a coup-d’-Etat. He is
not more blameworthy than the Emperor Napoleon III who in 1852 was
loudly applauded. Neither is it necessary for his justification to
urge the barbarous customs of his age; for we should be forced to
remember that, in the Nineteenth Century, our (French) national hero,
in a time of peace, caused to be seized on foreign territory, to be
carried to Vincennes, and, after the mockery of a trial, to be shot
like a dog in the castle-ditch, an innocent man who was a prince of
the blood-royal of France. [Duc d’Enghien?] Yet no man has ever dared
to liken the Emperor Napoleon I to a Borgia! (_Réné, Comte de
Maricourt._)
The news reached Rome on the night of the second of January. The blow
had been struck with such rapidity as to put complicity of the Lord
Alexander beyond the dimensions of time and space.
In the Eternal City, the year had opened with the ceremony called
L’Ubbedienza, in which the cardinals renew their vow of fidelity to the
Pope, as, formerly, Roman Senators vowed fidelity to the Princeps on
each New Year’s Day. A cardinal, who would omit this duty except for a
valid reason, would cause precisely such a scandal as P. Thrasea Paetus
caused to Tacitus by neglecting to swear to Nero. Notwithstanding this
renewal of allegiance on the first of January, only three days later the
Pope’s Holiness found reason to arrest Cardinal Giambattista Orsini,
with Archbishop Alviano of Florence, and Don Giacomo Poplicola di
Santacroce, Orsini’s partisans, being determined once for all to crush
that House of incorrigible rebels. This Don Giacomo Poplicola di
Santacroce had only himself to blame. His House, the most illustrious of
all the sixty conscript families of Rome, had been outlawed in 1482 by
the Lord Xystus P.P. IV by reason of the furious feud between Santacroce
and Dellavalle which had turned the Eternal City for months together
into shambles. He should have known better than to put his head in the
lion’s mouth. Giustiniani, the Orator of Venice, received an account of
what had happened from the Pope’s Own mobile lips; and embodied the same
in a dispatch to his government dated the fourth of January 1503. It
appears to be perfectly logical on the part of the Pope’s Holiness,
that, in view of the coming trial of the two Orsini whom Duke Cesare was
bringing to Rome, evidence should be sought among the members of their
faction.
The behaviour of Orsini was impolitic and suspicious to the last degree.
They were under the shadow. Two of their alleged accomplices had been
executed at Sinigaglia. The cardinal was detained in the Mola of
Hadrian. Don Paolo Orsini and Duke Francesco Orsini of Gravina were
prisoners of Duke Cesare. Their circumstances required a patient policy
of inaction pending coming trial, the result of which they needed not to
fear supposing them to be innocent of conspiracy. On the contrary, they
gave clear evidence of guilt, desperately maintaining an armed rebellion
in pontifical territory, ravaging the Viterbo country, and continuing to
make leagues with other rebels whether these were Roman barons or chiefs
of independent banditti.
The Orator of Venice wrote to his government on the seventeenth of
January: “The Pontiff is much disturbed, and more than ever on his
guard. They say that Colonna and Savelli and all the discontented barons
have joined Orsini. This night there was a panic at the Vatican: no one
knows the cause. The captain of the guard called out his troops and
watched all night under arms.”
Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace, now in his twenty-second year and
father of four children, raised a squadron of condottieri and attacked
his August Father’s enemies: but on the night of the twentieth of
January, the Orsini cavalry captured the Bridge of Nomentano where a
fortress was; and all the Borgo rose in tumult. Messer Francesco
Remolino Bishop of Sorrento, and the Orator of Siena, left the City for
the camp of Duke Cesare carrying orders that he should leave everything
and advance on Rome, which was in imminent peril. But before the envoys
reached him, on the night of the seventeenth of January, at Citta di
Pieve he suddenly had beheaded Don Paolo Orsini and Duke Francesco
Orsini of Gravina, the two prisoners to whom he had promised a legal
trial in Rome. The attitude of Orsini perfectly justified Duke Cesare in
exercising his rights as sovereign justiciary and breaking his promise.
His camp was surrounded by Orsini castles, the two barons undoubtedly
were caught in the article of conspiracy; and their summary decapitation
became a sudden necessity to intimidate the Orsini conspirators in and
about Rome. It was not the custom of the Sixteenth Century to mince
matters, from any silly humanitarian motives, by sacrificing thousands
of proletariat lives when the fierce slaughter of a brace of
notabilities would serve the purpose. The modern accusation, that the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI was privy to the execution of these two Orsini,
falls to the ground when the dates of His dispatches to Duke Cesare, and
of their deaths, are compared.
Cardinal Giambattista Orsini remained a state-prisoner in the Mola of
Hadrian, within whose walls he had full liberty. By his own request, his
food was sent in daily from his own House; and also he received visits
from his relations. There he lived, attended by his own physicians,
until the twenty-second of February when he died, and was buried in the
church of San Salvatore _in Lauro_. Soon it was said that the Pope’s
Holiness had envenomed him; and this is a charge which it is utterly
difficult to prove.
Giustiniani, the Orator of Venice, who was a friend of the House of
Orsini, and always inimical to the Borgia, said without explanation or
remark in a dispatch to his government dated the fifteenth of February:
“The Lord Cardinal Orsini in prison shews signs of frenzy.”
In the dispatch dated the twenty-second of February, he said: “The Lord
Cardinal Orsini is reduced to the last extremity, and his physicians say
that there is no hope of saving his life.”
In the dispatch dated the twenty-third of February, he said: “I give
notice that, yesterday, after the departure of my courier, the Lord
Cardinal Orsini died; and this evening, with an honourable escort, he
was taken to the church of San Salvatore, and there interred.”
Brancatalini, in his Diarium, wrote: “This day XXII February 1503,
Cardinal Orsini left the Castle of Santangelo dead, at a half-hour of
the night; (5.30–6 P.M.) and Mariano di Stefano with many other Romans
accompanied him; and he was borne to San Salvatore _in Lauro_.”
Soderini, Orator of the Signoria of Florence, in a dispatch dated the
twenty-third of February 1503 wrote to his government:
“Cardinal Orsini died yesterday: and was buried at the twenty-fourth
hour (5–5.30 P.M.) at San Salvatore the church of the House of Orsini;
and, by order of the Pope, the body was escorted by his relations, and
by the cardinals of the Curia, uncovered and resting on a bier draped
with cloth-of-gold, vested in a red chasuble brocaded with golden
flowers, on the head was a white mitre, and at the feet were two hats
in token of his cardinalitial rank. The monks performed the funeral
service; and there were about sixty or seventy lighted torches. May he
rest in peace.”
Obviously, the Orators of the Powers had no suspicion of venom.
Giustiniani gladly would have reported such a rumour had he found
himself in a position to do so which would have been consistent with his
dignity and duty to the Venetian Senate. When He heard what His enemies
were saying, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI took prompt action. On the day
after the obsequies He convoked the physicians who had attended the dead
Cardinal during his illness and agony; and required them to certify that
death was owed to natural causes without any violence due to venom or
other means; He made them swear on the Sacrament to the truth of their
depositions, which were recorded with the facts of the case in the usual
form.
It was customary to consider certain signs as indicating venom; _e.g._,
the spots, the colour, the odour of the corpse. There is no mention made
of these. The Pope’s Holiness ordered a public funeral, the body was
uncovered; and carried openly through Rome. Every one might see it; and,
had the Orsini faction discovered any signs which pointed to an
unnatural death, they surely would have proclaimed their suspicions. The
interment on the day after death was, and is, the wholesome Roman
custom. The hour, after sunset, was, and is, the hour of burial.
It has been said by modern idealists that the Lord Alexander P.P. VI
envenomed Cardinal Orsini in order to inherit his riches. The idea is
absurd and ridiculous; for the Orsini would have been the heirs of their
dead kinsman. In fact they were. The imputation discredits itself by
reason of the gross ignorance on which it is based. It is alleged that
the Pope is the heir-at-law of cardinals. He is. But He was not, in the
reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. It was the Lord Julius P.P. II
(1503–1513) who cupidinously issued the Bull which names the Roman
Pontiff heir-at-law of all cardinals, and of all clergy dying in Rome;
and this Pope (as Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere) was no friend to
Borgia. And this fact ought to dispose of all allegations of cupidinal
motive in this, as in other cases.
The Lord Alexander P.P. VI had the Orsini at His mercy. Duke Cesare had
executed two chiefs of that House. The Cardinal was secure in the
impregnable Mola of Hadrian. If the Pope’s Holiness had wished to rid
Himself of this one He was quite strong enough to do so, without resort
to venom, by a regular execution in public, or in private if preferred,
and so defy the odium which inevitably attends the exhibition of venom.
But that He had no intention of visiting His prisoners with death, or
with anything more than incarceration to keep them out of mischief, may
be seen from the fact that a few months later (August 1503) Archbishop
Alviano of Florence was released alive and well from the Mola of
Hadrian.
As there appears to have been no motive and no necessity for the alleged
crime, so also there appears to have been no possibility of its
commission. Cardinal Giambattista Orsini was visited daily by his
people, and his food was brought to him by them. His physicians also
made deposition on oath that his death was not caused by venom.
It is only reasonable to conjecture, then, that being a very old man,
_conscius criminis sui_ (conspiracy), alarmed by the execution of his
accomplices, terrified at his own peril, he succumbed to an entirely
natural collapse. The dysentery, which carried him off, goes to support
this theory,
* * * * *
The French in the Regno were not prospering; and the favour of the
papacy appeared to be leaning towards Spain. The Crusade languished, not
for lack of funds (for the Pope’s Holiness envoyed a grant of money to
Hungary); but because of the want of martial spirit on the part of, and
the customary disgraceful dissensions among the Christian Powers. Venice
and Hungary threw up the sponge, and came to terms with the Muslim
Infidel. The conquest of Eastern Europe and the settlement of the Turks
therein was an accomplished fact.
* * * * *
Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna occupied Pesaro. This was the
fief of that young Tyrant, Don Giovanni Sforza, whose marriage with
Madonna Lucrezia Borgia had been annulled by a canonical impediment. The
spoliation of his appanage was a ground of fresh offence. The rupture
between the Houses of Borgia and Sforza was irremediable. People spoke
of Duke Cesare, now, as the Caesar Augustus of a new Roman Empire,
independent, and ruled by the sceptre of a Princeps of the House of
Borgia. After the execution of the conspirators at Sinigaglia, the
Venetian chronicler Priuli, who loathed the very name of Borgia, wrote
on the eleventh of January 1503: “Some wish to make and crown him King
of Italy; others wish to make him Emperor: for he prospers so that no
one dare forbid him anything.”[55]
The establishment of a Borgia Dynasty would have been no treason against
the rights of the Papacy. The rebellious tyrants whom Duke Cesare had
overthrown were unprofitable and even menacing. In their place was the
Duke who brought law, order, and prosperity. Of course Duke Cesare
derived benefit from his victories. The labourer is worthy of his hire,
and even successful English generals are not begrudged their peerages.
Duke Cesare’s duchy of Romagna, his commanding position, his power to
enrich himself by the taxation of his subjects, were a fair reward for
the immense services which he had rendered. The Papacy had now, instead
of a lost territory infested by the scum of European ruffianry refusing
to acknowledge authority or natural law, a vast province inhabited by
law-abiding prosperous contented vassals ready and glad to pay the
traditional tribute to their over-lord, in return for the unwonted
safety of their lives and property. Duke Cesare was in the position of a
viceroy. He held office at the pleasure of the Roman Pontiff. He was
persona ingrata to the rulers of the other Italian states, who were
envious of his splendid beauty, of his imperious character, of his
extraordinary success, and of his tremendous potentiality. And they
feared this tawny prince who had the tiger-strength to crush them one
and all. Backed by the spiritual and temporal influence and wealth of
the Pontiff, he could keep his irresistible army of veterans always on a
war-footing, and himself its generalissimo; and so the Papacy itself
acquired, through him, and in him, and for the first time, a material
basis of independence: while, in opposition to the Pope, he could not
exist.
There was the policy of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI.
He planned it with deliberation. He spared no pains to put it into
effect. He did not want to ruin the Church, because She was the
foundation upon which He would build His dynasty. Something of the kind
was of absolute and imperious necessity. The Forged Decretals and
Donation of Constantine, (which foist had been put forth in a Brief of
the Lord Hadrian P.P. I to the Emperor Charlemagne,) “the magic pillars
of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the Popes,” severely had been
criticized as early as the Twelfth Century. It was left, however, to
Messer Lorenzo della Valla mercilessly to denounce them as forgeries in
1440, as already has been shewn here. When the Lord Alexander P.P. VI
ascended the pontifical throne fifty-two years later, both Decretals and
Donation had been thrown overboard from the Barque of Peter, to lighten
the ship: and the Pope had no title-deeds to shew, forged or otherwise,
for Peter’s Patrimony. Any diplomatist would see that a right, of some
kind more inexpugnable than Prescription, was desirable. The Lord
Alexander P.P. VI chose Conquest, and the Founding of a Borgia Dynasty.
The office of the Church He magnified, that She the better might help
the state. He intended that His descendants, members of the House of
Borgia, though nominally the vassals should be the suzerains of His
Successors: that Borgia should wear the double-crown of Princeps, as
well as, and by means of the triple crown of Pontifex Maximus,—that a
dynasty of Borgia should occupy both pontifical and imperial thrones.
There was ruin in the scheme: but not that ruin which vulgarly might be
supposed.
It was an intelligent enough policy—of a worldly sort. Only—it was not
inspired by religion, nor restrained by morality. When it fell to
pieces, the Lord Julius P.P. II was able of its fragments alone to build
the Papal States which lasted more than three centuries and a half until
1870.
The power of the House of Borgia was so well founded that the mere death
of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI would not have affected it. There was a
strong party of Spanish cardinals in the Sacred College, and three of
these were of the House of Borgia. The Vicegerent of Rome, the Lord
Jaime Serra, Cardinal-Priest of the Title of San Vitale, was a Spaniard
also. The Roman barons, Colonna, Orsini, Savelli, Dellavalle were
broken; Poplicola di Santacroce outlawed; Sforza-Visconti of Milan,
Sforza of Santafiora, Sforza of Chotignuola, Sforza of Pesaro,
Sforza-Riario of Imola and Forli, all were exiled. The Roman Cesarini
were loyal to Borgia, and had their Cardinal (Giuliano) in the Curia.
Spain was friendly, and occupied in the New World. France was friendly,
and feeble. Germany was feeble and internally distracted. England was
only a fifth-rate power. And the invincible army of Duke Cesare de
Valentinois della Romagna was ready to carry into effect its leader’s
will. But chance, molecules, Providence,—the reader will
choose,—disabled Duke Cesare, made him unable to act, or unwilling to
act,—the reader again will choose,—at the very moment when his action
was imperatively necessary. If, on the death of the Lord Alexander P.P.
VI he had had his health, he easily might have done anything, said
Machiavelli.[56]
“The Worldly Hope Men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and, anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face,
Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.[57]
* * * * *
At the Ninth Consistory of the thirtieth (or thirty-first) of May (or
June) 1503, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI named nine cardinals; five of
whom were Spaniards, three Italians, and one German. They were:
(α) the Lord Don Juan de Castellar, Bishop of Oleron;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Maria _in Trastevere
tit. Calixtus_:
(β) the Lord Don Francisco Remolino, Bishop of Sorrento, a friend of
Duke Cesare; Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Giovanni e
San Paolo:
(γ) the Lord Don Francisco de Sprata, Bishop of Leon;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Sergio e San Bacco:
(δ) the Lord Francesco Soderini da Volterra, Canon of the Vatican
Basilica; Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Susanna
_inter Duas Domos_:
(ε) the Lord Niccolo da Flisco, Bishop of Forli, Orator of the
Republic of Genoa to the Christian King; Cardinal-Presbyter of
the Title of Santa Prisca:
(ζ) the Lord Adriano Castellense di Corneto, Orator of the Lord
Innocent P.P. VIII to Britannia Barbara (Scotland);
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Crisogono:
(η) the Lord Melchior Copis, Bishop of Brixen; Cardinal-Presbyter of
the Title of San Niccolo _inter Imagines_:
(θ) the Lord Don Jaime Casanova, Apostolic Prothonotary;
Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Stefano _in Monte Celio_:
(ι) the Lord Don Francisco Iloris, Apostolic Treasurer,
Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria Nuova.
Why a learned Catholic historian[58] should go out of his way to call
this a simoniacal creation, and his English editor to repeat the
calumny, is hard to say. It is bad policy to cry stinking fish, at all
times; it is especially silly to do so when the fish are fresh. The Bull
_De Simoniaca Electione_ directed against Simony was not issued until
1505, in the reign of the Lord Julius P.P. II; and it was not
retrospective. In 1503, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was actually a
temporal sovereign, “an Italian Despot with certain sacerdotal
additions.” The cardinals were the highest degree of His peerage. No
doubt they paid for their promotion in the usual way; fees to officials,
the crusade tax on the revenues of their Titles, perhaps even a handsome
contribution to the Treasury: but why call this Simony, when it was not
Simony _stricte dicte_ till two years later? A Red Hat no more can be
bought than Strawberry Leaves. A man may use his gold to recommend
himself for these head-gears. A man may present £25,000 to the best of
all princesses’ Hospital Fund, or land worth a quarter of a million to
the proletariat; he may “bang a saxpence” in fees to officials for his
knighthood, he even may pay pounds sterling in fees to officials for his
barony: but he righteously would be enraged if people said that he had
bought his knighthood or his barony. The word Simony must be taken as
belonging to the Genus _Blessed_, (_e.g._, Mesopotamia;) or as the bark
of a dog who dare not bite. Either it is a mere incantation; or a
war-whoop “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” In sober logical
earnest, it is inapplicable here.
* * * * *
As the heat of summer increased, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, now of the
age of seventy-two years, used to sit and take the air in the shady
gardens of the Vatican, and amuse Himself by watching two little boys at
play. They were His bastard and his grandson; Duke Giovanni Borgia of
Nepi and Camerino, of the age of five years; and Duke Roderico of
Sermoneta, Madonna Lucrezia’s son, of the age of four years.
* * * * *
When the sun entered the constellation of Leo—Sol in Leone, the
dog-days—the heat became abnormal; and plague and fevers appeared in
Rome.[59] The Orators of the Powers promptly made arrangements to quit
the City, for a cool and wholesome villegiatura.
Don Antonio Giustiniani, the Orator of Venice, sent to his Senate a
dispatch dated the eleventh of July 1503, in which he wrote: “I went to
the palace; and, on entering His apartment, I found our Lord the Pope in
His habits reclining on a couch. He received me with good humour, saying
that for three days He had been inconvenienced by a slight dysentery,
but that He hoped it would be unimportant.”
On the next day Giustiniani wrote: “The Pope’s Holiness reviewed His
troops from a balcony.”
On the fourteenth of July, he wrote again: “I went to the palace; and,
on entering, I found His Holiness on His throne in the Hall of Pontiffs.
He was a little depressed: but looked well.”
Messer Francesco Fortucci, the Orator of Florence, sent to his Signoria
a dispatch dated the twentieth of July, in which he wrote: “There are
many people sick of fevers, and many have died.”
On the twenty-second of July, he wrote: “I thank the Signoria for leave
of absence, because I myself am uneasy, and almost out of my mind with
fright; for so many people are dying of fever, and there is also
something like the Pest.”
On the evening of the fifth of August, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI rode
with Duke Cesare and several prelates to a supper _al fresco_ at the
villa of the Cardinal of San Crisogono outside the walls. Rome and the
surrounding country are particularly unwholesome, though cool, during
the hour after sunset. It is said that the Holiness of the Pope was much
heated by the exertion of riding there; and that, while He was in this
condition, He drank a cup of wine for the sake of coolness. No more
hazardous action can be imagined; except on the part of one desiring to
court a malarial fever.
Two days later, on the seventh of August, the Orator Giustiniani wrote
to his government: “I found the Pope less cheerful and more dull than
usual. He said to me _Sir Orator, all these sick people in Rome, all
these daily deaths, make Us fearful, and persuade Us to take more care
of Our person._”
Monsignor Hans Burchard, the Caerimonarius, wrote in his Diarium: “On
the twelfth of August, after vespers, between the twenty-first and
twenty-second hour, (5–6 P.M.) He (the Pope’s Holiness) shewed signs of
a fever which does not abate.”
It should be noted that this is seven days after the garden-supper.
On the thirteenth of August, Giustiniani wrote to his sovereign the Doge
of Venice, that the Pope had vomited after eating, and had been feverish
all night; that Duke Cesare also was sick: and that no one was admitted
to the Vatican. He tells about the supper in the garden of the Cardinal
of San Crisogono; and adds: “To-morrow morning I will try to have
precise information to send to Your Sublimity.”
These dispatches give an excellent idea of some of the duties of a
Sixteenth Century ambassador, to hang about doors of palaces, to
chronicle performances of natural functions, to bribe royal flunkeys and
report their gossip in state-dispatches.
On the fourteenth of August, the same Orator wrote that the Pope had
been phlebotomized,—“some speak of fourteen, some of sixteen ounces:
perhaps it will be true to say ten; and that is an enormous quantity for
a man of seventy-three years, which is the age of His Blessedness.”
(The Lord Alexander P.P. VI was born in 1431; and was of the age of
seventy-two years in 1503.)
“Still the fever does not abate. The Pope has it yet; though less
violently than yesterday. To-day the Duke is worse.”
The same day, the fourteenth of August, Don Beltrando Costabili, the
Orator of Duke Ercole of Ferrara wrote at some length, no doubt because
Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, the consort of Ferrara’s heir, would expect
detailed information when the health of her august and affectionate
Father was concerned. He said:
“Yesterday morning, I was informed on good authority that His Holiness
has commanded the attendance of the Bishop of Venosa who was sick at
home, and of another physician of the City; and that these are not
allowed to leave him. I was informed that the Pope had vomitings and
fever yesterday: and that they have relieved him of nine ounces of
blood. During the day, His Holiness caused some cardinals to play at
cards before Him while He rested. I was informed also that last night
He slept fairly well. But to-day between the eighteenth and nineteenth
hour, (2–3 P.M.) there was a crisis like that of Saturday, of a kind
which makes His courtiers uneasy; and every one is unwilling to speak
of His condition. I have sought by all means to obtain information:
but the more I seek, the less I learn; for the physicians, the
chirurgeons, and the apothecaries are not allowed to quit the
Presence: from which I conclude that the malady is grave. The Duke of
the Romagna also, is very sick with fever, vomitings, and disorder of
the stomach. _It is not astonishing that His Holiness, and His
Excellency should be ill; for all the courtiers, especially those who
are in the palace, are in the same state, by reason of the unwholesome
conditions of the air, which, there, they breathe._”
The last sentence, in italics, is of exceedingly great importance. The
operation of venesection did not effect a lysis, as appears from the
dispatches of Giustiniani which continue the tale. On the fifteenth of
August, he wrote to the Venetian Senate that it was difficult to get
positive information: but that the affair was serious; and, that there
was likely to be disorder in the City if the Pope died.
On the sixteenth of August, he wrote that the Pope and the Duke
continued to be tormented with fevers, and that the Duke’s was the more
violent. He added that the condition of the Pope must be aggravated by
His anxieties and cares, and by the sickness of the Duke.
On the seventeenth of August, Giustiniani wrote again:
“Yesterday I wrote to Your Sublimity by Girolamo Passamonte the
courier, who arrived here. To-day I inform you that our Lord the Pope
has taken medicine. The fever continually torments Him, not without
danger. I am informed by a sure authority that the Bishop of Venosa,
chief-physician of His Blessedness and a familiar of the Cardinal
Giovantonio di Sangiorgio, (or, perhaps, the Cardinal of San Giorgio
_in Velum Aureum_, Rafaele Galeotto Sansoni-Riario,) has told his
steward that the sickness of the Pope is very dangerous, and that he
ought to make the said cardinal hasten hither; which thing has been
done.”
He adds that the partisans of Duke Cesare, expecting a riot on the death
of the Pope, have made secure their property and have taken precautions
to prevent ill news from being bruited abroad. This was ordinary
political prudence.
On the eighteenth of August, the same Orator wrote,
“Early this morning, our Lord the Pope, knowing of the danger of His
sickness, has received His rites; and some cardinals have been
admitted into the presence of His Blessedness. The Viaticum was given
in secret; for His familiars try to conceal His condition as much as
possible. They say, that the Bishop of Venosa, early this morning
before the Communion, came from the Pope’s Chamber, weeping, and
saying to one of his people that the danger was very grave, and
complaining with chagrin of the inefficacy of some potions which,
yesterday, he had administered.... The Duke also is very sick. It has
been said to my secretary, _Sir Secretary, this is no time for
ceremonies or fine words. Tell the Orator to hasten to inform the
Senate of Venice that the Pope_ GRAVITER LABORAT. Also, the same
informant said that the Pope cannot live much longer without a
miracle.”
On the eighteenth of August, Giustiniani also wrote a second dispatch to
the Doge of Venice, in which he said:
“To-day I sent the latest news to Your Sublimity by Lorenzo da
Camerino. After he was gone, Messer Scipione, a physician from the
palace, came to tell me that yesterday at the sixteenth hour (noon),
the Pope, wishing to rise for a certain need, was taken with a fit of
choking, and is in evil plight, going from bad to worse; and that in
his opinion His Holiness will die to-night:—and, from what he says, I
judge the malady to be an apoplexy. Such also is the opinion of this
physician so excellent is his art.”
The Orator adds that, now, Duke Cesare is neglected; and is preparing
secretly to take refuge in the Mola of Hadrian.
Monsignor Burchard makes the following entry in his Diarium, a work of
which the original is undiscovered, and copies only accessible to the
student. He was perfectly qualified to speak on this subject from
personal knowledge; the demise of the Pope being a ceremonial function
which he would have to arrange and superintend. He says:
“On Wednesday the eighteenth of August between the twelfth and
thirteenth hour (8–9 A.M.) He (the Lord Alexander P.P. VI) confessed
Himself to the Lord Bishop Pietro of Culen who said mass in His
presence; and, after his Communion, administered the Sacrament of the
Eucharist to the Pope, who was seated on His bed; and then finished
the mass. Five cardinals were present, d’Oristano, di Cosenza, di
Monreale,[60] Casanueva, and di Constantinople, to whom the Pope said
that He felt ill. At the hour of vespers the said Bishop of Culen
administered the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to Him; and He died in
the presence of the datary and the bishop.”
This event took place in the third room of the Borgia Tower occupied by
the Library counting from the Library side.
On the nineteenth of August, Giustiniani announced the news to the
Senate, and added, “to-day He was carried _de moro_,[61] and shewn to
the people; but His corpse was more hideous and monstrous than words can
tell, and without human form. For decency, it was kept for some time
covered; and before sunset they buried it in the presence of two of the
cardinal-deacons attached to the palace.”
In reading this dispatch, it must be remembered that Giustiniani hated
the Borgia; and that the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was an old man of an
obese habit of body, Who had died of a fever in the height of summer, in
a most unwholesome quarter of the City, and at a time when antiseptic
treatment was unknown.
The Notary of Orvieto, on his return from Rome four days later, publicly
described to his municipality all that he had seen of the _novendiali_;
and added that he had kissed the feet of His Holiness in St.
Peter’s[62]: but said nothing of any hideous or monstrous appearance of
the corpse.
Soon after death, a rumour was heard to the effect that the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI and Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna had died
envenomed.
For three months it was only a rumour. A new Pope was elected—Cardinal
Francesco de’ Piccolhuomini of Siena, who took the name of the Lord Pius
P.P. III out of respect to His Uncle, the Lord Pius P.P. II,[63]—and was
dead after a two months’ reign.
Then Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, irreconcileable enemy of Borgia,
attained the object of his ambition; and was elected Pope by the name of
the Lord Julius P.P. II. And then the rumour took a concrete form.
On the tenth of November it definitely was said that, at the
garden-supper of the fifth of August venom had been put into some wine
by order of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI; that by a butler’s blunder that
envenomed wine had been served to the Pope’s Holiness and to Duke
Cesare: that the former being old had died therefrom; that the latter
being young had endured heroic treatment for a cure. Some said that he
had been plunged into the ripped-up belly of a live mule or bull amid
the steaming palpitating entrails profusely to sweat the venom out of
him: others, that he had been dipped in iced-water, and so cured.
Writing several years later, Messer Francesco Guicciardini and Messer
Paolo Giovio added new details. Guicciardini definitely settled the
falsehood in the form in which it generally appears. He gave a list of
cardinals, also, and prelates who were to have been envenomed by the
Lord Alexander P.P. VI that He might inherit their wealth. Giovio named
and described the venom which, he said, the Borgia commonly used. He
called it _Cantarella_[64]; and said it was a sugared powder, or a
powder under the guise of sugar, which was of a wonderful whiteness, and
of a rather pleasant taste. It did not overwhelm the vital forces in the
manner of the active venoms by sudden and energetic action: but, by
penetrating insensibly the veins, it slowly worked with mortal effect.
(Paolo Giovio, Hist. II. 47. VIII. 205.) Is there any toxicological
chymist who from this description can give the formula of this
extraordinary venom?
The testimony of these two men is tainted. Messer Francesco
Guicciardini, who wrote long after the event and solely from hearsay,
was a Florentine. Whatever is, and was, of Florence, is cultured,
pedantic, artificial, in the highest degree: whatever is, and was, of
Rome, is nakedly natural, original, free, and absolute, in the highest
degree. It was, and is, a habit of mind in the Florentine to decry Rome
and all things Roman. Politically, Messer Francesco Guicciardini was an
adherent of the House of Medici; and Medici were naturally the mortal
foes of Borgia, seeing that Borgia had acquiesced in and profited by
their expulsion from Florence. And he was in the pay of the Roman
Colonna, who were Ghibelline by inherited tradition, _i.e._, upholders
of the imperial against the papal prerogative. He was born in 1482; and
was of the age of twenty-one years at the death of the Lord Alexander
P.P. VI. In 1530, having exhorted the Lord Clement P.P. VII to punish
Florence for insults which he (Guicciardini) had received in 1527, he
turned traitor against the Medici, writing invectives against them till
his death in 1540. He divinely wrote at all times a sonorous and courtly
Tuscan, which makes his reader believe that one who could write so
exquisitely must needs write truly. Yet he did not hesitate to boast
that he had a pen of gold for his friends, and a pen of iron for his
foes. Regretfully then it must be said that Messer Francesco
Guicciardini does not deserve belief unless his statements can be
corroborated.
Touching the matter of the Borgia venom, and especially of the
envenoming of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and Duke Cesare, he is
corroborated by Messer Paolo Giovio.
Messer Paolo Giovio was born in 1483, and was of the age of twenty years
at the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. He issued no books till
twenty-one years later. His first was a quoad-scientific treatise on
Roman Fishes (_De Piscibus Romanis_), published in 1524. He was a
_dilettante_ of a kind. He practised amniomancy, or the art of
divination by inspection of the membrane, Amnios, in which the unborn
child is wrapped—fantastic effort of a seeker after Truth. He was one of
those double-faced historians, who wrote one set of memoirs for the
highest bidder; (Popes whom they despised, Dukes whom they privately
reviled,) and a second set of memoirs for the enemies of the patrons of
the first. His Life of the Lord Leo P.P. X (Giovanni de’ Medici) is a
specimen. Even during his life, he was considered to be a flagrant liar.
He used to say, with a dog-like knowledge of his masters the “people”
who “desire to be deceived,” that the centuries would give his written
lies the force of truth. He used an affected and flamboyant rather than
a pure style; and was the inferior of Guicciardini. The Lord Clement
P.P. VII (Giulio de’ Medici), to be rid of his incessant importunity,
gave him the bishopric of Nocera; and he died in 1552.
Who, therefore, wishes to believe Messer Francesco Guicciardini
uncorroborated, or corroborated by Messer Paolo Giovio, will do so on
his own responsibility.
Let it be noted that both Giovio and Guicciardini were Roman Catholics.
Their calumnies against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI are their own; and
were not invented by dissenters from their creed. The said calumnies
very naturally have been adopted by these last as articles of faith; and
repeated usque ad nauseam; or resented, with the most unconvincing and
inane half-heartedness, by a majority of modern and soi-disant
enlightened Roman Catholics, who fear (positively they shew every sign
of fear) to credit their own learned clergy of the present day,
Leonetti, Velron, Cerri, and Ollivier, to say nothing of the laity,
_e.g._, Comte Réné de Maricourt, who have laboured for justice to the
maligned Borgia. Will these astonishingly inconsistent persons prefer to
believe the opinion of an atheist, who was incidentally a man of common
sense? It is Voltaire who, in speaking of Guicciardini’s statement,
(that the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was the victim of venom which He had
set for his cardinals, that, having killed them, He might take their
treasure,) says,
“All the enemies of the Holy See have welcomed this horrible anecdote.
I myself do not believe it at all; and my chief reason lies in its
extreme improbability. It is evident that the envenoming of a dozen
cardinals at supper would have caused the Father and the son[65] to
become so execrable, that nothing could have saved them from the fury
of the Roman people, and of the whole of Italy. Such a crime never
could have been concealed. Even supposing that it had not been avenged
by all Italy leagued together, it was directly contrary to the
interests of Cesare (detto) Borgia. The Pope was on the verge of the
grave. The Borgia faction was powerful enough to elect one of its own
creatures: was it likely that the votes of cardinals would be gained
by envenoming a dozen of them? I make bold to say to Guicciardini,
‘Europe has been deceived by you, and you have been deceived by your
feelings. You were the enemy of the Pope; you have followed the advice
of your hatred. It is true that He had used vengeance cruel and
perfidious, against foes perfidious and cruel as Himself. Hence you
conclude that a Pope of the age of seventy-two years could not die a
natural death. You maintain, on vague rumour, that an aged sovereign,
whose coffers at that time contained more than a million of gold
ducats,[66] desired to envenom several cardinals that He might seize
their treasures. But were these treasures so important? The treasures
of cardinals nearly always were removed by their gentlemen before the
Popes could seize them. Why do you think that so prudent a Pope cared
to risk the doing of so very infamous a deed for so very small a gain;
a deed that could not be done without accomplices; and that sooner or
later must have been discovered? May I not trust the official accounts
of the Pope’s sickness, more than the mere rumours of the mob? That
official account declares the Pope to have died of a double-tertian
fever. There is not the slightest vestige of proof in favour of the
accusation which you have brought against His memory. His son
Borgia[67] happened to fall sick at the time when his Father died.
That is the sole foundation for the story of the venom.’”
It will appear that the death of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, from venom,
is improbable. It may also be said that it was impossible, for reasons
here forthcoming.
The Legend of the Borgia Venom
One of the stock phrases used by biographers and historians of the
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries was “he (or she)—died in the odour of
sanctity.” Another was “he (or she)—died not without suspicion of
venom.” Both phrases are the merest expression of private opinion, the
importance of which depends upon the integrity and knowledge of the
user: but in no case do they amount to a dogmatic, final, infallible, or
authoritative, decision.
When a person is said to have departed this life in the odour of
sanctity, (a purely technical phrase, insusceptible of literal
translation,) sooner or later the process of ecclesiastical law is begun
for obtaining for the deceased the successive titles, _Venerable Servant
of God_, _the Blessed ——_, and _Saint ——_. These titles, only being
conferred after stringent examination of quality lasting many years and
sometimes many centuries,[68] are taken to prove the pious opinion “died
in the odour of sanctity” to have been founded on a verity.
But when a person is said to have died “not without suspicion of venom,”
it is very rarely that steps are taken, juridically to examine that
suspicion with a view to proving it to be founded on fact or falsehood.
The world deliberately prefers to believe the worst of man, deliberately
prefers suspicion. The expression in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries was as randomly and as inconsequently used as the cry for a
General Council, by every one who found occasion to go “against the
government”; and it certainly does not command respect by reason of its
absurdly frequent repetition. It was the fashion for their enemies to
accuse the Borgia of compassing the death of some by venom. It was also
the fashion for the Borgia to retort upon their enemies in the same
formula. There can be no human doubt that the Borgia and their enemies
would have envenomed each the other, had they known how to do so with
security and certainty. It was a habit of the Latin Races to see no
distinction between venom and steel when the idea was to get rid of a
foe. Cold northern nations, the English in particular, always have had a
horror of venom, preferring boots, fists, bullet, or blade; indeed one
of the most hideous penances ordained by English and Post-Reformation
law was awarded to criminals who had envenomed the lieges. They were
boiled alive. “This year, the XVII March, was boyled in Smithfield one
Margaret Davis, a maiden which had poisoned three households that she
dwelled in.” (Wriothesley’s Chronicle, 1542.)
Perhaps to this habit, of regarding the use of venom as so horrible a
crime, is due the fascination which those, who are supposed to have
attained high eminence in its practice, have for Englishmen.
Undoubtedly, Lord Alexander P.P. VI and Duke Cesare de Valentinois della
Romagna are regarded as having been artists in venom, possessing
knowledge far surpassing that of modern alchymists. They are believed to
have envenomed their foes, named and unnamed, by the score; and, at
last, to have fallen into the pit that they have digged for others.
Of the cases named, Cardinal Giovanni Borgia (detto Giuniore), the
Sultan Djim, and Cardinal Orsini, are the most important. The
improbability in the case of the first already has been shewn: Duke
Cesare and he were friendly; their interests were asymptotic; and they
were apart during the seventeen days before the cardinal died. The
improbability in the case of the Sultan Djim lies in the fact that the
Pope lost 40,000 ducats annually, and the only means of keeping the
Turks from Christendom, by his death which was due to natural causes,
and took place when he was in the hands of the Christian King Charles
VIII at Naples, some weeks after he had left Rome. The improbability in
the case of Cardinal Orsini is proved by the tainted source from which
the charge emanated; by the publicity of all proceedings before and
after his death; and by the sworn testimony of his leeches. Cases of
this kind must be considered together; and rejected or accepted
together; for rumours do not gain credibility from vociferous
repetition: nor does it avail to plead that because advantages accrue
from the death of such a one, therefore, the person benefited by the
death is likely to have envenomed the deceased. Death is always
advantageous to some one living: but in no case named did the Lord
Alexander P.P. VI and Duke Cesare reap any gain whatever, but
contrariwise loss. As for the statement, that the venom of the Borgia
was a slow venom, slow in action, dirigible in absence, it safely may be
said that no such venom existed then any more than it does now.
This slow venom is an invention of purveyors of a certain class of
fiction, doing vast credit to their imaginative powers, but possessing
no tangible existence. These writers of fiction are merchants who must
supply their customers with goods upon demand. The Legend of the Borgia
Venom is a department of their trade. The public has read it and cried
for more according to the sample. The public is pleased to amuse itself.
At other times the public has the humour to inform itself; and takes
spiritual pastors, and masters, cunning in all learning, in all verities
of past and present. From these, the truth is required for mental
profit; from the others invention and imagination for mental recreation.
The public pays and has the right to choose what it will buy. A grocer,
who would venture to supply pickles instead of pepper ordered, would
encounter his patron’s discontent. A teacher, who would venture to
purvey fiction instead of fact required, would meet with similar
disaster, one would think. But in sober earnest, the Legend of the
Borgia Venom so very industriously has been propagated, that modern
serious writers have adopted it as one of the items which safely may be
included in their serious writings: and the public finding it there, in
places where truth is expected to be, looks upon the false as true
because it comes with the imprimatur of authority.
Herr Eugene Burckhardt’s very learned modern work, _The Civilization of
the Renaissance in Italy_, of which an English Translation is
accessible, is a case in point. It purports to be gravely written, and
is a mine of accurate information. Yet, among continuous ropes of pearls
of wisdom, occasionally one is startled by the discovery of a bead so
base, that one wonders how it has escaped detection and damnation. Here
is an example,
“Strictly speaking, as we are now discussing phases of Italian
civilization, this pontificate (1492–1503) might be passed over, since
the Borgia are no more Italian than the House of Naples. Alexander
spoke Spanish in public with Caesar; Lucrezia at her entry into
Ferrara, where she wore a Spanish costume, was sung to by Spanish
Buffoons: their confidential servants consisted of Spaniards, as did
most of the ill-famed company of the troops of Caesar in the war of
1500; and even his Hangman Don Michelotto, _and his Poisoner Sebastian
Pinzon_, seem to have been of the same nation.”
That is a specimen of the slipshod way in which serious writers are
false to their trust, of the half-truths which they make to serve for
the truth about the Borgia. It is exceedingly necessary to lay great
stress upon the Spanish origin of the Borgia, lest odium undeserved
should light on their adopted country Italy. They were very fine
examples of their race: but never let it be forgotten that their vices,
(for, being men, they had their vices) were Spanish and not Italian
vices. Herr Burckhardt does well to emphasize this fact, and to enrich
and illuminate it with a wealth of illustration: but when he comes to
speak of Don Michelotto as Duke Cesare’s Hangman, and of Sebastian
Pinzon as his Poisoner, with the light and easy freedom which one uses
in speaking of “the unquestioned things that are”; then one is compelled
to conjure up the horrible and fantastic picture of the Generalissimo of
the Pontifical Army stalking about the continent of Europe with an
official Hangman and an official Poisoner in his entourage. Don
Michelotto was a captain of Duke Cesare’s condottieri, a valued
confidential servant, perhaps, on sudden occasion, as at Sinigaglia, his
_executeur des hautes œuvres_: but never a professional Hangman. And
Sebastian Pinzon? Is it to be believed that Duke Cesare—for this really
is what Herr Burckhardt’s amazing statement implies—did so much
venenation in the way of business, that it was as necessary to have a
Lord High Poisoner attached to his staff as a Groom of the Stola or a
Clerk of the Hanaper?[69] The thing is absurd; worthy of comic opera,
not of serious history. But the origin of Herr Burckhardt’s error shall
be traced.
Giustiniani the Orator of Venice, to whom the Borgia were intensely
antipathetic, and who neglected no opportunity of relating rumours
detrimental to them, sent to his government a dispatch dated the
twentieth of July 1502, stating, that the Most Illustrious Lord
Giambattista Ferrari, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Crisogono,
vulgarly called the Cardinal of Modena, had died; that, in accordance
with his testament, his goods and benefices had been distributed; that
his archbishopric of Capua had been given to the young and lusty Lord
Cardinal Prince Ippolito d’Este (now of the age of twenty-four years and
a person of fashion;) that his bishopric of Modena had been given to his
brother; that the greater part of his goods had been given to his
secretary Messer Sebastiano Pinzoni; that this last bequest was called
“the price of blood” for the secretary had envenomed his master, to have
his goods; that the Pope had endowed the said secretary with a canonry
in Padua, the prefecture of Sant’ Agata in Cremona, a benefice in Rome,
another in Mantua valued at five hundred ducats, and had received him
_inter familiares_.
Now there is no word in that dispatch which implicates Duke Cesare. We
learn that Messer Sebastiano Pinzoni, secretary to the Cardinal of
Modena, was said, by rumour, to have envenomed his master in order to
profit thereby; and also that the said secretary had been patronised by
the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. That is all. It would be unpleasant to think
of the Pope’s Holiness as the patron of a murderer: yet that would be
the obvious conclusion, if the matter ended here. But it does not. There
is further record of Messer Sebastiano Pinzoni, which makes it clear
that his crime at first was unknown to the Pope; and that on its
discovery he was forced to take refuge in flight. It is Monsignor
Burchard who records in his Diarum under date Wednesday the twentieth of
November 1504, that the Ruota (the supreme secular tribunal of the Holy
Roman Church) delivered sentence against Sebastiano Pinzoni, Apostolic
Scribe, who was contumacious and absent, depriving him of all benefices
and offices, for that he had slain with venom the Lord Cardinal of
Modena his patron who had raised him from the dung-hill.[70] Ciacconi
says that the Cardinal of Modena was envenomed by Sebastiano Pinzoni,
his gentleman-of-the-bedchamber; who, being imprisoned on another charge
in the reign of the Lord Leo P.P. X, when put to the Question, confessed
this crime, which he before had denied.
Let it be admitted that Sebastiano Pinzoni envenomed his master, then.
But Herr Burckhardt brings no evidence to prove that he was connected
with Duke Cesare; nor is it established that he was employed by His
Excellency in any capacity, private, or official. But every crime of
every criminal in the Borgian Era is attributed to Borgia as a matter of
course; and Herr Burckhardt, writing serious history, introduces
fiction, and passes off Sebastiano Pinzoni as Duke Cesare’s Poisoner!
To turn from the historian to the novelist will afford a little
recreation in this quest of the Venom of the Borgia; and, also, the
diversion will not be unprofitable: for the novelist is an exceedingly
important person by reason that he commands an infinitely wider audience
than the historian, and influences, forms, or moulds, an infinitely
larger section of opinion. M. Alexandre Dumas in his Crimes Célèbres has
much to say about the Borgia. Knowing, as a practised hand, that the
best fiction is that which has a substratum of fact and an air of truth,
M. Dumas quotes the precious Messer Paolo Giovio and his _Cantarella_
which already has been mentioned here. Further, with a wealth of
“corroborative detail calculated to give verisimilitude to an otherwise
bald and unconvincing narrative,” he describes the preparation of a
liquid venom which, he says, the Borgia used. A bear was caught and made
to swallow a strong dose of arsenic. When this began to take effect, the
bear was suspended by his hind-legs head-downward; and incontinent he
would fall into convulsions, while from his throat there poured a
copious deadly stream of foam, which was collected on a silver plate,
bottled in vials hermetically sealed; and this was the liquid Venom of
the Borgia.
There were plenty of bears in the Apennines, perhaps, even in the Alban
Hills within twenty miles of Rome; so the bear is probable enough.
Having caught his bear, Duke Cesare would convey him to the Vatican—a
large palace truly, but rather too full of people to be desirable as a
private venom-factory. On a dark night in a lonely courtyard, the Pope’s
Holiness and the Duke’s Excellency would administer the arsenic to the
bear. The method of administration is not described, nor the slinging up
of the beast prior to his convulsions, nor the picture of the aged
Pontiff skipping round with the silver plate in His solicitude that no
drop of the fluid should be lost, nor the solemn bottling of the vials,
nor their hermetic sealing with what seal? The Ring of the Fisherman?
And M. Dumas carefully omits to say that the nasty mess so secretly and
arduously obtained would have been far less venomous than the original
dose of arsenic; which, administered neat, without the intervention of
an ill-used bear, certainly would have slain: but which would be
deprived of most, if not of all, of its venomous potency, by its
submission to the digestive processes of M. Dumas’ improbable and
impossible bear.
* * * * *
Undoubtedly, there were the same venomous substances in and on this
earth in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, as there are now: some
few were known; but many more, and these the most sure and deadly, were
not even dreamed of, _e.g._, strychnine, prussic acid, or the hideous
bacilli, accessible as dust to any Twentieth Century medico who, on the
sole condition that he is not instigated by criminal motives, with
perfect security to himself can envenom and slay a street, a district,
or a city. In the year 1164, Abd-el-Mumin-ben-Ali the Moorish King of
Spain chased from his dominions all Jews and Christians who refused the
faith of Islam. Among these, to Egypt went the celebrated Moses
ben-Maimon. All that was known, he knew; and he knew sixteen venoms;
litharge, verdigris, opium, arsenic, spurge or milk-wort, cashew-nut,
hemlock, henbane, stramonium or thorn-apple, hemp, mandrake, venomous
fungi, plantain, black-nightshade or felon-wort, belladonna, and
cantharides. To these, were added in the Borgian Era four centuries
later, the tri-sulphite of arsenic, orpiment, antimony, corrosive
sublimate, aconite or wolfsbane or monkshood, and perhaps white
hellebore, and black or Christmas-Rose; making two and twenty substances
known to be venomous.
Undoubtedly, much damage might be done with this arsenal of venoms: but
only in the event of the existence of the will to use them, and of the
knowledge of the method of their exhibition.
Undoubtedly, there was the will. The fact that Madonna Caterina
Sforza-Riario (author of a wonderful collection of recipes, domestic and
medicinal, a good housewife as well as witch and warrior,) was said to
have attempted the envenoming of the Pope’s Holiness, as described in
Book II, speaks for the fact that venom was feared, and therefore likely
to be used. Governments experimented with venoms: for what purpose, who
can tell? M. Lamanshy published an interesting document dated 1432 which
he found in the Venetian Secret Archives.[71] “Trial has been made, on
three porcine animals, of certain venoms, found in the chancery, sent
very long ago from Vicenza, which have been proved not to be good.”
Undoubtedly, there was the will. Undoubtedly, also, there was not the
ability.
* * * * *
Strange and paradoxical though it may seem to be, alchymical knowledge,
alchymical art, was in a lower condition during the years succeeding the
Renascence of Learning, than it had been in the Middle Ages, the
so-called Dark Ages, which had gone before. The Dark Ages were the ages
of Simples. The Age of the Renascence was the age of Compounds. And, in
those compounds, virtue was changed, or lost, by sublimation, by
distillation, or annulled by heterogeneous admixture. The following will
make this plain.
In the Dark Ages, medicaments were made from single herbs exhibited in
the form of draughts, poultices, lotions, or unguents. The old herbaries
of Dioskorides, or of Appulejus, were used as text-books; and a few
extracts from these will be curious, perhaps valuable, certainly a help
to understanding.
(α) The herb Betony or Bishopwort (_Betonica officinalis_) must be
gathered in August without the help of iron, the mould shaken
from the roots, and dried in the shade. When triturated, two
drachms of it, mixed with hot beer or wine or honey, is an
antidote to venom, a digestive, a cure for hydrophobia,
constipation, toothache, and prevents monstrous nocturnal
visitors, or frightful sights and dreams. A lotion, made from
the herb seethed in fresh water till two-thirds are evaporated,
cures broken-head, epistaxis, fatigue, and rupture; or the
leaves may be used as a poultice. (As a matter of fact, Betony
is intoxicating, emetic, and purgative.)
(β) The herb Vervain or Ashthroat (_Verbena officinalis_) must be
pounded as a poultice for wounds and carbuncles. It is an
antidote to all venoms, and dogs may not bark at him who bears
it.
(γ) The herb Clovewort (_Ranunculus acris_), wreathed with red thread
on the neck during the waning of the April or October moon,
cures lunacy.
(δ) The herb Mugwort (_Artemisia dracunculus_), pounded to an unguent
with well-boiled olive-oil, will make strained sinews supple.
(This is excellent.)
(ε) The herb Ravensleek (_Orchis_, Σατύριον) will cure sore eyes when
they are smeared with its juice.
(ζ) The herb Watercress (_Nasturtium officinale_) will with its juice
stop hair from falling.
(η) The herb Madder (_Rubia tinctoria_) as a poultice cures sciatica.
(θ) The herb Clover (_Trifolium pratense_) prevents him who carries it
from suffering sore jaws.
(ι) The herb Rosemary (_Rosmarinus officinalis_) is good for the
teeth.
(κ) The herb Rue (_Ruta graveolens_), eaten green is an antifat; a
twig stops nose-bleeding; macerated in vinegar and soused on the
brow induces forgetfulness. Recommended for priests who wish to
observe their vow of continence.
(λ) The herb Dwarfdwostle or Pennyroyal (_Mentha pulegium_), as
unguent, cures sea-sickness; as a salve, or burned as incense,
cures fever and bellyache.
(μ) The herb Sage (_Salvia_), as a lotion, cures itch.
(ν) The herb Marjoram (_Origanum vulgare_), steeped in vinegar, cures
headache, or may be chewed for a cough.
(ξ) The herb Foxglove (_Digitalis purpurea_), as a poultice, cures
sores and pimples, ἕρπης. (Its venomous principle appears to be
unknown.)
(ο) The herb Wildthyme or Shepherdspurse (_Thymus campestris_) will
remove all inward foulness by the drinking of its ooze.
(π) The herb Violet (_Viola odorata_), made into an unguent with lard
or honey, cures wounds.
(ρ) The herb Wildgourd (_Cucumis colocynthus_, κολοκύνθος ἀγρía), its
inward neshness pounded in lithe beer without the churnels, will
stir the inward.
Those are Simples, _i.e._, medicaments derived from single herbs, easily
come-by, within the reach of all; suited to a simple, but by no means
silly, race of men content with simple things, gifted with faith and
sense, and unconcerned to dive below the surface and explore, or
experiment with, nature’s sacrosanct arcana.
* * * * *
The Renascence of Learning, when the works of ancient writers were
rediscovered, devoured, put in practice, filled men’s minds with new
ideas, and completely changed their point of view.
_The Most Salubrious Precepts of Medicine_ written by Quintus Serenus
Sermonicus in the Third Century; the Thirty Seven Books of _Natural
History_ by C. Plinius Secundus (Pliny Senior) which first saw light in
A.D. 77; the eighty-three _Treatises_ of Claudius Galenus, (A.D.
130–200); the thirty-four chapters of the _Animal Medicaments_ which
Sextus Placitus wrote in the Fourth Century after the Incarnation; the
eight books of Alexandros of Tralles in Lydia, _On Medicine_, first
given to the world in the Sixth Century;—these were the keys that opened
the door of speculation to the alert and eager men of the Fifteenth
Century, already intoxicated by the glorious Discovery of Man.
Weird and wonderful effects were produced by this flood of knowledge.
Weird and wonderful were the new significances given to natural things,
the combinations of natural objects projected, the doctrines evolved
from observation of natural phenomena. The study of nature became a
sacred thing, reserved for the reverent and wise. Its followers were
called magi, or magicians; their pursuit was magic. The magical art was
either white or black, for the good or ill of men. Great and holy
personages practised white magic: the black was damned by the Church,
and the bare suspicion of its practice sufficed to burn. The Lord
Alexander P.P. VI distinguished Himself by His severity to the black
magi. White magic included the art of healing; divination by
cheiromancy, amniomancy, lithomancy, astrology, and also experimented to
find out the hidden properties and virtues of all things strange, as
well as common. It was a vast field for research; and the men who walked
therein were just like boys, eager, sensible, ardent, inexperienced,
ready to assume and take for granted.
A most eminent mage was Messer Eurico Cornelio Agrippa. During the
pontificate of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI he wrote his learning in a
book which he called _The Book of Occult Philosophy_. In the year 1510
he shewed his work to a friend, the celebrated Abbot Trithemius, who was
charmed with it, added to it, and advised Messer Eurico to impart it to
the elect alone. The advice apparently was taken; for the book was not
published till 1531. The mage largely dealt with kabbalistic writing,
giving various mysterious alphabets for use in magical recipes. He set
forth the sigils planets and planet-signs of certain archangels, patrons
of the days of the week, Michael, Gabriel, Samael, Raphael, Sachael,
Anael, Cassiel, with their proper perfumes, red wheat, aloes, pepper,
mastic, saffron, pepperwort, sulphur. He placed great importance on
charms and periapts or amulets.
“St. Thomas Aquinas,” he wrote, “that holy Doctor, in his Book _De
Fato_ saith that even Garments, Buildings, and other artificial Works
whatsoever, do receive a certain Qualification from the Stars: and
Magicians affirm that, not only by the Mixture and Application of
natural Things, but also in Images, Seals, Rings, Glasses, and some
other Instruments, being opportunely framed under a certain
Constellation, some celestial illustration may be taken, and some
wonderful thing may be received.”
This being his idea, it is not surprising to find him prescribing for
the reduction of an intermittent fever, the following charm of Quintus
Serenus Sermonicus to be written on parchment and worn round the neck:
a b r a c a d a b r a
a b r a c a d a b r
a b r a c a d a b
a b r a c a d a
a b r a c a d
a b r a c a
a b r a c
a b r a
a b r
a b
a
or, as a protection against evil spirits and dangers of journey, water,
enemy, or arms, the beginning and end of the first five verses of
Genesis:
בוווו––צמרכד
written on virgin parchment, or on most pure gold, back and front, with
an ink made of the smoke, of incense, or of consecrated wax tapers,
mixed with holy water. This charm also must be worn round the neck, and
its efficacy is conditional upon the belief of the wearer in God the
Creator of All.
Men of the Borgian Era knew that the tail of an ibex, dried with its
flesh and skin and worn about the person, would ward off magic unless
the wearer should consent thereto. This they learned from St.
Hildegard’s treatise _De Animalibus_. They knew that the herb Heliotrope
or Turnsole (_Heliotropion Europaeum_), placed under the pillow of a man
who has been robbed, will bring him a vision of the thief and his spoil;
and that, when it was set up in a church, unfaithful wives would be
unable to go away until it was removed. Their faith in the virtue of
gems was very precious; and chiefly derived from the physician
Alexandros of Tralles. A cockatrice engraved on green jasper preserved
from the Evil Eye. A metal cross tied on the left arm cured epilepsy. A
live spider tied in a rag on the same arm cured ague. A metal ring,
engraved with the sacred tau =Τ= (the “_Mark on the Forehead_”), also
freed from epilepsy. A ring, set with ass-hoof, cured ἀδυναμία. A ring,
carved with a council of ravens for Apollo, conferred conjugal joy and
the gift of clear-seeing. A brownish-yellow jacinth gave sleep. An
agate, carved with St. John the Divine, protected from venom. Oriental
jasper or heliotrope (blood-stone), engraved with a youth wearing a
necklace of herbs, when anointed with marigold juice, conferred
invisibility. A copper ring, figured with a lion, a crescent, and a
star, and worn on the fourth finger, cured calculus. Amethyst kept the
wearer sober, and a papal bull ordained it for episcopal rings. Coral
delivered from incubi and succubi. Herakles strangling the lion of
Nemea, carved on a honey-coloured sard, cured colic. Carnelian carved
with a Hermes Psuchopompos gave cheerfulness and courage. A man might
live as long as he liked if he looked at a presentment of St.
Christopher (the Christian Herakles) every day.[72] The toad-stone or
bufonite (the fossil palatal tooth of the ray-fish _Pycnodus_) when set
in a ring was a most potent periapt against black magic. In the
University Galleries at Oxford, No. 691, there is a splendid specimen of
a double-toad-stone ring; _i.e._, the stones are set outward on opposite
sides of the ring so that the one always touches the closed hand, while
the other is free to dismay a magical enemy.
Cheiromancy was expounded by Messer Andrea Corvo da Carpi, whose deeply
religious little treatise adorned with diagrams was published at Venice
in 1500.
But the chief of the men of science of the Borgian Era was Messer
Giambattista della Porta of Naples. Born in 1445, dying in 1515, he was
an exact contemporary of Borgia. What he did not know of natural
science, no other man of his epoch knew. His house in Naples was a
resort of literary and scientific men of every nation. He established
public and private academies of science in all directions, the chief of
which were Gli Ozioni of Naples and one called Il Secreti which met in
his own house, and to which no mage was admitted unless he had made some
new and notable discovery of natural phenomena. This was the academy
whose name and air of mystery excited intense ecclesiastical suspicion
at Rome, which by hinting at black magic procured the order to close the
meetings of the mages.
Messer Giambattista della Porta was a copious writer. He gave to the
world a treatise On Physiognomy, in which he judges men’s characters by
comparing their faces to those of certain beasts; and a diffuse and
learned work on cyphers, De Occultis Literium Notis. His great work,
however, was The Book of Natural Magic. He says that he began it in
1460, when he barely was of the age of fifteen years;—these were the
precocious times when Messer Giovanni de Medici was a Lord Cardinal at
thirteen and Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace a married man and
captain of condottieri at fourteen;—and thirty-five years later in 1495,
by the help of that lusty young Maecenas the Lord Cardinal Prince
Ippolito d’Este, he published the matured work from which the following
recipes are taken.
Very few English people realize the doctrine of Sympathy and Antipathy;
or admit that Attraction and Repulsion are Primary Forces. “I do not
love thee, Doctor Fell, the reason why I cannot tell,” says the
Englishman, and worries to find that reason instead of recognising the
Law. “She is simpatica and he is antipaticissimo,” says an Italian,
stating and admitting a natural law. Messer Giambattista della Porta is
very clear on the point of Antipathy, which he illustrates by saying
that Vine and Colewort are natural enemies, because Colewort cures
drunkenness; that Rue and Hemlock are natural enemies, because Hemlock
heals blisters raised by Rue: as well as on the point of Sympathy which
he illustrates by saying that a wild bull, tethered to a fig-tree, will
become tame and gentle; and a dog, laid to a diseased part of a man’s
body, will absorb the disease.
He says that beasts have knowledge all their own: that ravens use ivy,
eagles use maidenhair, herons use carrots, on their nests as natural
preservatives against enchantments: that cats eat grass, and pigeons
pellitory, for their ailments: that lions with quartan agues eat apes,
that dim-eyed hawks eat sow-thistle, that serpents rejuvenate on fennel,
and that partridges eat leeks to clear their voices.
To prove that he has not gone about the world with eyes closed, he
remarks that mice are generated of putrefaction, frogs of rotten dust
and rain, red toads of dirt and καταμήνια, and serpents of the hair of
horses’ manes or of a dead man’s back-marrow.
He advises the creation of new animals by crossbreeding; a hunting dog,
of a mastiff and a lioness or tigress; a trick dog, of a bitch and an
ape; and birds with delicious flesh for gourmets, of a cock and a
peahen, or of a cock pheasant and a plain hen. His method of making a
bird sociable and friendly is quaint and unique. He says that, before
the creature has got its feathers, you must break off its lower beak
even to the jaw. Then, having not the wherewithal to peck up food, it
must come to its master to be fed.
He advocates the creation of new fruits which sound most daintily, by
grafting a mulberry on a chestnut tree, a peach on a nut, a quince on a
pear, a citron on an apple, and a cherry on a bay. He advises the making
of bread with dates and walnuts; and of wine with quinces.
He will make precious stones—a jacinth by putting lead into an earthen
pot, and setting it in a glass-maker’s furnace until the lead is
vitrified: or an emerald by dissolving silver in aqua-fortis, casting in
plates of copper to which the composition will adhere, drying the plates
in the sun, setting them in an earthen pot for some days in a
glass-maker’s furnace.
He says that green and merry dreams may be procured by eating balm, or
bugloss, or bows of poplar; and black and melancholy dreams by eating
beans, lentils, onions, garlic, leeks.
He will cure toothache with roots of pellitory or of herbane, bruised.
For the care of the teeth he recommends a wash made of leaves of mastic,
rosemary, sage, and bramble, macerated in Greek wine, (_i.e._, a strong
rich wine grown in dry volcanic soil:) or a tooth-powder made of barley
bread-crumbs browned with salt. But his recipe for white and pearly
teeth is a master-piece.
“Take three handfuls each of flowers and leaves of sage, nettle,
rosemary, mallow, olive, plantain, and rind of walnut roots; two
handfuls each of rock-rose (κίστος), horehound, bramble-tops; a pound
of flower and half a pound of seed of myrtle; two handfuls of rose
buds; two drachms each of sandal-wood, coriander, and citron-pips;
three drachms of cinnamon; ten drachms of cypress nuts; five green
pine-cones; two drachms each of mastic and Armenian bole or clay.
Reduce all these to powder. Infuse them in sharp black wine. Macerate
them for three days. Slightly press out the wine. Put them in an
alembic and distil them on a gentle fire. Boil the distillation till
two ounces of alum is dissolved in it. Keep in a close-stopped vial:
and, for use, fill the mouth with the lotion, and rub the teeth with a
finger wrapped in fine linen.”
An excellent specimen this, of a Compound as distinguished from a
Simple; of the sophistication, and of the meticulous personal
cleanliness, of people of the Borgian Era.
To cure a man of Envy, says this mage, keep him in the fresh air, hang
carbuncles and jacinths and sapphires on his neck, let him wear a ring
made of ass-hoof and smell to hyssop and sweet lilies.
Messer Giambattista Porta’s ninth Book teaches how to make women
beautiful. There was a fashion which continued the forehead to the
middle of the skull; and a depilatory is recommended made of quicklime
four ounces, and orpiment two ounces, boiled until a hen’s feather
dipped into it is bared. This frightful compound must not long remain on
the skin; and the burns should be dressed with the gum of aspen-bark
(_Populus Tremula_) and oil of roses or of violets. Or, hair may be
removed by fomentation with hot water, plucking out with nippers one by
one, and anointing the holes with a saturated solution of saltpetre, or
with oil of brimstone or vitriol, the process being repeated once a
year. Where hair is only thin and downy, the roots of wild hyacinth
rubbed on will keep it back.
To dye the hair yellow, (in imitation of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, whose
beautiful yellow hair was much admired,) add enough honey to soften the
lees of white wine and keep the hair wet with this all night. Then
bruise roots of celandine and greater-clivers-madder, mix them with oil
of cummin seed, box-shavings, and saffron; and keep this on the head for
four and twenty hours, when it should be washed off with a lye of
cabbage-stalks and ashes of rye-straw.
To make the hair grow it should be washed in the liquid that first
distils from honey by the fire: or it should be anointed with an unguent
made of marsh-mallow bruised in hog’s grease, boiled long in wine, added
to bruised cummin seed, mastic, yolk of egg, boiled again, and strained
through linen.
To make hair thick and curly, boil maidenhair with smallage seed in wine
and oil; or roots of daffydillies, or dwarf-elder, boiled with wine and
oil.
Water, in which the bulbous tops of lilies have been boiled, makes the
skin fair: and corrosive sublimate and cerusa (white lead) makes the
face white and shining.
For sunburn, white of egg and sugar-candy on the face at night, washed
off in barley-water in the morning, is prescribed: and a clear skin is
to be had by rubbing with the rind or bruised seeds of melons. It will
be obvious that there were “plain” as well as “coloured” women in the
Borgian Era; _i.e._, those who went about their duty (of cultivating
their charms) in a wholesome way, and those who used violent and nasty
methods.
Messer Giambattista della Porta appears to have used his science and
magical art to invent “Some Sports against Women”; which will show what
the Borgian Era regarded as permissible practical jokes. He says that,
if you wish to discover paint on a face, you must chew saffron before
breathing on her, and incontinently she yellows: or you may burn
brimstone near her, which will blacken mercury sublimate and cerusa
(white lead): or you may chew cummin or garlic and breathe on her, and
her cerusa or quicksilver will decay. But if that you yearn to dye a
woman green, you must decoct a chameleon in her bath.
His tenth book deals with interminable and elaborate processes of
distillation and sublimation; proving that what was said on a previous
page concerning Letters and Art, (viz., that the habit of the time was
to think all of the workmanship, and nothing of the material used,) was
perfectly true of Fifteenth Century pharmacy also. These mages sat and
boiled their alembics and crucibles; and distilled, and distilled, and
sublimed, and sublimed, till the nature of their stuff was lost, or
utterly changed, instead of being refined and concentrated as they
vainly hoped. They were just like boys, eager, sensible, ardent,
inexperienced. They made the inevitable blunders of adventurers. They
committed the extravagances of human nature in unwonted circumstances;
and the wisdom of the Twentieth Century is the fruit of the fooling of
the Fifteenth.
Messer Giambattista della Porta devotes his eleventh book to Perfumes;
his twelfth to the making of Greek Fire (from camphor, pitch, spirits
and brimstone) of gunpowder, and of rockets shells and mines; his
thirteenth to the tempering of steel.
His fourteenth book contains monstrous and characteristic recipes
connected with meats and drinks. If you want to make your guests
drunken, mix with their wine the filth of a dog’s ear. If you prefer to
make them mad-drunk, give them a camel’s froth in water. If you want to
avoid being overcome of wine, eat leeks and saffron, wear garlands of
roses, violets and ivy-berries, and carry an amethyst on your person. To
keep your boy sober, before he has tasted wine give him the boiled eggs
of an owl, to temper his natural heat. If you want delicately to drive
unwelcome guests from your table, you may disgust them with the viands
in five ways: first, a needle which has sewed dead men’s shrouds when
stuck under the table will cause all to loathe to eat: secondly, meat
secretly peppered with powdered root of wake-robin (_Arum maculatum_)
will fetch the skin off their mouths: thirdly, food sprinkled before
serving with powdered leaves of cuckoo-pine (—_gen. Arum_) will produce
copious salivation: fourthly, knives and napkins rubbed with wildgourd
juice (_Cucunis colocynthus_, κολοκύνθις ἀγρία) will give to all they
touch a horrible smack : lastly, harp-strings, cut small and strewed on
hot meat, will writhe like worms; and so you may rid your table of
unwelcome guests.
If you would bone a pigeon, draw, and soak in vinegar for four and
twenty hours; then pull out the bones, wash well, fill with herbs and
spices and roast or boil it. To make tender a tough capon, boil it
before roasting. But, if you desire to give your friends much joy,
entertain them to a goose cooked alive. In the courtyard, pluck your
goose except her head and neck, and cover her with lard and suet. Build
a ring of faggots round her; not too narrow, lest she evade the
roasting, nor too wide lest the smoke choke her, or the fire burn her.
Inside the ring of faggots, on the ground occupied by your plucked and
larded goose, place several pots of water mixed with salt and bearwort.
Light the faggots slowly. When the goose begins to roast she will walk
about; but she cannot escape; and you have her wings. When she grows
weary and very hot, she quenches her thirst with the medicated water,
and cools her heart and her inward parts. You continually must moisten
her head and her heart with a sponge at the end of a cane. At last, you
will see her run incontinently up and down; and presently stumble. Then
she is empty, and there is no more moisture in her heart. Wherefore you
may take her away, and set her on the table to your guests: she will cry
when you pull off her pieces; and you almost may eat her before she has
died.
The fifteenth and last book of Natural Magic treats of various modes of
conducting secret correspondence by invisible inks, writing on eggs or
naked backs of drugged couriers, counterfeit seals and writing, messages
by pigeon or by arrows.
Those are the things of which a sober learned and most eminent physician
of the Fifteenth Century seriously has written, and called Natural
Magic. He shews the innocent ingenuous mind of a child rampant among new
toys.
* * * * *
Having shewn something of this mage’s knowledge, it may be said, now,
that, scattered about his Book of Natural Magic, carelessly and
incidentally, there are allusions to certain venoms. He says:
I. that ἐζάμβλωσις may be procured by exhibiting the wine that Pliny
calls Phthorium (Φθόριος) (Plin. 4, 16, 19, § 110), made from
the grapes of a vine on which hellebore, wildgourd, and scamony
have been grafted:
II. that Mandrakes (Μανδραγόρας), _Mandragora_ (_Atropa Officinalis_)
growing by a vine, will make its grapes hypnotic:
III. that one drachm of belladonna (—_gen. Atropa_) or stramonium
(thorn-apple, _Datura stramonium_) in water, (which they will
infect without taste or smell,) “will make men mad without any
hurt, so that it is a most pleasant spectacle to behold such
mad whimsies and visions. It is very pleasant to behold. Pray
make trial,” he lightly says. But he adds that one ounce of
these drugs will make a man sleep four days.
IV. that one drachm of Nightshade rind (_Solanum nigrum_) in wine
will give sleep; a little more, madness; a large dose, death:
V. that Hemlock (_Conium maculatum_) in wine will cause death:
VI. that the drachm dose of belladonna, bruised in wine, is good for
driving away unwelcome guests.
It will be noticed that three of these six prescriptions contemplate
death.