THE LIFE OF CESARE BORGIA
Of France, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, Prince of Andria and Venafri
Count of Dyois, Lord of Piombino, Camerino and Urbino, Gonfalonier and
Captain-General of Holy Church
A History and Some Criticisms
By Rafael Sabatini
PREFACE
This is no Chronicle of Saints. Nor yet is it a History of Devils. It is
a record of certain very human, strenuous men in a very human, strenuous
age; a lustful, flamboyant age; an age red with blood and pale with
passion at white-heat; an age of steel and velvet, of vivid colour,
dazzling light and impenetrable shadow; an age of swift movement,
pitiless violence and high endeavour, of sharp antitheses and amazing
contrasts.
To judge it from the standpoint of this calm, deliberate, and correct
century--as we conceive our own to be--is for sedate middle-age to judge
from its own standpoint the reckless, hot, passionate, lustful humours
of youth, of youth that errs grievously and achieves greatly.
So to judge that epoch collectively is manifestly wrong, a hopeless
procedure if it be our aim to understand it and to be in sympathy with
it, as it becomes broad-minded age to be tolerantly in sympathy with the
youth whose follies it perceives. Life is an ephemeral business, and
we waste too much of it in judging where it would beseem us better to
accept, that we ourselves may come to be accepted by such future ages as
may pursue the study of us.
But if it be wrong to judge a past epoch collectively by the standards
of our own time, how much more is it not wrong to single out individuals
for judgement by those same standards, after detaching them for the
purpose from the environment in which they had their being? How false
must be the conception of them thus obtained! We view the individuals so
selected through a microscope of modern focus. They appear monstrous
and abnormal, and we straight-way assume them to be monsters and
abnormalities, never considering that the fault is in the adjustment
of the instrument through which we inspect them, and that until that is
corrected others of that same past age, if similarly viewed, must appear
similarly distorted.
Hence it follows that some study of an age must ever prelude and
accompany the study of its individuals, if comprehension is to wait upon
our labours. To proceed otherwise is to judge an individual Hottentot or
South Sea Islander by the code of manners that obtains in Belgravia or
Mayfair.
Mind being the seat of the soul, and literature being the expression of
the mind, literature, it follows, is the soul of an age, the surviving
and immortal part of it; and in the literature of the Cinquecento you
shall behold for the looking the ardent, unmoral, naïve soul of this
Renaissance that was sprawling in its lusty, naked infancy and bellowing
hungrily for the pap of knowledge, and for other things. You shall
infer something of the passionate mettle of this infant: his
tempestuous mirth, his fierce rages, his simplicity, his naïveté, his
inquisitiveness, his cunning, his deceit, his cruelty, his love of
sunshine and bright gewgaws.
To realize him as he was, you need but to bethink you that this was
the age in which the Decamerone of Giovanni Boccaccio, the Facetiae of
Poggio, the Satires of Filelfo, and the Hermaphroditus of Panormitano
afforded reading-matter to both sexes. This was the age in which the
learned and erudite Lorenzo Valla--of whom more anon--wrote his famous
indictment of virginity, condemning it as against nature with arguments
of a most insidious logic. This was the age in which Casa, Archbishop
of Benevento, wrote a most singular work of erotic philosophy, which,
coming from a churchman’s pen, will leave you cold with horror should
you chance to turn its pages. This was the age of the Discovery of Man;
the pagan age which stripped Christ of His divinity to bestow it upon
Plato, so that Marsilio Ficino actually burnt an altar-lamp before an
image of the Greek by whose teachings--in common with so many scholars
of his day--he sought to inform himself.
It was an age that had become unable to discriminate between the merits
of the Saints of the Church and the Harlots of the Town. Therefore it
honoured both alike, extolled the carnal merits of the one in much the
same terms as were employed to extol the spiritual merits of the other.
Thus when a famous Roman courtesan departed this life in the year 1511,
at the early age of twenty-six, she was accorded a splendid funeral and
an imposing tomb in the Chapel Santa Gregoria with a tablet bearing the
following inscription:
“IMPERIA CORTISANA ROMANA QUAE DIGNA TANTO NOMINE, RARAE INTER MORTALES
FORMAE SPECIMEN DEDIT.”
It was, in short, an age so universally immoral as scarcely to be termed
immoral, since immorality may be defined as a departure from the morals
that obtain a given time and in a given place. So that whilst from
our own standpoint the Cinquecento, taken collectively, is an age of
grossest licence and immorality, from the standpoint of the Cinquecento
itself few of its individuals might with justice be branded immoral.
For the rest, it was an epoch of reaction from the Age of Chivalry:
an epoch of unbounded luxury, of the cult and worship of the beautiful
externally; an epoch that set no store by any inward virtue, by truth
or honour; an epoch that laid it down as a maxim that no inconvenient
engagement should be kept if opportunity offered to evade it.
The history of the Cinquecento is a history developed in broken pledges,
trusts dishonoured and basest treacheries, as you shall come to conclude
before you have read far in the story that is here to be set down.
In a profligate age what can you look for but profligates? Is it just,
is it reasonable, or is it even honest to take a man or a family from
such an environment, for judgement by the canons of a later epoch? Yet
is it not the method that has been most frequently adopted in dealing
with the vast subject of the Borgias?
To avoid the dangers that must wait upon that error, the history of that
House shall here be taken up with the elevation of Calixtus III to the
Papal Throne; and the reign of the four Popes immediately preceding
Roderigo Borgia--who reigned as Alexander VI--shall briefly be surveyed
that a standard may be set by which to judge the man and the family that
form the real subject of this work.
The history of this amazing Pope Alexander is yet to be written. No
attempt has been made to exhaust it here. Yet of necessity he bulks
large in these pages; for the history of his dazzling, meteoric son is
so closely interwoven with his own that it is impossible to present the
one without dealing at considerable length with the other.
The sources from which the history of the House of Borgia has been
culled are not to be examined in a preface. They are too numerous,
and they require too minute and individual a consideration that their
precise value and degree of credibility may be ascertained. Abundantly
shall such examination be made in the course of this history, and in
a measure as the need arises to cite evidence for one side or for the
other shall that evidence be sifted.
Never, perhaps, has anything more true been written of the Borgias and
their history than the matter contained in the following lines of Rawdon
Brown in his Ragguagli sulla Vita e sulle Opere di Marino Sanuto: “It
seems to me that history has made use of the House of Borgia as of
a canvas upon which to depict the turpitudes of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries.”
Materials for the work were very ready to the hand; and although they
do not signally differ from the materials out of which the histories
of half a dozen Popes of the same epoch might be compiled, they are far
more abundant in the case of the Borgia Pope, for the excellent reason
that the Borgia Pope detaches from the background of the Renaissance far
more than any of his compeers by virtue of his importance as a political
force.
In this was reason to spare for his being libelled and lampooned even
beyond the usual extravagant wont. Slanders concerning him and his son
Cesare were readily circulated, and they will generally be found
to spring from those States which had most cause for jealousy and
resentment of the Borgia might--Venice, Florence, and Milan, amongst
others.
No rancour is so bitter as political rancour--save, perhaps, religious
rancour, which we shall also trace; no warfare more unscrupulous or more
prone to use the insidious weapons of slander than political warfare.
Of this such striking instances abound in our own time that there can
scarce be the need to labour the point. And from the form taken by such
slanders as are circulated in our own sedate and moderate epoch may be
conceived what might be said by political opponents in a fierce age that
knew no pudency and no restraint. All this in its proper place shall be
more closely examined.
For many of the charges brought against the House of Borgia some
testimony exists; for many others--and these are the more lurid,
sensational, and appalling covering as they do rape and murder,
adultery, incest, and the sin of the Cities of the Plain--no single
grain of real evidence is forthcoming. Indeed, at this time of day
evidence is no longer called for where the sins of the Borgias
are concerned. Oft-reiterated assertion has usurped the place of
evidence--for a lie sufficiently repeated comes to be credited by its
very utterer. And meanwhile the calumny has sped from tongue to tongue,
from pen to pen, gathering matter as it goes. The world absorbs the
stories; it devours them greedily so they be sensational, and writers
well aware of this have been pandering to that morbid appetite for some
centuries now with this subject of the Borgias. A salted, piquant tale
of vice, a ghastly story of moral turpitude and physical corruption,
a hair-raising narrative of horrors and abominations--these are the
stock-in-trade of the sensation-monger. With the authenticity of the
matters he retails such a one has no concern. “Se non é vero é ben
trovato,” is his motto, and in his heart the sensation-monger--of
whatsoever age--rather hopes the thing be true. He will certainly
make his public so believe it; for to discredit it would be to lose
nine-tenths of its sensational value. So he trims and adjusts his wares,
adds a touch or two of colour and what else he accounts necessary
to heighten their air of authenticity, to dissemble any peeping
spuriousness.
A form of hypnosis accompanies your study of the subject--a suggestion
that what is so positively and repeatedly stated must of necessity be
true, must of necessity have been proved by irrefutable evidence at some
time or other. So much you take for granted--for matters which began
their existence perhaps as tentative hypotheses have imperceptibly
developed into established facts.
Occasionally it happens that we find some such sentence as the following
summing up this deed or that one in the Borgia histories: “A deal of
mystery remains to be cleared up, but the Verdict of History assigns the
guilt to Cesare Borgia.”
Behold how easy it is to dispense with evidence. So that your tale
be well-salted and well-spiced, a fico for evidence! If it hangs not
overwell together in places, if there be contradictions, lacunae, or
openings for doubt, fling the Verdict of History into the gap, and so
strike any questioner into silence.
So far have matters gone in this connection that who undertakes to set
down to-day the history of Cesare Borgia, with intent to do just and
honest work, must find it impossible to tell a plain and straightforward
tale--to present him not as a villain of melodrama, not a monster,
ludicrous, grotesque, impossible, but as human being, a cold, relentless
egotist, it is true, using men for his own ends, terrible and even
treacherous in his reprisals, swift as a panther and as cruel where his
anger was aroused, yet with certain elements of greatness: a splendid
soldier, an unrivalled administrator, a man pre-eminently just, if
merciless in that same justice.
To present Cesare Borgia thus in a plain straightforward tale at this
time of day, would be to provoke the scorn and derision of those who
have made his acquaintance in the pages of that eminent German scholar,
Ferdinand Gregorovius, and of some other writers not quite so eminent
yet eminent enough to serve serious consideration. Hence has it been
necessary to examine at close quarters the findings of these great ones,
and to present certain criticisms of those same findings. The author is
overwhelmingly conscious of the invidious quality of that task; but he
is no less conscious of its inevitability if this tale is to be told at
all.
Whilst the actual sources of historical evidence shall be examined in
the course of this narrative, it may be well to examine at this stage
the sources of the popular conceptions of the Borgias, since there will
be no occasion later to allude to them.
Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance,
it may be said that in proper hands it has been and should continue to
be one of the most valued and valuable expressions of the literary art.
To render and maintain it so, however, it is necessary that certain
well-defined limits should be set upon the licence which its writers
are to enjoy; it is necessary that the work should be honest work; that
preparation for it should be made by a sound, painstaking study of the
period to be represented, to the end that a true impression may first be
formed and then conveyed. Thus, considering how much more far-reaching
is the novel than any other form of literature, the good results that
must wait upon such endeavours are beyond question. The neglect of
them--the distortion of character to suit the romancer’s ends, the like
distortion of historical facts, the gross anachronisms arising out of
a lack of study, have done much to bring the historical romance into
disrepute. Many writers frankly make no pretence--leastways none that
can be discerned--of aiming at historical precision; others, however,
invest their work with a spurious scholarliness, go the length of citing
authorities to support the point of view which they have taken, and
which they lay before you as the fruit of strenuous lucubrations.
These are the dangerous ones, and of this type is Victor Hugo’s famous
tragedy Lucrezia Borgia, a work to which perhaps more than to any other
(not excepting Les Borgias in Crimes Célèbres of Alexandre Dumas) is due
the popular conception that prevails to-day of Cesare Borgia’s sister.
It is questionable whether anything has ever flowed from a distinguished
pen in which so many licences have been taken with the history of
individuals and of an epoch; in which there is so rich a crop of crude,
transpontine absurdities and flagrant, impossible anachronisms. Victor
Hugo was a writer of rare gifts, a fertile romancer and a great poet,
and it may be unjust to censure him for having taken the fullest
advantages of the licences conceded to both. But it would be difficult
to censure him too harshly for having--in his Lucrezia Borgia--struck a
pose of scholarliness, for having pretended and maintained that his work
was honest work founded upon the study of historical evidences. With
that piece of charlatanism he deceived the great mass of the unlettered
of France and of all Europe into believing that in his tragedy he
presented the true Lucrezia Borgia.
“If you do not believe me,” he declared, “read Tommaso Tommasi, read the
Diary of Burchard.”
Read, then, that Diary, extending over a period of twenty-three years,
from 1483 to 1506, of the Master of Ceremonies of the Vatican (which
largely contributes the groundwork of the present history), and the one
conclusion to which you will be forced is that Victor Hugo himself had
never read it, else he would have hesitated to bid you refer to a work
which does not support a single line that he has written.
As for Tommaso Tommasi--oh, the danger of a little learning! Into what
quagmires does it not lead those who flaunt it to impress you!
Tommasi’s place among historians is on precisely the same plane as
Alexandre Dumas’s. His Vita di Cesare Borgia is on the same historical
level as Les Borgias, much of which it supplied. Like Crimes Célèbres,
Tommasi’s book is invested with a certain air of being a narrative of
sober fact; but like Crimes Célèbres, it is none the less a work of
fiction.
This Tommaso Tommasi, whose real name was Gregorio Leti--and it is under
this that such works of his as are reprinted are published nowadays--was
a most prolific author of the seventeenth century, who, having turned
Calvinist, vented in his writings a mordacious hatred of the Papacy and
of the religion from which he had seceded. His Life of Cesare Borgia was
published in 1670. It enjoyed a considerable vogue, was translated into
French, and has been the chief source from which many writers of fiction
and some writers of “fact” have drawn for subsequent work to carry
forward the ceaseless defamation of the Borgias.
History should be as inexorable as Divine Justice. Before we admit
facts, not only should we call for evidence and analyse it when it is
forthcoming, but the very sources of such evidence should be examined,
that, as far as possible, we may ascertain what degree of credit they
deserve. In the study of the history of the Borgias, we repeat, there
has been too much acceptance without question, too much taking
for granted of matters whose incredibility frequently touches and
occasionally oversteps the confines of the impossible.
One man knew Cesare Borgia better, perhaps, than did any other
contemporary, of the many who have left more or less valuable records;
for the mind of that man was the acutest of its age, one of the acutest
Italy and the world have ever known. That man was Niccolô Macchiavelli,
Secretary of State to the Signory of Florence. He owed no benefits to
Cesare; he was the ambassador of a power that was ever inimical to the
Borgias; so that it is not to be dreamt that his judgement suffered from
any bias in Cesare’s favour. Yet he accounted Cesare Borgia--as we shall
see--the incarnation of an ideal conqueror and ruler; he took Cesare
Borgia as the model for his famous work The Prince, written as a grammar
of statecraft for the instruction in the art of government of that
weakling Giuliano de’Medici.
Macchiavelli pronounces upon Cesare Borgia the following verdict:
“If all the actions of the duke are taken into consideration, it will
be seen how great were the foundations he had laid to future power. Upon
these I do not think it superfluous to discourse, because I should not
know what better precept to lay before a new prince than the example of
his actions; and if success did not wait upon what dispositions he
had made, that was through no fault of his own, but the result of an
extraordinary and extreme malignity of fortune.”
In its proper place shall be considered what else Macchiavelli had to
say of Cesare Borgia and what to report of events that he witnessed
connected with Cesare Borgia’s career.
Meanwhile, the above summary of Macchiavelli’s judgement is put forward
as a justification for the writing of this book, which has for scope to
present to you the Cesare Borgia who served as the model for The Prince.
Before doing so, however, there is the rise of the House of Borgia to be
traced, and in the first two of the four books into which this history
will be divided it is Alexander VI, rather than his son, who will hold
the centre of the stage.
If the author has a mercy to crave of his critics, it is that they
will not impute it to him that he has set out with the express aim of
“whitewashing”--as the term goes--the family of Borgia. To whitewash is
to overlay, to mask the original fabric under a superadded surface. Too
much superadding has there been here already. By your leave, all
shall be stripped away. The grime shall be removed and the foulness of
inference, of surmise, of deliberate and cold-blooded malice, with which
centuries of scribblers, idle, fantastic, sensational, or venal, have
coated the substance of known facts.
But the grime shall be preserved and analysed side by side with the
actual substance, that you may judge if out of zeal to remove the former
any of the latter shall have been included in the scraping.
The author expresses his indebtedness to the following works which,
amongst others, have been studied for the purposes of the present
history:
Alvisi, Odoardo, Cesare Borgia, Duca di Romagna. Imola, 1878.
Auton, Jean d’, Chroniques de Louis XII (Soc. de l’Hist. de France).
Paris, 1889.
Baldi, Bernardino, Della Vita e Fatti di Guidobaldo. Milano, 1821.
Barthélemy, Charles, Erreurs et Mensonges Historiques. Paris, 1873.
Bernardi, Andrea, Cronache Forlivese, 1476-1517. Bologna, 1897.
Bonnaffé, Edmond, Inventaire de la Duchesse de Valentinois, Paris,
1878.
Bonoli, Paolo, Istorie della Città di Forli. Forli, 1661.
Bourdeilles, Pierre, Vie des Hommes Illustres. Leyde, 1666.
Brown, Rawdon, Ragguagli Sulla Vita e sulle Opere di Marino Sanuto.
Venezia, 1837.
Buonaccorsi, Biagio, Diario. Firenze, 1568.
Burchard, Joannes, Diarium, sive Rerum Urbanarum Commentarii.
(Edited by L. Thuasne.) Paris, 1885.
Burckhardt, Jacob, Der Cultur der Renaissance in Italien. Basel, 1860.
Castiglione, Baldassare, Il Cortigiano. Firenze, 1885.
Chapelles, Grillon des, Esquisses Biographiques. Paris, 1862.
Cerri, Domenico, Borgia. Tonino, 1857.
Clementini, Cesare, Raccolto Istorico delle Fondatione di Rimino.
Rimini, 1617.
Corio, Bernardino, Storia di Milano. Milano, 1885.
Corvo, Baron, Chronicles of the House of Borgia. London, 1901.
Espinois, Henri de l’, Le Pape Alexandre VI (in the Revue des Questions
Historiques, Vol. XXIX). Paris, 1881.
Giovio, Paolo, La Vita di Dicenove Uomini Illustri. Venetia, 1561.
Giovio, Paolo, Delle Istorie del Suo Tempo. Venetia, 1608.
Giustiniani, Antonio, Dispacci, 1502-1505. (Edited by Pasquale Villari.)
Firenze, 1876.
Granata, F., Storia Civile di Capua. 1752.
Gregorovius, Ferdinand, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter.
Stuttgart, 1889.
Gregorovius, Ferdinand, Lacrezia Borgia (Italian translation). Firenze,
1855.
Guicciardini, Francesco, Istoria d’Italia. Milan, 1803.
Guingené, P. L., Histoire Littéraire d’Italie. Milano, 1820.
Infessura, Stefano, Diarum Rerum Romanum. (Edited by 0. Tommassini.)
Roma, 1887.
Leonetti, A., Papa Alessandro VI. Bologna, 1880.
Leti, Gregorio (“Tommaso Tommasi”), Vita di Cesare Borgia, Milano, 1851.
Lucaire, Achille, Alain le Grand, Sire d’Albret. Paris, 1877.
Macchiavelli, Niccolô, Il Principe. Torino, 1853.
Macchiavelli, Niccolô, Le Istorie Fiorentine. Firenze, 1848.
Macchiavelli, Niccolô, Opere Minori. Firenze, 1852.
Matarazzo, Francesco, Cronaca della Città di Perugia, 1492-1503.
(Edited by F. Bonaini and F. Polidori.) In Archivio Storico
Italiano, Firenze, 1851.
Panvinio, Onofrio, Le Vite dei Pontefici. Venezia, 1730.
Pascale, Aq., Racconto del Sacco di Capova. Napoli, 1632.
Righi, B., Annali di Faenza. Faenza, 1841.
Sanazzaro, Opere. Padua, 1723.
Sanuto Marino, Diarii, Vols. I to V. (Edited by F. Stefani.) Venice,
1879.
Tartt, W. M., Pandolfo Collenuccio, Memoirs connected with his life.
1868.
“Tommaso Tommasi” (Gregorio Leti), Vita di Cesare Borgia. 1789.
Varchi, Benedetto, Storia Fiorentina. Florence, 1858.
Visari, Gustavo, Vita degli Artefici.
Villari, Pasquale, La Storia di Girolamo Savonarola, etc. Florence,
1861.
Villari, Pasquale, Niccolò Machiavelli e I suoi Tempi. Milano, 1895.
Yriarte, Charles, La Vie de César Borgia. Paris, 1889.
Yriarte, Charles, Autour des Borgia. Paris, 1891.
Zurita, Geronimo, Historia del Rey Don Hernando el Catolico (in Anales).
Çaragoça, 1610.
CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE HOUSE OF THE BULL
CHAPTER
I. THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA
II. THE REIGNS OF SIXTUS IV AND INNOCENT VIII
III. ALEXANDER VI
IV. BORGIA ALLIANCES
BOOK II
THE BULL PASCANT
I. THE FRENCH INVASION
II. THE POPE AND THE SUPERNATURAL
III. THE ROMAN BARONS
IV. THE MURDER OF THE DUKE OF GANDIA
V. THE RENUNCIATION OF THE PURPLE
BOOK III
THE BULL RAMPANT
I. THE DUCHESS OF VALENTINOIS
II. THE KNELL OF THE TYRANTS
III. IMOLA AND FORLI
IV. GONFALONIER OF THE CHURCH
V. THE MURDER OF ALFONSO OF ARAGON
VI. RIMINI AND PESARO
VII. THE SIEGE OF FAENZA
VIII. ASTORRE MANFREDI
IX. CASTEL BOLOGNESE AND PIOMBINO
X. THE END OF THE HOUSE OF ARAGON
XI. THE LETTER TO SILVIO SAVELLI
XII. LUCREZIA’S THIRD MARRIAGE
XIII. URBINO AND CAMERINO
XIV. THE REVOLT OF THE CONDOTTIERI
XV. MACCHIAVELLI’S LEGATION
XVI. RAMIRO DE LORQUA
XVII. “THE BEAUTIFUL STRATAGEM”
VIII. THE ZENITH
BOOK IV
THE BULL CADENT
I. THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER VI
II. PIUS III
III. JULIUS II
IV. ATROPOS
BOOK I
THE HOUSE OF THE BULL
“Borgia stirps: BOS: atque Ceres transcendit Olympo, Cantabat nomen
saecula cuncta suum.”
Michele Ferno
CHAPTER I. THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF BORGIA
Although the House of Borgia, which gave to the Church of Rome two popes
and at least one saint,(1) is to be traced back to the eleventh century,
claiming as it does to have its source in the Kings of Aragon, we shall
take up its history for our purposes with the birth at the city of
Xativa, in the kingdom of Valencia, on December 30, 1378, of Alonso de
Borja, the son of Don Juan Domingo de Borja and his wife Doña Francisca.
1 St. Francisco Borgia, S.J.--great-grandson of Pope
Alexander VI, born at Gandia, in Spain, in 1510.
To this Don Alonso de Borja is due the rise of his family to its
stupendous eminence. An able, upright, vigorous-minded man, he became a
Professor and Doctor of Jurisprudence at the University of Lerida,
and afterwards served Alfonso I of Aragon, King of Naples and the Two
Sicilies, in the capacity of secretary. This office he filled with the
distinction that was to be expected from one so peculiarly fitted for it
by the character of the studies he had pursued.
He was made Bishop of Valencia, created Cardinal in 1444, and
finally--in 1455--ascended the throne of St. Peter as Calixtus III, an
old man, enfeebled in body, but with his extraordinary vigour of mind
all unimpaired.
Calixtus proved himself as much a nepotist as many another Pope before
and since. This needs not to be dilated upon here; suffice it that
in February of 1456 he gave the scarlet hat of Cardinal-Deacon of San
Niccoló, in Carcere Tulliano, to his nephew Don Roderigo de Lanzol y
Borja.
Born in 1431 at Xativa, the son of Juana de Borja (sister of Calixtus)
and her husband Don Jofrè de Lanzol, Roderigo was in his twenty-fifth
year at the time of his being raised to the purple, and in the following
year he was further created Vice-Chancellor of Holy Church with an
annual stipend of eight thousand florins. Like his uncle he had studied
jurisprudence--at the University of Bologna--and mentally and physically
he was extraordinarily endowed.
From the pen-portraits left of him by Gasparino of Verona, and Girolamo
Porzio, we know him for a tall, handsome man with black eyes and full
lips, elegant, courtly, joyous, and choicely eloquent, of such health
and vigour and endurance that he was insensible to any fatigue. Giasone
Maino of Milan refers to his “elegant appearance, serene brow, royal
glance, a countenance that at once expresses generosity and majesty, and
the genial and heroic air with which his whole personality is invested.”
To a similar description of him Gasparino adds that “all women upon whom
he so much as casts his eyes he moves to love him; attracting them as
the lodestone attracts iron;” which is, it must be admitted, a most
undesirable reputation in a churchman.
A modern historian(1) who uses little restraint when writing of Roderigo
Borgia says of him that “he was a man of neither much energy nor
determined will,” and further that “the firmness and energy wanting to
his character were, however, often replaced by the constancy of his evil
passions, by which he was almost blinded.” How the constancy of evil
passions can replace firmness and energy as factors of worldly success
is not readily discernible, particularly if their possessor is blinded
by them. The historical worth of the stricture may safely be left to be
measured by its logical value. For the rest, to say that Roderigo Borgia
was wanting in energy and in will is to say something to which his
whole career gives the loud and derisive lie, as will--to some extent at
least--be seen in the course of this work.
1 Pasquale Villari in his Machiavelli i suoi Tempi
His honours as Cardinal-Deacon and Vice-Chancellor of the Holy See he
owed to his uncle; but that he maintained and constantly improved his
position--and he a foreigner, be it remembered--under the reigns of
the four succeeding Popes--Pius II, Paul II, Sixtus IV, and Innocent
VIII--until finally, six-and-twenty years after the death of Calixtus
III, he ascended, himself, the Papal Throne, can be due only to the
unconquerable energy and stupendous talents which have placed him where
he stands in history--one of the greatest forces, for good or ill, that
ever occupied St. Peter’s Chair.
Say of him that he was ambitious, worldly, greedy of power, and a prey
to carnal lusts. All these he was. But for very sanity’s sake do not let
it be said that he was wanting either in energy or in will, for he was
energy and will incarnate.
Consider that with Calixtus III’s assumption of the Tiara Rome became
the Spaniard’s happy hunting-ground, and that into the Eternal City
streamed in their hundreds the Catalan adventurers--priests, clerks,
captains of fortune, and others--who came to seek advancement at the
hands of a Catalan Pope. This Spanish invasion Rome resented. She grew
restive under it.
Roderigo’s elder brother, Don Pedro Luis de Lanzol y Borja, was made
Gonfalonier of the Church, Castellan of all pontifical fortresses
and Governor of the Patrimony of St. Peter, with the title of Duke of
Spoleto and, later, Prefect of Rome, to the displacement of an Orsini
from that office. Calixtus invested this nephew with all temporal power
that it was in the Church’s privilege to bestow, to the end that he
might use it as a basis to overset the petty tyrannies of Romagna, and
to establish a feudal claim on the Kingdom of Naples.
Here already we see more than a hint of that Borgia ambition which was
to become a byword, and the first attempt of this family to found a
dynasty for itself and a State that should endure beyond the transient
tenure of the Pontificate, an aim that was later to be carried into
actual--if ephemeral--fulfilment by Cesare Borgia.
The Italians watched this growth of Spanish power with jealous, angry
eyes. The mighty House of Orsini, angered by the supplanting of one of
its members in the Prefecture of Rome, kept its resentment warm, and
waited. When in August of 1458 Calixtus III lay dying, the Orsini seized
the chance: they incited the city to ready insurgence, and with fire and
sword they drove the Spaniards out.
Don Pedro Luis made haste to depart, contrived to avoid the Orsini, who
had made him their special quarry, and getting a boat slipped down the
Tiber to Civita Vecchia, where he died suddenly some six weeks later,
thereby considerably increasing the wealth of Roderigo, his brother and
his heir.
Roderigo’s cousin, Don Luis Juan, Cardinal-Presbyter of Santi Quattro
Coronati, another member of the family who owed his advancement to his
uncle Calixtus, thought it also expedient to withdraw from that zone of
danger to men of his nationality and name.
Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja alone remained--leastways, the only prominent
member of his house--boldly to face the enmity of the majority of the
Sacred College, which had looked with grim disfavour upon his uncle’s
nepotism. Unintimidated, he entered the Conclave for the election of a
successor to Calixtus, and there the chance which so often prefers to
bestow its favours upon him who knows how to profit by them, gave him
the opportunity to establish himself as firmly as ever at the Vatican,
and further to advance his interests.
It fell out that when the scrutiny was taken, two cardinals stood
well in votes--the brilliant, cultured Enea Silvio Bartolomeo
de’ Piccolomini, Cardinal of Siena, and the French Cardinal
d’Estouteville--though neither had attained the minimum majority
demanded. Of these two, the lead in number of votes lay with the
Cardinal of Siena, and his election therefore might be completed
by Accession--that is, by the voices of such cardinals as had not
originally voted for him--until the minimum majority, which must exceed
two-thirds, should be made up.
The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja led this
accession, with the result that the Cardinal of Siena became Pontiff--as
Pius II--and was naturally enough disposed to advance the interests of
the man who had been instrumental in helping him to that eminence. Thus,
his position at the Vatican, in the very face of all hostility, became
stronger and more prominent than ever.
A letter written two years later from the Baths at Petriolo by Pius II
to Roderigo when the latter was in Siena--whither he had been sent
by his Holiness to superintend the building of the Cathedral and
the Episcopal and Piccolomini palaces--is frequently cited by way of
establishing the young prelate’s dissolute ways. It is a letter at once
stern and affectionate, and it certainly leaves no doubt as to what
manner of man was the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor in his private life, and
to what manner of unecciesiastical pursuits he inclined. It is difficult
to discover in it any grounds upon which an apologist may build.
“BELOVED SON,
“When four days ago, in the gardens of Giovanni de Bichis, were
assembled several women of Siena addicted to worldly vanity, your
worthiness, as we have learnt, little remembering the office which you
fill, was entertained by them from the seventeenth to the twenty-second
hour. For companion you had one of your colleagues, one whom his years
if not the honour of the Holy See should have reminded of his duty. From
what we have heard, dancing was unrestrainedly indulged, and not one of
love’s attractions was absent, whilst your behaviour was no different
from that which might have been looked for in any worldly youth.
Touching what happened there, modesty imposes silence. Not only the
circumstance itself, but the very name of it is unworthy in one of your
rank. The husbands, parents, brothers, and relations of these young
women were excluded, in order that your amusements should be the more
unbridled. You with a few servants undertook to direct and lead those
dances. It is said that nothing is now talked of in Siena but your
frivolity. Certain it is that here at the baths, where the concourse
of ecclesiastics and laity is great, you are the topic of the day. Our
displeasure is unutterable, since all this reflects dishonourably upon
the sacerdotal estate and office. It will be said of us that we are
enriched and promoted not to the end that we may lead blameless lives,
but that we may procure the means to indulge our pleasures. Hence the
contempt of us entertained by temporal princes and powers and the daily
sarcasms of the laity. Hence also the reproof of our own mode of life
when we attempt to reprove others. The very Vicar of Christ is involved
in this contempt, since he appears to countenance such things. You,
beloved son, have charge of the Bishopric of Valencia, the first of
Spain; you are also Vice-Chancellor of the Church; and what renders your
conduct still more blameworthy is that you are among the cardinals, with
the Pope, one of the counsellors of the Holy See. We submit it to your
own judgement whether it becomes your dignity to court young women, to
send fruit and wine to her you love, and to have no thought for anything
but pleasure. We are censured on your account; the blessed memory of
your uncle Calixtus is vituperated, since in the judgement of many
he was wrong to have conferred so many honours upon you. If you seek
excuses in your youth, you are no longer so young that you cannot
understand what duties are imposed upon you by your dignity. A cardinal
should be irreproachable, a model of moral conduct to all. And what just
cause have we for resentment when temporal princes bestow upon us titles
that are little honourable, dispute with us our possessions, and attempt
to bend us to their will? In truth it is we who inflict these wounds
upon ourselves, and it is we who occasion ourselves these troubles,
undermining more and more each day by our deeds the authority of the
Church. Our guerdon is shame in this world and condign punishment in the
next. May your prudence therefore set a restraint upon these vanities
and keep you mindful of your dignity, and prevent that you be known for
a gallant among married and unmarried women. But should similar facts
recur, we shall be compelled to signify that they have happened against
our will and to our sorrow, and our censure must be attended by your
shame. We have always loved you, and we have held you worthy of our
favour as a man of upright and honest nature. Act therefore in such
a manner that we may maintain such an opinion of you, and nothing can
better conduce to this than that you should lead a well-ordered life.
Your age, which is such as still to promise improvement, admits that we
should admonish you paternally.”
“PETRIOLO, June 11, 1460.”
Such a letter is calculated to shock us in our modern notions of a
churchman. To us this conduct on the part of a prelate is scandalous
beyond words; that it was scandalous even then is obvious from the
Pontiff’s letter; but that it was scandalous in an infinitely lesser
degree is no less obvious from the very fact that the Pontiff wrote
that letter (and in such terms) instead of incontinently unfrocking the
offender.
In considering Roderigo’s conduct, you are to consider--as has been
urged already--the age in which he lived. You are to remember that it
was an age in which the passions and the emotions wore no such masks as
they wear to-day, but went naked and knew no shame of their nudity; an
age in which personal modesty was as little studied as hypocrisy, and in
which men, wore their vices as openly as their virtues.
No amount of simple statement can convey an adequate notion of the
corrupt state of the clergy at the time. To form any just appreciation
of this, it is necessary to take a peep at some of the documents that
have survived--such a document, for instance, as that Bull of this Pope
Pius II which forbade priests from plying the trades of keeping taverns,
gaming-houses, and brothels.
Ponder also that under his successor, Sixtus IV, the tax levied upon the
courtesans of Rome enriched the pontifical coffers to the extent of
some 20,000 ducats yearly. Ponder further that when the vicar of
the libidinous Innocent VIII published in 1490 an edict against
the universal concubinage practised by the clergy, forbidding its
continuation under pain of excommunication, all that it earned him was
the severe censure of the Holy Father, who disagreed with the measure
and who straightway repealed and cancelled the edict.(1)
1 See Burchard’s Diarium, Thuasne Edition, Vol. II. p.442
et seq.
All this being considered, and man being admittedly a creature of his
environment, can we still pretend to horror at this Roderigo and at the
fact that being the man he was--prelate though he might be--handsome,
brilliant, courted, in the full vigour of youth, and a voluptuary by
nature, he should have succumbed to the temptations by which he was
surrounded?
One factor only could have caused him to use more restraint--the good
example of his peers. That example he most certainly had not.
Virtue is a comparative estate, when all is said; and before we can find
that Roderigo was vile, that he deserves unqualified condemnation for
his conduct, we must ascertain that he was more or less exceptional in
his licence, that he was less scrupulous than his fellows. Do we find
that? To find the contrary we do not need to go beyond the matter which
provoked that letter from the Pontiff. For we see that he was not even
alone, as an ecclesiastic, in the adventure; that he had for associate
on that amorous frolic one Giacopo Ammanati, Cardinal-Presbyter of
San Crisogno, Roderigo’s senior and an ordained priest, which--without
seeking to make undue capital out of the circumstance--we may mention
that Roderigo was not. He was a Cardinal-Deacon, be it remembered.(1) We
know that the very Pontiff who admonished these young prelates, though
now admittedly a man of saintly ways, had been a very pretty fellow
himself in his lusty young days in Siena; we know that Roderigo’s
uncle--the Calixtus to whom Pius II refers in that letter as of “blessed
memory”--had at least one acknowledged son.(2) We know that Piero and
Girolamo Riario, though styled by Pope Sixtus IV his “nephews,” were
generally recognized to be his sons.(3) And we know that the numerous
bastards of Innocent VIII--Roderigo’s immediate precursor on the
Pontifical Throne--were openly acknowledged by their father. We know, in
short, that it was the universal custom of the clergy to forget its vows
of celibacy, and to circumvent them by dispensing with the outward
form and sacrament of marriage; and we have it on the word of Pius II
himself, that “if there are good reasons for enjoining the celibacy of
the clergy, there are better and stronger for enjoining them to marry.”
1 He was not ordained priest until 1471, after the election
of Sixtus IV.
2 Don Francisco de Borja, born at Valencia in 1441.
3 Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine.
What more is there to say? If we must be scandalized, let us be
scandalized by the times rather than by the man. Upon what reasonable
grounds can we demand that he should be different from his fellows; and
if we find him no different, what right or reason have we for picking
him out and rendering him the object of unparalleled obloquy?
If we are to deal justly with Roderigo Borgia, we must admit that, in
so far as his concessions to his lusts are concerned, he was a typical
churchman of his day; neither more nor less--as will presently grow
abundantly clear.
It may be objected by some that had such been the case the Pope would
not have written him such a letter as is here cited. But consider a
moment the close relations existing between them. Roderigo was the
nephew of the late Pope; in a great measure Pius II owed his election,
as we have seen, to Roderigo’s action in the Conclave. That his interest
in him apart from that was paternal and affectionate is shown in every
line of that letter. And consider further that Roderigo’s companion
is shown by that letter to be equally guilty in so far as the acts
themselves are to be weighed, guilty in a greater degree when we
remember his seniority and his actual priesthood. Yet to Cardinal
Ammanati the Pope wrote no such admonition. Is not that sufficient proof
that his admonition of Roderigo was dictated purely by his personal
affection for him?
In this same year 1460 was born to Cardinal Roderigo a son--Don Pedro
Luis de Borja--by a spinster (mulier soluta) unnamed. This son was
publicly acknowledged and cared for by the cardinal.
Seven years later--in 1467--he became the father of a daughter--Girolama
de Borja--by a spinster, whose name again does not transpire. Like Pedro
Luis she too was openly acknowledged by Cardinal Roderigo. It was widely
believed that this child’s mother was Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, who
soon became quite openly the cardinal’s mistress, and was maintained by
him in such state as might have become a maîtresse en titre. But, as we
shall see later, the fact of that maternity of Girolama is doubtful in
the extreme. It was never established, and it is difficult to understand
why not if it were the fact.
Meanwhile Paul II--Pietro Barbo, Cardinal of Venice--had succeeded Pius
II in 1464, and in 1471 the latter was in his turn succeeded by
the formidable Sixtus IV--Cardinal Francesco Maria della Rovere--a
Franciscan of the lowest origin, who by his energy and talents had
become general of his order and had afterwards been raised to the
dignity of the purple.
It was Cardinal Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja who, in his official capacity
of Archdeacon of Holy Church, performed the ceremony of coronation and
placed the triple crown on the head of Pope Sixtus. It is probable that
this was his last official act as Archdeacon, for in that same year
1471, at the age of forty, he was ordained priest and consecrated Bishop
of Albano.
CHAPTER II. THE REIGNS OF SIXTUS IV AND INNOCENT VIII
The rule of Sixtus was as vigorous as it was scandalous. To say--as has
been said--that with his succession to St. Peter’s Chair came for the
Church a still sadder time than that which had preceded it, is not
altogether true. Politically, at least, Sixtus did much to strengthen
the position of the Holy See and of the Pontificate. He was not long in
giving the Roman factions a taste of his stern quality. If he employed
unscrupulous means, he employed them against unscrupulous men--on the
sound principle of similia similibus curantur--and to some extent they
were justified by the ends in view.
He found the temporal throne of the Pontiffs tottering when he ascended
it. Stefano Porcaro and his distinguished following already in 1453 had
attempted the overthrow of the pontifical authority, inspired, no doubt,
by the attacks that had been levelled against it by the erudite and
daring Lorenzo Valla.
This Valla was the distinguished translator of Homer, Herodotus, and
Thucydides, who more than any one of his epoch advanced the movement of
Greek and Latin learning, which, whilst it had the effect of arresting
the development of Italian literature, enriched Europe by opening up to
it the sources of ancient erudition, of philosophy, poetry, and literary
taste. Towards the year 1435 he drifted to the court of Alfonso of
Aragon, whose secretary he ultimately became. Some years later he
attacked the Temporal Power and urged the secularization of the States
of the Church. “Ut Papa,” he wrote, “tantum Vicarius Christi sit, et
non etiam Coesari.” In his De falso credita et ementita Constantini
Donatione, he showed that the decretals of the Donation of Constantine,
upon which rests the Pope’s claim to the Pontifical States, was an
impudent forgery, that Constantine had never had the power to give,
nor had given, Rome to the Popes, and that they had no right to govern
there. He backed up this terrible indictment by a round attack upon the
clergy, its general corruption and its practices of simony; and as a
result he fell into the hands of the Inquisition. There it might have
gone very ill with him but that King Alfonso rescued him from the
clutches of that dread priestly tribunal.
Meanwhile, he had fired his petard. If a pretext had been wanting to
warrant the taking up of arms against the Papacy, that pretext Valla had
afforded. Never was the temporal power of the Church in such danger, and
ultimately it must inevitably have succumbed but for the coming of so
strong and unscrupulous a man as Sixtus IV to stamp out the patrician
factions that were heading the hostile movement.
His election, it is generally admitted, was simoniacal; and by simony he
raised the funds necessary for his campaign to reestablish and support
the papal authority. This simony of his, says Dr. Jacob Burckhardt,
“grew to unheard-of proportions, and extended from the appointment of
cardinals down to the sale of the smallest benefice.”
Had he employed these means of raising funds for none but the purpose
of putting down the assailants of the Pontificate, a measure of
justification (political if not ecclesiastical) might be argued in his
favour. Unfortunately, having discovered these ready sources of revenue,
he continued to exploit them for purposes far less easy to condone.
As a nepotist Sixtus was almost unsurpassed in the history of the
Papacy. Four of his nephews and their aggrandizement were the particular
objects of his attentions, and two of these--as we have already
said--Piero and Girolamo Riario, were universally recognized to be his
sons.
Piero, who was a simple friar of twenty-six years of age at the time
that his father became Pope, was given the Archbishopric of Florence,
made Patriarch of Constantinople, and created Cardinal to the title of
San Sisto, with a revenue of 60,000 crowns.
We have it on the word of Cardinal Ammanati(1)--the same gentleman who,
with Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja made so scandalously merry in de Bichis’
garden at Siena--that Cardinal Riario’s luxury “exceeded all that had
been displayed by our forefathers or that can even be imagined by our
descendants”; and Macchiavelli tells us(2) that “although of very low
origin and mean rearing, no sooner had he obtained the scarlet hat than
he displayed a pride and ambition so vast that the Pontificate seemed
too small for him, and he gave a feast in Rome which would have appeared
extraordinary even for a king, the expense exceeding 20,000 florins.”
1 In a letter to Francesco Gonzaga.
2 Istorie Florentine.
Knowing so much, it is not difficult to understand that in one year or
less he should have dissipated 200,000 florins, and found himself in
debt to the extent of a further 60,000.
In 1473, Sixtus being at the time all but at war with Florence, this
Cardinal Riario visited Venice and Milan. In the latter State he was
planning with Duke Galeazzo Maria that the latter should become King of
Lombardy, and then assist him with money and troops to master Rome and
ascend the Papal Throne--which, it appears, Sixtus was quite willing
to yield to him--thus putting the Papacy on a hereditary basis like any
other secular State.
It is as well, perhaps, that he should have died on his return to Rome
in January of 1474--worn out by his excesses and debaucheries, say some;
of poison administered by the Venetians, say others--leaving a mass of
debts, contracted in his transactions with the World, the Flesh, and the
Devil, to be cleared up by the Vicar of Christ.
His brother Girolamo, meanwhile, had married Caterina Sforza, a natural
daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria. She brought him as her dowry the City
of Imola, and in addition to this he received from his Holiness the City
of Forli, to which end the Ordelaffi were dispossessed of it. Here again
we have a papal attempt to found a family dynasty, and an attempt that
might have been carried further under circumstances more propitious and
had not Death come to check their schemes.
The only one of the four “nephews” of Sixtus--and to this one was
imputed no nearer kinship--who was destined to make any lasting mark
in history was Giuliano della Rovere. He was raised by his uncle to the
purple with the title of San Pietro in Vincoli, and thirty-two years
later he was to become Pope (as Julius II). Of him we shall hear much in
the course of this story.
Under the pontificate of Sixtus IV the position and influence of
Cardinal Roderigo were greatly increased, for once again the Spanish
Cardinal had made the most of his opportunities. As at the election of
Pius II, so at the election of Sixtus IV it was Cardinal Roderigo who
led the act of accession which gave the new Pope his tiara, and for
this act Roderigo--in common with the Cardinals Orsini and Gonzaga who
acceded with him--was richly rewarded and advanced, receiving as his
immediate guerdon the wealthy Abbey of Subiaco.
At about this time, 1470, must have begun the relations between Cardinal
Roderigo and Giovanna Catanei, or Vannozza Catanei, as she is styled in
contemporary documents--Vannozza being a corruption or abbreviation of
Giovannozza, an affectionate form of Giovanna.
Who she was, or whence she came, are facts that have never been
ascertained. She is generally assumed to have been a Roman; but there
are no obvious grounds for the assumption, her name, for instance,
being common to many parts of Italy. And just as we have no sources of
information upon her origin, neither have we any elements from which
to paint her portrait. Gregorovius rests the probability that she was
beautiful upon the known characteristics and fastidious tastes of
the cardinal. Since it is unthinkable that such a man would have been
captivated by an ugly woman or would have been held by a stupid one,
it is fairly reasonable to conclude that she was beautiful and
ready-witted.
All that we do know of her up to the time of her liaison with Cardinal
Roderigo is that she was born on July 13, 1442, this fact being
ascertainable by a simple calculation from the elements afforded by the
inscription on her tomb in Santa Maria del Popolo:
Vix ann. LXXVI m. IV d. XII Objit anno MDXVIII XXVI, Nov.
And again, just as we know nothing of her family origin, neither have we
any evidence of what her circumstances were when she caught the magnetic
eye of Cardinal Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja--or Borgia as by now his
name, which had undergone italianization, was more generally spelled.
Infessura states in his diaries that Roderigo desiring later--as Pope
Alexander VI--to create cardinal his son by her, Cesare Borgia, he
caused false witness to be borne to the fact that Cesare was the
legitimate son of one Domenico d’Arignano, to whom he, the Pope, had
in fact married her. Guicciardini(1) makes the same statement, without,
however, mentioning name of this d’Arignano.
1 Istoria d’Italia.
Now, bastards were by canon law excluded from the purple, and it is
probably upon this circumstance that both Infessura and Guicciardini
have built the assumption that some such means as these had been adopted
to circumvent the law, and--as so often happens in chronicles concerning
the Borgias--the assumption is straightway stated as a fact. But
there were other ways of circumventing awkward commandments, and,
unfortunately for the accuracy of these statements of Infessura and
Guicciardini, another way was taken in this instance. As early as
1480, Pope Sixtus IV had granted Cesare Borgia--in a Bull dated October
1(1)--dispensation from proving the legitimacy of his birth. This
entirely removed the necessity for any such subsequent measures as those
which are suggested by these chroniclers.
1 See the supplement to the Appendix of Thuasne’s edition
of Burchard’s Diarium.
Moreover, had Cardinal Roderigo desired to fasten the paternity of
Cesare on another, there was ready to his hand Vannozza’s actual
husband, Giorgio della Croce.(2) When exactly this man became her
husband is not to be ascertained. All that we know is that he was so in
1480, and that she was living with him in that year in a house in Piazza
Pizzo di Merlo (now Piazza Sforza Cesarini) not far from the house on
Banchi Vecchi which Cardinal Roderigo, as Vice-Chancellor, had converted
into a palace for himself, and a palace so sumptuous as to excite the
wonder of that magnificent age.
2 D’Arignano is as much a fiction as the rest of
Infessura’s story.
This Giorgio della Croce was a Milanese, under the protection of
Cardinal Roderigo, who had obtained for him a post at the Vatican as
apostolic secretary. According to some, he married him to Vannozza in
order to afford her an official husband and thus cloak his own relations
with her. It is an assumption which you will hesitate to accept. If we
know our Cardinal Roderigo at all, he was never the man to pursue his
pleasures in a hole-and-corner fashion, nor one to bethink him of a
cloak for his amusements. Had he but done so, scandalmongers would
have had less to fasten upon in their work of playing havoc with his
reputation. What is far more likely is that della Croce owed Cardinal
Roderigo’s protection and the appointment as apostolic secretary to his
own complacency in the matter of his wife’s relations with the splendid
prelate. However we look at it, the figure cut in this story by della
Croce is not heroic.
Between the years 1474 and 1476, Vannozza bore Roderigo two sons, Cesare
Borgia (afterwards Cardinal of Valencia and Duke of Valentinois), the
central figure of our story, and Giovanni Borgia (afterwards Duke of
Gandia).
Lucrezia Borgia, we know from documentary evidence before us, was born
on April 19, 1479.
But there is a mystery about the precise respective ages of Vannozza’s
two eldest sons, and we fear that at this time of day it has become
impossible to establish beyond reasonable doubt which was the firstborn;
and this in spite of the documents discovered by Gregorovius and his
assertion that they remove all doubt and enable him definitely to assert
that Giovanni was born in 1474 and Cesare in 1476.
Let us look at these documents. They are letters from ambassadors to
their masters; probably correct, and the more credible since they
happen to agree and corroborate one another; still, not so utterly and
absolutely reliable as to suffice to remove the doubts engendered by the
no less reliable documents whose evidence contradicts them.
The first letters quoted by Gregorovius are from the ambassador
Gianandrea Boccaccio to his master, the Duke of Ferrara, in 1493. In
these he mentions Cesare Borgia as being sixteen to seventeen years of
age at the time. But the very manner of writing--“sixteen to seventeen
years”--is a common way of vaguely suggesting age rather than positively
stating it. So we may pass that evidence over, as of secondary
importance.
Next is a letter from Gerardo Saraceni to the Duke of Ferrara, dated
October 26, 1501, and it is more valuable, claiming as it does to be the
relation of something which his Holiness told the writer. It is in the
post-scriptum that this ambassador says: “The Pope gave me to understand
that the said Duchess [Lucrezia Borgia] will complete twenty-two years
of age next April, and at that same time the Duke of Romagna will
complete his twenty-sixth year.”(1)
1 “Facendomi intendere the epsa Duchessa é di etá di anni ventidui, li
quali finiranno a questo Aprile; in el qual tempo anche lo Illmo. Duca
di Romagna fornirá anni ventisei.”
This certainly fixes the year of Cesare’s birth as 1476; but we are
to remember that Saraceni is speaking of something that the Pope had
recently told him; exactly how recently does not transpire. An error
would easily be possible in so far as the age of Cesare is concerned.
In so far as the age of Lucrezia is concerned, an error is not only
possible, but has actually been committed by Saraceni. At least the age
given in his letter is wrong by one year, as we know by a legal document
drawn up in February of 1491--Lucrezia’s contract of marriage with Don
Juan Cherubin de Centelles.(2)
2 A contract never executed.
According to this protocol in old Spanish, dated February 26, 1491,
Lucrezia completed her twelfth year on April 19, 1491,(3) which
definitely and positively gives us the date of her birth as April 19,
1479.
3 “Item mes attenent que dita Dona Lucretia a XVIIII de Abril prop.
vinent entrará in edat de dotze anys.”
A quite extraordinary error is that made by Gregorovius when he
says that Lucrezia Borgia was born on April 18, 1480, extraordinary
considering that he made it apparently with this very protocol under his
eyes, and cites it, in fact (Document IV in the Appendix to his Lucrezia
Borgia) as his authority.
To return, however, to Cesare and Giovanni, there is yet another
evidence quoted by Gregorovius in support of his contention that the
latter was the elder and born in 1474; but it is of the same nature and
of no more, nor less, value than those already mentioned.
Worthy of more consideration in view of their greater official and
legal character are the Ossuna documents, given in the Supplement of the
Appendix in Thuasne’s edition of Burchard’s Diary, namely:
(a) October 1, 1480.--A Bull from Sixtus IV, already mentioned,
dispensing Cesare from proving his legitimacy. In this he is referred to
as in his sixth year--“in sexto tuo aetatis anno.”
This, assuming Boccaccio’s letter to be correct in the matter of April
being the month of Cesare’s birth, fixes the year of his birth as 1475.
(b) August 16, 1482.--A Bull of Sixtus IV, appointing Roderigo Borgia
administrator of Cesare’s benefices. In this he is mentioned as being
seven years of age (i.e., presumably in his eighth year), which again
gives us his birth-year as 1475.
(c) September 12, 1484.--A Bull of Sixtus IV, appointing Cesare
treasurer of the Church of Carthage. In this he is mentioned as in his
ninth year--“in nono tuo aetatis anno.” This is at variance with the
other two, and gives us 1476 as the year of his birth.
To these evidences, conflicting as they are, may be added Burchard’s
mention in his diary under date of September 12, 1491, that Cesare was
then seventeen years of age. This would make him out to have been born
in 1474.
Clearly the matter cannot definitely be settled upon such evidence as we
have. All that we can positively assert is that he was born between the
years 1474 and 1476, and we cannot, we think, do better for the purposes
of this story than assume his birth-year to have been 1475.
We know that between those same years, or in one or the other of them,
was born Giovanni Borgia; but just as the same confusion prevails with
regard to his exact age, so is it impossible to determine with any
finality whether he was Cesare’s junior or senior.
The one document that appears to us to be the most important in this
connection is that of the inscription on their mother’s tomb. This runs:
FAUSTIAE CATHANAE, CESARE VALENTINAE, JOHANNAE CANDIAE, JUFFREDO
SCYLATII, ET LUCRETIA FERRARIAE DUCIB. FILIIS NOBILI PROBITATE INSIGNI,
RELIGIONE EXIMIA, ETC., ETC.
If Giovanni was, as is claimed, the eldest of her children, why does his
name come second? If Cesare was her second son, why does his name take
the first place on that inscription?
It has been urged that if Cesare was the elder of these two, he, and not
Giovanni, would have succeeded to the Duchy of Gandia on the death of
Pedro Luis--Cardinal Roderigo’s eldest son, by an unknown mother. But
that does not follow inevitably; for it is to be remembered that Cesare
was already destined for an ecclesiastical career, and it may well be
that his father was reluctant to change his plans.
Meanwhile the turbulent reign of Sixtus IV went on, until his ambition
to increase his dominions had the result of plunging the whole of Italy
into war.
Lorenzo de’Medici had thwarted the Pope’s purposes in Romagna, coming to
the assistance of Città di Castello when this was attacked in the Pope’s
interest by the warlike Giuliano della Rovere. To avenge himself for
this, and to remove a formidable obstacle to his family’s advancement,
the Pope inspired the Pazzi conspiracy against the lives of the famous
masters of Florence. The conspiracy failed; for although Giuliano
de’Medici fell stabbed to the heart--before Christ’s altar, and at the
very moment of the elevation of the Host--Lorenzo escaped with slight
hurt, and, by the very risk to which he had been exposed, rallied the
Florentines to him more closely than ever.
Open war was the only bolt remaining in the papal quiver, and open
war he declared, preluding it by a Bull of Excommunication against the
Florentines. Naples took sides with the Pope. Venice and Milan came to
the support of Florence, whereupon Milan’s attentions were diverted to
her own affairs, Genoa being cunningly set in revolt against her.
In 1480 a peace was patched up; but it was short-lived. A few months
later war flared out again from the Holy See, against Florence this
time, and on the pretext of its having joined the Venetians against
the Pope in the late war. A complication now arose, created by the
Venetians, who seized the opportunity to forward their own ambitions and
increase their territories on the mainland, and upon a pretext of the
pettiest themselves declared war upon Ferrara. Genoa and some minor
tyrannies were drawn into the quarrel on the one side, whilst on the
other Florence, Naples, Mantua, Milan, and Bologna stood by Ferrara.
Whilst the papal forces were holding in check the Neapolitans who
sought to pass north to aid Ferrara, whilst the Roman Campagna was being
harassed by the Colonna, and Milan was engaged with Genoa, the Venetians
invested Ferrara, forced her to starvation and to yielding-point.
Thereupon the Pope, perceiving the trend of affairs, and that the only
likely profit to be derived from the campaign would lie with Venice,
suddenly changed sides that he might avoid a contingency so far removed
from all his aims.
He made a treaty with Naples, and permitted the Neapolitan army passage
through his territories, of which they availed themselves to convey
supplies to Ferrara and neutralize the siege. At the same time the Pope
excommunicated the Venetians, and urged all Italy to make war upon them.
In this fashion the campaign dragged on to every one’s disadvantage and
without any decisive battle fought, until at last the peace of Bagnolo
was concluded in August of 1484, and the opposing armies withdrew from
Ferrara.
The news of it literally killed Sixtus. When the ambassadors declared
to him the terms of the treaty he was thrown into a violent rage, and
declared the peace to be at once shameful and humiliating. The gout from
which he suffered flew to his heart, and on the following day--August
12, 1484--he died.
Two things he did during his reign to the material advantage of
the Church, however much he may have neglected the spiritual. He
strengthened her hold upon her temporal possessions and he enriched the
Vatican by the addition of the Sistine Chapel. For the decoration
of this he procured the best Tuscan talent of his day--and of many
days--and brought Alessandro Filipeppi (Botticelli), Pietro Vannuccio
(Il Perugino), and Domenico Bigordi (IL Ghirlandajo) from Florence to
adorn its walls with their frescoes.(1)
1 The glory of the Sistine Chapel, however, is Michelangelo’s “Last
Judgement,” which was added later, in the reign of Pope Julius II
(Giuliano della Rovere).
In the last years of the reign of Pope Sixtus, Cardinal Roderigo’s
family had suffered a loss and undergone an increase.
In 1481 Vannozza bore him another son--Giuffredo Borgia, and in the
following year died his eldest son (by an unknown mother) Pedro Luis de
Borgia, who had reached the age of twenty-two and was betrothed at the
time of his decease to the Princess Maria d’Aragona.
In January of that same year, 1482, Cardinal Roderigo had married his
daughter Girolama--now aged fifteen--to Giovanni Andrea Cesarini, the
scion of a patrician Roman house. The alliance strengthened the bonds of
good feeling which for some considerable time had prevailed between the
two families. Unfortunately the young couple were not destined to many
years of life together, as in 1483 both died.
Of Cesare all that we know at this period is what we learn from the
Papal Bulls conferring several benefices upon him. In July 1482 he was
granted the revenues from the prebendals and canonries of Valencia; in
the following month he was appointed Canon of Valencia and apostolic
notary. In April 1484 he was made Provost of Alba, and in September
of the same year treasurer of the Church of Carthage. No doubt he was
living with his mother, his brothers, and his sister at the house in the
Piazza Pizzo di Merlo, where an ample if not magnificent establishment
was maintained.
By this time Cardinal Roderigo’s wealth and power had grown to
stupendous proportions, and he lived in a splendour well worthy of his
lofty rank. He was now fifty-three years of age, still retaining the air
and vigour of a man in his very prime, which, no doubt, he owed as much
as to anything to his abstemious and singularly sparing table-habits. He
derived a stupendous income from his numerous abbeys in Italy and
Spain, his three bishoprics of Valencia, Porto, and Carthage, and
his ecclesiastical offices, among which the Vice-Chancellorship alone
yielded him annually eight thousand florins.(1)
1 The gold florin, ducat, or crown was equal to ten shillings of our
present money, and had a purchasing power of five times that amount.
Volterra refers with wonder to the abundance of his plate, to his
pearls, his gold embroideries, and his books, the splendid equipment of
his beds, the trappings of his horses, and other similar furnishings in
gold, in silver, and in silk. In short, he was the wealthiest prince of
the Church of his day, and he lived with a magnificence worthy of a king
or of the Pope himself.
Of the actual man, Volterra, writing in 1586, says: “He is of a spirit
capable of anything, and of a great intelligence. A ready speaker,
and of distinction, notwithstanding his indifferent literary culture;
naturally astute, and of marvellous talent in the conduct of affairs.”
In the year in which Volterra wrote of Cardinal Roderigo in such terms
Vannozza was left a widow by the death of Giorgio della Croce. Her
widowhood was short, however, for in the same year--on June 6--she took
a second husband, possibly at the instance of Roderigo Borgia, who
did not wish to leave her unprotected; that, at least, is the general
inference, although there is very little evidence upon which to base it.
This second husband was Carlo Canale, a Mantovese scholar who had served
Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga in the capacity of chamberlain, and who had
come to Rome on the death of his patron.
The marriage contract shows that by this time Vannozza had removed her
residence to Piazza Branchis. In addition to this she had by this
time acquired a villa with its beautiful gardens and vineyards in the
Suburra near S. Pietro in Vincoli. She is also known to have been the
proprietor of an inn--the Albergo del Leone--in Via del Orso, opposite
the Torre di Nona, for she figures with della Croce in a contract
regarding a lease of it in 1483.
With her entrance into second nuptials, her relations with Cardinal
Roderigo came to an end, and his two children by her, then in
Rome--Lucrezia and Giuffredo--went to take up their residence with
Adriana Orsini (née de Mila) at the Orsini Palace on Monte Giordano. She
was a cousin of Roderigo’s, and the widow of Lodovico Orsini, by whom
she had a son, Orso Orsini, who from early youth had been betrothed to
Giulia Farnese, the daughter of a patrician family, still comparatively
obscure, but destined through this very girl to rise to conspicuous
eminence.
For her surpassing beauty this Giulia Farnese has been surnamed La
Bella--and as Giulia La Bella was she known in her day--and she has been
immortalized by Pinturicchio and Guglielmo della Porta. She sat to the
former as a model for his Madonna in the Borgia Tower of the Vatican,
and to the latter for the statue of Truth which adorns the tomb of her
brother Alessandro Farnese, who became Pope Paul III.
Here in Adriana Orsini’s house, where his daughter Lucrezia was being
educated, Cardinal Roderigo, now at the mature age of some six-and-fifty
years, made the acquaintance and became enamoured of this beautiful
golden-headed Giulia, some forty years his junior. To the fact that she
presently became his mistress--somewhere about the same time that
she became Orso Orsini’s wife--is due the sudden rise of the House of
Farnese. This began with her handsome, dissolute brother Alessandro’s
elevation to the purple by her lover, and grew to vast proportions
during his subsequent and eminently scandalous occupation of the Papal
Throne as Paul III.
In the year 1490 Lucrezia was the only one of Roderigo’s children by
Vannozza who remained in Rome.
Giovanni Borgia was in Spain, whither he had gone on the death of his
brother Pedro Luis, to take posession of the Duchy of Gandia, which the
power of his father’s wealth and vast influence at the Valencian Court
had obtained for that same Pedro Luis. To this Giovanni now succeeded.
Cesare Borgia--now aged fifteen--had for some two years been studying
his humanities in an atmosphere of Latinity at the Sapienza of Perugia.
There, if we are to believe the praises of him uttered by Pompilio, he
was already revealing his unusual talents and a precocious wit. In
the preface of the Syllabica on the art of Prosody dedicated to him by
Pompilio, the latter hails him as the hope and ornament of the Hous of
Borgia--“Borgiae familiae spes et decus.”
From Perugia he was moved in 1491 to the famous University of Pisa, a
college frequented by the best of Italy. For preceptor he had Giovanni
Vera of Arcilla, a Spanish gentleman who was later created a cardinal by
Cesare’s father. There in Pisa Cesare maintained an establishment of a
magnificence in keeping with his father’s rank and with the example set
him by that same father.
It was Cardinal Roderigo’s wish that Cesare should follow an
ecclesiastical career; and the studies of canon law which he pursued
under Filippo Decis, the most rated lecturer on canon law of his day,
were such as peculiarly to fit him for that end and for the highest
honours the Church might have to bestow upon him later. At the age of
seventeen, while still at Pisa, he was appointed prothonotary of the
Church and preconized Bishop of Pampeluna.
Sixtus IV died, as we have seen, in August 1482. The death of a Pope
was almost invariably the signal for disturbances in Rome, and they
certainly were not wanting on this occasion. The Riario palaces were
stormed and looted, and Girolamo Riario--the Pope’s “nepot”--threw
himself into the castle of Sant’ Angelo with his forces.
The Orsini and Colonna were in arms, “so that in a few days
incendiarism, robbery, and murder raged in several parts of the city.
The cardinals besought the Count to surrender the castle to the Sacred
College, withdraw his troops, and deliver Rome from the fear of his
forces; and he, that he might win the favour of the future Pope, obeyed,
and withdrew to Imola.”(1)
1 Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine.
The cardinals, having thus contrived to restore some semblance of order,
proceeded to the creation of a new Pontiff, and a Genoese, Giovanni
Battista Cibo, Cardinal of Malfetta, was elected and took the name of
Innocent VIII.
Again, as in the case of Sixtus, there is no lack of those who charge
this Pontiff with having obtained his election by simony. The Cardinals
Giovanni d’ Aragona (brother to the King of Naples) and Ascanio Sforza
(brother of Lodovico, Duke of Milan) are said to have disposed of their
votes in the most open and shameless manner, practically putting them
up for sale to the highest bidder. Italy rang with the scandal of it, we
are told.
Under Innocent’s lethargic rule the Church again began to lose much of
the vigour with which Sixtus had inspired it. If the reign of Sixtus
had been scandalous, infinitely worse was that of Innocent--a sordid,
grasping sensualist, without even the one redeeming virtue of strength
that had been his predecessor’s. Nepotism had characterized many
previous pontificates; open paternity was to characterize his, for he
was the first Pope who, in flagrant violation of canon law, acknowledged
his children for his own. He proceeded to provide for some seven
bastards, and that provision appears to have been the only aim and scope
of his pontificate.
Not content with raising money by the sale of preferments, Innocent
established a traffic in indulgences, the like of which had never been
seen before. In the Rome of his day you might, had you the money, buy
anything, from a cardinal’s hat to a pardon for the murder of your
father.
The most conspicuous of his bastards was Francesco Cibo--conspicuous
chiefly for the cupidity which distinguished him as it distinguished the
Pope his father. For the rest he was a poor-spirited fellow who sorely
disappointed Lorenzo de’Medici, whose daughter Maddalena he received
in marriage. Lorenzo had believed that, backed by the Pope’s influence,
Francesco would establish for himself a dynasty in Romagna. But father
and son were alike too invertebrate--the one to inspire, the other to
execute any such designs as had already been attempted by the nepots of
Calixtus III and Sixtus IV.
Under the weak and scandalous rule of Innocent VIII Rome appears to
have been abandoned to the most utter lawlessness. Anarchy, robbery, and
murder preyed upon the city. No morning dawned without revealing corpses
in the streets; and if by chance the murderer was caught, there was
pardon for him if he could afford to buy it, or Tor di Nona and the
hangman’s noose if he could not.
It is not wonderful that when at last Innocent VIII died Infessura
should have blessed the day that freed the world of such a monster.
But his death did not happen until 1492. A feeble old man, he had become
subject to lethargic or cataleptic trances, which had several times
already deceived those in attendance into believing him dead. He grew
weaker and weaker, and it became impossible to nourish him upon anything
but woman’s milk. Towards the end came, Infessura tells us, a Hebrew
physician who claimed to have a prescription by which he could save the
Pope’s life. For his infusion(1) he needed young human blood, and to
obtain it he took three boys of the age of ten, and gave them a ducat
apiece for as much as he might require of them. Unfortunately he took so
much that the three boys incontinently died of his phlebotomy, and the
Hebrew was obliged to take to flight to save his own life, for the Pope,
being informed of what had taken place, execrated the deed and ordered
the physician’s arrest. “Judeus quidem aufugit, et Papa sanatus not
est,” concludes Infessura.
1 The silly interpretation of this afforded by later writers, that this
physician attempted transfusion of blood--silly, because unthinkable in
an age which knew nothing of the circulation of the blood--has already
been exploded.
Innocent VIII breathed his last on July 25, 1492.
CHAPTER III. ALEXANDER VI
The ceremonies connected with the obsequies of Pope Innocent VIII
lasted--as prescribed--nine days; they were concluded on August 5, 1492,
and, says Infessura naïvely, “sic finita fuit eius memoria.”
The Sacred College consisted at the time of twenty-seven cardinals, four
of whom were absent at distant sees and unable to reach Rome in time
for the immuring of the Conclave. The twenty-three present were, in the
order of their seniority: Roderigo Borgia, Oliviero Caraffa, Giuliano
della Rovere, Battista Zeno, Giovanni Michieli, Giorgio Costa, Girolamo
della Rovere, Paolo Fregosi, Domenico della Rovere, Giovanni dei
Conti, Giovanni Giacomo Sclafetani, Lorenzo Cibo, Ardicino della Porta,
Antoniotto Pallavicino, Maffeo Gerardo, Francesco Piccolomini, Raffaele
Riario, Giovanni Battista Savelli, Giovanni Colonna, Giovanni Orsini,
Ascanio Maria Sforza, Giovanni de’Medici, and Francesco Sanseverino.
On August 6 they assembled in St. Peter’s to hear the Sacred Mass of the
Holy Ghost, which was said by Giuliano della Rovere on the tomb of the
Prince of the Apostles, and to listen to the discourse “Pro eligendo
Pontefice,” delivered by the learned and eloquent Bishop of Carthage.
Thereafter the Cardinals swore upon the Gospels faithfully to observe
their trust, and thereupon the Conclave was immured.
According to the dispatches of Valori, the Ferrarese ambassador in Rome,
it was expected that either the Cardinal of Naples (Oliviero Caraffa)
or the Cardinal of Lisbon (Giorgio Costa) would be elected to the
Pontificate; and according to the dispatch of Cavalieri the ambassador
of Modena, the King of France had deposited 200,000 ducats with a Roman
banker to forward the election of Giuliano della Rovere. Nevertheless,
early on the morning of August 11 it was announced that Roderigo Borgia
was elected Pope, and we have it on the word of Valori that the election
was unanimous, for he wrote on the morrow to the Council of Eight (the
Signory of Florence) that after long contention Alexander VI was created
“omnium consensum--ne li manco un solo voto.”
The subject of this election is one with which we rarely find an author
dealing temperately or with a proper and sane restraint. To vituperate
in superlatives seems common to most who have taken in hand this and
other episodes in the history of the Borgias. Every fresh writer who
comes to the task appears to be mainly inspired by a desire to emulate
his forerunners, allowing his pen to riot zestfully in the accumulation
of scandalous matter, and seeking to increase if possible its lurid
quality by a degree or two. As a rule there is not even an attempt made
to put forward evidence in substantiation of anything that is alleged.
Wild and sweeping statement takes the place that should be held by calm
deduction and reasoned comment.
“He was the worst Pontiff that ever filled St. Peter’s Chair,” is one
of these sweeping statements, culled from the pages of an able, modern,
Italian author, whose writings, sound in all that concerns other
matters, are strewn with the most foolish extravagances and flagrant
inaccuracies in connection with Alexander VI and his family.
To say of him, as that writer says, that “he was the worst Pontiff
that ever filled St. Peter’s Chair,” can only be justified by an utter
ignorance of papal history. You have but to compare him calmly and
honestly--your mind stripped of preconceptions--with the wretched
and wholly contemptible Innocent VIII whom he succeeded, or with the
latter’s precursor, the terrible Sixtus IV.
That he was better than these men, morally or ecclesiastically, is
not to be pretended; that he was worse--measuring achievement by
opportunity--is strenuously to be denied. For the rest, that he was
infinitely more gifted and infinitely more a man of affairs is not to be
gainsaid by any impartial critic.
If we take him out of the background of history in which he is set, and
judge him singly and individually, we behold a man who, as a churchman
and Christ’s Vicar, fills us with horror and loathing, as a scandalous
exception from what we are justified in supposing from his office must
have been the rule. Therefore, that he may be judged by the standard of
his own time if he is to be judged at all, if we are even to attempt to
understand him, have we given a sketch of the careers of those Popes who
immediately preceded him, with whom as Vice-Chancellor he was intimately
associated, and whose examples were the only papal examples that he
possessed.
That this should justify his course we do not pretend. A good churchman
in his place would have bethought him of his duty to the Master whose
Vicar he was, and would have aimed at the sorely needed reform. But we
are not concerned to study him as a good churchman. It is by no means
clear that we are concerned to study him as a churchman at all. The
Papacy had by this time become far less of an ecclesiastical than a
political force; the weapons of the Church were there, but they were
being employed for the furtherance not of churchly, but of worldly aims.
If the Pontiffs in the pages of this history remembered or evoked their
spiritual authority, it was but to employ it as an instrument for the
advancement of their temporal schemes. And personal considerations
entered largely into these.
Self-aggrandizement, insufferable in a cleric, is an ambition not
altogether unpardonable in a temporal prince; and if Alexander aimed at
self-aggrandizement and at the founding of a permanent dynasty for
his family, he did not lack examples in the careers of those among his
predecessors with whom he had been associated.
That the Papacy was Christ’s Vicarage was a fact that had long since
been obscured by the conception that the Papacy was a kingdom of this
world. In striving, then, for worldly eminence by every means in his
power, Alexander is no more blameworthy than any other. What, then,
remains? The fact that he succeeded better than any of his forerunners.
But are we on that account to select him for the special object of our
vituperation? The Papacy had tumbled into a slough of materialism in
which it was to wallow even after the Reformation had given it pause
and warning. Under what obligation was Alexander VI, more than any other
Pope, to pull it out of that slough? As he found it, so he carried it
on, as much a self-seeker, as much a worldly prince, as much a family
man and as little a churchman as any of those who had gone immediately
before him.
By the outrageous discrepancy between the Papacy’s professed and actual
aims it was fast becoming an object of execration, and it is Alexander’s
misfortune that, coming when he did, he has remained as the type of his
class.
The mighty of this world shall never want for detractors. The mean and
insignificant, writhing under the consciousness of his shortcomings,
ministers to his self-love by vilifying the great that he may lessen
the gap between himself and them. To achieve greatness is to achieve
enemies. It is to excite envy; and as envy no seed can raise up such a
crop of hatred.
Does this need labouring? Have we not abundant instances about us of the
vulgar tittle-tattle and scandalous unfounded gossip which, born Heaven
alone knows on what back-stairs or in what servants’ hall, circulates
currently to the detriment of the distinguished in every walk of
life? And the more conspicuously great the individual, the greater
the incentive to slander him, for the interest of the slander is
commensurate with the eminence of the personage assailed.
Such to a great extent is the case of Alexander VI. He was too powerful
for the stomachs of many of his contemporaries, and he and his son
Cesare had a way of achieving their ends. Since that could not be
denied, it remained to inveigh loudly against the means adopted; and
with pious uplifting of hands and eyes, to cry, “Shame!” and “Horror!”
and “The like has never been heard of!” in wilful blindness to what had
been happening at the Vatican for generations.
Later writers take up the tale of it. It is a fine subject about
which to make phrases, and the passion for phrase-making will at times
outweigh the respect for truth. Thus Villari with his “the worst Pontiff
that ever filled St. Peter’s Chair,” and again, elsewhere, echoing what
many a writer has said before him from Guicciardini downwards, in
utter and diametric opposition to the true facts of the case: “The
announcement of his election was received throughout Italy with
universal dismay.” To this he adds the ubiquitous story of King
Ferrante’s bursting into tears at the news--“though never before known
to weep for the death of his own children.”
Let us pause a moment to contemplate the grief the Neapolitan King. What
picture is evoked in your minds by that statement of his bursting into
tears at Alexander’s election? We see--do we not?--a pious, noble soul,
horror-stricken at the sight of the Papacy’s corruption; a truly sublime
figure, whose tears will surely stand to his credit in heaven; a great
heart breaking; a venerable head bowed down with lofty, righteous grief,
weeping over the grave of Christian hopes. Such surely is the image we
are meant to see by Guicciardini and his many hollow echoers.
Turn we now for corroboration of that noble picture to the history of
this same Ferrante. A shock awaits us. We find, in this bastard of
the great and brilliant Alfonso a cruel, greedy, covetous monster, so
treacherous and so fiendishly brutal that we are compelled to extend
him the charity of supposing him to be something less than sane. Let us
consider but one of his characteristics. He loved to have his enemies
under his own supervision, and he kept them so--the living ones caged
and guarded, the dead ones embalmed and habited as in life; and this
collection of mummies was his pride and delight. More, and worse could
we tell you of him. But--ex pede, Herculem.
This man shed tears we are told. Not another word. It is left to our
imagination to paint for us a picture of this weeping; it is left to us
to conclude that these precious tears were symbolical of the grief of
Italy herself; that the catastrophe that provoked them must have been
terrible indeed.
But now that we know what manner of man was this who wept, see how
different is the inference that we may draw from his sorrow. Can we
still imagine it--as we are desired to do--to have sprung from a lofty,
Christian piety? Let us track those tears to their very source, and we
shall find it to be compounded of rage and fear.
Ferrante saw trouble ahead of him with Lodovico Sforza, concerning a
matter which shall be considered in the next chapter, and not at all
would it suit him at such a time that such a Pope as Alexander--who, he
had every reason to suppose, would be on the side of Lodovico--should
rule in Rome.
So he had set himself, by every means in his power, to oppose Roderigo’s
election. His rage at the news that all his efforts had been vain,
his fear of a man of Roderigo’s mettle, and his undoubted dread of
the consequences to himself of his frustrated opposition of that man’s
election, may indeed have loosened the tears of this Ferrante who had
not even wept at the death of his own children. We say “may” advisedly;
for the matter, from beginning to end, is one of speculation. If we
leave it for the realm of fact, we have to ask--Were there any tears
at all? Upon what authority rests the statement of the Florentine
historian? What, in fact, does he say?
“It is well known that the King of Naples, for all that in public he
dissembled the pain it caused him, signified to the queen, his
wife, with tears--which were Unusual in him even on the death of his
children--that a Pope had been created who would be most pernicious to
Italy.”
So that, when all is said, Ferrante shed his kingly tears to his wife
in private, and to her in private he delivered his opinion of the new
Pontiff. How, then, came Guicciardini to know of the matter? True, he
says, “It is well known”--meaning that he had those tears upon hearsay.
It is, of course, possible that Ferrante’s queen may have repeated what
passed between herself and the king; but that would surely have been in
contravention of the wishes of her husband, who had, be it remembered,
“dissembled his grief in public.” And Ferrante does not impress one
as the sort of husband whose wishes his wife would be bold enough to
contravene.
It is surprising that upon no better authority than this should these
precious tears of Ferrante’s have been crystallized in history.
If this trivial instance has been dealt with at such length it is
because, for one reason, it is typical of the foundation of so many
of the Borgia legends, and, for another, because when history has been
carefully sifted for evidence of the “universal dismay with which the
election of Roderigo Borgia was received” King Ferrante’s is the only
case of dismay that comes through the mesh at all. Therefore was it
expedient to examine it minutely.
That “universal dismay”--like the tears of Ferrante--rests upon the word
of Guicciardini. He says that “men were filled with dread and horror by
this election, because it had been effected by such evil ways [con arte
si brutte]; and no less because the nature and condition of the person
elected were largely known to many.”
Guicciardini is to be read with the greatest caution and reserve when he
deals with Rome. His bias against, and his enmity of, the Papacy are as
obvious as they are notorious, and in his endeavours to bring it as much
as possible into discredit he does not even spare his generous patrons,
the Medicean Popes--Leo X and Clement VII. If he finds it impossible to
restrain his invective against these Pontiffs, who heaped favours and
honours upon him, what but virulence can be expected of him when
he writes of Alexander VI? He is largely to blame for the flagrant
exaggeration of many of the charges brought against the Borgias; that he
hated them we know, and that when he wrote of them he dipped his golden
Tuscan pen in vitriol and set down what he desired the world to believe
rather than what contemporary documents would have revealed to him,
we can prove here and now from that one statement of his which we have
quoted.
Who were the men who were filled with dismay, horror, or dread at
Roderigo’s election?
The Milanese? No. For we know that Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the Duke
of Milan’s brother, was the most active worker in favour of Roderigo’s
election, and that this same election was received and celebrated in
Milan with public rejoicings.
The Florentines? No. For the Medici were friendly to the House of
Borgia, and we know that they welcomed the election, and that from
Florence Manfredi--the Ferrarese ambassador--wrote home: “It is said he
will be a glorious Pontiff” (“Dicesi che sará glorioso Pontefice”).
Were Venice, Genoa, Mantua, Siena, or Lucca dismayed by this election?
Surely not, if the superlatively laudatory congratulations of their
various ambassadors are of any account.
Venice confessed that “a better pastor could not have been found for the
Church,” since he had proved himself “a chief full of experience and an
excellent cardinal.”
Genoa said that “his merit lay not in having been elected, but in having
been desired.”
Mantua declared that it “had long awaited the pontificate of one who,
during forty years, had rendered himself, by his wisdom and justice,
capable of any office.”
Siena expressed its joy at seeing the summit of eminence attained by
a Pope solely upon his merits--“Pervenuto alla dignitá pontificale
meramente per meriti proprii.”
Lucca praised the excellent choice made, and extolled the
accomplishments, the wisdom, and experience of the Pontiff.
Not dismay, then, but actual rejoicing must have been almost universal
in Italy on the election of Pope Alexander VI. And very properly--always
considering the Pontificate as the temporal State it was then being
accounted; for Roderigo’s influence was vast, his intelligence was
renowned, and had again and again been proved, and his administrative
talents and capacity for affairs were known to all. He was well-born,
cultured, of a fine and noble presence, and his wealth was colossal,
comprising the archbishoprics of Valencia and Porto, the bishoprics of
Majorca, Carthage, Agria, the abbeys of Subiaco, the Monastery of Our
Lady of Bellefontaine, the deaconry of Sancta Maria in Via Lata, and his
offices of Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Holy Church.
We are told that he gained his election by simony. It is very
probable that he did. But the accusation has never been categorically
established, and until that happens it would be well to moderate
the vituperation hurled at him. Charges of that simony are common;
conclusive proof there is none. We find Giacomo Trotti, the French
ambassador in Milan, writing to the Duke of Ferrara a fortnight after
Roderigo’s election that “the Papacy has been sold by simony and a
thousand rascalities, which is a thing ignominious and detestable.”
Ignominious and detestable indeed, if true; but be it remembered that
Trotti was the ambassador of France, whose candidate, backed by French
influence and French gold, as we have seen, was della Rovere; and, even
if his statement was true, the “ignominious and detestable thing” was at
least no novelty. Yet Guicciardini, treating of this matter, says: “He
gained the Pontificate owing to discord between the Cardinals Ascanio
Sforza and Giuliano di San Pietro in Vincoli; and still more because, in
a manner without precedent in that age [con esempio nuovo in quella etá]
he openly bought the votes of many cardinals, some with money, some with
promises of his offices and benefices, which were very great.”
Again Guicciardini betrays his bias by attempting to render Roderigo’s
course, assuming it for the moment to be truly represented, peculiarly
odious by this assertion that it was without precedent in that age.
Without precedent! What of the accusations of simony against Innocent
VIII, which rest upon a much sounder basis than these against Alexander,
and what of those against Sixtus IV? Further, if a simoniacal election
was unprecedented, what of Lorenzo Valla’s fierce indictment of
simony--for which he so narrowly escaped the clutches of the Inquisition
some sixty years before this date?
Simony was rampant at the time, and it is the rankest hypocrisy to make
this outcry against Alexander’s uses of it, and to forget the others.
Whether he really was elected by simony or not depends largely--so far
as the evidence available goes--upon what we are to consider as
simony. If payment in the literal sense was made or promised, then
unquestionably simony there was. But this, though often asserted, still
awaits proof. If the conferring of the benefices vacated by a cardinal
on his elevation to the Pontificate is to be considered simony, then
there never was a Pope yet against whom the charge could not be levelled
and established.
Consider that by his election to the Pontificate his Archbishoprics,
offices, nay, his very house itself--which at the time of which we write
it was customary to abandon to pillage--are vacated; and remember that,
as Pope, they are now in his gift and that they must of necessity be
bestowed upon somebody. In a time in which Pontiffs are imbued with a
spiritual sense of their office and duties, they will naturally make
such bestowals upon those whom they consider best fitted to use them
for the greater honour and glory of God. But we are dealing with no such
spiritual golden age as that when we deal with the Cinquecento, as we
have already seen; and, therefore, all that we can expect of a Pope is
that he should bestow the preferment he has vacated upon those among
the cardinals whom he believes to be devoted to himself. Considering his
election in a temporal sense, it is natural that he should behave as any
other temporal prince; that he should remember those to whom he owes
the Pontificate, and that he should reward them suitably. Alexander
VI certainly pursued such a course, and the greatest profit from his
election was derived by the Cardinal Sforza who--as Roderigo himself
admitted--had certainly exerted all his influence with the Sacred
College to gain him the Pontificate. Alexander gave him the vacated
Vice-Chancellorship (for which, when all is said, Ascanio Sforza was
excellently fitted), his vacated palace on Banchi Vecchi, the town of
Nepi, and the bishopric of Agri.
To Orsini he gave the Church of Carthage and the legation of Marche; to
Colonna the Abbey of Subiaco; to Savelli the legation of Perugia (from
which he afterwards recalled him, not finding him suited to so difficult
a charge); to Raffaele Riario went Spanish benefices worth four thousand
ducats yearly; to Sanseverino Roderigo’s house in Milan, whilst he
consented that Sanseverino’s nephew--known as Fracassa--should enter
the service of the Church with a condotta of a hundred men-at-arms and a
stipend of thirteen thousand ducats yearly.
Guicciardini says of all this that Ascanio Sforza induced many of the
cardinals “to that abominable contract, and not only by request and
persuasion, but by example; because, corrupt and of an insatiable
appetite for riches, he bargained for himself, as the reward of so much
turpitude, the Vice-Chancellorships, churches, fortresses [the very
plurals betray the frenzy of exaggeration dictated by his malice] and
his [Roderigo’s] palace in Rome full of furniture of great value.”
What possible proof can Guicciardini have--what possible proof can there
be--of such a “bargain”? It rests upon purest assumption formed after
those properties had changed hands--Ascanio being rewarded by them for
his valuable services, and, also--so far as the Vice-Chancellorship was
concerned--being suitably preferred. To say that Ascanio received
them in consequence of a “bargain” and as the price of his vote and
electioneering services is not only an easy thing to say, but it is the
obvious thing for any one to say who aims at defaming.
It is surprising that we should find in Guicciardini no mention of the
four mule-loads of silver removed before the election from Cardinal
Roderigo’s palace on Banchi Vecchi to Cardinal Ascanio’s palace in
Trastevere. This is generally alleged to have been part of the price
of Ascanio’s services. Whether it was so, or whether, as has also been
urged, it was merely removed to save it from the pillaging by the mob
of the palace of the cardinal elected to the Pontificate, the fact is
interesting as indicating in either case Cardinal Roderigo’s assurance
of his election.
M. Yriarte does not hesitate to say: “We know to-day, by the dispatches
of Valori, the narrative of Girolamo Porzio, and the Diarium of
Burchard, the Master of Ceremonies, each of the stipulations made with
the electors whose votes were bought.”
Now whilst we do know from Valori and Porzio what benefices Alexander
actually conferred, we do not know, nor could they possibly have
told us, what stipulations had been made which these benefices were
insinuated to satisfy.
Burchard’s Diarium might be of more authority on this subject, for
Burchard was the Master of Ceremonies at the Vatican; but, unfortunately
for the accuracy of M. Yriarte’s statement, Burchard is silent on the
subject, for the excellent reason that there is no diary for the period
under consideration. Burchard’s narrative is interrupted on the death of
Innocent VIII, on July 12, and not resumed until December 2, when it is
not retrospective.
There is, it is true, the Diarium of Infessura. But that is of no more
authority on such a matter than the narrative of Porzio or the letters
of Valori.
Lord Acton--in his essay upon this subject--has not been content to rest
the imputation of simony upon such grounds as satisfied M. Yriarte. He
has realized that the only testimony of any real value in such a case
would be the actual evidence of such cardinals as might be willing
to bear witness to the attempt to bribe them. And he takes it for
granted--as who would not at this time of day, and in view of such
positive statements as abound?--that such evidence has been duly
collected; thus, he tells us confidently that the charge rests upon the
evidence of those cardinals who refused Roderigo’s bribes.
That it most certainly does not. If it did there would be an end to
the matter, and so much ink would not have been spilled over it; but no
single cardinal has left any such evidence as Lord Acton supposes and
alleges. It suffices to consider that, according to the only evidences
available--the Casanatense Codices(1) and the dispatches of that same
Valori(2) whom M. Yriarte so confidently cites, Roderigo Borgia’s
election was unanimous. Who, then, were these cardinals who refused
his bribes? Or are we to suppose that, notwithstanding that refusal--a
refusal which we may justifiably suppose to have been a scandalized and
righteously indignant one--they still afforded him their votes?
1 “...essendo concordi tutti i cardinali, quasi da contrari voti rivolti
tutti in favore di uno solo, crearono lui sommo ponteflce” (Casanatense
MSS). See P. Leonetti, Alessandro VI. 2 “Fu pubblicato il Cardinale
Vice-Cancelliere in Sommo Pontefice Alessandro VI(to) nuncupato, el
quale dopo una lunga contentione fu creato omnium consensum--ne ii manco
un solo voto” (Valori’s letter to the Otto di Pratica, August 12,
1492). See Supplement to Appendix in E. Thuasne’s edition of Burchard’s
Diarium.
This charge of simony was levelled with the object of making Alexander
VI appear singularly heinous. So much has that object engrossed and
blinded those inspired by it, that, of itself, it betrays them. Had
their horror been honest, had it sprung from true principles, had it
been born of any but a desire to befoul and bespatter at all costs
Roderigo Borgia, it is not against him that they would have hurled their
denunciations, but against the whole College of Cardinals which took
part in the sacrilege and which included three future Popes.(1)
1 Cardinals Piccolomini, de’Medici, and Giuliano della Rovere.
Assuming not only that there was simony, but that it was on as wholesale
a scale as was alleged, and that for gold--coined or in the form of
benefices--Roderigo bought the cardinal’s votes, what then? He bought
them, true. But they--they sold him their sacred trust, their duty
to their God, their priestly honour, their holy vows. For the gold he
offered them they bartered these. So much admitted, then surely, in that
transaction, those cardinals were the prostitutes! The man who bought
so much of them, at least, was on no baser level than were they.
Yet invective singles him out for its one object, and so betrays the
aforethought malice of its inspiration.
Our quarrel is with that; with that, and with those writers who have
taken Alexander’s simony for granted--eagerly almost--for the purpose
of heaping odium upon him by making him appear a scandalous exception to
the prevailing rule.
If, nevertheless, we hold, as we have said, that simony probably did
take place, we do so, not so much upon the inconclusive evidence of the
fact, as upon the circumstance that it had become almost an established
custom to purchase the tiara, and that Roderigo Borgia--since his
ambition clearly urged him to the Pontificate--would have been an
exception had he refrained.
It may seem that to have disputed so long to conclude by admitting so
much is no better than a waste of labour. Not so, we hope. Our aim has
been to correct the adjustment of the focus and properly to trim the
light in which Roderigo Borgia is to be viewed, to the end that you may
see him as he was--neither better nor worse--the creature of his
times, of his environment, and of the system in which he was reared and
trained. Thus shall you also get a clearer view of his son Cesare, when
presently he takes the stage more prominently.
During the seventeen days of the interregnum between the death of
Innocent and the election of Alexander the wild scenes usual to
such seasons had been taking place in Rome; and, notwithstanding the
Cardinal-Chamberlain’s prompt action in seizing the gates and bridges,
and the patrols’ endeavours to maintain order, crime was unfettered
to such an extent that some 220 murders are computed to have taken
place--giving the terrible average of thirteen a day.
It was a very natural epilogue to the lax rule of the lethargic
Innocent. One of the first acts of Alexander’s reign was to deal
summarily with this lawlessness. He put down violence with a hard hand
that knew no mercy. He razed to the ground the house of a murderer
caught red-handed, and hanged him above the ruins, and so dealt
generally that such order came to prevail as had never before been known
in Rome.
Infessura tells us how, in the very month of his election, he appointed
inspectors of prisons and four commissioners to administer justice,
and that he himself gave audience on Tuesdays and settled disputes,
concluding, “et justitiam mirabili modo facere coepit.”
He paid all salaries promptly--a striking departure, it would seem,
from what had been usual under his predecessor--and the effect of his
improved and strenuous legislation was shortly seen in the diminished
prices of commodities.
He was crowned Pope on August 6, on the steps of the Basilica of
St. Peter, by the Cardinal-Archdeacon Piccolomini. The ceremony was
celebrated with a splendour worthy of the splendid figure that was its
centre. Through the eyes of Michele Ferno--despite his admission that
he is unable to convey a worthy notion of the spectacle--you may see the
gorgeous procession to the Lateran in which Alexander VI showed himself
to the applauding Romans; the multitude of richly adorned men, gay and
festive; the seven hundred priests and prelates, with their familiars
the splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles of Rome; the archers and
Turkish horsemen, and the Palatine Guard, with its great halberds and
flashing shields; the twelve white horses, with their golden bridles,
led by footmen; and then Alexander himself on a snow-white horse,
“serene of brow and of majestic dignity,” his hand uplifted--the
Fisherman’s Ring upon its forefinger--to bless the kneeling populace.
The chronicler flings into superlatives when he comes to praise the
personal beauty of the man, his physical vigour and health, “which go to
increase the veneration shown him.”
Thus in the brilliant sunshine of that Italian August, amid the plaudits
of assembled Rome, amid banners and flowers, music and incense, the
flash of steel and the blaze of decorations with the Borgian arms
everywhere displayed--or, a grazing steer gules--Alexander VI passes to
the Vatican, the aim and summit of his vast ambition.
Friends and enemies alike have sung the splendours of that coronation,
and the Bull device--as you can imagine--plays a considerable part in
those verses, be they paeans or lampoons. The former allude to Borgia as
“the Bull,” from the majesty and might of the animal that was displayed
upon their shield; the latter render it the subject of much scurrilous
invective, to which it lends itself as readily. And thereafter, in
almost all verse of their epoch, writers ever say “the Bull” when they
mean the Borgia.
CHAPTER IV. BORGIA ALLIANCES
At the time of his father’s election to the throne of St. Peter, Cesare
Borgia--now in his eighteenth year--was still at the University of Pisa.
It is a little odd, considering the great affection for his children
which was ever one of Roderigo’s most conspicuous characteristics,
that he should not have ordered Cesare to Rome at once, to share in the
general rejoicings. It has been suggested that Alexander wished to avoid
giving scandal by the presence of his children at such a time. But that
again looks like a judgement formed upon modern standards, for by the
standards of his day one cannot conceive that he would have given
very much scandal; moreover, it is to be remembered that Lucrezia and
Giuffredo, at least, were in Rome at the time of their father’s election
to the tiara.
However that may be, Cesare did not quit Pisa until August of that year
1492, and even then not for Rome, but for Spoleto--in accordance with
his father’s orders--where he took up his residence in the castle.
Thence he wrote a letter to Piero de’Medici, which is interesting,
firstly, as showing the good relations prevailing between them;
secondly, as refuting a story in Guicciardini, wherewith that historian,
ready, as ever, to belittle the Borgias, attempts to show him cutting a
poor figure. He tells us(1) that, whilst at Pisa, Cesare had occasion
to make an appeal to Piero de’Medici in the matter of a criminal case
connected with one of his familiars; that he went to Florence and waited
several hours in vain for an audience, whereafter he returned to Pisa
“accounting himself despised and not a little injured.”
1 Istoria d’Italia, tom. V.
No doubt Guicciardini is as mistaken in this as in many another matter,
for the letter written from Spoleto expresses his regret that, on
the occasion of his passage through Florence (on his way from Pisa to
Spoleto), he should not have had time to visit Piero, particularly as
there was a matter upon which he desired urgently to consult with him.
He recommends to Piero his faithful Remolino, whose ambition it is to
occupy the chair of canon law at the University of Pisa, and begs his
good offices in that connection. That Juan Vera, Cesare’s preceptor
and the bearer of that letter, took back a favourable answer is highly
probable, for in Fabroni’s Hist. Acad. Pisan we find this Remolino duly
established as a lecturer on canon law in the following year.
The letter is further of interest as showing Cesare’s full consciousness
of the importance of his position; its tone and its signature--“your
brother, Cesar de Borgia, Elect of Valencia”--being such as were usual
between princes.
The two chief aims of Alexander VI, from the very beginning of his
pontificate, were to re-establish the power of the Church, which was
then the most despised of the temporal States of Italy, and to promote
the fortune of his children. Already on the very day of his coronation
he conferred upon Cesare the bishopric of Valencia, whose revenues
amounted to an annual yield of sixteen thousand ducats. For the time
being, however, he had his hands very full of other matters, and it
behoved him to move slowly at first and with the extremest caution.
The clouds of war were lowering heavily over Italy when Alexander came
to St. Peter’s throne, and it was his first concern to find for himself
a safe position against the coming of the threatening storm. The chief
menace to the general peace was Lodovico Maria Sforza, surnamed Il
Moro,(1) who sat as regent for his nephew, Duke Gian Galeazzo, upon
the throne of Milan. That regency he had usurped from Gian Galeazzo’s
mother, and he was now in a fair way to usurp the throne itself. He kept
his nephew virtually a prisoner in the Castle of Pavia, together with
his young bride, Isabella of Aragon, who had been sent thither by her
father, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the crown of Naples.
1 Touching Lodovico Maria’s by-name of “Il Moro”--which is generally
translated as “The Moor,” whilst in one writer we have found him
mentioned as “Black Lodovico,” Benedetto Varchi’s explanation (in his
Storia Fiorentina) may be of interest. He tells us that Lodovico was not
so called on account of any swarthiness of complexion, as is supposed by
Guicciardini, because, on the contrary, he was fair; nor yet on account
of his device, showing a Moorish squire, who, brush in hand, dusts the
gown of a young woman in regal apparel, with the motto, “Per Italia
nettar d’ogni bruttura”; this device of the Moor, he tells us, was a
rébus or pun upon the word “moro,” which also means the mulberry, and
was so meant by Lodovico. The mulberry burgeons at the end of winter
and blossoms very early. Thus Lodovico symbolized his own prudence and
readiness to seize opportunity betimes.
Gian Galeazzo thus bestowed, Lodovico Maria went calmly about the
business of governing, like one who did not mean to relinquish the
regency save to become duke. But it happened that a boy was born to the
young prisoners at Pavia, whereupon, spurred perhaps into activity by
this parenthood and stimulated by the thought that they had now a son’s
interests to fight for as well as their own, they made appeal to King
Ferrante of Naples that he should enforce his grandson-in-law’s rights
to the throne of Milan. King Ferrante could desire nothing better, for
if his grandchild and her husband reigned in Milan, and by his favour
and contriving, great should be his influence in the North of Italy.
Therefore he stood their friend.
Matters were at this stage when Alexander VI ascended the papal throne.
This election gave Ferrante pause, for, as we have seen, he had schemed
for a Pope devoted to his interests, who would stand by him in the
coming strife, and his schemes were rudely shaken now. Whilst he was
still cogitating the matter of his next move, the wretched Francesco
Cibo (Pope Innocent’s son) offered to sell the papal fiefs of Cervetri
and Anguillara, which had been made over to him by his father, to
Gentile Orsini--the head of his powerful house. And Gentile purchased
them under a contract signed at the palace of Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere, on September 3, for the sum of forty thousand ducats advanced
him by Ferrante.
Alexander protested strongly against this illegal transaction, for
Cervetri and Anguillara were fiefs of the Church, and neither had Cibo
the right to sell nor Orsini the right to buy them. Moreover, that they
should be in the hands of a powerful vassal of Naples such as Orsini
suited the Pope as little as it suited Lodovico Maria Sforza. It stirred
the latter into taking measures against the move he feared Ferrante
might make to enforce Gian Galeazzo’s claims.
Lodovico Maria went about this with that sly shrewdness so
characteristic of him, so well symbolized by his mulberry badge--a
humorous shrewdness almost, which makes him one of the most delightful
rogues in history, just as he was one of the most debonair and cultured.
He may indeed be considered as one of the types of the subtle, crafty,
selfish politician that was the ideal of Macchiavelli.
You see him, then, effacing the tight-lipped, cunning smile from his
comely face and pointing out to Venice with a grave, sober countenance
how little it can suit her to have the Neapolitan Spaniards ruffling
it in the north, as must happen if Ferrante has his way with Milan.
The truth of this was so obvious that Venice made haste to enter into
a league with him, and into the camp thus formed came, for their own
sakes, Mantua, Ferrara, and Siena. The league was powerful enough thus
to cause Ferrante to think twice before he took up the cudgels for Gian
Galeazzo. If Lodovico could include the Pope, the league’s might would
be so paralysing that Ferrante would cease to think at all about his
grandchildren’s affairs.
Foreseeing this, Ferrante had perforce to dry the tears Guicciardini has
it that he shed, and, replacing them by a smile, servile and obsequious,
repaired, hat in hand, to protest his friendship for the Pope’s
Holiness.
And so, in December of 1492, came the Prince of Altamura--Ferrante’s
second son--to Rome to lay his father’s homage at the feet of the
Pontiff, and at the same time to implore his Holiness to refuse the King
of Hungary the dispensation the latter was asking of the Holy See, to
enable him to repudiate his wife, Donna Leonora--Ferrante’s daughter.
Altamura was received in Rome and sumptuously entertained by the
Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. This cardinal had failed, as we have
seen, to gain the Pontificate for himself, despite the French influence
by which he had been supported. Writhing under his defeat, and hating
the man who had defeated him with a hatred so bitter and venomous
that the imprint of it is on almost every act of his life--from the
facilities he afforded for the assignment to Orsini of the papal fiefs
that Cibo had to sell--he was already scheming for the overthrow of
Alexander. To this end he needed great and powerful friends; to this end
had he lent himself to the Cibo-Orsini transaction; to this end did he
manifest himself the warm well-wisher of Ferrante; to this end did he
cordially welcome the latter’s son and envoy, and promise his support to
Ferrante’s petition.
But the Holy Father was by no means as anxious for the friendship of
the old wolf of Naples. The matter of the King of Hungary was one that
required consideration, and, meanwhile, he may have hinted slyly there
was between Naples and Rome a little matter of two fiefs to be adjusted.
Thus his most shrewd Holiness thought to gain a little time, and in that
time he might look about him and consider what alliances would suit his
interests best.
At this Cardinal della Rovere, in high dudgeon, flung out of Rome and
away to his Castle of Ostia to fortify--to wield the sword of St. Paul,
since he had missed the keys of St. Peter. It was a shrewd move.
He foresaw the injured dignity of the Spanish House of Naples, and
Ferrante’s wrath at the Pope’s light treatment of him and apathy for
his interests; and the cardinal knew that with Ferrante were allied the
mighty houses of Colonna and Orsini. Thus, by his political divorcement
from the Holy See, he flung in his lot with theirs, hoping for red war
and the deposition of Alexander.
But surely he forgot Milan and Lodovico Maria, whose brother, Ascanio
Sforza, was at the Pope’s elbow, the energetic friend to whose efforts
Alexander owed the tiara, and who was therefore hated by della Rovere
perhaps as bitterly as Alexander himself.
Alexander went calmly about the business of fortifying the Vatican and
the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and gathering mercenaries into his service.
And, lest any attempt should be made upon his life when he went abroad,
he did so with an imposing escort of men-at-arms; which so vexed and
fretted King Ferrante, that he did not omit to comment upon it in
scathing terms in a letter that presently we shall consider. For the
rest, the Pope’s Holiness preserved an unruffled front in the face of
the hostile preparations that were toward in the kingdom of Naples,
knowing that he could check them when he chose to lift his finger and
beckon the Sforza into alliance. And presently Naples heard an alarming
rumour that Lodovico Maria had, in fact, made overtures to the Pope,
and that the Pope had met these advances to the extent of betrothing
his daughter Lucrezia to Giovanni Sforza, Lord of Pesaro and cousin to
Lodovico.
So back to the Vatican went the Neapolitan envoys with definite
proposals of an alliance to be cemented by a marriage between Giuffredo
Borgia--aged twelve--and Ferrante’s granddaughter Lucrezia of Aragon.
The Pope, with his plans but half-matured as yet, temporized, was
evasive, and continued to arm and to recruit. At last, his arrangements
completed, he abruptly broke off his negotiations with Naples, and on
April 25, 1493, publicly proclaimed that he had joined the northern
league.
The fury of Ferrante, who realized that he had been played with and
outwitted, was expressed in a rabid letter to his ambassador at the
Court of Spain.
“This Pope,” he wrote, “leads a life that is the abomination of all,
without respect for the seat he occupies. He cares for nothing save to
aggrandize his children, by fair means or foul, and this is his sole
desire. From the beginning of his Pontificate he has done nothing but
disturb the peace, molesting everybody, now in one way, now in another.
Rome is more full of soldiers than of priests, and when he goes abroad
it is with troops of men-at-arms about him, with helmets on their heads
and lances by their sides, all his thoughts being given to war and to
our hurt; nor does he overlook anything that can be used against us, not
only inciting in France the Prince of Salerno and other of our rebels,
but befriending every bad character in Italy whom he deems our enemy;
and in all things he proceeds with the fraud and dissimulation natural
to him, and to make money he sells even the smallest office and
preferment.”
Thus Ferrante of the man whose friendship he had been seeking some six
weeks earlier, and who had rejected his advances. It is as well to know
the precise conditions under which that letter was indited, for extracts
from it are too often quoted against Alexander. These conditions known,
and known the man who wrote it, the letter’s proper value is at once
apparent.
It was Ferrante’s hope, and no doubt the hope of Giuliano della Rovere,
that the King of Spain would lend an ear to these grievances, and move
in the matter of attempting to depose Alexander; but an event more
important than any other in the whole history of Spain--or of Europe,
for that matter--was at the moment claiming its full attention, and the
trifling affairs of the King of Naples--trifling by comparison--went
all unheeded. For this was the year in which the Genoese navigator,
Cristofero Colombo, returned to tell of the new and marvellous world
he had discovered beyond the seas, and Ferdinand and Isabella were
addressing an appeal to the Pope--as Ruler of the World--to establish
them in the possession of the discovered continent. Whereupon the Pope
drew a line from pole to pole, and granted to Spain the dominion over
all lands discovered, or to be discovered, one hundred miles westward of
Cape Verde and the Azores.
And thus Ferrante’s appeal to Spain against a Pope who showed himself so
ready and complaisant a friend to Spain went unheeded by Ferdinand and
Isabella. And what time the Neapolitan nursed his bitter chagrin, the
alliance between Rome and Milan was consolidated by the marriage of
Lucrezia Borgia to Giovanni Sforza, the comely weakling who was Lord of
Pesaro and Cotignola.
Lucrezia Borgia’s story has been told elsewhere; her rehabilitation
has been undertaken by a great historian(1) among others, and all
serious-minded students must be satisfied at this time of day that the
Lucrezia Borgia of Hugo’s tragedy is a creature of fiction, bearing
little or no resemblance to the poor lady who was a pawn in the
ambitious game played by her father and her brother Cesare, before she
withdrew to Ferrara, where eventually she died in child-birth in her
forty-first year. We know that she left the duke, her husband, stricken
with a grief that was shared by his subjects, to whom she had so deeply
endeared herself by her exemplary life and loving rule.(2)
1 Ferdinand Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia.
2 See, inter alia, the letters of Alfonso d’Este and Giovanni Gonzaga on
her death, quoted in Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia.
Later, in the course of this narrative, where she crosses the story
of her brother Cesare, it will be necessary to deal with some of
the revolting calumnies concerning her that were circulated, and, in
passing, shall be revealed the sources of the malice that inspired them
and the nature of the evidence upon which they rest, to the eternal
shame alike of those pretended writers of fact and those avowed writers
of fiction who, as dead to scruples as to chivalry, have not hesitated
to make her serve their base melodramatic or pornographic ends.
At present, however, there is no more than her first marriage to be
recorded. She was fourteen years of age at the time, and, like all the
Borgias, of a rare personal beauty, with blue eyes and golden hair.
Twice before, already, had she entered into betrothal contracts with
gentlemen of her father’s native Spain; but his ever-soaring ambition
had caused him successively to cancel both those unfulfilled contracts.
A husband worthy of the daughter of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was no
longer worthy of the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, for whom an alliance
must now be sought among Italy’s princely houses. And so she came to be
bestowed upon the Lord of Pesaro, with a dowry of 30,000 ducats.
Her nuptials were celebrated in the Vatican on June 12, 1493, in
the splendid manner worthy of the rank of all concerned and of the
reputation for magnificence which the Borgia had acquired. That night
the Pope gave a supper-party, at which were present some ten cardinals
and a number of ladies and gentlemen of Rome, besides the ambassadors
of Ferrara, Venice, Milan, and France. There was vocal and instrumental
music, a comedy was performed, the ladies danced, and they appear to
have carried their gaieties well into the dawn. Hardly the sort of scene
for which the Vatican was the ideal stage. Yet at the time it should
have given little or no scandal. But what a scandal was there not,
shortly afterwards, in connection with it, and how that scandal was
heaped up later, by stories so revolting of the doings of that night
that one is appalled at the minds that conceived them and the credulity
that accepted them.
Infessura writes of what he heard, and he writes venomously, as he
betrays by the bitter sarcasm with which he refers to the fifty silver
cups filled with sweetmeats which the Pope tossed into the laps of
ladies present at the earlier part of the celebration. “He did it,”
says Infessura, “to the greater honour and glory of Almighty God and the
Church of Rome.” Beyond that he ventures into no great detail, checking
himself betimes, however, with a suggested motive for reticence a
thousand times worse than any formal accusation. Thus: “Much else is
said, of which I do not write, because either it is not true, or, if
true, incredible.”(1)
1 “Et multa alia dicta sunt; que hic non scribo, que aut non sunt; vel
si sunt, incredibilia” (Infessura, Diarium).
It is amazing that the veil which Infessura drew with those words should
have been pierced--not indeed by the cold light of fact, but by the hot
eye of prurient imagination; amazing that he should be quoted at all--he
who was not present--considering that we have the testimony of what did
take place from the pen of an eye-witness, in a letter from Gianandrea
Boccaccio, the ambassador of Ferrara, to his master.
At the end of his letter, which describes the proceedings and the
wedding-gifts and their presentation, he tells us how the night was
spent. “Afterwards the ladies danced, and, as an interlude, a worthy
comedy was performed, with much music and singing, the Pope and all the
rest of us being present throughout. What else shall I add? It would
make a long letter. The whole night was spent in this manner; let your
lordship decide whether well or ill.”
Is not that sufficient to stop the foul mouth of inventive slander? What
need to suggest happenings unspeakable? Yet it is the fashion to quote
the last sentence above from Boccaccio’s letter in the original--“totam
noctem comsumpsimus; judicet modo Ex(ma.) Dominatio vestra si bene
o male”--as though decency forbade its translation; and at once this
poisonous reticence does its work, and the imagination--and not only
that of the unlettered--is fired, and all manner of abominations are
speculatively conceived.
Infessura, being absent, says that the comedies performed were
licentious (“lascive”). But what comedies of that age were not? It was
an age which had not yet invented modesty, as we understand it. That
Boccaccio, who was present, saw nothing unusual in the comedy--there
was only one, according to him--is proved by his description of it as
“worthy” (“una degna commedia.”)
M. Yriarte on this same subject(1) is not only petty, but grotesque.
He chooses to relate the incident from the point of view of Infessura,
whom, by the way, he translates with an amazing freedom,(2) and he makes
bold to add regarding Gianandrea Boccaccio that: “It must also be
said that the ambassador of Ferrara, either because he did not see
everything, or because he was less austere than Infessura, was not
shocked by the comedies, etc.” (“soit qu’il n’ait pas tout vu, soit
qu’il ait été moins austère qu’Infessura, n’est pas choqué....”)
1 La Vie de César Borgia.
2 Thus in the matter of the fifty silver cups tossed by the Pope into
the ladies’ laps, “sinum” is the word employed by Infessura--a word
which has too loosely been given its general translation of “bosom,”
ignoring that it equally means “lap” and that “lap” it obviously means
in this instance. M. Yriarte, however, goes a step further, and prefers
to translate it as “corsage,” which at once, and unpleasantly, falsifies
the picture; and he adds matter to dot the I’s to an extent certainly
not warranted even by Infessura.
M. Yriarte, you observe, does not scruple to opine that Boccaccio, who
was present, did not see everything; but he has no doubt that Infessura,
who was not present, and who wrote from “hearsay,” missed nothing.
Alas! Too much of the history of the Borgias has been written in this
spirit, and the discrimination in the selection of authorities has ever
been with a view to obtaining the more sensational rather than the more
truthful narrative.
Although it is known that Cesare came to Rome in the early part of
1493--for his presence there is reported by Gianandrea Boccaccio
in March of that year--there is no mention of him at this time in
connection with his sister’s wedding. Apparently, then, he was not
present, although it is impossible to suggest where he might have been
at the time.
Boccaccio draws a picture of him in that letter, which is worthy of
attention, “On the day before yesterday I found Cesare at home in
Trastevere. He was on the point of setting out to go hunting, and
entirely in secular habit; that is to say, dressed in silk and armed.
Riding together, we talked a while. I am among his most intimate
acquaintances. He is man of great talent and of an excellent nature; his
manners are those of the son of a great prince; above everything, he is
joyous and light-hearted. He is very modest, much superior to, and of a
much finer appearance than, his brother the Duke of Gandia, who also is
not short of natural gifts. The archbishop never had any inclination for
the priesthood. But his benefice yields him over 16,000 ducats.”
It may not be amiss--though perhaps no longer very necessary, after what
has been written--to say a word at this stage on the social position of
bastards in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to emphasize the fact
that no stigma attached to Cesare Borgia or to any other member of his
father’s family on the score of the illegitimacy of their birth.
It is sufficient to consider the marriages they contracted to perceive
that, however shocking the circumstances may appear to modern notions,
the circumstance of their father being a Pope not only cannot have been
accounted extraordinarily scandalous (if scandalous at all) but, on the
contrary, rendered them eligible for alliances even princely.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we see the bastard born of
a noble, as noble as his father, displaying his father’s arms without
debruisement and enjoying his rank and inheritance unchallenged on the
score of his birth, even though that inheritance should be a throne--as
witness Lucrezia’s husband Giovanni, who, though a bastard of the house
of Sforza, succeeded, nevertheless, his father in the Tyranny of Pesaro
and Cotignola.
Later we shall see this same Lucrezia, her illegitimacy notwithstanding,
married into the noble House of Este and seated upon the throne of
Ferrara. And before then we shall have seen the bastard Cesare married
to a daughter of the royal House of Navarre. Already we have seen the
bastard Francesco Cibo take to wife the daughter of the great Lorenzo
de’Medici, and we have seen the bastard Girolamo Riario married to
Caterina Sforza--a natural daughter of the ducal House of Milan--and we
have seen the pair installed in the Tyranny of Imola and Forli. A score
of other instances might be added; but these should suffice.
The matter calls for the making of no philosophies, craves no
explaining, and, above all, needs no apology. It clears itself.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries--more just than our own more
enlightened times--attributed no shame to the men and women born out of
wedlock, saw no reason--as no reason is there, Christian or Pagan--why
they should suffer for a condition that was none of their contriving.
To mention it may be of help in visualizing and understanding that
direct and forceful epoch, and may even suggest some lenience in
considering a Pope’s carnal paternity. To those to whom the point of
view of the Renaissance does not promptly suggest itself from this plain
statement of fact, all unargued as we leave it, we recommend a perusal
of Gianpietro de Crescenzi’s Il Nobile Romano.
The marriage of Lucrezia Borgia to Giovanni Sforza tightened the
relations between the Pope and Milan, as the Pope intended. Meanwhile,
however, the crafty and mistrustful Lodovico, having no illusions as
to the true values of his allies, and realizing them to be self-seekers
like himself, with interests that were fundamentally different from his
own, perceived that they were likely only to adhere to him for just
so long as it suited their own ends. He bethought him, therefore, of
looking about him for other means by which to crush the power of Naples.
France was casting longing eyes upon Italy, and it seemed to Lodovico
that in France was a ready catspaw. Charles VIII, as the representative
of the House of Anjou, had a certain meagre claim upon the throne of
Naples; if he could be induced to ride south, lance on thigh, and press
that claim there would be an end to the dominion of the House of Aragon,
and so an end to Lodovico’s fears of a Neapolitan interference with his
own occupation of the throne of Milan.
To an ordinary schemer that should have been enough; but as a schemer
Lodovico was wholly extraordinary. His plans grew in the maturing, and
took in side-issues, until he saw that Naples should be to Charles VIII
as the cheese within the mouse-trap. Let his advent into Italy to break
the power of Naples be free and open; but, once within, he should find
Milan and the northern allies between himself and his retreat, and
Lodovico’s should it be to bring him to his knees. Thus schemed Lodovico
to shiver, first Naples and then France, before hurling the latter back
across the Alps. A daring, bold, and yet simple plan of action. And what
a power in Italy should not Lodovico derive from its success!
Forthwith he got secretly to work upon it, sending his invitation to
Charles to come and make good his claim to Naples, offering the French
troops free passage through his territory.(1) And in the character
of his invitation he played upon the nature of malformed, ambitious
Charles, whose brain was stuffed with romance and chivalric
rhodomontades. The conquest of Naples was an easy affair, no more than
a step in the glorious enterprise that awaited the French king, for
from Naples he could cross to engage the Turk, and win back the Holy
Sepulchre, thus becoming a second Charles the Great.
1 See Corlo, Storia di Milano, and Lodovico’s letter to Charles VIII,
quoted therein, lib. vii.
Thus Lodovico Maria the crafty, to dazzle Charles the romantic, and to
take the bull of impending invasion by the very horns.
We have seen the failure of the appeal to Spain against the Pope made
by the King of Naples. To that failure was now added the tightening of
Rome’s relations with Milan by the marriage between Lucrezia Borgia and
Giovanni Sforza, and Ferrante--rumours of a French invasion, with
Naples for its objective being already in the air--realized that nothing
remained him but to make another attempt to conciliate the Pope’s
Holiness. And this time he went about his negotiations in a manner
better calculated to serve his ends, since his need was grown more
urgent. He sent the Prince of Altamura again to Rome for the ostensible
purpose of settling the vexatious matter of Cervetri and Anguillara and
making alliance with the Holy Father, whilst behind Altamura was the
Neapolitan army ready to move upon Rome should the envoy fail this time.
But on the terms now put forward, Alexander was willing to negotiate,
and so a peace was patched up between Naples and the Holy See, the
conditions of which were that Orsini should retain the fiefs for his
lifetime, but that they should revert to Holy Church on his death, and
that he should pay the Church for the life-lease of them the sum of
40,000 ducats, which already he had paid to Francesco Cibo; that the
peace should be consolidated by the marriage of the Pope’s bastard,
Giuffredo, with Sancia of Aragon, the natural daughter of the Duke of
Calabria, heir to the throne of Naples, and that she should bring the
Principality of Squillace and the County of Coriate as her dowry.
The other condition demanded by Naples--at the suggestion of Cardinal
Giuliano della Rovere--was that the Pope should disgrace and dismiss
his ViceChancellor, Ascanio Sforza, which would have shattered the
pontifical relations with Milan. To this, however, the Pope would not
agree, but he met Naples in the matter to the extent of consenting to
overlook Cardinal della Rovere’s defection and receive him back into
favour.
On these terms the peace was at last concluded in August of 1493, and
immediately afterwards there arrived in Rome the Sieur Peron de Basche,
an envoy from the King of France charged with the mission to prevent any
alliance between Rome and Naples.
The Frenchman was behind the fair. The Pope took the only course
possible under the awkward circumstances, and refused to see the
ambasssador. Thereupon the offended King of France held a grand council
“in which were proposed and treated many things against the Pope and for
the reform of the Church.”
These royal outbursts of Christianity, these pious kingly frenzies to
unseat an unworthy Pontiff and reform the Church, follow always, you
will observe, upon the miscarriage of royal wishes.
In the Consistory of September 1493 the Pope created twelve new
cardinals to strengthen the Sacred College in general and his own hand
in particular.
Amongst these new creations were the Pope’s son Cesare, and Alessandro
Farnese, the brother of the beautiful Giulia. The grant of the red hat
to the latter appears to have caused some scandal, for, owing to the
Pope’s relations with his sister, to which it was openly said that
Farnese owed the purple, he received the by-name of Cardinal della
Gonella--Cardinal of the Petticoat.
That was the first important step in the fortunes of the House of
Farnese, which was to give dukes to Parma, and reach the throne of Spain
(in the person of Isabella Farnese) before becoming extinct in 1758.
BOOK II. THE BULL PASCANT
Roma Bovem invenit tunc, cum fundatur aratro, Et nunc lapsa suo est ecce
renata Bove.
From an inscription quoted by Bernardino Coaxo.
CHAPTER I. THE FRENCH INVASION
You see Cesare Borgia, now in his nineteenth year, raised to the purple
with the title of Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria Nuova--notwithstanding
which, however, he continues to be known in preference, and, indeed, to
sign himself by the title of his archbishopric, Cardinal of Valencia.
It is hardly necessary to mention that, although already Bishop of
Pampeluna and Archbishop of Valencia, he had received so far only his
first tonsure. He never did receive any ecclesiastical orders beyond the
minor and revocable ones.
It was said by Infessura, and has since been repeated by a multitude of
historians, upon no better authority than that of this writer on hearsay
and inveterate gossip, that, to raise Cesare to the purple, Alexander
was forced to prove the legitimacy of that young man’s birth, and that
to this end he procured false witnesses to swear that he was “the son of
Vannozza de’ Catanei and her husband, Domenico d’Arignano.” Already has
this been touched upon in an earlier chapter, here it was shown that
Vannozza never had a husband of the name of d’Arignano, and it might
reasonably be supposed that this circumstance alone would have sufficed
to restrain any serious writer from accepting and repeating Infessura’s
unauthoritative statement.
But if more they needed, it was ready to their hands in the Bull
of Sixtus IV of October 1, 1480--to which also allusion has been
made--dispensing Cesare from proving his legitimacy: “Super defectum
natalium od ordines et quoecumque beneficia.”
Besides that, of what avail would any false swearing have been,
considering that Cesare was openly named Borgia, that he was openly
acknowledged by his father, and that in the very Bull above mentioned he
is stated to be the son of Roderigo Borgia?
This is another instance of the lightness, the recklessness with which
Alexander VI has been accused of unseemly and illicit conduct, which it
may not be amiss to mention at this stage, since, if not the accusation
itself, at least the matter that occasioned it belongs chronologically
here.
During the first months of his reign--following in the footsteps of
predecessors who had made additions to the Vatican--Alexander set
about the building of the Borgia Tower. For its decoration he brought
Perugino, Pinturicchio, Volterrano, and Peruzzi to Rome. Concerning
Pinturicchio and Alexander, Vasari tells us, in his Vita degli Artefici,
that over the door of one of the rooms in the Borgia Tower the artist
painted a picture of the Virgin Mary in the likeness of Giulia Farnese
(who posed to him as the model) with Alexander kneeling to her in
adoration, arrayed in full pontificals.
Such a thing would have been horrible, revolting, sacrilegious.
Fortunately it does not even amount to a truth untruly told; and well
would it be if all the lies against the Borgias were as easy to refute.
True, Pinturicchio did paint Giulia Farnese as the Madonna; true also
that he did paint Alexander kneeling in adoration--but not to the
Madonna, not in the same picture at all. The Madonna for which Giulia
Farnese was the model is over a doorway, as Vasari says. The kneeling
Alexander is in another room, and the object of his adoration is the
Saviour rising from His tomb.
Yet one reputable writer after another has repeated that lie of
Vasari’s, and shocked us by the scandalous spectacle of a Pope so
debauched and lewd that he kneels in pontificals, in adoration, at the
feet of his mistress depicted as the Virgin Mary.
In October of that same year of 1493 Cesare accompanied his father on a
visit to Orvieto, a journey which appears to have been partly undertaken
in response to an invitation from Giulia Farnese’s brother Alessandro.
Orvieto was falling at the time into decay and ruin, no longer the
prosperous centre it had been less than a hundred years earlier; but the
shrewd eye of Alexander perceived its value as a stronghold, to be used
as an outpost of Rome or as a refuge in time of danger, and he proceeded
to repair and fortify it. In the following summer Cesare was invested
with its governorship, at the request of its inhabitants, who sent an
embassy to the Pope with their proposal,--by way, no doubt, of showing
their gratitude for his interest in the town.
But in the meantime, towards the end of 1493, King Ferrante’s uneasiness
at the ever-swelling rumours of the impending French invasion was
quickened by the fact that the Pope had not yet sent his son Giuffredo
to Naples to marry Donna Sancia, as had been contracted. Ferrante feared
the intrigues of Milan with Alexander, and that the latter might
be induced, after all, to join the northern league. In a frenzy of
apprehension, the old king was at last on the point of going to Milan to
throw himself at the feet of Lodovico Sforza, who was now his only hope,
when news reached him that his ambassadors had been ordered to leave
France.
That death-blow to his hopes was a death-blow to the man himself. Upon
receiving the news he was smitten by an apoplexy, and upon January 25,
1494, he departed this life without the consolation of being able to
suppose that any of his schemes had done anything to avert the impending
ruin of his house.
In spite of all Alexander’s intercessions and representations,
calculated to induce Charles VIII to abandon his descent upon Italy; in
spite, no less, of the counsel he received at home from such far-seeing
men as had his ear, the Christian King was now determined upon the
expedition and his preparations were well advanced. In the month of
March he assumed the title of King of Sicily, and sent formal intimation
of it to Alexander, demanding his investiture at the hands of the Pope
and offering to pay him a heavy annual tribute. Alexander was thus given
to choose between the wrath of France and the wrath of Naples, and--to
put the basest construction on his motives--he saw that the peril from
an enemy on his very frontiers would be more imminent than that of an
enemy beyond the Alps. It is also possible that he chose to be guided by
his sense of justice and to do in the matter what he considered right.
By whatever motive he was prompted, the result was that he refused to
accede to the wishes of the Christian King.
The Consistory which received the French ambassador--Peron de
Basche--became the scene of stormy remonstrances, Cardinal Giuliano
della Rovere, of course, supporting the ambassador and being supported
in his act of insubordination by the Vice-Chancellor Ascanio Sforza
(who represented his brother Lodovico in the matter) and the Cardinals
Sanseverino, Colonna, and Savelli, all attached to French interests.
Peron de Basche so far presumed, no doubt emboldened by this support, as
to threaten the Pope with deposition if he persisted in his refusal to
obey the King of France.
You see once more that kingly attitude, and you shall see it yet again
presently and be convinced of its precise worth. In one hand a bribe of
heavy annual tribute, in the other a threat of deposition; it was thus
they conducted their business with the Holy Father. In this instance his
Holiness took the threat, and dismissed the insolent ambassador. Della
Rovere, conceiving that in France he had a stouter ally than in Naples,
and seeing that he had once more incurred the papal anger by his
open enmity, fled back to Ostia; and, not feeling safe there, for the
pontifical forces were advancing upon his fortress, took ship to Genoa,
and thence to France, to plot the Pope’s ruin with the exasperated
Charles; and, the charge of simony being the only weapon with which
they could attack Alexander’s seat upon the papal throne, the charge of
simony was once more brandished.
His Holiness took the matter with a becoming and stately calm. He sent
his nephew, Giovanni Borgia, to Naples to crown Alfonso, and with him
went Giuffredo Borgia to carry out the marriage contract with Alfonso’s
daughter, and thus strengthen the alliance between Rome and Naples.
By the autumn Charles had crossed the Alps with the most formidable army
that had ever been sent out of France, full ninety thousand strong. And
so badly was the war conducted by the Neapolitan generals who were sent
to hold him in check that the appearance of the French under the very
walls of Rome was almost such as to take the Pope by surprise. Charles’s
advance from the north had been so swift and unhindered that Alexander
contemptuously said the French soldiers had come into Italy with wooden
spurs and chalk in their hands to mark their lodgings.
Charles had been well received by the intriguing Lodovico Sforza, with
whom he visited the Castle of Pavia and the unfortunate Gian Galeazzo,
who from long confinement, chagrin, and other causes was now reduced
to the sorriest condition. Indeed, on October 22, some days after that
visit, the wretched prince expired. Whether or not Lodovico had him
poisoned, as has been alleged--a charge, which, after all, rests on no
proof, nor even upon the word of any person of reliance--his death most
certainly lies at his ambitious uncle’s door.
Charles was at Piacenza when the news of Gian Galeazzo’s death reached
him. Like the good Christian that he accounted himself, he ordered the
most solemn and imposing obsequies for the poor youth for whom in life
he had done nothing.
Gian Galeazzo left a heart-broken girl-widow and two children to succeed
him to the throne he had never been allowed to occupy--the eldest,
Francesco Sforza, being a boy of five. Nevertheless, Lodovico was
elected Duke of Milan. Not only did he suborn the Parliament of Milan
to that end, but he induced the Emperor to confirm him in the title. To
this the Emperor consented, seeking to mask the unscrupulous deed by a
pitiful sophism. He expounded that the throne of Milan should originally
have been Lodovico’s, and never Galeazzo Maria’s (Gian Galeazzo’s
father), because the latter was born before Francesco Sforza had become
Duke of Milan, whereas Lodovico was born when he already was so.
The obsequies of Gian Galeazzo completed, Charles pushed on. From
Florence he issued his manifesto, and although this confined itself to
claiming the kingdom of Naples, and said no word of punishing the Pope
for his disobedience in crowning Alfonso and being now in alliance with
him, it stirred up grave uneasiness at the Vatican.
The Pope’s position was becoming extremely difficult; nevertheless,
he wore the boldest possible face when he received the ambassadors of
France, and on December 9 refused to grant the letters patent of passage
through the Pontifical States which the French demanded. Thereupon
Charles advanced threateningly upon Rome, and was joined now by those
turbulent barons Orsini, Colonna, and Savelli.
Alexander VI has been widely accused of effecting a volte-face at this
stage and betraying his Neapolitan allies; but his conduct, properly
considered, can hardly amount to that. What concessions he made to
France were such as a wise and inadequately supported man must make to
an army ninety thousand strong. To be recklessly and quixotically heroic
is not within the function of Popes; moreover, Alexander had Rome to
think of, for Charles had sent word that, if he were resisted he would
leave all in ruins, whereas if a free passage were accorded him he would
do no hurt nor suffer any pillage to be done in Rome.
So the Pope did the only thing consistent with prudence: he made a
virtue of necessity and gave way where it was utterly impossible for him
to resist. He permitted Charles the passage through his territory which
Charles was perfectly able to take for himself if refused. There ensued
an interchange of compliments between Pope and King, and early in
January Charles entered Rome in such warlike panoply as struck terror
into the hearts of all beholders. Of that entrance Paolo Giovio has left
us an impressive picture.
The vanguard was composed of Swiss and German mercenaries--tall fellows,
these professional warriors, superb in their carriage and stepping
in time to the beat of their drums; they were dressed in variegated,
close-fitting garments that revealed all their athletic symmetry. A
fourth of them were armed with long, square-bladed halberts, new to
Italy; the remainder trailed their ten-foot pikes, and carried a short
sword at their belts, whilst to every thousand of them there were a
hundred arquebusiers. After them came the French infantry, without
armour save the officers, who wore steel corselets and head-pieces.
These, again, were followed by five thousand Gascon arbalisters, each
shouldering his arbalest--a phalanx of short, rude fellows, not to be
compared with the stately Swiss. Next came the cavalry, advancing in
squadrons, glittering and resplendent in their steel casings; 2,500 of
these were in full heavy armour, wielding iron maces and the ponderous
lances that were usual also in Italy. Every man-at-arms had with him
three horses, mounted by a squire and two valets (four men going to the
lance in France). Some 5,000 of the cavalry were more lightly armed, in
corselets and head-piece only, and they carried long wooden bows in the
English fashion; whilst some were armed with pikes, intended to complete
the work of the heavier cavalry. These were followed by 200 knights--the
very flower of French chivalry for birth and valour--shouldering their
heavy iron maces, their armour covered by purple, gold-embroidered
surcoats. Behind them came 400 mounted archers forming the bodyguard of
the king.
The misshapen monarch himself was the very caricature of a man, hideous
and grotesque as a gargoyle. He was short of stature, spindle-shanked,
rachitic and malformed, and of his face, with its colossal nose, loose
mouth and shallow brow, Giovio says that “it was the ugliest ever seen
on man.”
Such was the person of the young king--he was twenty-four years of age
at the time--who poured his legions into Rome, and all full-armed as if
for work of immediate destruction. Seen, as they were, by torchlight
and the blaze of kindled bonfires--for night had fallen long before
the rearguard had entered the city--they looked vague, fantastic, and
terrifying. But the most awe-inspiring sight of all was kept for the
end; it consisted of the thirty-six pieces of artillery which brought
up the rear, each piece upon a carriage swiftly drawn by horses, and
the longest measuring eight feet, weighing six thousand pounds, and
discharging an iron ball as big as a man’s head.
The king lay in the Palace of San Marco, where a lodging had been
prepared for him, and thither on the day after his entrance came Cesare
Borgia, with six Cardinals, from the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, whither
the Pope had withdrawn, to wait upon his Christian Majesty. Charles
immediately revealed the full and exigent nature of his demands. He
required the Pope’s aid and counsel in the conquest of Naples, upon
which he was proceeding; that Cesare Borgia be delivered into his hands
as a hostage to ensure the Pope’s friendliness; and that the Castle of
Sant’ Angelo be handed over to him to be used as a retreat in case of
need or danger. Further, he demanded that Prince Djem--the brother of
Sultan Bajazet, who was in the Pope’s hands--should be delivered up to
him as a further hostage.
This Djem (Gem, or Zizim, as his name is variously spelled) was the
second son of Mahomet II, whose throne he had disputed with his brother
Bajazet on their father’s death. He had raised an army to enforce his
claim, and had not lacked for partisans; but he was defeated and put
to flight by his brother. For safety he had delivered himself up to the
Knights of Rhodes, whom he knew to be Bajazet’s implacable enemies.
They made him very welcome, for d’Aubusson, the Grand Master of Rhodes,
realized that the possession of the prince’s person was a very fortunate
circumstance for Christianity, since by means of such a hostage the
Turk could be kept in submission. Accordingly d’Aubusson had sent him to
France, and wrote: “While Djem lives, and is in our hands, Bajazet will
never dare to make war upon Christians, who will thus enjoy great peace.
Thus is it salutary that Djem should remain in our power.” And in France
Djem had been well received and treated with every consideration due to
a person of his princely rank.
But he appears to have become a subject of contention among the
Powers, several of which urged that he could be of greater service to
Christianity in their hands than in those of France. Thus, the King of
Hungary had demanded him because, being a neighbour of Bajazet’s, he
was constantly in apprehension of Turkish raids. Ferdinand of Spain had
desired him because the possession of him would assist the Catholic King
in the expulsion of the Moors. Ferrante of Naples had craved him because
he lived in perpetual terror of a Turkish invasion.
In the end he had been sent to Rome, whither he went willingly under
the advice of the Knights of Rhodes, whose prisoner he really considered
himself. They had discovered that Bajazet was offering enormous bribes
to Charles for the surrender of him, and they feared lest Charles should
succumb to the temptation.
So Prince Djem had come to Rome in the reign of Pope Innocent VIII, and
there he had since remained, Sultan Bajazet making the Pope an annual
allowance of forty thousand ducats for his brother’s safe custody. He
was a willing prisoner, or rather a willing exile, for, far from being
kept a prisoner, he was treated at Rome with every consideration,
associating freely with those about the Pontifical Court, and being
frequently seen abroad in company with the Pope and the Duke of Gandia.
Now Charles was aware that the Pope, in his dread of a French invasion,
and seeing vain all his efforts to dissuade Charles from making his
descent upon Italy, had appealed for aid to Bajazet. For so doing he has
been severely censured, and with some justice, for the picture of the
Head of Christianity making appeal to the infidel to assist him against
Christians is not an edifying one. Still, it receives some measure
of justification when we reflect what was the attitude of these same
Christians towards their Head.
Bajazet himself, thrown into a panic at the thought of Djem falling into
the hands of a king who proposed to make a raid upon him, answered the
Pope begging his Holiness to “have Djem removed from the tribulations of
this world, and his soul transported to another, where he might enjoy a
greater peace.” For this service he offered the Pope 300,000 ducats, to
be paid on delivery of the prince’s body; and, if the price was high, so
was the service required, for it would have ensured Bajazet a peace of
mind he could not hope to enjoy while his brother lived.
This letter was intercepted by Giovanni della Rovere, the Prefect of
Sinigaglia, who very promptly handed it to his brother, the Cardinal
Giuliano. The cardinal, in his turn, laid it before the King of France,
who now demanded of the Pope the surrender of the person of this Djem as
a further hostage.
Alexander began by rejecting the king’s proposals severally and
collectively, but Charles pressed him to reconsider his refusal, and so,
being again between the sword and the wall, the Pope was compelled to
submit. A treaty was drawn up and signed on January 15, the king, on
his side, promising to recognize the Pope and to uphold him in all his
rights.
On the following day Charles made solemn act of veneration to the
Pontiff in Consistory, kissing his ring and his foot, and professing
obedience to him as the kings of France, his forbears, had ever done.
Words for deeds!
Charles remained twelve days longer in Rome, and set out at last, on
January 28, upon the conquest of Naples. First he went solemnly to take
his leave of the Pope, and they parted with every outward mark of a
mutual esteem which they most certainly cannot have experienced. When
Charles knelt for the Pope’s blessing, Alexander raised him up and
embraced him; whilst Cesare completed the show of friendliness by
presenting Charles with six beautiful chargers.
They set out immediately afterwards, the French king taking with him
his hostages, neither of which he was destined to retain for long, with
Cesare riding in the place of honour on his right.
The army lay at Marino that night, and on the following at Velletri. In
the latter city Charles was met by an ambassador of Spain--Antonio da
Fonseca. Ferdinand and Isabella were moved at last to befriend their
cousins of Naples, whom all else had now abandoned, and at the same time
serve their own interests. Their ambassador demanded that Charles should
abandon his enterprise and return to France, or else be prepared for war
with Spain.
It is eminently probable that Cesare had knowledge of this ultimatum to
Charles, and that his knowledge influenced his conduct. However that may
be, he slipped out of Velletri in the dead of that same night disguised
as a groom. Half a mile out of the town, Francesco del Sacco, an officer
of the Podestá of Velletri, awaited him with a horse, and on this he
sped back to Rome, where he arrived on the night of the 30th. He went
straight to the house of one Antonio Flores, an auditor of the Tribunal
of the Ruota and a person of his confidence, who through his influence
and protection was destined to rise to the eminence of the archbishopric
of Avignon and Papal Nuncio to the Court of France.
Cesare remained at Flores’s house, sending word to the Pope of his
presence, but not attempting to approach the Vatican. On the following
day he withdrew to the stronghold of Spoleto.
Meanwhile Rome was thrown into a panic by the young cardinal’s
action and the dread of reprisals on the part of France. The quaking
municipality sent representatives to Charles to assure him that Rome had
had nothing to do with this breach of the treaty, and to implore him not
to visit it upon the city. The king replied by a special embassy to
the Pope, and there apparently dropped the matter, for a few days later
Cesare reappeared at the Vatican.
Charles, meanwhile, despite the threats of Spain, pushed on to
accomplish his easy conquest.
King Alfonso had already fled the kingdom (January 25), abdicating in
favour of his brother Federigo. His avowed object was to withdraw to
Sicily, retire from the world, and do penance for his sins, for which no
doubt there was ample occasion. The real spur was probably--as opined
by Commines--cowardice; for, says that Frenchman, “Jamais homme cruel ne
fut hardi.”
Federigo’s defence of the realm consigned to him was not conspicuous,
for the French entered Naples almost without striking a blow within
twenty days of their departure from Rome.
Scarcely had Charles laid aside his armour when death robbed him of the
second hostage he had brought from the Vatican. On February 25, after
a week’s illness, Prince Djem died of dysentery at the Castle of Capua,
whither Charles had sent him.
Rumours that he had been poisoned by the Pope arose almost at once; but,
considering that twentyeight days had elapsed since his parting
from Alexander, it was, with the best intentions in the world, rather
difficult to make that poisoning credible, until the bright notion was
conceived, and made public, that the poison used was a “white powder”
of unknown components, which did its work slowly, and killed the victim
some time after it had been administered. Thus, by a bold and brazen
invention, an impossible falsehood was made to wear a possible aspect.
And in that you have most probably the origin of the famous secret
poison of the Borgias. Having been invented to fit the alleged poisoning
of Prince Djem, which it was desired to fasten upon the Pope by hook or
by crook, it was found altogether too valuable an invention not to be
used again. By means of it, it became possible to lay almost any death
in the world at the door of Alexander.
Before proceeding to inquire further into this particular case, let us
here and now say that, just as to-day there is no inorganic toxin known
to science that will either lie fallow for weeks in the human system,
suddenly to become active and slay, or yet to kill by slow degrees
involving some weeks in the process, so none was known in the Borgian or
any other era. Science indeed will tell you that the very notion of
any such poison is flagrantly absurd, and that such a toxic action is
against all the laws of nature.
But a scientific disquisition is unnecessary. For our present needs
arguments of common sense should abundantly suffice. This poison--this
white powder--was said to be a secret of the Borgias. If that is so,
by what Borgia was the secret of its existence ever divulged? Or, if it
never was divulged, how comes it to be known that a poison so secret,
and working at such distances of time, was ever wielded by them?
The very nature of its alleged action was such as utterly to conceal the
hand that had administered it; yet here, on the first recorded occasion
of its alleged use, it was more or less common knowledge if Giovio and
Guicciardini are to be believed!
Sagredo(1) says that Djem died at Terracina three days after having been
consigned to Charles VIII, of poison administered by Alexander, to whom
Bajazet had promised a large sum of money for the deed. The same is
practically Giovio’s statement, save that Giovio causes him to die at
a later date and at Gaeta; Guicciardini and Corio tell a similar story,
but inform us that he died in Naples.
1 In Mem. Storiche dei Monarchi Ottomani.
It is entirely upon the authority of these four writers that the Pope is
charged with having poisoned Djem, and it is noteworthy that in the four
narratives we find different dates and three different places given as
the date and place of the Turk’s death, and more noteworthy still that
in not one instance of these four is date or place correctly stated.
Now the place where Djem died, and the date of his death, were public
facts about which there was no mystery; they were to be ascertained--as
they are still--by any painstaking examiner. His poisoning, on the
other hand, was admittedly a secret matter, the truth of which it was
impossible to ascertain with utter and complete finality. Yet of this
poisoning they know all the secrets, these four nimble writers who
cannot correctly tell us where or when the man died!
We will turn from the fictions they have left us--which, alas! have but
too often been preferred by subsequent writers to the true facts
which lay just as ready to their hands, but of course were less
sensational--and we will consider instead the evidence of those
contemporaries who do, at least, know the time and place of Djem’s
decease.
If any living man might have known of a secret poison of the Borgias at
this stage, that man was Burchard the Caeremoniarius, and, had he known
of it, not for a moment would he have been silent on the point. Yet
not a word of this secret poison shall you find in his diaries, and
concerning the death of Djem he records that “on February 25 died at the
Castle of Capua the said Djem, through meat or drink that disagreed with
him.”
Panvinio, who, being a Neapolitan, was not likely to be any too friendly
to the Pope--as, indeed, he proves again and again--tells us positively
that Djem died of dysentry at Capua.(1)
1 Vitis Pontif. Rom.
Sanuto, writing to the Council of Ten, says that Djem took ill at Capua
of a catarrh, which “descended to his stomach”; and that so he died.
And now mark Sanuto’s reasoning upon his death, which is the very
reasoning we should ourselves employ finally to dispose of this chatter
of poisoning, did we not find it awaiting quotation, more authoritative
therefore than it could be from us, and utterly irrefutable and
conclusive in its logic. “This death is very harmful to the King of
France, to all Italy, and chiefly to the Pope, who is thereby deprived
of 40,000 ducats yearly, which was paid him by his [Djem’s] brother for
his custody. And the king showed himself greatly grieved by this death,
and it was suspected that the Pope had poisoned him, which, however, was
not to be believed, as it would have been to his own loss.”
Just so--to his own infinite loss, not only of the 40,000 ducats yearly,
but of the hold which the custody of Djem gave him upon the Turks.
The reason assigned by those who charged Alexander with this crime
was the bribe of 300,000 ducats offered by Bajezet in the intercepted
letter. The offer--which, incidentally, had never reached the Pope--was
instantly taken as proof of its acceptance--a singular case of making
cause follow upon effect, a method all too prevalent with the Borgian
chroniclers. Moreover, they entirely overlooked the circumstance that,
for Djem’s death in the hands of France, the Pope could make no claim
upon Bajazet.
Finally--though the danger be incurred of becoming tedious upon this
point--they also forgot that, years before, Bajazet had offered such
bribes to Charles for the life of Djem as had caused the Knights of
Rhodes to remove the Turk from French keeping. Upon that circumstance
they might, had it sorted with their inclinations, have set up a
stronger case of poisoning against Charles than against the Pope, and
they would not have been put to the necessity of inventing a toxin that
never had place in any earthly pharmacopoeia.
It is not, by this, suggested that there is any shadow of a case against
Charles. Djem died a perfectly natural death, as is established by the
only authorities competent to speak upon the matter, and his death was
against the interests of everybody save his brother Bajazet; and against
nobody’s so much as the Pope’s.
CHAPTER II. THE POPE AND THE SUPERNATURAL
By the middle of March of that year 1495 the conquest of Naples was a
thoroughly accomplished fact, and the French rested upon their victory,
took their ease, and made merry in the capital of the vanquished
kingdom.
But in the north Lodovico Sforza-now Duke of Milan de facto, as we have
seen--set about the second part of the game that was to be played. He
had a valuable ally in Venice, which looked none too favourably on the
French and was fully disposed to gather its forces against the common
foe. The Council of Ten sent their ambassador, Zorzi, to the Pope to
propose an alliance.
News reached Charles in Naples of the league that was being formed. He
laughed at it, and the matter was made the subject of ridicule in some
of the comedies that were being performed for the amusement of his
Court. Meanwhile, the intrigue against him went forward; on March 26 his
Holiness sent the Golden Rose to the Doge, and on Palm Sunday the league
was solemnly proclaimed in St. Peter’s. Its terms were vague; there
was nothing in it that was directly menacing to Charles; it was simply
declared to have been formed for the common good. But in the north the
forces were steadily gathering to cut off the retreat of the French, and
suddenly Lodovico Sforza threw aside the mask and made an attack upon
the French navy at Genoa.
At last Charles awoke to his danger and began to care for his safety.
Rapidly he organized the occupation of Naples, and, leaving Montpensier
as Viceroy and d’Aubigny as Captain-General, he set out for Rome with
his army, intent upon detaching the Pope from the league; for the Pope,
being the immediate neighbour of Naples, would be as dangerous as an
enemy as he was valuable as an ally to Charles.
He entered Rome on June 1. The Pope, however, was not there to receive
him. Alexander had left on May 28 for Orvieto, accompanied by Cesare,
the Sacred College, 200 men-at-arms, and 1,000 horse and 3,000 foot,
supplied by Venice. At Orvieto, on June 3, the Pontiff received an
ambassador from the Emperor, who had joined the league, and on the
4th he refused audience to the ambassador of France, sent to him from
Ronciglione, where the King had halted. Charles, insistent, sent again,
determined to see the Pope; but Alexander, quite as determined not to
see the king, pushed on to Perugia with his escort.
There his Holiness abode until the French and Italians had met on the
River Taro and joined battle at Fornovo, of which encounter both sides
claimed the victory. If Charles’s only object was to win through, then
the victory undoubtedly was his, for he certainly succeeded in cutting
a way through the Italians who disputed his passage. But he suffered
heavily, and left behind him most of his precious artillery, his tents
and carriages, and the immense Neapolitan booty he was taking home, with
which he had loaded (says Gregorovius) twenty thousand mules. All this
fell into the hands of the Italian allies under Gonzaga of Mantua,
whilst from Fornovo Charles’s retreat was more in the nature of
a flight. Thus he won back to France, no whit the better for his
expedition, and the only mark of his passage which he left behind him
was an obscene ailment, which, with the coming of the French into Italy,
first manifested itself in Europe, and which the Italians paid them the
questionable compliment of calling “the French disease”--morbo gallico,
or il mal francese.
During the Pope’s visit to Perugia an incident occurred which is not
without importance to students of his character, and of the character
left of him by his contemporaries and others.
There lived in Perugia at this time a young nun of the Order of St.
Dominic, who walked in the way of St. Catherine of Siena, Colomba da
Rieti by name. You will find some marvellous things about her in the
Perugian chronicles of Matarazzo, which, for that matter, abound in
marvellous things--too marvellous mostly to be true.
When he deals with events happening beyond the walls of his native town
Matarazzo, as an historian, is contemptible to a degree second only to
that of those who quote him as an authority. When he deals with matters
that, so to speak, befell under his very eyes, he is worthy, if not of
credit at least of attention, for his “atmosphere” is valuable.
Of this Sister Colomba Matarazzo tells us that she ate not nor drank,
save sometimes some jujube fruit, and even these but rarely. “On the day
of her coming to Perugia (which happened in 1488), as she was Crossing
the Bridge of St. Gianni some young men attempted to lay hands upon her,
for she was comely and beautiful; but as they did so, she showed them
the jujube fruit which she carried in a white cloth, whereupon they
instantly stood bereft of strength and wits.”
Next he tells us how she would pass from life for an hour or two, and
sometimes for half a day, and her pulse would cease to beat, and she
would, seem all dead. And then she would quiver and come to herself
again, and prophesy the future, and threaten disaster. And again:
“One morning two of her teeth were found to have fallen out, which had
happened in fighting with the devil; and, for the many intercessions
which she made, and the scandals which she repaired by her prayers, the
people came to call her saint.”
Notwithstanding all this, and the fact that she lived without
nourishment, he tells us that the brothers of St. Francis had little
faith in her. Nevertheless, the community built her a very fine
monastery, which was richly endowed, and many nuns took the habit of her
Order.
Now it happened that whilst at Perugia in his student days, Cesare had
witnessed a miracle performed by this poor ecstatic girl; or rather he
had arrived on the scene--the Church of St. Catherine of Siena--to
find her, with a little naked boy in her lap, the centre of an excited,
frenzied crowd, which was proclaiming loudly that the child had been
dead and that she had resurrected him. This was a statement which the
Prior of the Dominicans did not seem disposed unreservedly to accept,
for, when approached with a suggestion that the bells should be rung
in honour of the event, he would not admit that he saw any cause to
sanction such a course.
In the few years that were sped since then, however, sister Colomba
had acquired the great reputation of which Matarazzo tells us, so that,
throughout the plain of Tiber, the Dominicans were preaching her fame
from convent to convent. In December of 1495 Charles VIII heard of
her at Siena, and was stirred by a curiosity which he accounted
devotional--the same curiosity that caused one of his gentlemen to
entreat Savonarola to perform “just a little miracle” for the King’s
entertainment. You can picture the gloomy fanatic’s reception of that
invitation.
The Pope now took the opportunity of his sojourn in Perugia to pay
Colomba da Rieti a visit, and there can be no doubt that he did so in a
critical spirit. Accompanied by Cesare and some cardinals and gentlemen
of his following, he went to the Church of St. Dominic and was conducted
to the sister’s cell by the Prior--the same who in Cesare’s student-days
had refused to have the bells rung.
Upon seeing the magnificent figure of the Pontiff filling the doorway of
her little chamber, Sister Colomba fell at his feet, and, taking hold of
the hem of his gown, she remained prostrate and silent for some moments,
when at last she timidly arose. Alexander set her some questions
concerning the Divine Mysteries. These she answered readily at first,
but, as his questions grew, she faltered, became embarrassed, and fell
silent, standing before him white and trembling, no doubt a very piteous
figure. The Pope, not liking this, turned to the Prior to demand an
explanation, and admonished him sternly: “Caveto, Pater, quia ego Papa
sum!”
This had the effect of throwing the Prior into confusion, and he set
himself to explain that she was in reality very wonderful, that he
himself had not at first believed in her, but that he had seen so
much that he had been converted. At this stage Cesare came to his
aid, bearing witness, as he could, that he himself had seen the
Prior discredit her when others were already hailing her as a saint,
wherefore, if he now was convinced, he must have had very good evidence
to convince him. We can imagine the Prior’s gratitude to the young
cardinal for that timely word when he saw himself in danger perhaps of
being called to account for fostering and abetting an imposture.
What was Alexander’s opinion of her in the end we do not know; but we
do know that he was not readily credulous. When, for instance, he heard
that the stigmata were alleged to have appeared upon the body of Lucia
di Narni he did what might be expected of a sceptic of our own times
rather than of a churchman of his superstitious age--he sent his
physicians to examine her.
That is but one instance of his common-sense attitude towards
supernatural manifestations. His cold, calm judgement caused him to
seek, by all available and practical means, to discriminate between the
true and the spurious in an age in which men, by their credulity, were
but too ready to become the prey of any impostor. It argues a breadth of
mind altogether beyond the times in which he had his being. Witches and
warlocks, who elsewhere--and even in much later ages, and in Protestant
as well as Catholic States--were given to the fire, he contemptuously
ignored. The unfortunate Moors and Jews, who elsewhere in Europe were
being persecuted by the Holy Inquisition and burnt at the stake as an
act of faith for the good of their souls and the greater honour and
glory of God, found in Alexander a tolerant protector and in Rome a safe
shelter.
These circumstances concerning him are not sufficiently known; it is
good to know them for their own sake. But, apart from that, they have
a great historical value which it is well to consider. It is not to be
imagined that such breadth of views could be tolerated in a Pope in the
dawn of the sixteenth century. The times were not ripe for it; men
did not understand it; and what men do not understand they thirst to
explain, and have a way of explaining in their own fashion and according
to their own lights.
A Pope who did such things could not be a good Pope, since such things
must be abhorrent to God--as men conceived God then.
To understand this is to understand much of the bad feeling against
Alexander and his family, for this is the source of much of it. Because
he did not burn witches and magicians it was presently said that he
was himself a warlock, and that he practised black magic. It was not,
perhaps, wanton calumny; it was said in good faith, for it was the only
reason the times could think of that should account for his restraint.
Because he tolerated Moors and Jews it was presently said by some that
he was a Moor, by others that he was a Jew, and by others still that he
was both.
What wonder, then, if the rancorous Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere
venomously dubbed him Moor and Jew, and the rabid fanatic Savonarola
screamed that he was no Pope at all, that he was not a Christian, nor
did he believe in any God?
Misunderstood in these matters, he was believed to be an infidel, and no
crime was too impossible to be fastened upon the man who was believed to
be that in the Italy of the Cinquecento.
Alexander, however, was very far from being an infidel, very far from
not being a Christian, very far from not believing in God, as he has
left abundant evidence in the Bulls he issued during his pontificate.
It is certainly wrong to assume--and this is pointed out by
l’Espinois--that a private life which seems to ignore the commandments
of the Church must preclude the possibility of a public life devoted to
the service of the Church. This is far from being the case. Such a state
of things--such a dual personality--is by no means inconsistent with
churchmen of the fifteenth, or, for that matter, of the twentieth
century.
The whole truth of the matter is contained in a Portuguese rhyme, which
may roughly be translated:
Soundly Father Thomas preaches.
Don’t do as he does; do as he teaches.
A debauchee may preach virtue with salutary effect, just as a man may
preach hygiene without practising the privations which it entails, or
may save you from dyspepsia by pointing out to you what is indigestible
without himself abstaining from it.
Such was the case of Alexander VI, as we are justified in concluding
from the evidence that remains.
Let us consider the apostolic zeal revealed by his Bull granting America
to Spain. This was practically conceded--as the very terms of it will
show--on condition that Spain should employ the dominion accorded her
over the New World for the purpose of propagating the Christian
faith and the conversion and baptism of the heathen. This is strictly
enjoined, and emphasized by the command that Spain shall send out
God-fearing men who are learned in religion and capable of teaching it
to the people of the newly discovered lands.
Thus Alexander invented the missionary.
To King Manuel the Fortunate (of Portugal), who sought his authority for
the conquest of Africa, he similarly enjoined that he should contrive
that the name of the Saviour be adored there, and the Catholic faith
spread and honoured, to the end that the king “might win eternal life
and the blessing of the Holy See.”
To the soldiers going upon this expedition his Holiness granted the same
indulgences as to those who fought in the Holy Land, and he aided the
kings of Spain and Portugal in this propagation of Christianity out of
the coffers of the Church.
He sent to America a dozen of the children of St. Francis, as apostles
to preach the Faith, and he invested them with the amplest powers.
He prosecuted with stern rigour the heretics of Bohemia, who were
obscenely insulting Church and Sacraments, and he proceeded similarly
against the “Picards” and “Vaudois.” Against the Lombard demoniacs, who
had grown bold, were banding themselves together and doing great evil to
property, to life, and to religion, Alexander raised his mighty arm.
Then there is his Bull of June 1, 1501, against those who already were
turning to evil purposes the newly discovered printing-press. In this
he inveighed against the printing of matter prejudicial to healthy
doctrine, to good manners, and, above all, to the Catholic Faith or
anything that should give scandal to the faithful. He threatened the
printers of impious works with excommunication should they persist,
and enlisted secular weapons to punish them in a temporal as well as
a spiritual manner. He ordered the preparation of indexes of all
works containing anything hurtful to religion, and pronounced a ban of
excommunication against all who should peruse the books so indexed.
Thus Alexander invented the Index Expurgatorius.
There is abundant evidence that he was a fervid celebrant, and of his
extreme devotion to the Blessed Virgin--in whose honour he revived the
ringing of the Angelus Bell--shall be considered later.
Whatever his private life, it is idle to seek to show that his public
career was other than devoted to the upholding of the dignity and honour
of the Church.
CHAPTER III. THE ROMAN BARONS
Having driven Charles VIII out of Italy, it still remained for the
allies to remove all traces of his passage from Naples and to restore
the rule of the House of Aragon. In this they had the aid of Ferdinand
and Isabella, who sent an army under the command of that distinguished
soldier Gonzalo de Cordoba, known in his day as the Great Captain.
He landed in Calabria in the spring of 1496, and war broke out afresh
through that already sorely devastated land. The Spaniards were joined
by the allied forces of Venice and the Church under the condotta of the
Marquis Gonzaga of Mantua, the leader of the Italians at Fornovo.
Lodovico had detached himself from the league, and again made terms
with France for his own safety’s sake. But his cousin, Giovanni Sforza,
Tyrant of Pesaro--the husband of Lucrezia Borgia--continued in the
pontifical army at the head of a condotta of 600 lances. Another command
in the same ranks was one of 700 lances under the youthful Giuffredo
Borgia, now Prince of Squillace and the husband of Doña Sancia of
Aragon, a lady of exceedingly loose morals, who had brought to Rome the
habits acquired in the most licentious Court of that licentious age.
The French lost Naples even more easily than they had conquered it, and
by July 7 Ferdinand II was able to reenter his capital and reascend
his throne. D’Aubigny, the French general, withdrew to France, whilst
Montpensier, the Viceroy, retired to Pozzuoli, where he died in the
following year.
Nothing could better have suited the purposes of Alexander than the
state of things which now prevailed, affording him, as it did, the means
to break the power of the insolent Roman barons, who already had so
vexed and troubled him. So in the Consistory of June 1 he published
a Bull whereby Gentile Virginio Orsini, Giangiordano Orsini, and his
bastard Paolo Orsini and Bartolomeo d’Alviano, were declared outlawed
for having borne arms with France against the Church, and their
possessions were confiscated to the State. This decree was to be
enforced by the sword, and, for the purposes of the impending war, the
Duke of Gandia was recalled to Rome. He arrived early in August, having
left at Gandia his wife Maria Enriquez, a niece of the Royal House of
Spain. It was Cesare Borgia who took the initiative in the pomp with
which his brother was received in Rome, riding out at the head of the
entire Pontifical Court to meet and welcome the young duke.
In addition to being Duke of Gandia, Giovanni Borgia was already Duke
of Sessa and Prince of Teano, which further dignities had been conferred
upon him on the occasion of his brother Giuffredo’s marriage to Donna
Sancia. To these the Pope now added the governorship of Viterbo and of
the Patrimony of St. Peter, dispossessing Cardinal Farnese of the latter
office to bestow it upon this well-beloved son.
In Venice it was being related, a few months later,--in October--that
Gandia had brought a woman from Spain for his father, and that the
latter had taken her to live with him. The story is given in Sanuto,
and of course has been unearthed and served up by most historians and
essayists. It cannot positively be said that it is untrue; but it can
be said that it is unconfirmed. There is, for instance, no word of it
in Burchard’s Diarium, and when you consider how ready a chronicler
of scandalous matter was this Master of Ceremonies, you will no doubt
conclude that, if any foundation there had been for that Venetian story,
Burchard would never have been silent on the subject.
The Pope had taken into his pay that distinguished condottiero, Duke
Guidobaldo of Urbino, who later was to feel the relentless might
of Cesare. To Guidobaldo’s command was now entrusted the punitive
expedition against the Orsini, and with him was to go the Duke of
Gandia, ostensibly to share the leadership, in reality that, under so
able a master, he might serve his apprenticeship to the trade of arms.
So on October 25 Giovanni Borgia was very solemnly created Gonfalonier
of the Church and Captain-General of the pontifical troops. On the same
day the three standards were blessed in St. Peter’s--one being the Papal
Gonfalon bearing the arms of the Church and the other two the personal
banners of Guidobaldo and Gandia. The two condottieri attended the
ceremony, arrayed in full armour, and received the white truncheons that
were the emblems of their command.
On the following day the army set out, accompanied by the Cardinal de
Luna as papal legate a latere, and within a month ten Orsini strongholds
had surrendered.
So far all had been easy for the papal forces; but now the Orsini
rallied in the last three fortresses that remained them--Bracciano,
Trevignano, and Anguillara, and their resistance suddenly acquired a
stubborn character, particularly that of Bracciano, which was captained
by Bartolomeo d’Alviano, a clever, resourceful young soldier who was
destined to go far. Thus the campaign, so easily conducted at the
outset, received a check which caused it to drag on into the winter. And
now the barons received further reinforcements. Vitellozzo Vitelli, the
Tyrant of Città di Castello, came to the aid of the Orsini, as did also
the turbulent Baglioni of Perugia, the della Rovere in Rome, and all
those who were inimical to Alexander VI. On the other hand, however, the
barons Colonna and Savelli ranged themselves on the side of the Pope.
Already Trevignano had fallen, and the attack of the pontifical army
was concentrated upon Bracciano. Hard pressed, and with all supplies
cut off, Bartolomeo d’Alviano was driven to the very verge of surrender,
when over the hills came Carlo Orsini, with the men of Vitellozzo
Vitelli, to take the papal forces by surprise and put them to utter
rout. Guidobaldo was made prisoner, whilst the Duke of Gandia, Fabrizio
Colonna, and the papal legate narrowly escaped, and took shelter in
Ronciglione, the Pope’s son being slightly wounded in the face.
It was a severe and sudden conclusion to a war that had begun under
such excellent auspices for the Pontificals. Yet, notwithstanding that
defeat, which had left guns and baggage in the hands of the enemy, the
Pope was the gainer by the campaign, having won eleven strongholds from
the Orsini in exchange for one battle lost.
The barons now prepared to push home their advantage and complete
the victory; but the Pope checkmated them by an appeal to Gonzalo de
Cordoba, who promptly responded and came with Prospero Colonna to the
aid of the Church. He laid siege to Ostia, which was being held for the
Cardinal della Rovere, and compelled it to a speedy surrender, thereby
bringing the Orsini resistance practically to an end. For the present
the might of the barons was broken, and they were forced to pay
Alexander the sum of 50,000 ducats to redeem their captured fortresses.
Gonzalo de Cordoba made a triumphal entry into Rome, bringing with him
Monaldo da Guerra, the unfortunate defender of Ostia, in chains. He was
received with great honour by the Duke of Gandia, accompanied by his
brother-in-law, Giovanni Sforza, and they escorted him to the Vatican,
where the Pope awaited him.
This was but one of the many occasions just then on which Giovanni
Sforza was conspicuous in public in close association with his
father-in-law, the Pope. Burchard mentions his presence at the blessing
of the candles on the Feast of the Purification, and shows him to us as
a candle-bearer standing on the Pope’s right hand. Again we see him
on Palm Sunday in attendance upon Alexander, he and Gandia standing
together on the steps of the pontifical throne in the Sixtine Chapel
during the Blessing of the Palms. There and elsewhere Lucrezia’s husband
is prominently in the public eye during those months of February and
March of 1497, and we generally see him sharing, with the Duke of
Gandia, the honour of close attendance upon the Pontiff, all of which
but serves to render the more marked his sudden disappearance from that
scene.
The matter of his abrupt and precipitate flight from Rome is one
concerning which it is unlikely that the true and complete facts will
ever be revealed. It was public gossip at this time that his marriage
with Lucrezia was not a happy one, and that discord marred their life
together. Lucrezia’s reported grievance upon this subject reads a
little vaguely to us now, whatever it may have conveyed at the time. She
complained that Giovanni “did not fittingly keep her company,”(1) which
may be taken to mean that a good harmony did not prevail between them,
or, almost equally well, that there were the canonical grounds for
complaint against him as a husband which were afterwards formally
preferred and made the grounds for the divorce. It is also possible that
Alexander’s ambition may have urged him to dissolve the marriage to
the end that she might be free to be used again as a pawn in his
far-reaching game.
1 “Che non gli faceva buona compagnia.”
All that we do know positively is that, one evening in Holy Week, Sforza
mounted a Turkish horse, and, on the pretext of going as far as the
Church of Sant’ Onofrio to take the air, he slipped out of Rome, and so
desperately did he ride that, twenty-four hours later, he was home in
Pesaro, his horse dropping dead as he reached the town.
Certainly some terrible panic must have urged him, and this rather lends
colour to the story told by Almerici in the Memorie di Pesaro. According
to this, the Lord of Pesaro’s chamberlain, Giacomino, was in Lucrezia’s
apartments one evening when Cesare was announced, whereupon, by
Lucrezia’s orders, Giacomino concealed himself behind a screen. The
Cardinal of Valencia entered and talked freely with his sister, the
essence of his conversation being that the order had been issued for her
husband’s death.
The inference to be drawn from this is that Giovanni had been given to
choose in the matter of a divorce, and that he had refused to be a party
to it, whence it was resolved to remove him in a still more effective
manner.
Be that as it may, the chroniclers of Pesaro proceed to relate that,
after Cesare had left her, Lucrezia asked Giacomino if he had heard what
had been said, and, upon being answered in the affirmative, urged him
to go at once and warn Giovanni. It was as a consequence of this alleged
warning that Giovanni made his precipitate departure.
A little while later, at the beginning of June, Lucrezia left the
Vatican and withdrew to the Convent of San Sisto, in the Appian Way, a
step which immediately gave rise to speculation and to unbridled gossip,
all of which, however, is too vague to be worthy of the least attention.
Aretino’s advices to the Cardinal Ippolito d’Este suggest that she did
not leave the Vatican on good terms with her family, and it is very
possible, if what the Pesaro chroniclers state is true, that her
withdrawal arose out of her having warned Giovanni of his danger and
enabled him to escape.
At about the same time that Lucrezia withdrew to her convent her brother
Gandia was the recipient of further honours at the hands of his fond
father. The Pope had raised the fief of Benevento to a dukedom, and as
a dukedom conferred it upon his son, to him and to his legitimate heirs
for ever. To this he added the valuable lordships of Terracina and
Pontecorvo.
Cesare, meanwhile, had by no means been forgotten, and already this
young cardinal was--with perhaps the sole exception of the Cardinal
d’Estouteville--the richest churchman in Christendom. To his many other
offices and benefices it was being proposed to add that of Chamberlain
of the Holy See, Cardinal Riario, who held the office, being grievously
ill and his recovery despaired of. Together with that office it was the
Pope’s avowed intention to bestow upon Cesare the palace of the late
Cardinal of Mantua, and with it, no doubt, he would receive a proportion
of the dead cardinal’s benefices.
Cesare was twenty-two years of age at the time; tall, of an athletic
slenderness, and exceedingly graceful in his movements, he was
acknowledged to be the handsomest man of his age. His face was long and
pale, his brow lofty, his nose delicately aquiline. He had long
auburn hair, and his hazel eyes, large, quick in their movements, and
singularly searching in their glance, were alive with the genius of the
soul behind them. He inherited from his father the stupendous health
and vigour for which Alexander had been remarkable in his youth, and
was remarkable still in his old age. The chase had ever been Cesare’s
favourite pastime, and the wild boar his predilect quarry; and in
the pursuit of it he had made good use of his exceptional physical
endowments, cultivating them until--like his father before him--he was
equal to the endurance of almost any degree of fatigue.
In the Consistory of June 8 he was appointed legate a latere to go to
Naples to crown King Federigo of Aragon--for in the meanwhile another
change had taken place on the Neapolitan throne by the death of young
Ferdinand II, who had been succeeded by his uncle, Federigo, Prince of
Altamura.
Cesare made ready for his departure upon this important mission, upon
which he was to be accompanied by his brother Giovanni, Duke of Gandia.
They were both to be back in Rome by September, when Gandia was to
return to Spain, taking with him his sister Lucrezia.
Thus had the Pope disposed; but the Borgia family stood on the eve of
the darkest tragedy associated with its name, a tragedy which was to
alter all these plans.
CHAPTER IV. THE MURDER OF THE DUKE OF GANDIA
On June 14, 1497, the eve of Cesare and Giovanni Borgia’s departure
for Naples, their mother Vannozza gave them a farewell supper in her
beautiful vineyard in Trastevere. In addition to the two guests of
honour several other kinsmen and friends were present, among whom were
the Cardinal of Monreale and young Giuffredo Borgia. They remained at
supper until an advanced hour of the night, when Cesare and Giovanni
took their departure, attended only by a few servants and a mysterious
man in a mask, who had come to Giovanni whilst he was at table, and who
almost every day for about a month had been in the habit of visiting him
at the Vatican.
The brothers and these attendants rode together into Rome and as far as
the Vice-Chancellor Ascanio Sforza’s palace in the Ponte Quarter. Here
Giovanni drew rein, and informed Cesare that he would not be returning
to the Vatican just yet, as he was first “going elsewhere to amuse
himself.” With that he took his leave of Cesare, and, with one single
exception--in addition to the man in the mask--dismissed his servants.
The latter continued their homeward way with the cardinal, whilst the
Duke, taking the man in the mask upon the crupper of his horse and
followed his single attendant, turned and made off in the direction of
the Jewish quarter.
In the morning it was found that Giovanni had not yet returned, and
his uneasy servants informed the Pope of his absence and of the
circumstances of it. The Pope, however, was not at all alarmed.
Explaining his son’s absence in the manner so obviously suggested by
Giovanni’s parting words to Cesare on the previous night, he assumed
that the gay young Duke was on a visit to some complacent lady and that
presently he would return.
Later in the day, however, news was brought that his horse had been
found loose in the streets, in the neighbourhood of the Cardinal of
Parma’s palace, with only one stirrup-leather, the other having clearly
been cut from the saddle, and, at the same time, it was related that the
servant who had accompanied him after he had separated from the rest
had been found at dawn in the Piazza della Giudecca mortally wounded and
beyond speech, expiring soon after his removal to a neighbouring house.
Alarm spread through the Vatican, and the anxious Pope ordered inquiries
to be made in every quarter where it was possible that anything might
be learned. It was in answer to these inquiries that a boatman of the
Schiavoni--one Giorgio by name--came forward with the story of what he
had seen on the night of Wednesday. He had passed the night on board his
boat, on guard over the timber with which she was laden. She was moored
along the bank that runs from the Bridge of Sant’ Angelo to the Church
of Santa Maria Nuova.
He related that at about the fifth hour of the night, just before
daybreak, he had seen two men emerge from the narrow street alongside
the Hospital of San Girolamo, and stand on the river’s brink at the spot
where it was usual for the scavengers to discharge their refuse carts
into the water. These men had looked carefully about, as if to make
sure that they were not being observed. Seeing no one astir, they made a
sign, whereupon a man well mounted on a handsome white horse, his heels
armed with golden spurs, rode out of that same narrow street. Behind
him, on the crupper of his horse, Giorgio beheld the body of a man, the
head hanging in one direction and the legs in the other. This body was
supported there by two other men on foot, who walked on either side of
the horseman.
Arrived at the water’s edge, they turned the horse’s hind-quarters to
the river; then, taking the body between them, two of them swung it well
out into the stream. After the splash, Giorgio had heard the horseman
inquire whether they had thrown well into the middle, and had heard
him receive the affirmative answer--“Signor, Si.” The horseman then sat
scanning the surface a while, and presently pointed out a dark object
floating, which proved to be their victim’s cloak. The men threw stones
at it, and so sank it, whereupon they turned, and all five departed as
they had come.
Such is the boatman’s story, as related in the Diarium of Burchard. When
the Pope had heard it, he asked the fellow why he had not immediately
gone to give notice of what he had witnessed, to which this Giorgio
replied that, in his time, he had seen over a hundred bodies thrown into
the Tiber without ever anybody troubling to know anything about them.
This story and Gandia’s continued absence threw the Pope into a frenzy
of apprehension. He ordered the bed of the river to be searched foot by
foot. Some hundreds of boatmen and fishermen got to work, and on that
same afternoon the body of the ill-fated Duke of Gandia was brought up
in one of the nets. He was not only completely dressed--as was to
have been expected from Giorgio’s story--but his gloves and his purse
containing thirty ducats were still at his belt, as was his dagger, the
only weapon he had carried; the jewels upon his person, too, were all
intact, which made it abundantly clear that his assassination was not
the work of thieves.
His hands were still tied, and there were from ten to fourteen wounds on
his body, in addition to which his throat had been cut.
The corpse was taken in a boat to the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, where it
was stripped, washed, and arrayed in the garments of the Captain-General
of the Church. That same night, on a bier, the body covered with a
mantle of brocade, the face “looking more beautiful than in life,” he
was carried by torchlight from Sant’ Angelo to Santa Maria del Popolo
for burial, quietly and with little pomp.
The Pope’s distress was terrible. As the procession was crossing the
Bridge of Sant’ Angelo, those who stood there heard his awful cries of
anguish, as is related in the dispatches of an eye-witness quoted by
Sanuto. Alexander shut himself up in his apartments with his passionate
sorrow, refusing to see anybody; and it was only by insistence that the
Cardinal of Segovia and some of the Pope’s familiars contrived to gain
admission to his presence; but even then, not for three days could they
induce him to taste food, nor did he sleep.
At last he roused himself, partly in response to the instances of the
Cardinal of Segovia, partly spurred by the desire to avenge the death of
his child, and he ordered Rome to be ransacked for the assassins;
but, although the search was pursued for two months, it proved utterly
fruitless.
That is the oft-told story of the death of the Duke of Gandia. Those are
all the facts concerning it that are known or that ever will be known.
The rest is speculation, and this speculation follows the trend of
malice rather than of evidence.
Suspicion fell at first upon Giovanni Sforza, who was supposed to have
avenged himself thus upon the Pope for the treatment he had received.
There certainly existed that reasonable motive to actuate him, but not a
particle of evidence against him.
Next rumour had it that Cardinal Ascanio Sforza’s was the hand that had
done this work, and with this rumour Rome was busy for months. It was
known that he had quarrelled violently with Gandia, who had been grossly
insulted by a chamberlain of Ascanio’s, and who had wiped out the insult
by having the man seized and hanged.
Sanuto quotes a letter from Rome on July 21, which states that “it is
certain that Ascanio murdered the Duke of Gandia.” Cardinal Ascanio’s
numerous enemies took care to keep the accusation alive at the
Vatican, and Ascanio, in fear for his life, had left Rome and fled to
Grottaferrata. When summoned to Rome, he had refused to come save under
safeconduct. His fears, however, appear to have been groundless, for
the Pope attached no importance to the accusation against him, convinced
of his innocence, as he informed him.
Thereupon public opinion looked about for some other likely person
upon whom to fasten its indictment, and lighted upon Giuffredo Borgia,
Gandia’s youngest brother. Here, again, a motive was not wanting.
Already has mention been made of the wanton ways of Giuffredo’s
Neapolitan wife, Doña Sancia. That she was prodigal of her favours there
is no lack of evidence, and it appears that, amongst those she admitted
to them, was the dead duke. Jealousy, then, it was alleged, was the spur
that had driven Giuffredo to the deed; and that the rumour of this must
have been insistent is clear when we find the Pope publicly exonerating
his youngest son.
Thus matters stood, and thus had public opinion spoken, when in the
month of August the Pope ordered the search for the murderer to cease.
Bracci, the Florentine ambassador, explains this action of Alexander’s.
He writes that his Holiness knew who were the murderers, and that he was
taking no further steps in the matter in the hope that thus, conceiving
themselves to be secure, they might more completely discover themselves.
Bracci’s next letter bears out the supposition that he writes from
inference, and not from knowledge. He repeats that the investigations
have been suspended, and that to account for this some say what already
he has written, whilst others deny it; but that the truth of the matter
is known to none.
Later in the year we find the popular voice denouncing Bartolomeo
d’Alviano and the Orsini. Already in August the Ferrarese ambassador,
Manfredi, had written that the death of the Duke of Gandia was being
imputed to Bartolomeo d’Alviano, and in December we see in Sanuto a
letter from Rome which announces that it is positively stated that the
Orsini had caused the death of Giovanni Borgia.
These various rumours were hardly worth mentioning for their own values,
but they are important as showing how public opinion fastened the crime
in turn upon everybody it could think of as at all likely to have had
cause to commit it, and more important still for the purpose of refuting
what has since been written concerning the immediate connection of
Cesare Borgia with the crime in the popular mind.
Not until February of the following year was the name of Cesare ever
mentioned in connection with the deed. The first rumour of his
guilt synchronized with that of his approaching renunciation of his
ecclesiastical career, and there can be little doubt that the former
sprang from the latter. The world conceived that it had discovered on
Cesare’s part a motive for the murder of his brother. That motive--of
which so very much has been made--shall presently be examined.
Meanwhile, to deal with the actual rumour, and its crystallization into
history. The Ferrarese ambassador heard it in Venice on February 12,
1498. Capello seized upon it, and repeated it two and a half years
later, stating on September 28, 1500: “etiam amazó il fratello.”
And there you have the whole source of all the unbridled accusations
subsequently launched against Cesare, all of which find a prominent
place in Gregorovius’s Geschichte der Stadt Rom, whilst the rumours
accusing others, which we have mentioned here, are there slurred over.
One hesitates to attack the arguments and conclusions of the very
eminent author of that mighty History of Rome in the Middle Ages, but
conscience and justice demand that his chapter upon this subject be
dealt with as it deserves.
The striking talents of Gregorovius are occasionally marred by the
egotism and pedantry sometimes characteristic of the scholars of his
nation. He is too positive; he seldom opines; he asserts with finality
the things that only God can know; occasionally his knowledge,
transcending the possible, quits the realm of the historian for that
of the romancer, as for instance--to cite one amid a thousand--when he
actually tells us what passes in Cesare Borgia’s mind at the coronation
of the King of Naples. In the matter of authorities, he follows a
dangerous and insidious eclecticism, preferring those who support the
point of view which he has chosen, without a proper regard for their
intrinsic values.
He tells us definitely that, if Alexander had not positive knowledge, he
had at least moral conviction that it was Cesare who had killed the
Duke of Gandia. In that, again, you see the God-like knowledge which
he usurps; you see him clairvoyant rather than historical. Starting out
with the positive assertion that Cesare Borgia was the murderer, he sets
himself to prove it by piling up a mass of worthless evidence, whose
worthlessness it is unthinkable he should not have realized.
“According to the general opinion of the day, which in all probability
was correct, Cesare was the murderer of his brother.”
Thus Gregorovius in his Lucrezia Borgia. A deliberate misstatement! For,
as we have been at pains to show, not until the crime had been fastened
upon everybody whom public opinion could conceive to be a possible
assassin, not until nearly a year after Gandia’s death did rumour for
the first time connect Cesare with the deed. Until then the ambassadors’
letters from Rome in dealing with the murder and reporting speculation
upon possible murderers never make a single allusion to Cesare as the
guilty person.
Later, when once it had been bruited, it found its way into the writings
of every defamer of the Borgias, and from several of these it is taken
by Gregorovius to help him uphold that theory.
Two motives were urged for the crime. One was Cesare’s envy of his
brother, whom he desired to supplant as a secular prince, fretting
in the cassock imposed upon himself which restrained his unbounded
ambition. The other--and no epoch but this one under consideration,
in its reaction from the age of chivalry, could have dared to level it
without a careful examination of its sources--was Cesare’s jealousy,
springing from the incestuous love for their sister Lucrezia, which he
is alleged to have disputed with his brother. Thus, as l’Espinois has
pointed out, to convict Cesare Borgia of a crime which cannot absolutely
be proved against him, all that is necessary is that he should be
charged with another crime still more horrible of which even less proof
exists.
This latter motive, it is true, is rejected by Gregorovius. “Our sense
of honesty,” he writes, “repels us from attaching faith to the belief
spread in that most corrupt age.” Yet the authorities urging one motive
are commonly those urging the other, and Gregorovius quotes those that
suit him, without considering that, if he is convinced they lie in one
connection, he has not the right to assume them truthful in another.
The contemporary, or quasi-contemporary writers upon whose “authority”
it is usual to show that Cesare Borgia was guilty of both those
revolting crimes are: Sanazzaro, Capello, Macchiavelli, Matarazzo,
Sanuto, Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, Guicciardini, and Panvinio.
A formidable array! But consider them, one by one, at close quarters,
and take a critical look at what they actually wrote:
SANAZZARO was a Neapolitan poet and epigrammatist, who could not--his
times being what they were--be expected to overlook the fact that
in these slanderous rumours of incest was excellent matter for
epigrammatical verse. Therefore, he crystallized them into lines which,
whilst doing credit to his wit, reveal his brutal cruelty. No one will
seriously suppose that such a man would be concerned with the veracity
of the matter of his verses--even leaving out of the question his enmity
towards the House of Borgia, which will transpire later. For him a ben
trovato was as good matter as a truth, or better. He measured its value
by its piquancy, by its adaptability to epigrammatic rhymes.
Conceive the heartlessness of the man who, at the moment of Alexander’s
awful grief at the murder of his son--a grief which so moved even
his enemies that the bitter Savonarola, and the scarcely less bitter
Cardinal della Rovere, wrote to condole with him--could pen that
terrible epigram:
Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,
Piscaris notum retibus ecce tuum.
Consider the ribaldry of that, and ask yourselves whether this is a man
who would immolate the chance of a witticism upon the altar of Truth.
It is significant that Sanazzaro, for what he may be worth, confines
himself to the gossip of incest. Nowhere does he mention that Cesare was
the murderer, and we think that his silence upon the matter, if it shows
anything, shows that Cesare’s guilt was not so very much the “general
opinion of the day,” as Gregorovius asks us to believe.
CAPPELLO was not in Rome at the time of the murder, nor until three
years later, when he merely repeated the rumour that had first sprung up
some eight months after the crime.
The precise value of his famous “relation” (in which this matter is
recorded, and to which we shall return in its proper place) and the
spirit that actuated him is revealed in another accusation of murder
which he levels at Cesare, an accusation which, of course, has also been
widely disseminated upon no better authority than his own. It is Capello
who tells us that Cesare stabbed the chamberlain Perrotto in the Pope’s
very arms; he adds the details that the man had fled thither for shelter
from Cesare’s fury, and that the blood of him, when he was stabbed,
spurted up into the very face of the Pope. Where he got the story is
not readily surmised--unless it be assumed that he evolved it out of his
feelings for the Borgias. The only contemporary accounts of the death of
this Perrotto--or Pedro Caldes, as was his real name--state that he fell
by accident into the Tiber and was drowned.
Burchard, who could not have failed to know if the stabbing story had
been true, and would not have failed to report it, chronicles the
fact that Perrotto was fished out of Tiber, having fallen in six days
earlier--“non libenter.” This statement, coming from the pen of the
Master of Ceremonies at the Vatican, requires no further corroboration.
Yet corroboration there actually is in a letter from Rome of February
20, 1498, quoted by Marino Sanuto in his Diarii. This states that
Perrotto had been missing for some days, no one knowing what had become
of him, and that now “he has been found drowned in the Tiber.”
We mention this, in passing, with the twofold object of slaying another
calumny, and revealing the true value of Capello, who happens to be the
chief “witness for the prosecution” put forward by Gregorovius. “Is it
not of great significance,” inquires the German historian, “that
the fact should have been related so positively by an ambassador who
obtained his knowledge from the best sources?”
The question is frivolous, for the whole trouble in this matter is that
there were no sources at all, in the proper sense of the word--good or
bad. There was simply gossip, which had been busy with a dozen names
already.
MACCHIAVELLI includes a note in his Extracts from Letters to the Ten, in
which he mentions the death of Gandia, adding that “at first nothing was
known, and then men said it was done by the Cardinal of Valencia.”
There is nothing very conclusive in that. Besides, incidentally it
may be mentioned, that it is not clear when or how these extracts were
compiled by Macchiavelli (in his capacity of Secretary to the Signory
of Florence) from the dispatches of her ambassadors. But it has been
shown--though we are hardly concerned with that at the moment--that
these extracts are confused by comments of his own, either for his own
future use or for that of another.
MATARAZZO is the Perugian chronicler of whom we have already expressed
the only tenable opinion. The task he set himself was to record
the contemporary events of his native town--the stronghold of the
blood-dripping Baglioni. He enlivened it by every scrap of scandalous
gossip that reached him, however alien to his avowed task. The
authenticity of this scandalmongering chronicle has been questioned;
but, even assuming it to be authentic, it is so wildly inaccurate when
dealing with matters happening beyond the walls of Perugia as to be
utterly worthless.
Matarazzo relates the story of the incestuous relations prevailing in
the Borgia family, and with an unsparing wealth of detail not to be
found elsewhere; but on the subject of the murder he has a tale to tell
entirely different from any other that has been left us. For, whilst he
urges the incest as the motive of the crime, the murderer, he tells us,
was Giovanni Sforza, the outraged husband; and he gives us the fullest
details of that murder, time and place and exactly how committed, and
all the other matters which have never been brought to light.
It is all a worthless, garbled piece of fiction, most obviously; as such
it has ever been treated; but it is as plausible as it is untrue, and,
at least, as authoritative as any available evidence assigning the guilt
to Cesare.
SANUTO we accept as a more or less careful and painstaking chronicler,
whose writings are valuable; and Sanuto on the matter of the murder
confines himself to quoting the letter of February 1498, in which the
accusation against Cesare is first mentioned, after having given other
earlier letters which accuse first Ascanio and then Orsini far more
positively than does the latter letter accuse Cesare.
On the matter of the incest there is no word in Sanuto; but there is
mention of Doña Sancia’s indiscretions, and the suggestion that, through
jealousy on her account, it was rumoured that the murder had been
committed--another proof of how vague and ill-defined the rumours were.
PIETRO MARTIRE D’ANGHIERA writes from Burgos, in Spain, that he
is convinced of the fratricide. It is interesting to know of that
conviction of his; but difficult to conceive how it is to be accepted as
evidence.
If more needs to be said of him, let it be mentioned that the letter
in which he expresses that conviction is dated April 1497--two months
before the murder took place! So that even Gregorovius is forced to
doubt the authenticity of that document.
GUICCIARDINI is not a contemporary chronicler of events as they
happened, but an historian writing some thirty years later. He merely
repeats what Capello and others have said before him. It is for him
to quote authorities for what he writes, and not to be set up as an
authority. He is not reliable, and he is a notorious defamer of the
Papacy, sparing nothing that will serve his ends. He dilates with gusto
upon the accusation of incest.
Lastly, PANVINTO is in the same category as Guicciardini. He was not
born until some thirty years after these events, and his History of the
Popes was not written until some sixty years after the murder of the
Duke of Gandia. This history bristles with inaccuracies; he never
troubles to verify his facts, and as an authority he is entirely
negligible.
In the valuable Diarium of Burchard there is unfortunately a lacuna at
this juncture, from the day after the murder (of which he gives the full
particulars to which we have gone for our narrative of that event) until
the month of August following. And now we may see Gregorovius actually
using silence as evidence. He seizes upon that lacuna, and goes so far
as to set up the tentative explanation that Burchard “perhaps purposely
interrupted his Diary that he might avoid mentioning the fratricide.”
If such were the case, it would be a strange departure from Burchard’s
invariable rule, which is one of cold, relentless, uncritical
chronicling of events, no matter what their nature. Besides, any
significance with which that lacuna might be invested is discounted by
the fact that such gaps are of fairly common occurrence in the course
of Burchard’s record. Finally it remains to be shown that the lacuna
in question exists in the original diaries, which have yet to be
discovered.
So much for the valuable authorities, out of which--and by means of a
selection which is not quite clearly defined--Gregorovius claims to have
proved that the murderer of the Duke of Gandia was his brother Cesare
Borgia, Cardinal of Valencia.(1)
1 It is rather odd that, in the course of casting about for a possible
murderer of Gandia, public opinion should never have fastened upon
Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. He had lately been stripped of the
Patrimony of St. Peter that the governorship of this might be bestowed
upon Gandia; his resentment had been provoked by that action of the
Pope’s, and the relations between himself and the Borgias were strained
in consequence. Possibly there was clear proof that he could have had no
connection with the crime.
Now to examine more closely the actual motives given by those
authorities and by later, critical writers, for attributing the guilt to
Cesare.
In September of the year 1497, the Pope had dissolved the marriage
of his daughter Lucrezia and Giovanni Sforza, and the grounds for
the dissolution were that the husband was impotens et frigidus
natura--admitted by himself.(2)
2 “El S. de Pesaro ha scripto qua de sua mano non haverla mai
cognosciuta et esser impotente, alias la sententia non se potea dare. El
prefato S. dice pero haver scripto cosi per obedire el Duca de Milano et
Aschanio” (Collenuccio’s letter from Rome to the Duke of Ferrara, Dec.
25, 1497).
If you know anything of the Italy of to-day, you will be able to
conceive for yourself how the Italy of the fifteenth century must have
held her sides and pealed her laughter at the contemptible spectacle of
an unfortunate who afforded such reason to be bundled out of a nuptial
bed. The echo of that mighty burst of laughter must have rung from
Calabria to the Alps, and well may it have filled the handsome weakling
who was the object of its cruel ridicule with a talion fury. The
weapons he took up wherewith to defend himself were a little obvious. He
answered the odious reflections upon his virility by a wholesale charge
of incest against the Borgia family; he screamed that what had been said
of him was a lie invented by the Borgias to serve their own unutterable
ends.(1) Such was the accusation with which the squirming Lord of Pesaro
retaliated, and, however obvious, yet it was not an accusation that
the world of his day would lightly cast aside, for all that the
perspicacious may have rated it at its proper value.
1 “Et mancho se e curato de fare prova de qua con Done per poterne
chiarire el Rev. Legato che era qua, sebbene sua Excellentia tastandolo
sopra cio gli ne abbia facto offerta.” And further: “Anzi haverla
conosciuta infinite volte, ma chel Papa non geiha tolta per altro se
non per usare con lei” (Costabili’s letter from Milan to the Duke of
Ferrara, June 23, 1497).
What is of great importance to students of the history of the Borgias is
that this was the first occasion on which the accusation of incest was
raised. Of course it persisted; such a charge could not do otherwise.
But now that we see in what soil it had its roots we shall know what
importance to attach to it.
Not only did it persist, but it developed, as was but natural. Cesare
and the dead Gandia were included in it, and presently it suggested
a motive--not dreamed of until then--why Cesare might have been his
brother’s murderer.
Then, early in 1498, came the rumour that Cesare was intending to
abandon the purple, and later Writers, from Capello down to our own
times, have chosen to see in Cesare’s supposed contemplation of that
step a motive so strong for the crime as to prove it in the most
absolutely conclusive manner. In no case could it be such proof, even
if it were admitted as a motive. But is it really so to be admitted? Did
such a motive exist at all? Does it really follow--as has been taken
for granted--that Cesare must have remained an ecclesiastic had Gandia
lived? We cannot see that it does. Indeed, such evidence as there is,
when properly considered, points in the opposite direction, even if no
account is taken of the fact that this was not the first occasion on
which it was proposed that Cesare should abandon the ecclesiastical
career, as is shown by the Ferrarese ambassador’s dispatches of March
1493.
It is contended that Gandia was a stumbling-block to Cesare, and that
Gandia held the secular possessions which Cesare coveted; but if that
were really the case why, when eventually (some fourteen months after
Gandia’s death) Cesare doffed the purple to replace it by a soldier’s
harness, did he not assume the secular possessions that had been his
brother’s?
His dead brother’s lands and titles went to his dead brother’s son,
whilst Cesare’s career was totally different, as his aims were totally
different, from any that had been Gandia’s, or that might have been
Gandia’s had the latter lived. True, Cesare became Captain-General of
the Church in his dead brother’s place; but for that his brother’s death
was not necessary. Gandia had neither the will nor the intellect
to undertake the things that awaited Cesare. He was a soft-natured,
pleasure-loving youth, whose way of life was already mapped out for him.
His place was at Gandia, in Spain, and, whilst he might have continued
lord of all the possessions that were his, it would have been Cesare’s
to become Duke of Valentinois, and to have made himself master of
Romagna, precisely as he did.
In conclusion, Gandia’s death no more advanced, than his life could have
impeded, the career which Cesare afterwards made his own, and to say
that Cesare murdered him to supplant him is to set up a theory which the
subsequent facts of Cesare’s life will nowise justify.
It is idle of Gregorovius to say that the logic of the crime is
inexorable--in its assigning the guilt to Cesare--fatuous of him to
suppose that, as he claims, he has definitely proved Cesare to be his
brother’s murderer.
There is much against Cesare Borgia, but it never has been proved, and
never will be proved, that he was a fratricide. Indeed the few really
known facts of the murder all point to a very different conclusion--a
conclusion more or less obvious, which has been discarded, presumably
for no better reason than because it was obvious.
Where was all this need to go so far afield in quest of a probable
murderer imbued with political motives? Where the need to accuse in turn
every enemy that Gandia could possibly possess before finally fastening
upon his own brother?
Certain evidence is afforded by the known facts of the case, scant as
they are. It may not amount to much, but at least it is sufficient
to warrant a plausible conclusion, and there is no justification
for discarding it in favour of something for which not a particle of
evidence is forthcoming.
There is, first of all, the man in the mask to be accounted for. That
he is connected with the crime is eminently probable, if not absolutely
certain.
It is to be remembered that for a month--according to Burchard--he
had been in the habit of visiting Gandia almost daily. He comes to
Vannozza’s villa on the night of the murder. Is it too much to suppose
that he brought a message from some one from whom he was in the habit of
bringing messages?
He was seen last on the crupper of Gandia’s horse as the latter rode
away towards the Jewish quarter.(1) Gandia himself announced that he was
bound on pleasure--going to amuse himself. Even without the knowledge
which we possess of his licentious habits, no doubt could arise as to
the nature of the amusement upon which he was thus bound at dead of
night; and there are the conclusions formed in the morning by his
father, when it was found that Gandia had not returned.
1 The Ghetto was not yet in existence. It was not built until 1556,
under Paul IV.
Is it so very difficult to conceive that Gandia, in the course of the
assignation to which he went, should have fallen into the hands of
an irate father, husband, or brother? Is it not really the obvious
inference to draw from the few facts that we possess? That it was the
inference drawn by the Pope and clung to even some time after the
crime and while rumours of a different sort were rife, is shown by the
perquisition made in the house of Antonio Pico della Mirandola, who had
a daughter whom it was conceived might have been the object of the young
duke’s nocturnal visit, and whose house was near the place where Gandia
was flung into the Tiber.
We could hazard speculations that would account for the man in the mask,
but it is not our business to speculate save where the indications are
fairly clear.
Let us consider the significance of Gandia’s tied hands and the wounds
upon his body in addition to the mortal gash across his throat. To what
does this condition point? Surely not to a murder of expediency so much
as to a fierce, lustful butchery of vengeance. Surely it suggests that
Gandia may have been tortured before his throat was cut. Why else were
his wrists pinioned? Had he been swiftly done to death there would have
been no need for that. Had hired assassins done the work they would not
have stayed to pinion him, nor do we think they would have troubled to
fling him into the river; they would have slain and left him where he
fell.
The whole aspect of the case suggests the presence of the master, of the
personal enemy himself. We can conceive Gandia’s wrists being tied, to
the end that this personal enemy might do his will upon the wretched
young man, dealing him one by one the ten or fourteen wounds in the body
before making an end of him by cutting his throat. We cannot explain
the pinioned wrists in any other way. Then the man on the handsome white
horse, the man whom the four others addressed as men address their lord.
Remember his gold spurs--a trifle, perhaps; but hired assassins do not
wear gold spurs, even though their bestriding handsome white horses may
be explainable.
Surely that was the master, the personal enemy himself--and it was not
Cesare, for Cesare at the time was at the Vatican.
There we must leave the mystery of the murder of the Duke of Gandia; but
we leave it convinced that, such scant evidence as there is, points to
an affair of sordid gallantry, and nowise implicates his brother Cesare.
CHAPTER V. THE RENUNCIATION OF THE PURPLE
At the Consistory of June 19, 1497 the Sacred College beheld a
broken-hearted old man who declared that he had done with the world, and
that henceforth life could offer him nothing that should endear it to
him.
“A greater sorrow than this could not be ours, for we loved him
exceedingly, and now we can hold neither the Papacy nor any other thing
as of concern. Had we seven Papacies, we would give them all to restore
the duke to life.” So ran his bitter lament.
He denounced his course of life as not having been all that it should
have been, and appeared to see in the murder of his son a punishment
for the evil of his ways. Much has been made of this, and quite
unnecessarily. It has been taken eagerly as an admission of his
unparalleled guilt. An admission of guilt it undoubtedly was; but what
man is not guilty? and how many men--ay, and saints even--in the hour of
tribulation have cried out that they were being made to feel the wrath
of God for the sins that no man is without?
If humanity contains a type that would not have seen in such a cause for
sorrow a visitation of God, it is the type of inhuman monster to
which we are asked to believe that Alexander VI belonged. A sinner
unquestionably he was, and a great one; but a human sinner, and not an
incarnate devil, else there could have been no such outcry from him in
such an hour as this.
He announced that henceforth the spiritual needs of the Church should be
his only care. He inveighed against the corruption of the ecclesiastical
estate, confessing himself aware of how far it had strayed from the
ancient discipline and from the laws that had been framed to bridle
licence and cupidity, which were now rampant and unchecked; and he
proclaimed his intention to reform the Curia and the Church of Rome. To
this end he appointed a commission consisting of the Cardinal-Bishops
Oliviero Caraffa and Giorgio Costa, the Cardinal-Priests Antonietto
Pallavicino and Gianantonio Sangiorgio, and the Cardinal-Deacons
Francesco Piccolomini and Raffaele Riario.
There was even a suggestion that he was proposing to abdicate, but that
he was prevailed upon to do nothing until his grief should have abated
and his judgement be restored to its habitual calm. This suggestion,
however, rests upon no sound authority.
Letters of condolence reached him on every hand. Even his arch-enemy,
Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, put aside his rancour in the face of the
Pope’s overwhelming grief--and also because it happened to consort with
his own interests, as will presently transpire. He wrote to Alexander
from France that he was truly pained to the very soul of him in his
concern for the Pope’s Holiness--a letter which, no doubt, laid the
foundations to the reconciliation that was toward between them.
Still more remarkable was it that the thaumaturgical Savonarola should
have paused in the atrabilious invective with which he was inflaming
Florence against the Pope, should have paused to send him a letter of
condolence in which he prayed that the Lord of all mercy might comfort
his Holiness in his tribulation.
That letter is a singular document; singularly human, yielding a
singular degree of insight into the nature of the man who penned it.
A whole chapter of intelligent speculation upon the character of
Savonarola, based upon a study of externals, could not reveal as much of
the mentality of that fanatical demagogue as the consideration of just
this letter.
The sympathy by which we cannot doubt it to have been primarily inspired
is here overspread by the man’s rampant fanaticism, there diluted by the
prophecies from which he cannot even now refrain; and, throughout, the
manner is that of the pulpit-thumping orator. The first half of his
letter is a prelude in the form of a sermon upon Faith, all very trite
and obvious; and the notion of this excommunicated friar holding forth
to the Pope’s Holiness in polemical platitudes delivered with all the
authority of inspired discoveries of his own is one more proof that at
the root of fanaticism in all ages and upon all questions, lies an utter
lack of a sense of fitness and proportion. Having said that “the just
man liveth in the Lord by faith,” and that “the Lord in His mercy
passeth over all our sins,” he proclaims that he announces things
of which he is assured, and for which he is ready to suffer all
persecutions, and begs his Holiness to turn a favourable eye upon the
work of faith in which he is labouring, and to give heed no more to the
impious, promising the Holy Father that thus shall the Lord bestow upon
him the essence of joy instead of the spirit of grief. Having begun, as
we have seen, with an assurance that “the Lord in His mercy passeth over
all our sins,” he concludes by prophesying, with questionable logic,
that “the thunders of His wrath will ere long be heard.” Nor does he
omit to mention--with an apparent arrogance that again betrays that same
want of a sense of proportion--that all his predictions are true.
His letter, however, and that of Cardinal della Rovere, among so
many others, show us how touched was the world by the Pope’s loss and
overwhelming grief, how shocked at the manner in which this had been
brought about.
The commission which Alexander had appointed for the work of reform had
meanwhile got to work, and the Cardinal of Naples edited the articles of
a constitution which was undoubtedly the object of prolonged study and
consideration, as is revealed by the numerous erasures and emendations
which it bears. Unfortunately--for reasons which are not apparent--it
was never published by Alexander. Possibly by the time that it was
concluded the aggrandizement of the temporal power was claiming his
entire attention to the neglect of the spiritual needs of the Holy See.
It is also possible--as has been abundantly suggested--that the stern
mood of penitence had softened with his sorrow, and was now overpast.
Nevertheless, it may have been some lingering remnant of this fervour of
reform that dictated the severe punishment which fell that year upon the
flagitious Bishop of Cosenza. A fine trade was being driven in Rome by
the sale of forged briefs of indulgence. Raynaldus cites a Bull on that
score addressed by Alexander, in the first year of his pontificate, to
the bishops of Spain, enjoining them to visit with punishment all who
in that kingdom should be discovered to be pursuing such a traffic. On
September 4, 1497, Burchard tells us, three servants of the Pontifical
Secretary, the Archbishop of Cosenza (Bartolomeo Florido) were arrested
in consequence of the discovery of twenty forged briefs issued by them.
In their examination they incriminated their master the archbishop, who
was consequently put upon his trial and found guilty. Alexander deposed,
degraded, and imprisoned him in Sant’ Angelo in a dark room, where
he was supplied with oil for his lamp and bread and water for his
nourishment until he died. His underlings were burnt in the Campo di
Fiori in the following month.
The Duke of Gandia left a widow and two children--Giovanni, a boy of
three years of age, and Isabella, a girl of two. In the interests of
her son, the widowed duchess applied to the Governor of Valencia in
the following September for the boy’s investiture in the rights of his
deceased father. This was readily granted upon authority from Rome, and
so the boy Giovanni was recognized as third Duke of Gandia, Prince
of Sessa and Teano, and Lord of Cerignola and Montefoscolo, and the
administration of his estates during his minority was entrusted to his
uncle, Cesare Borgia.
The Lordship of Benevento--the last grant made to Giovanni Borgia--was
not mentioned; nor was it then nor ever subsequently claimed by the
widow. It is the one possession of Gandia’s that went to Cesare, who was
confirmed in it by the King of Naples.
The Gandia branch of the Borgia family remained in Spain, prospered and
grew in importance, and, incidentally, produced St. Francis de Borgia.
This Duke of Gandia was Master of the Household to Charles V, and thus
a man of great worldly consequence; but it happened that he was so moved
by the sight of the disfigured body of his master’s beautiful queen
that he renounced the world and entered the Society of Jesus, eventually
becoming its General. He died in 1562, and in the fulness of time was
canonized.
Cesare’s departure for Naples as legate a latere to anoint and crown
Federigo of Aragon was naturally delayed by the tragedy that had
assailed his house, and not until July 22 did he take his leave of the
Pope and set out with an escort of two hundred horse.
Naples was still in a state of ferment, split into two parties, one of
which favoured France and the other Aragon, so that disturbances were
continual. Alexander expressed the hope that Cesare might appear in that
distracted kingdom in the guise of an “angel of peace,” and that by his
coronation of King Federigo he should set a term to the strife that was
toward.
The city of Naples itself was now being ravaged by fever, and in
consequence of this it was determined that Cesare should repair instead
to Capua, where Federigo would await him. Arrived there, however, Cesare
fell ill, and the coronation ceremony again suffered a postponement
until August 10. Cesare remained a fortnight in the kingdom, and on
August 22 set out to return to Rome, and his departure appears to have
been a matter of relief to Federigo, for so impoverished did the King
of Naples find himself that the entertainment of the legate and his
numerous escort had proved a heavy tax upon his flabby purse.
On the morning of September 6 all the cardinals in Rome received a
summons to attend at the Monastery of Santa Maria Nuova to welcome the
returned Cardinal of Valencia. In addition to the Sacred College all the
ambassadors of the Powers were present, and, after the celebration of
the Mass, the entire assembly proceeded to the Vatican, where the
Pope was waiting to receive his son. When the young cardinal presented
himself at the foot of the papal throne Alexander opened his arms to
him, embraced, and kissed him, speaking no word.
This rests upon the evidence of two eye-witnesses,(1) and the
circumstance has been urged and propounded into the one conclusive piece
of evidence that Cesare had murdered his brother, and that the Pope knew
it. In this you have some more of what Gregorovius terms “inexorable
logic.” He kissed him, but he spake no word to him; therefore, they
reason, Cesare murdered Gandia. Can absurdity be more absurd, fatuity
more fatuous? Lucus a non lucendo! To square the circle should surely
present no difficulty to these subtle logicians.
1 “Non dixit verbum Pape Valentinus, nec Papa sibi, sed eo deosculato,
descendit de solio” (Burchard’s Diarium, and “Solo lo bació,” in letter
from Rome in Sanuto’s Diarii)
It was, as we have seen, in February of 1498 that it was first rumoured
that Cesare intended to put off the purple; and that the rumour had
ample foundation was plain from the circumstance that the Pope was
already laying plans whose fulfilment must be dependent upon that step,
and seeking to arrange a marriage for Cesare with Carlotta of Aragon,
King Federigo of Naples’s daughter, stipulating that her dowry should
be such that Cesare, in taking her to wife, should become Prince of
Altamura and Tarentum.
But Federigo showed himself unwilling, possibly in consideration of
the heavy dowry demanded and of the heavy draft already made by the
Borgias--through Giuffredo Borgia, Prince of Squillace--upon this Naples
which the French invasion had so impoverished. He gave out that he would
not have his daughter wedded to a priest who was the son of a priest and
that he would not give his daughter unless the Pope could contrive that
a cardinal might marry and yet retain his hat.
It all sounded as if he were actuated by nice scruples and high
principles; but the opinion is unfortunately not encouraged when we
find him, nevertheless, giving his consent to the marriage of his nephew
Alfonso to Lucrezia Borgia upon the pronouncement of her divorce from
Giovanni Sforza. The marriage, let us say in passing, was celebrated
at the Vatican on June 20, 1498, Lucrezia receiving a dowry of 40,000
ducats. But the astute Alexander saw to it that his family should
acquire more than it gave, and contrived that Alfonso should receive the
Neapolitan cities of Biselli and Quadrata, being raised to the title of
Prince of Biselli.
Nevertheless, there was a vast difference between giving in marriage a
daughter who must take a weighty dowry out of the kingdom and receiving
a daughter who would bring a handsome dowry with her. And the facts
suggest that such was the full measure of Federigo’s scruples.
Meanwhile, to dissemble his reluctance to let Cesare have his daughter
to wife, Federigo urged that he must first take the feeling of Ferdinand
and Isabella in this matter.
While affairs stood thus, Charles VIII died suddenly at Amboise in April
of that year 1498. Some work was being carried out there by artists whom
he had brought from Naples for the purpose, and, in going to visit this,
the king happened to enter a dark gallery, and struck his forehead so
violently against the edge of a door that he expired the same day--at
the age of twenty-eight. He was a poor, malformed fellow, as we have
seen, and “of little understanding,” Commines tells us, “but so good
that it would have been impossible to have found a kinder creature.”
With him the Valois dynasty came to an end. He was succeeded by his
cousin, the Duke of Orleans, who, upon his coronation at Rheims, assumed
the title of King of France and the Two Sicilies and Duke of Milan--a
matter which considerably perturbed Federigo of Aragon and Lodovico
Sforza. Each of these rulers saw in that assumption of his own title by
Louis XII a declaration of enmity, the prelude to a declaration of open
war; wherefore, deeming it idle to send their ambassadors to represent
them at the Court of France, they refrained from doing so.
Louis XII’s claim upon the Duchy of Milan was based upon his being the
grandson of Valentina Visconti, and, considering himself a Visconti, he
naturally looked upon the Sforza dominion as no better than a usurpation
which too long had been left undisturbed. To disturb it now was the
first aim of his kingship. And to this end, as well as in another
matter, the friendship of the Pope was very desirable to Louis.
The other matter concerned his matrimonial affairs. No sooner did he
find himself King of France than he applied to Rome for the dissolution
of his marriage with Jeanne de Valois, the daughter of Louis XI. The
grounds he urged were threefold: Firstly, between himself and Jeanne
there existed a relationship of the fourth degree and a spiritual
affinity, resulting from the fact that her father, Louis XI, had
held him at the baptismal font--which before the Council of Trent
did constitute an impediment to marriage. Secondly, he had not been a
willing party to the union, but had entered into it as a consequence of
intimidation from the terrible Louis XI, who had threatened his life
and possessions if not obeyed in this. Thirdly, Jeanne laboured under
physical difficulties which rendered her incapable of maternity.
Of such a nature was the appeal he made to Alexander, and Alexander
responded by appointing a commission presided over by the Cardinal of
Luxembourg, and composed of that same cardinal and the Bishops of Albi
and Ceuta, assisted by five other bishops as assessors, to investigate
the king’s grievance. There appears to be no good reason for assuming
that the inquiry was not conducted fairly and honourably or that the
finding of the bishops and ultimate annulment of the marriage was not in
accordance with their consciences. We are encouraged to assume that all
this was indeed so, when we consider that Jeanne de Valois submitted
without protest to the divorce, and that neither then nor subsequently
at any time did she prefer any complaint, accepting the judgement, it is
presumable, as a just and fitting measure.
She applied to the Pope for permission to found a religious order, whose
special aim should be the adoration and the emulation of the perfections
of the Blessed Virgin, a permission which Alexander very readily
accorded her. He was, himself, imbued with a very special devotion for
the Mother of the Saviour. We see the spur of this special devotion of
his in the votive offering of a silver effigy to her famous altar of the
Santissima Nunziata in Florence, which he had promised in the event of
Rome being freed from Charles VIII. Again, after the accident of the
collapse of a roof in the Vatican, in which he narrowly escaped death,
it is to Santa Maria Nuova that we see him going in procession to hold
a solemn thanksgiving service to Our Lady. In a dozen different ways
did that devotion find expression during his pontificate; and be it
remembered that Catholics owe it to Alexander VI that the Angelus-bell
is rung thrice daily in honour of the Blessed Virgin.
To us this devotion to the Mother of Chastity on the part of a churchman
openly unchaste in flagrant subversion of his vows is a strange and
incongruous spectacle. But the incongruity of it is illumining. It
reveals Alexander’s simple attitude towards the sins of the flesh,
and shows how, in common with most churchmen of his day, he found no
conscientious difficulty in combining fervid devotion with perfervid
licence. Whatever it may seem by ours, by his lights--by the light of
the examples about him from his youth, by the light of the precedents
afforded him by his predecessors in St. Peter’s Chair--his conduct was
a normal enough affair, which can have afforded him little with which to
reproach himself.
In the matter of the annulment of the marriage of Louis XII it is to
be conceded that Alexander made the most of the opportunity it afforded
him. He perceived that the moment was propitious for enlisting the
services of the King of France to the achievement of his own ends, more
particularly to further the matter of the marriage of Cesare Borgia
with Carlotta of Aragon, who was being reared at the Court of France.
Accordingly Alexander desired the Bishop of Ceuta to lay his wishes in
the matter before the Christian King, and, to the end that Cesare might
find a fitting secular estate awaiting him when eventually he emerged
from the clergy, the Pope further suggested to Louis, through the
bishop’s agency, that Cesare should receive the investiture of the
counties of Valentinois and Dyois in Dauphiny. On the face of it this
wears the look of inviting bribery. In reality it scarcely amounted
to so much, although the opportunism that prompted the request is
undeniable. Yet it is worthy of consideration that in what concerned the
counties of Valentinois and Dyois, the Pope’s suggestion constituted
a wise political step. These territories had been in dispute between
France and the Holy See for a matter of some two hundred years, during
which the Popes had been claiming dominion over them. The claims had
been admitted by Louis XI, who had relinquished the counties to the
Church; but shortly after his death the Parliament of Dauphiny had
restored them to the crown of France. Charles VIII and Innocent VIII had
wrangled over them, and an arbitration was finally projected, but never
held.
Alexander now perceived a way to solve the difficulty by a compromise
which should enrich his son and give the latter a title to replace that
of cardinal which he was to relinquish. So his proposal to Louis XII was
that the Church should abandon its claim upon the territories, whilst
the king, raising Valentinois to the dignity of a duchy, should so
confer it upon Cesare Borgia.
Although the proposal was politically sound, it constituted at the same
time an act of flagrant nepotism. But let us bear in mind that Alexander
did not lack a precedent for this particular act. When Louis XI had
surrendered Valentinois to Sixtus IV, this Pope had bestowed it upon
his nephew Girolamo, thereby vitiating any claim that the Holy See
might subsequently have upon the territory. We judge it--under the
circumstances that Louis XI had surrendered it to the Church--to be a
far more flagrant piece of nepotism than was Alexander’s now.
Louis XII, nothing behind the Pope in opportunism, saw in the concession
asked of him the chance of acquiring Alexander’s good-will. He
consented, accompanying his consent by a request for a cardinal’s hat
for Georges d’Amboise, Bishop of Rouen, who had been his devoted friend
in less prosperous times, and the sharer of his misfortunes under
the previous reign, and was now his chief counsellor and minister. In
addition he besought--dependent, of course, upon the granting of
the solicited divorce--a dispensation to marry Anne of Brittany, the
beautiful widow of Charles VIII. This was Louis’s way of raising the
price, as it were, of the concession and services asked of him; yet,
that there might be no semblance of bargaining, his consent to Cesare’s
being created Duke of Valentinois was simultaneous with his request for
further favours.
With the Royal Patents conferring that duchy upon the Pope’s son, Louis
de Villeneuve reached Rome on August 7, 1498. On the same day the young
cardinal came before the Sacred College, assembled in Consistory, to
crave permission to doff the purple.
After the act of adoration of the Pope’s Holiness, he humbly submitted
to his brother cardinals that his inclinations had ever been in
opposition to his embracing the ecclesiastical dignity, and that, if he
had entered upon it at all, this had been solely at the instances of his
Holiness, just as he had persevered in it to gratify him; but that, his
inclinations and desires for the secular estate persisting, he implored
the Holy Father, of his clemency, to permit him to put off his habit and
ecclesiastical rank, to restore his hat and benefices to the Church, and
to grant him dispensation to return to the world and be free to contract
marriage. And he prayed the very reverend cardinals to use their good
offices on his behalf, adding to his own their intercessions to the
Pope’s Holiness to accord him the grace he sought.
The cardinals relegated the decision of the matter to the Pope. Cardinal
Ximenes alone--as the representative of Spain--stood out against the
granting of the solicited dispensation, and threw obstacles in the way
of it. In this, no doubt, he obeyed his instructions from Ferdinand and
Isabella, who saw to the bottom of the intrigue with France that was
toward, and of the alliance that impended between Louis XII and the Holy
See--an alliance not at all to the interests of Spain.
The Pope made a speedy rout of the cardinal’s objections with the most
apostolic and irresistible of all weapons. He pointed out that it was
not for him to hinder the Cardinal of Valencia’s renunciation of the
purple, since that renunciation was clearly become necessary for the
salvation of his soul--“Pro salutae animae suae”--to which, of course,
Ximenes had no answer.
But, with the object of conciliating Spain, this ever-politic Pope
indicated that, if Cesare was about to become a prince of France, his
many ecclesiastical benefices, yielding some 35,000 gold florins yearly,
being mostly in Spain, would be bestowed upon Spanish churchmen, and he
further begged Ximenes to remember that he already had a “nephew” at the
Court of Spain in the person of the heir of Gandia, whom he particularly
commended to the favour of Ferdinand and Isabella.
Thus was Cesare Borgia’s petition granted, and his return to the world
accomplished. And, by a strange chance of homonymy, his title remained
unchanged despite his change of estate. The Cardinal of Valencia, in
Spain, became the Duke of Valence--or Valentinois--in France and in
Italy Valentino remained Valentino.
BOOK III. THE BULL RAMPANT
“Cum numine Caesaris omen.”
(motto on Cesare Borgia’s sword.)
CHAPTER I. THE DUCHESS OF VALENTINOIS
King Louis XII dispatched the Sieur de Sarenon by sea, with a fleet of
three ships and five galleys, to the end that he should conduct the
new duke to France, which fleet was delayed so that it did not drop its
anchors at Ostia until the end of September.
Meanwhile, Cesare’s preparations for departure had been going forward,
and were the occasion of a colossal expenditure on the part of his sire.
For the Pope desired that his son, in going to France to assume his
estate, and for the further purposes of marrying a wife, of conveying
to Louis the dispensation permitting his marriage with Anne of Brittany,
and of bearing the red hat to Amboise, should display the extraordinary
magnificence for which the princes of cultured and luxurious Italy were
at the time renowned.
His suite consisted of fully a hundred attendants, what with
esquires, pages, lacqueys and grooms, whilst twelve chariots and fifty
sumpter-mules were laden with his baggage. The horses of his followers
were all sumptuously caparisoned with bridles and stirrups of solid
silver; and, for the rest, the splendour of the liveries, the weapons
and the jewels, and the richness of the gifts he bore with him were the
amazement even of that age of dazzling displays.
In Cesare’s train went Ramiro de Lorqua, the Master of his Household;
Agabito Gherardi, his secretary; and his Spanish physician, Gaspare
Torella--the only medical man of his age who had succeeded in
discovering a treatment for the pudendagra which the French had left in
Italy, and who had dedicated to Cesare his learned treatise upon that
disease.
As a body-guard, or escort of honour, Cesare took with him thirty
gentlemen, mostly Romans, among whom were Giangiordano Orsini, Pietro
Santa Croce, Mario di Mariano, Domenico Sanguigna, Giulio Alberini,
Bartolomeo Capranica, and Gianbattista Mancini--all young, and all
members of those patrician families which Alexander VI had skilfully
attached to his own interest.
The latest of these was the Orsini family, with which an alliance was
established by the marriage celebrated at the Vatican on September 28 of
that same year between Fabio Orsini and Girolama Borgia, a niece of the
Pope’s.
Cesare’s departure took place on October 1, in the early morning, when
he rode out with his princely retinue, and followed the Tiber along
Trastevere, without crossing the city. He was mounted on a handsome
charger, caparisoned in red silk and gold brocade--the colours of
France, in which he had also dressed his lacqueys. He wore a doublet
of white damask laced with gold, and carried a mantle of black velvet
swinging from his shoulders. Of black velvet, too, was the cap on his
auburn head, its sable colour an effective background for the ruddy
effulgence of the great rubies--“as large as beans”--with which it was
adorned.
Of the gentlemen who followed him, the Romans were dressed in the French
mode, like himself, whilst the Spaniards adhered to the fashions of
their native Spain.
He was escorted as far as the end of the Banchi by four cardinals, and
from a window of the Vatican the Pope watched the imposing cavalcade
and followed it with his eyes until it was lost to view, weeping, we
are told, for very joy at the contemplation of the splendour and
magnificence which it had been his to bestow upon his beloved son--“the
very heart of him,” as he wrote to the King of France in that letter of
which Cesare was the bearer.
On October 12 the Duke of Valentinois landed at Marseilles, where he was
received by the Bishop of Dijon, whom the king had sent to meet him, and
who now accompanied the illustrious visitor to Avignon. There Cesare
was awaited by the Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. This prelate was now
anxious to make his peace with Alexander--and presently we shall look
into the motives that probably inspired him, a matter which has so far,
we fancy, escaped criticism for reasons that we shall also strive to
make apparent. To the beginnings of a reconciliation with the Pontiff
afforded by his touching letter of condolence on the death of the Duke
of Gandia, he now added a very cordial reception and entertainment of
Cesare; and throughout his sojourn in France the latter received at
the hands of della Rovere the very friendliest treatment, the cardinal
missing no opportunity of working in the duke’s interests and for the
advancement of his ends.
The Pope wrote to the cardinal commending Cesare to his good graces, and
the cardinal replied with protestations which he certainly proceeded to
make good.
Della Rovere was to escort Cesare to the king, who was with his Court
then at Chinon, awaiting the completion of the work that was being
carried out at his Castle of Blois, which presently became his chief
residence. But Cesare appears to have tarried in Avignon, for he was
still there at the end of October, nor did he reach Chinon until the
middle of December. The pomp of his entrance was a thing stupendous. We
find a detailed relation of it in Brantôme, translated into prose
form some old verses which, he tells us, that he found in the family
treasury. He complains of their coarseness, and those who are acquainted
with the delightful old Frenchman’s own frankness of expression may
well raise their brows at that criticism of his. Whatever the coarse
liberties taken with the subject--of which we are not allowed more than
an occasional glimpse--and despite the fact that the relation was
in verse, which ordinarily makes for the indulgence of the rhymer’s
fancy--the description appears to be fairly accurate, for it corresponds
more or less with the particulars given in Sanuto.
At the head of the cavalcade went twenty-four sumpter-mules, laden with
coffers and other baggage under draperies embroidered with Cesare’s
arms--prominent among which would be the red bull, the emblem of his
house, and the three-pointed flame, his own particular device. Behind
these came another twenty-four mules, caparisoned in the king’s colours
of scarlet and gold, to be followed in their turn by sixteen beautiful
chargers led by hand, similarly caparisoned, and their bridles and
stirrups of solid silver. Next came eighteen pages on horseback, sixteen
of whom were in scarlet and yellow, whilst the remaining two were in
cloth of gold. These were followed by a posse of lacqueys in the same
liveries and two mules laden with coffers draped with cloth of gold,
which contained the gifts of which Cesare was the bearer. Behind these
rode the duke’s thirty gentlemen, in cloth of gold and silver, and
amongst them came the duke himself.
Cesare was mounted on a superb war-horse that was all empanoplied in a
cuirass of gold leaves of exquisite workmanship, its head surmounted
by a golden artichoke, its tail confined in a net of gold abundantly
studded with pearls. The duke was in black velvet, through the slashings
of which appeared the gold brocade of the undergarment. Suspended from
a chain said by Brantôme’s poet to be worth thirty thousand ducats, a
medallion of diamonds blazed upon his breast, and in his black velvet
cap glowed those same wonderful rubies that we saw on the occasion of
his departure from Rome. His boots were of black velvet, laced with gold
thread that was studded with gems.
The rear of the cavalcade was brought up by more mules and the chariots
bearing his plate and tents and all the other equipage with which a
prince was wont to travel.
It is said by some that his horse was shod with solid gold, and there is
also a story--pretty, but probably untrue--that some of his mules were
shod in the same metal, and that, either because the shoes were loosely
attached of intent, or because the metal, being soft, parted readily
from the hoofs, these golden shoes were freely cast and left as largesse
for those who might care to take them.
The Bishop of Rouen--that same Georges d’Amboise for whom he was
bringing the red hat--the Seneschal of Toulouse and several gentlemen
of the Court went to meet him on the bridge, and escorted him up through
the town to the castle, where the king awaited him. Louis XII gave him
a warm and cordial welcome, showing him then and thereafter the
friendliest consideration. Not so, however, the lady he was come to woo.
It was said in Venice that she was in love with a young Breton gentleman
in the following of Queen Anne. Whether this was true, and Carlotta
acted in the matter in obedience to her own feelings, or whether she
was merely pursuing the instructions she had received from Naples, she
obstinately and absolutely refused to entertain or admit the suit of
Cesare.
Della Rovere, on January 18, wrote to the Pope from Nantes, whither the
Court had moved, a letter in which he sang the praises of the young Duke
of Valentinois.
“By his modesty his readiness, his prudence, and his other virtues he
has known how to earn the affections of every one.” Unfortunately, there
was one important exception, as the cardinal was forced to add: “The
damsel, either out of her own contrariness, or because so induced by
others, which is easier to believe, constantly refuses to hear of the
wedding.”
Della Rovere was quite justified in finding it easier to believe that
Carlotta was acting upon instructions from others, for, when hard
pressed to consent to the alliance, she demanded that the Neapolitan
ambassador should himself say that her father desired her to do so--a
statement which, it seems, the ambassador could not bring himself to
make.
Baffled by the persistence of that refusal, Cesare all but returned a
bachelor to Italy. So far, indeed, was his departure a settled matter
that in February of 1489, at the Castle of Loches, he received the
king’s messages for the Pope. Yet Louis hesitated to let him go without
having bound his Holiness to his own interests by stronger bonds.
In the task of tracing the annals of the Borgias, the honest seeker
after truth is compelled to proceed axe in hand that he may hack himself
a way through the tangle of irresponsible or malicious statements that
have grown up about this subject, driving their roots deep into the
soil of history. Not a single chance does malignity, free or chartered,
appear to have missed for the invention of flagitious falsehoods
concerning this family, or for the no less flagitious misinterpretation
of known facts.
Amid a mass of written nonsense dealing with Cesare’s sojourn in France
is the oft-repeated, totally unproven statement that he withheld from
Louis the dispensation enabling the latter to marry Anne of Brittany,
until such time as he should have obtained from Louis all that he
desired of him--in short, that he sold him the dispensation for the
highest price he could extract. The only motive served by this statement
is once more to show Alexander and his son in the perpetration of
simoniacal practices, and the statement springs, beyond doubt, from a
passage in Macchiavelli’s Extracts from Dispatches to the Ten. Elsewhere
has been mentioned the confusion prevailing in those extracts, and their
unreliability as historical evidences. That circumstance can be now
established. The passage in question runs as follows:
“This dispensation was given to Valentinois when he went to France
without any one being aware of its existence, with orders to sell it
dearly to the king, and not until satisfied of the wife and his other
desires. And, whilst these things were toward, the king learnt from the
Bishop of Ceuta that the dispensation already existed, and so, without
having received or even seen it the marriage was celebrated, and
for revealing this the Bishop of Ceuta was put to death by order of
Valentinois.”
Now, to begin with, Macchiavelli admits that what passed between Pope
and duke was secret. How, then, does he pretend to possess these
details of it? But, leaving that out of the question, his statement--so
abundantly repeated by later writers--is traversed by every one of the
actual facts of the case.
That there can have been no secret at all about the dispensation is made
plain by the fact that Manfredi, the Ferrarese ambassador, writes of it
to Duke Ercole on October 2--the day after Cesare’s departure from Rome.
And as for the death of Fernando d’Almeida Bishop of Ceuta, this did not
take place then, nor until two years later (on January 7, 1499) at the
siege of Forli, whither he had gone in Cesare’s train--as is related in
Bernardi’s Chronicles and Bonoli’s history of that town.
To return to the matter of Cesare’s imminent departure unwed from
France, Louis XII was not the only monarch to whom this was a source
of anxiety. Keener far was the anxiety experienced on that score by the
King of Naples, who feared that its immediate consequence would be to
drive the Holy Father into alliance with Venice, which was paying its
court to him at the time and with that end in view. Eager to conciliate
Alexander in this hour of peril, Federigo approached him with
alternative proposals, and offered to invest Cesare in the
principalities of Salerno and Sanseverino, which had been taken from the
rebel barons. To this the Pope might have consented, but that, in the
moment of considering it, letters reached him from Cesare which made him
pause.
Louis XII had also discovered an alternative to the marriage of Cesare
with Carlotta, and one that should more surely draw the Pope into the
alliance with Venice and himself.
Among the ladies of the Court of Queen Anne--Louis had now been wedded
a month--there were, besides Carlotta, two other ladies either of whom
might make Cesare a suitable duchess. One of these was a niece of the
king’s, the daughter of the Comte de Foix; the other was Charlotte
d’Albret, a daughter of Alain d’Albret, Duc de Guyenne, and sister to
the King of Navarre. Between these two Cesare was now given to choose by
Louis, and his choice fell upon Charlotte.
She was seventeen years of age and said to be the most beautiful maid
in France, and she had been reared at the honourable and pious Court of
Jeanne de Valois, whence she had passed into that of Anne of Brittany,
which latter, says Hilarion de Coste,(1) was “a school of virtue, an
academy of honour.”
1 Éloges et vies des Reynes, Princesses, etc.
Negotiations for her hand were opened with Alain, who, it is said, was
at first unwilling, but in the end won over to consent. Navarre had need
of the friendship of the King of France, that it might withstand the
predatory humours of Castille; and so, for his son’s sake, Alain could
not long oppose the wishes of Louis. Considering closely the pecuniary
difficulties under which this Alain d’Albret was labouring and his
notorious avarice, one is tempted to conclude that such difficulties
as he may have made were dictated by his reduced circumstances, his
impossibility, or unwillingness, to supply his daughter with a dowry
fitting her rank, and an unworthy desire to drive in the matter the best
bargain possible. And this is abundantly confirmed by the obvious care
and hard-headed cunning with which the Sieur d’Albret investigated
Cesare’s circumstances and sources of revenue to verify their values to
be what was alleged.
Eventually he consented to endow her with 30,000 livres Tournois (90,000
francs) to be paid as follows: 6,000 livres on the celebration of the
marriage, and the balance by annual instalments of 1,500 livres until
cleared off. This sum, as a matter of fact, represented her portion of
the inheritance from her deceased mother, Françoise de Bretagne, and it
was tendered subject to her renouncing all rights and succession in any
property of her father’s or her said deceased mother’s.
Thus is it set forth in the contract drawn up by Alain at Castel-Jaloux
on March 23, 1499, which contract empowers his son Gabriel and one
Regnault de St. Chamans to treat and conclude the marriage urged by the
king between the Duke of Valentinois and Alain’s daughter, Charlotte
d’Albret. But that was by no means all. Among other conditions imposed
by Alain, he stipulated that the Pope should endow his daughter with
100,000 livres Tournois, and that for his son, Amanieu d’Albret,
there should be a cardinal’s hat--for the fulfilment of both of which
conditions Cesare took it upon himself to engage his father.
On April 15 the treaty between France and Venice was signed at Blois.
It was a defensive and offensive alliance directed against all, with the
sole exception of the reigning Pontiff, who should have the faculty to
enter into it if he so elected. This was the first decisive step against
the House of Sforza, and so secretly were the negotiations conducted
that Lodovico Sforza’s first intimation of them resulted from the
capture in Milanese territory of a courier from the Pope with letters to
Cesare in France. From these he learnt, to his dismay, not only of the
existence of the league, but that the Pope had joined it. The immediate
consequence of this positive assurance that Alexander had gone over to
Sforza’s enemies was Ascanio Sforza’s hurried departure from Rome on
July 13.
In the meantime Cesare’s marriage had followed almost immediately upon
the conclusion of the treaty. The nuptials were celebrated on May 12,
and on the 19th he received at the hands of the King of France the
knightly Order of St. Michael, which was then the highest honour
that France could confer. When the news of this reached the Pope he
celebrated the event in Rome with public festivities and illuminations.
Of Cesare’s courtship we have no information. The fact that the marriage
was purely one of political expediency would tend to make us conceive it
as invested with that sordid lovelessness which must so often attend the
marriages of princes. But there exists a little data from which we may
draw certain permissible inferences. This damsel of seventeen was said
to be the loveliest in France, and there is more than a suggestion in
Le Feron’s De Gestis Regnum Gallorum, that Cesare was by no means
indifferent to her charms. He tells us that the Duke of Valentinois
entered into the marriage very heartily, not only for the sake of its
expediency, but for “the beauty of the lady, which was equalled by her
virtues and the sweetness of her nature.”
Cesare, we have it on more than one authority, was the handsomest man
of his day. The gallantry of his bearing merited the approval of so
fastidious a critic in such matters as Baldassare Castiglione, who
mentions it in his Il Cortigiano. Of his personal charm there is also no
lack of commendation from those who had his acquaintance at this time.
Added to this, his Italian splendour and flamboyance may well have
dazzled a maid who had been reared amid the grey and something stern
tones of the Court of Jeanne de Valois.
And so it may well be that they loved, and that they were blessed in
their love for the little space allotted them in each other’s company.
The sequel justifies in a measure the assumption. Just one little summer
out of the span of their lives--brief though those lives were--did they
spend together, and it is good to find some little evidence that, during
that brief season at least, they inhabited life’s rose-garden.
In September--just four short months after the wedding-bells had pealed
above them--the trumpets of war blared out their call to arms. Louis’s
preparations for the invasion of Milan were complete and he poured his
troops through Piedmont under the command of Giangiacomo Trivulzio.
Cesare was to accompany Louis into Italy. He appointed his
seventeen-year-old duchess governor and administrator of his lands and
lordships in France and Dauphiny under a deed dated September 8, and
he made her heiress to all his moveable possessions in the event of his
death. Surely this bears some witness, not only to the prevailing of
a good understanding between them, but to his esteem of her and the
confidence he reposed in her mental qualities. The rest her later
mourning of him shows.
Thus did Cesare take leave of the young wife whom he was never to see
again. Their child--born in the following spring--he was never to see at
all. The pity of it! Ambition-driven, to fulfil the destiny expected of
him, he turned his back upon that pleasant land of Dauphiny where the
one calm little season of his manhood had been spent, where happiness
and peace might have been his lifelong portion had he remained. He set
his face towards Italy and the storm and stress before him, and in the
train of King Louis he set out upon the turbulent meteoric course that
was to sear so deep and indelible a brand across the scroll of history.