THE INVASION OF ITALY--THE PROFLIGATE WORLD
Early in September, 1494, Charles VIII marched into Piedmont, and the
affairs of all Italy suffered an immediate change. The Pope and his
allies Alfonso and Piero de' Medici found themselves almost defenseless
in a short time. As early as November 17th the King entered Florence.
Alexander was anxious to meet him with his own and the Neapolitan troops
at Viterbo, where Cardinal Farnese was legate; but the French overran
the Patrimonium without hindrance, and even the Pope's mistress, her
sister Girolama, and Madonna Adriana, who were Alexander's "heart and
eyes," fell into the hands of a body of French scouts.
The Mantuan agent, Brognolo, informed his master of this event in a
despatch dated November 29, 1494: "A calamity has happened which is also
a great insult to the Pope. Day before yesterday Madonna Hadriana and
Madonna Giulia and her sister set out from their castle of Capodimonte
to go to their brother the cardinal, in Viterbo, and, when about a mile
from that place, they met a troop of French cavalry by whom they were
taken prisoners, and led to Montefiascone, together with their suite of
twenty-five or thirty persons."
The French captain who made this precious capture was Monseigneur
d'Allegre, perhaps the same Ivo who subsequently entered the service of
Cæsar. "When he learned who the beautiful women were he placed their
ransom at three thousand ducats, and in a letter informed King Charles
whom he had captured, but the latter refused to see them. Madonna Giulia
wrote to Rome saying they were well treated, and asking that their
ransom be sent."[37]
The knowledge of this catastrophe caused Alexander the greatest dismay.
He immediately despatched a chamberlain to Marino, where Cardinal
Ascanio was to be found in the headquarters of the Colonna, and who, on
his urgent request, had returned November 2d, and had had an interview
with King Charles. He complained to the cardinal of the indignity which
had been put upon him, and asked his cooperation to secure the release
of the prisoners. He also wrote to Galeazzo of Sanseverino, who was
accompanying the king to Siena, and who, wishing to please the Pope,
urged Charles VIII to release the ladies. Accompanied by an escort of
four hundred of the French, they were led to the gates of Rome, where
they were received December 1st by Juan Marades, the Pope's
chamberlain.[38]
This romantic adventure caused a sensation throughout all Italy. The
people, instead of sympathizing with the Pope, ridiculed him
mercilessly. A letter from Trotti, the Ferrarese ambassador at the court
of Milan, to Duke Ercole, quotes the words which Ludovico il Moro,
the usurper of the throne of his nephew, whom he had poisoned, uttered
on this occasion concerning the Pope.
[Illustration: CHARLES VIII.
From an engraving by Pannier.]
"He (Ludovico) gravely reproved Monsignor Ascanio and Cardinal
Sanseverino for surrendering Madonna Giulia, Madonna Adriana, and
Hieronyma to his Holiness; for, since these ladies were the 'heart and
eyes' of the Pope, they would have been the best whip for compelling him
to do everything which was wanted of him, for he could not live without
them. The French, who captured them, received only three thousand ducats
as ransom, although the Pope would gladly have paid fifty thousand or
more simply to have them back again. The same duke received news from
Rome, and also from Angelo in Florence, that when the ladies entered,
his Holiness went to meet them arrayed in a black doublet bordered with
gold brocade, with a beautiful belt in the Spanish fashion, and with
sword and dagger. He wore Spanish boots and a velvet biretta, all very
gallant. The duke asked me, laughing, what I thought of it, and I told
him that, were I the Duke of Milan, like him, I would endeavor, with the
aid of the King of France and in every other way--and on the pretext of
establishing peace--to entrap his Holiness, and with fair words, such as
he himself was in the habit of using, to take him and the cardinals
prisoners, which would be very easy. He who has the servant, as we say
at home, has also the wagon and the oxen; and I reminded him of the
verse of Catullus: 'Tu quoque fac simile: ars deluditur arte.'"[39]
Ludovico, the worthy contemporary of the Borgias, once an intimate
friend of Alexander VI, hated the Pope when he turned his face away
from him and France, and he was especially embittered by the treacherous
capture of his brother Ascanio. December 28th the same ambassador wrote
to Ercole, "The Duke Ludovico told me that he was hourly expecting the
arrival of Messer Bartolomeo da Calco with a courier bringing the news
that the Pope was taken and beheaded."[40] I leave it to the reader to
decide whether Ludovico, simply owing to his hatred of the Pope, was
slandering him and indulging in extravagances concerning him when he had
this conversation with Trotti, and also when he publicly stated to his
senate that "the Pope had allowed three women to come to him; one of
them being a nun of Valencia, the other a Castilian, the third a very
beautiful girl from Venice, fifteen or sixteen years of age." "Here in
Milan," continued Trotti in his despatch, "the same scandalous things
are related of the Pope as are told in Ferrara of the Torta."[41]
Elsewhere we may read how Charles VIII, victorious without the trouble
of winning battles, penetrated as far as Rome and Naples. His march
through Italy is the most humiliating of all the invasions which the
peninsula suffered; but it shows that when states and peoples are ready
for destruction, the strength of a weak-headed boy is sufficient to
bring about their ruin. The Pope outwitted the French monarch, who,
instead of having him deposed by a council, fell on his knees before
him, acknowledged him to be Christ's vicar, and concluded a treaty with
him.
After this he set out for Naples, which shortly fell into his hands.
Italy rose, a league against Charles VIII was formed, and he was
compelled to return. Alexander fled before him, first in the direction
of Orvieto, and then toward Perugia. While there he summoned Giovanni
Sforza, who arrived with his wife, June 16, 1495, remained four days,
and then went back to Pesaro.[42] The King of France succeeded in
breaking his way through the League's army at the battle of the Taro,
and thus honorably escaped death or capture.
Having returned to Rome, Alexander established himself still more firmly
in the holy chair, about which he gathered his ambitious bastards, while
the Borgias pushed themselves forward all the more audaciously because
the confusion occasioned in the affairs of Italy by the invasion of
Charles VIII made it all the easier for them to carry out their
intentions.
Lucretia remained a little longer in Pesaro with her husband, whom
Venice had engaged in the interests of the League. Giovanni Sforza,
however, does not appear to have been present either at the battle of
the Taro or at the siege of Novara. When peace was declared in October,
1495, between France and the Duke of Milan, whereby the war came to an
end in Northern Italy, Sforza was able to take his wife back to Rome.
Marino Sanuto speaks of her as having been in that city at the end of
October, and Burchard gives us a picture of Lucretia at the Christmas
festivities.
While in the service of the League Sforza commanded three hundred foot
soldiers and one hundred heavy horse. With these troops he set out for
Naples in the spring of the following year, when the united forces lent
the young King Ferrante II great assistance in the conflicts with the
French troops under Montpensier. Even the Captain-general of Venice, the
Marchese of Mantua, was there, and he entered Rome, March 26, 1496.
Sforza with his mercenaries arrived in Rome, April 15th, only to leave
the city again April 28th. His wife remained behind. May 4th he reached
Fundi.[43]
Alexander's two sons, Don Giovanni and Don Giuffrè, were still away from
Rome. One, the Duke of Gandia, was also in the pay of Venice, and was
expected from Spain to take command of four hundred men which his
lieutenant, Alovisio Bacheto, had enlisted for him. The other, Don
Giuffrè, had, as we have seen, gone to Naples in 1494, where he had
married Donna Sancia and had been made Prince of Squillace. As a member
of the house of Aragon he shared the dangers of the declining dynasty in
the hope of inducing the Pope not to abandon it. He accompanied King
Ferrante on his flight, and also followed his standard when, after the
retreat of Charles VIII, he, with the help of Spain, Venice, and the
Pope, again secured possession of his kingdom, entering Naples in the
summer of 1495.
Not until the following year did Don Giuffrè and his wife come to Rome.
In royal state they entered the Eternal City, May 20, 1496. The
ambassadors, cardinals, officers of the city, and numerous nobles went
to meet them at the Lateran gate. Lucretia also was there with her
suite. The young couple were escorted to the Vatican. The Pope on his
throne, surrounded by eleven cardinals, received his son and
daughter-in-law. On his right hand he had Lucretia and on his left
Sancia, sitting on cushions. It was Whitsuntide, and the two princesses
and their suites boldly occupied the priests' benches in S. Peter's,
and, according to Burchard, the populace was greatly shocked.
Three months later, August 10, 1496, Alexander's eldest son, Don
Giovanni, Duke of Gandia, entered Rome, where he remained, his father
having determined to make him a great prince.[44] It is not related
whether he brought his wife, Donna Maria, with him.
For the first time Alexander had all his children about him, and in the
Borgo of the Vatican there were no less than three nepot-courts.
Giovanni resided in the Vatican, Lucretia in the palace of S. Maria in
Portico, Giuffrè in the house of the Cardinal of Aleria near the Bridge
of S. Angelo, and Cæsar in the same Borgo.
They all were pleasure-loving upstarts who were consumed with a desire
for honors and power; all were young and beautiful; except Lucretia, all
were vicious, graceful, seductive scoundrels, and, as such, among the
most charming and attractive figures in the society of old Rome. For
only the narrowest observer, blind to everything but their infamous
deeds, can paint the Borgias simply as savage and cruel brutes,
tiger-cubs by nature. They were privileged malefactors, like many other
princes and potentates of that age. They mercilessly availed themselves
of poison and poignard, removing every obstacle to their ambition, and
smiled when the object was attained.
If we could see the life which these unrestrained bastards led in the
Vatican, where their father, conscious now of his security and
greatness, was enthroned, we should indeed behold strange things. It was
a singular drama which was being enacted in the domain of S. Peter,
where two young and beautiful women held a dazzling court, which was
always animated by swarms of Spanish and Italian lords and ladies and
the elegant world of Rome. Nobles and monsignori crowded around to pay
homage to these women, one of whom, Lucretia, was just sixteen, and the
other, Sancia, a little more than seventeen years of age.
We may imagine what love intrigues took place in the palace of these
young women, and how jealousy and ambition there carried on their
intricate game, for no one will believe that these princesses, full of
the passion and exuberance of youth, led the life of nuns or saints in
the shadows of S. Peter's. Their palace resounded with music and the
dance, and the noise of revels and of masquerades. The populace saw
these women accompanied by splendid cavalcades riding through the
streets of Rome to the Vatican; they knew that the Pope was in daily
intercourse with them, visiting them in person and taking part in their
festivities, and also receiving them, now privately, and now with
ceremonious pomp, as befitted princesses of his house. Alexander
himself, much as he was addicted to the pleasures of the senses, cared
nothing for elaborate banquets. Concerning the Pope, the Ferrarese
ambassador wrote to his master in 1495 as follows:
He partakes of but a single dish, though this must be a rich one.
It is, consequently, a bore to dine with him. Ascanio and others,
especially Cardinal Monreale, who formerly were his Holiness's
table companions, and Valenza too, broke off this companionship
because his parsimony displeased them, and avoided it whenever and
however they could.[45]
The doings in the Vatican furnished ground for endless gossip, which had
long been current in Rome. It was related in Venice, in October,
1496, that the Duke of Gandia had brought a Spanish woman to his father,
with whom he lived, and an account was given of a crime which is almost
incredible, although it was related by the Venetian ambassador and other
persons.[46]
[Illustration: SAVONAROLA.
From a painting by Fra Bartolommeo]
It was not long before Donna Sancia caused herself to be freely gossiped
about. She was beautiful and thoughtless; she appreciated her position
as the daughter of a king. From the most vicious of courts she was
transplanted into the depravity of Rome as the wife of an immature boy.
It was said that her brothers-in-law Gandia and Cæsar quarreled over her
and possessed her in turn, and that young nobles and cardinals like
Ippolito d'Este could boast of having enjoyed her favors.
Savonarola may have had these nepot-courts in mind when, from the pulpit
of S. Marco in Florence, he declaimed in burning words against the Roman
Sodom.
Even if the voice of the great preacher, whose words were filling all
Italy, did not reach Lucretia's ears, from her own experience she must
have known how profligate was the world in which she lived. About her
she saw vice shamelessly displayed or cloaked in sacerdotal robes; she
was conscious of the ambition and avarice which hesitated at no crime;
she beheld a religion more pagan than paganism itself, and a church
service in which the sacred actors,--with whose conduct behind the
scenes she was perfectly familiar,--were the priests, the cardinals, her
brother Cæsar, and her own father. All this Lucretia beheld, but they
are wrong who believe that she or others like her saw and regarded it as
we do now, or as a few pure-minded persons of that age did; for
familiarity always dulls the average person's perception of the truth.
In that age the conceptions of religion, of decency, and of morality
were entirely different from those of to-day. When the rupture between
the Middle Ages and its ascetic Church and the Renaissance was complete,
human passions threw off every restraint. All that had hitherto been
regarded as sacred was now derided. The freethinkers of Italy created a
literature never equaled for bold cynicism. From the _Hermaphroditus_ of
Beccadeli to the works of Berni and Pietro Aretino, a foul stream of
novelle, epigrams, and comedies, from which the serious Dante would have
turned his eyes in disgust, overflowed the land.
Even in the less sensual novelle, the first of which was Piccolomini's
_Euryalus_, and the less obscene comedies, adultery and derision of
marriage are the leading motives. The harlots were the Muses of
belles-lettres during the Renaissance. They boldly took their place by
the side of the saints of the Church, and contended with them for fame's
laurels. There is a manuscript collection of poems of the time of
Alexander VI which contains a series of epigrams beginning with a number
in praise of the Holy Virgin and the Saints, and then, without word or
warning, are several glorifying the famous cyprians of the day;
following a stanza on S. Pauline is an epigram on Meretricis Nichine, a
well-known courtesan of Siena, with several more of the same sort. The
saints of heaven and the priestesses of Venus are placed side by side,
without comment, as equally admirable women.[47]
No self-respecting woman would now attend the performance of a comedy of
the Renaissance, whose characters frequently represented the popes, the
princes, and the noble women of the day; and their presentation, even
before audiences composed entirely of men, would now be prohibited by
the censor of the theater in every land.
The naturalness with which women of the South even now discuss subjects
which people in the North are careful to conceal excites astonishment;
but what was tolerated by the taste or morals of the Renaissance is
absolutely incredible. We must remember, however, that this obscene
literature was by no means so diffused as novels are at the present
time, and also that Southern familiarity with whatever is natural also
served to protect women. Much was external, and was so treated that it
had no effect whatever upon the imagination. In the midst of the vices
of the society of the cities there were noble women who kept themselves
pure.
To form an idea of the morals of the great, and especially of the courts
of that day, we must read the history of the Visconti, the Sforza, the
Malatesta of Rimini, the Baglione of Perugia, and the Borgias of Rome.
They were not more immoral than the members of the courts of Louis XIV
and XV and of August of Saxony, but their murders rendered them more
terrible. Human life was held to be of little value, but criminal
egotism often was qualified by greatness of mind (magnanimitas), so that
a bloody deed prompted by avarice and ambition was often condoned.
Egotism and the selfish use of conditions and men for the profit of the
individual were never so universal as in the country of Macchiavelli,
where unfortunately they still are frequently in evidence. Free from the
pedantic opinions of the Germans and the reverence for condition, rank,
and birth which they have inherited from the Middle Ages, the Italians,
on the other hand, always recognized the force of personality--no matter
whether it was that of a bastard or not--but they, nevertheless, were
just as likely to become the slaves of the successful. Macchiavelli
maintains that the Church and the priests were responsible for the moral
ruin of the peninsula--but were not the Church and these priests
themselves products of Italy? He should have said that characteristics
which were inherent in the Germanic races were foreign to the Italians.
Luther could never have appeared among them.
While our opinion of Alexander VI and Cæsar is governed by ethical
considerations, this was not the case with Guicciardini, and less still
with Macchiavelli. They examined not the moral but the political man,
not his motives but his acts. The terrible was not terrible when it was
the deed of a strong will, nor was crime disgraceful when it excited
astonishment as a work of art. The terrible way in which Ferdinand of
Naples handled the conspiracy of the nobles of his kingdom made him, in
the eyes of Italy, not horrible but great; and Macchiavelli speaks of
the trick with which Cæsar Borgia outwitted his treacherous condottieri
at Sinigaglia as a "masterstroke," while the Bishop Paolo Giovio called
it "the most beautiful piece of deception." In that world of egotism
where there was no tribunal of public opinion, man could preserve
himself only by overpowering power and by outwitting cunning with
craft. While the French regarded, and still regard, "ridiculous" as the
worst of epithets, the Italian dreaded none more than that of
"simpleton."
Macchiavelli, in a well-known passage in his _Discorsi_ (i. 27),
explains his theory with terrible frankness, and his words are the exact
keynote of the ethics of his age. He relates how Julius II ventured into
Perugia, although Giampolo Baglione had gathered a large number of
troops there, and how the latter, overawed by the Pope, surrendered the
city to him. His comment is verbatim as follows: "People of judgment who
were with the Pope wondered at his foolhardiness, and at Giampolo's
cowardice; they could not understand why the latter did not, to his
everlasting fame, crush his enemy with one blow and enrich himself with
the plunder, for the Pope was accompanied by all his cardinals with
their jewels. They could not believe that he refrained on account of any
goodness or any conscientious scruples, for the heart of a wicked man,
who committed incest with his sister, and destroyed his cousins and
nephews so he might rule, could not be accessible to any feelings of
respect. So they came to the conclusion that there are men who can
neither be honorably bad nor yet perfectly good, who do not know how to
go about committing a crime, great in itself or possessing a certain
splendor. This was the case with Giampolo; he who thought nothing of
incest and the murder of his kinsmen did not know how, or rather did not
dare, in spite of the propitious moment, to perform a deed which would
have caused every one to admire his courage, and would have won for him
an immortal name. For he would first have shown the priests how small
men are in reality who live and rule as they do, and he would have been
the first to accomplish a deed whose greatness would have dazzled every
one, and would have removed every danger which might have arisen from
it."
Is it any wonder that in view of such a prostitution of morals to the
conception of success, fame, and magnificence, as Macchiavelli here and
in _Il Principe_ advocates, men like the Borgias found the widest field
for their bold crimes? They well knew that the greatness of a crime
concealed the shame of it. The celebrated poet Strozzi in Ferrara placed
Cæsar Borgia, after his fall, among the heroes of Olympus; and the
famous Bembo, one of the first men of the age, endeavors to console
Lucretia Borgia on the death of the "miserable little" Alexander VI,
whom he at the same time calls her "great" father.
No upright man, conscious of his own worth, would now enter the service
of a prince stained by such crimes as were the Borgias, if it were
possible for such a one now to exist, which is wholly unlikely. But then
the best and most upright of men sought, without any scruples whatever,
the presence and favors of the Borgias. Pinturicchio and Perugino
painted for Alexander VI, and the most wonderful genius of the century,
Leonardo da Vinci, did not hesitate to enter the service of Cæsar Borgia
as his engineer, to erect fortresses for him in the same Romagna which
he had appropriated by such devilish means.
The men of the Renaissance were in a high degree energetic and creative;
they shaped the world with a revolutionary energy and a feverish
activity, in comparison with which the modern processes of civilization
almost vanish. Their instincts were rougher and more powerful, and their
nerves stronger than those of the present race. It will always appear
strange that the tenderest blossoms of art, the most ideal creations of
the painter, put forth in the midst of a society whose moral
perversity and inward brutality are to us moderns altogether loathsome.
If we could take a man such as our civilization now produces and
transfer him into the Renaissance, the daily brutality which made no
impression whatever on the men of that age would shatter his nervous
system and probably upset his reason.
[Illustration: NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI.
From an engraving by G. Marri.]
Lucretia Borgia lived in Rome surrounded by these passions, and she was
neither better nor worse than the women of her time. She was thoughtless
and was filled with the joy of living. We do not know that she ever went
through any moral struggles or whether she ever found herself in
conscious conflict with the actualities of her life and of her
environment. Her father maintained an elaborate household for her, and
she was in daily intercourse with her brothers' courts. She was their
companion and the ornament of their banquets; she was entrusted with the
secret of all the Vatican intrigues which had any connection with the
future of the Borgias, and all her vital interests were soon to be
concentrated there.
Never, even in the later years of her life, does she appear as a woman
of unusual genius; she had none of the characteristics of the _viragos_
Catarina Sforza and Ginevra Bentivoglio; nor did she possess the
deceitful soul of an Isotta da Rimini, or the spirituelle genius of
Isabella Gonzaga. If she had not been the daughter of Alexander VI and
the sister of Cæsar Borgia, she would have been unnoticed by the
historians of her age or, at most, would have been mentioned only as one
of the many charming women who constituted the society of Rome. In the
hands of her father and her brother, however, she became the tool and
also the victim of their political machinations, against which she had
not the strength to make any resistance.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] This information is given by Marino Sanuto, Venuta di Carlo VIII,
in Italia; original in the Paris library, also a copy in the Marciana.
He calls Giulia "favorita del Pontefice, di età giovane, et bellissima
savia accorda et mansueta."
[38] According to one of Brognolo's despatches (Mantuan archives) Giulia
and Adriana returned December 1st, on which date Pandolfo Collenuccio,
who was in Rome, wrote, "Una optima novella ce è per alcuno. Che Ma
Julia si è recuperata, et andò Messer Joan Marrades per Lei. Et è venuta
in Roma: e dicesi, che Domenica de nocte allogiò in Palazzo." Archives
of Modena.
[39] Despatch of Giacomo Trotti, Milan, December 21, 1494. Archives of
Modena.
[40] Che li pareva ogni hora vedere messer Bartolomeo da Calche venire a
Sua Eccia cum una staffetta, chel papa fosse preso, e li fosse
taliata la testa.
[41] Trotti to the Duke of Ferrara, Milan, December 24, 1494.
[42] This is the date given by Marino Sanuto in his Ms. History of the
Invasion of Charles VIII, fol. 470.
[43] These dates are from the Diary of Marino Sanuto, vol. i. fol. 55,
58, 85.
[44] Il di de S. Laurentio il Duca de Gandia figliuolo del Papa, intrò
in Roma accompagnato dal Card. de Valentia, et tutta la corte con
grandissima pompa. Despatch of Ludovico Carissimi to the Duke of
Ferrara, Rome, August 15, 1496. Archives of Modena.
[45] Boccaccio to Ercole, March 24, 1495.
[46] The report is given in Diar. Marino Sanuto, vol. i, 258, and is
reprinted in part in the Civiltà Cattolica, March 15, 1873, p. 727. The
entire passage is as follows: Da Roma per le lettere del orator nostro
se intese et etiam de private persone cossa assai abominevole in la
chiesa di Dio che al papa erra nato un fiolo di una dona romana maridata
ch'el padre l'havea rufianata e di questa il marito invitò il suocero
ala vigna el lo uccise tagliandoli el capo ponendo quello sopra uno
legno con letere che dicera questo e il capo de mio suocero che a
rufianato sua fiola al papa et che inteso questo il papa fece metter el
dito in exilio di Roma con Taglia. Questa nova vene per letere
particular etiam si godea con la sua spagnola menatali di spagna per suo
fiol duca di Gandia novamente li venuto.
[47] Epitaphia clarissimarum mulierum que virtute: arte: aut aliqua nota
claruerunt. Codex Hartmann Schedel in the State Library of Munich.