The murder of the Duke of Gandia--Caesar departs to crown the King
of Naples--He returns to Rome--The Pope’s projected matrimonial
alliances for his children.
The most circumstantial account we have of the murder of the Duke of
Gandia is contained in Burchard’s diary,[16] and is as follows: “June
fourteenth the cardinal of Valencia and the Illustrious Don Giovanni
Borgia of Aragon, Duke of Gandia, Prince of the Holy Roman Church,
Captain-General of the pontifical forces, and most beloved son of his
Holiness dined at the home of their mother, Donna Vannozza, near the
church of San Pietro ad Vincola with their mother and several other
persons. The repast finished and night having come, Caesar and Gandia,
accompanied by a few of their people, mounted their horses and mules to
return to the Apostolic Palace. They rode together to a place not far
from the palace of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the Vice-Chancellor. There
the Duke, saying he intended to go and enjoy himself for a while before
returning to the palace, took leave of his brother, the cardinal, and
having dismissed all but one of the servants he had with him, _he rode
back_. He also kept with him a certain person who was masked and who
had come to him while at supper, and who for the past month had been
coming to see him almost every day at the Apostolic Palace. The Duke
took this person up on the crupper of his mule and rode off to the
Piazza degli Ebrei, where he left the servant he had kept, telling him
to wait for him there until the twenty-third hour, and if he did not
return then to go back to the palace. Having given these instructions,
the Duke with the mysterious person on the crupper, rode away from the
servant to some place--I know not where--and was killed and thrown
into the river.”
The servant left in the Piazza degli Ebrei was found there mortally
wounded and unable to give any information.
The morning of the fifteenth day, the Duke having failed to return
to the Apostolic Palace, the Pope became uneasy, but, assuming that
his son had gone to see some mistress and that he did not wish to be
observed coming away in the daytime, the father concluded he would
return that night; but Gandia failing to put in an appearance, the Holy
Father became alarmed and caused a thorough investigation to be made.
Among those examined was a certain Giorgio Sclavus, who made a business
of gathering driftwood along the banks of the river and who stated
that on the night the Duke disappeared he was guarding his wood when,
about the fifth hour, he saw two men on foot come from the Hospital
Sclavorum, along the public highway close to the river. After looking
about in every direction and seeing no one, they returned the way they
had come. Soon after two others appeared from precisely the same place
and did as the former couple had done, and, discovering no one, they
made a signal to their comrades. Immediately a man rode forth on a
white charger with a dead body behind him.
The corpse was taken from the horse and cast into the stream, whereupon
the rider asked, “Did it sink?” To which the others replied, “Signor,
si.” Then all disappeared whence they had come.
When the man was asked why he had not reported the crime to the
Governor of the city, he replied that in his time he had seen a hundred
bodies cast into the Tiber at this very place and no questions had been
asked.
Men were secured in the city to drag the river; a large reward was
offered for the recovery of the body, and about nightfall it was
found, fully clothed; even his purse, containing thirty ducats, was
untouched. On the corpse were nine wounds, one in the throat and eight
in the head, body, and legs, thus proving that the Duke had bravely
defended himself. The body was taken to the Castle of St. Angelo, and
subsequently to the Church of Santa Maria.
When Alexander learned of his son’s murder his grief exceeded all
bounds. For several days he would neither eat nor drink, and the
efforts of his familiars to console him were unavailing.
The Pope directed the Governor of the city to apprehend the murderers,
but in vain. Rome was filled with rumours. The Orsini were suspected,
so was Bartolomeo d’Alviano; even Lucretia Borgia’s husband, Giovanni
Sforza, was mentioned in connection with the crime. By those close to
the Pope Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was said to have been, if not the
perpetrator at least the instigator of the murder--he had recently
complained to the Pope of an insult he had received from Gandia.
Ascanio, when summoned by his Holiness, refused to obey until his
safety had been guaranteed by the ambassadors of Spain and Naples. When
he did appear, however, the Pope received him kindly and allowed him to
depart at his pleasure. Ascanio, nevertheless, believed it prudent to
leave Rome for a while.
It was also said that Antonio Maria Pico della Mirandola, inspired by
Ascanio, had committed the murder, and even Giuffre was suspected,
because--at least, so it was stated--Gandia had been unduly intimate
with his wife. In the effort to fasten the guilt on Caesar it was
said that both he and Gandia were rivals for Sancia’s favours, and
that, owing to jealousy, he had killed his brother. Burchard’s account
contains all that is known of the murder of the Duke. Suspicion finally
crystallised around Caesar, although the reasons for ascribing the
crime to him are so slight that it is amazing that historians have for
four hundred years laid the guilt at his door; we are not offered even
circumstantial evidence; the most that is adduced against him is a
possible motive, and there were undoubtedly equally strong motives for
him against the crime, especially if he had the astuteness we are led
to believe he possessed.
Even admitting he was potentially the criminal into which he later
developed, is it possible that he would have begun his career of
iniquity with a crime so monstrous as the deliberately planned murder
of his own brother? Caesar was then twenty-one and Gandia twenty-three
years of age. The latter may have received great honours at the hands
of their father, but so had the former. Caesar, a Prince of the Church,
of vast wealth, could look forward to a far more brilliant career than
could any mere princeling of Benevento. He must have known that even
the Papacy was within his prospects, and in that age what potentate in
Italy could compare with Christ’s Vicar? Although Caesar disliked the
Church the sacerdotal character of the cardinal was no impediment to
great temporal enterprises; like a cloak, it could be laid aside and
assumed again at pleasure; it was a distinct advantage, as Caesar must
have known.
There are men who are jealous of the success of all others, but they
are invariably weak characters, and no one can accuse Caesar Borgia
of weakness; even admitting he was jealous of Gandia, it is unlikely
that his jealousy was sufficiently bitter to induce him to plan the
murder of his brilliant and accomplished brother, whose talents and
advancement would surely contribute to the progress of all the family.
In that age, although there were determined family feuds and rivalries,
there was frequently a strong sense of family solidarity, and this the
Borgias possessed in an eminent degree.
Who was the unknown man in the mask who had been coming to see Gandia
at the Papal Palace almost daily for a month past, and who had even
called on him during the supper in Vannozza’s garden? Perhaps some
pander or low associate who had accompanied him during his debauches;
or if not this, a decoy sent by some enemy of the Duke or of his
family--and Italy was teeming with them.
If the murder was the work of some enemy, what would be more natural
than for the assassin to endeavour to turn suspicion from himself and
at the same time heap infamy upon the Borgias by launching the rumour
that the Cardinal of Valencia was the author of the crime?
It is clear that Gandia voluntarily went into the quarter of the city
dominated by the most determined enemies of the Borgia--the Orsini.
His personal attendant was found in the morning murdered, in the Piazza
degli Ebrei, where the Duke had left him. Evidently the man in the mask
had led Gandia into a trap, and then, after he had been dispatched,
had provided for the taking off of this henchman. When Gandia left the
servant he evidently thought he might not return that evening.
But how could the man in the mask have visited Gandia every day for a
month for the purpose of entrapping him, without the Duke discovering
it was a plot? Clearly Gandia had no suspicions whatever.
The whole affair is so mysterious that we are inclined to ask whether
Burchard’s statement of the circumstances is correct.
It is against all reason to suppose that Gandia would have ventured
at night unattended into the quarter of the Orsini with a strange man
behind him on his mule, unless he was going to keep an assignation, and
his remark to Caesar shows that such was his purpose.
If this assignation was only a plot to get him away from his own
people, who contrived it? Did Caesar? For Caesar to have arranged it
right in the stronghold of their bitterest enemies, a mass of details,
a planning, and a coincidence of events wellnigh impossible would have
been necessary. It is much more logical to suppose that those enemies
themselves planned it--especially as Gandia had been brought from
Spain expressly to crush the Orsini.
Again--we may ask--was the Duke playing false with his own people?
He had seen little of them, he scarcely knew them. Did he perhaps
fancy that he might rise more rapidly by casting his fortunes with
the enemies of the Pope than by supporting him? Was the mysterious
man in the mask the agent of some family or faction trying to win
over the Duke? Gandia accompanied this man apparently without even a
suggestion of fear into the enemy’s quarter. If he was concerned in
some conspiracy against his family and the Vatican, some obstacle in
the negotiations may have made his death and that of the bully left in
the square necessary to prevent exposure, even if it had not at first
been intended to murder the Duke.
If he was plotting against the Vatican, who were his
fellow-conspirators in the Orsini quarter? The affair seems to contain
more than a mere assignation, for if not why was it necessary to
dispatch the servant?
It was not long before accusations came from without, started perhaps
by persons who at a distance felt secure from the wrath of the Borgia.
February 22, 1498, Pigna, the Ferrarese ambassador in Venice, reported
that he had heard that Caesar had caused the Duke of Gandia’s death.
This was more than eight months after the crime; it was the first time
the charge had definitely been made; several of the Orsini were then
in Venice, and they would undoubtedly have spread the rumour, as the
Pope had endeavoured to cast suspicion on them. If they, however, had
brought about the Duke’s destruction, they would probably have gloried
in the deed.
The accusation once made against Caesar, it was repeated by Paolo
Capello in a relation of September 25, 1500, and also in the famous
letter to Silvio Savelli of November 15, 1501. This same Capello,
Venetian ambassador, wrote: “Every night the bodies of four or five
murdered men, bishops, prelates, and so forth, are found in Rome.”
Under Alexander VI. crime held high carnival in the Eternal City, as it
had under his predecessors.
The Pope did not receive Caesar--at least, publicly--for five weeks,
and the cardinal busied himself with preparations for his journey to
Naples to crown the King.
His Holiness seemed to have changed; he was constantly at work with
the six cardinals he had appointed to draw up plans for the reform
of the Church, and he declared in consistory that henceforth family
considerations and projects would have no weight with him.
At last he gave up trying to discover the murderer, and the conviction
became general that he, better than all others, knew who the guilty one
was. Alessandro Braccio, the Florentine orator in Rome, said in one
of his dispatches: “Whoever managed the affair had a good head, and
courage--and every one admits that he was a ‘master.’” This peculiar
attitude toward crime, which is merely a form of the unreasoned and
immoral admiration for success regardless of means still everywhere
prevalent, was especially noticeable in Italy during the Renaissance.
Machiavelli well illustrates it in his remarks on Giovanpagolo Baglioni
in connection with the expedition of Pope Julius II. to Perugia in
1505, for the express purpose of driving the Baglioni from their
domain. Although the Pope had a considerable army he entered the city
with only a small guard, in spite of the fact that Giovanpagolo had a
large force--and the “prudent men who were with the Pope commented on
his rashness and on the cowardice of Giovanpagolo, who might have won
eternal glory and at the same time have destroyed his enemy and secured
vast spoils, for the Pope was accompanied by all the cardinals with
their rich belongings. His restraint was not due to any goodness or
conscience, for he was a man who, in order to reign, had murdered many
of his kinsmen; and it was concluded that there are men who do not know
how to be great criminals or perfectly good--for a crime may possess
greatness and be to some extent glorious [_generosa_]. Therefore
Giovanpagolo did not know how--or better, did not dare--when he had
the opportunity, to perform a deed for which every one would have
admired his courage and which would have secured him eternal fame. And
he would have been the first to show the prelates how little respect
is due to those who live and reign as they do; and he would have
performed a deed whose greatness would have wiped out all infamy.”[17]
The Vice-Chancellor’s palace near which Caesar and Gandia parted on the
night of June 14, 1497, was on the Banchi Vecchi in the Ponte Quarter,
where the Orsini had four strongholds--Monte Giordano, Torre di Nona,
Tor Millina, and Tor Sanguigna. Besides the Orsini and their retainers
a large number of Jews dwelt in this part of the city.
June 16th Cardinal Ascanio Sforza sent his brother, the Moor, an
account of the tragedy, which agrees closely with that of Burchard. He
adds that Gandia’s mule was found near the house of Carlo da Parma.
Burchard’s narrative agrees with all those of the day. Many of the
Romans made no effort to conceal their joy at being rid of one Borgia,
and the satirists did not overlook the murder.
More than three years afterwards, September 28, 1500, the Venetian
Ambassador, Paolo Capello, definitely stated that Caesar was the
murderer; Capello, however, was not in Rome at the time of the
assassination.
It may never be known who was the murderer of the Duke of Gandia, but
there is absolutely no proof that Caesar either instigated or planned
the assassination. Gandia was about to form an alliance which the
Pope believed--and Caesar must have been of the same opinion--would
materially strengthen the house of Borgia, and the power of the family
had not yet become so firmly established that Caesar would have been
likely to commit a terrible crime for the purpose of securing the sole
dominion for himself. He still had need of Gandia, whatever the future
might bring him. There certainly were numerous enemies of the Borgia
who would profit much more by the destruction of a member of the family
than Caesar could.
The kingdom of Naples was torn by discord; one faction supported
France, another Aragon; and in his brief appointing the Cardinal of
Valencia legate to crown the King, the Pope enjoined him to put an end
to the strife. Caesar’s mission was an important one.
Accompanied by a numerous retinue, the expenses of which were to be
borne by King Frederic, the Cardinal of Valencia left Rome for Naples,
and August 1st reached Capua, where he was received by the royal Court
with the highest honours. There he fell ill, and Giuffre and his wife,
Sancia, left Rome almost immediately to go to him. However, his illness
could not have been serious, for he crowned Frederic, the last of the
Aragonese rulers of Naples, August 10, 1497.
Caesar acquitted himself well, displaying a dignity beyond his years.
He was invested with special privileges for the occasion; the symbols
of the spiritual as well as of the temporal power--the flabel, the
sedia gestatoria, the globe, and the sword--were borne before the
Pope’s representative, who exerted himself to secure the goodwill of
the new sovereign, who invested him, as the representative of the
son of the unfortunate Duke of Gandia, with Benevento, the barony of
Fiumara, and the county of Montefoscolo.
August 22nd, to the great relief of Frederic, whose exchequer was
suffering severely on account of the entertainment, Caesar set out
to return to Rome; as he did not reach the city until the 5th of the
following month, he may have spent some time inspecting the estates
granted Gandia’s son by the newly-crowned King.
The morning of the 6th--says Burchard--all the cardinals who were in
the city went to meet Caesar at Santa Maria Nuova, and later all were
received by his Holiness, and the Master of Ceremonies adds, “neither
father nor son uttered a word, but the Pope, having blessed him,
descended from the throne.” In this circumstance some writers discover
evidence of Caesar’s guilt.
The Pope, accompanied by the Cardinals of Valencia and of Agrigentum,
with an escort of a thousand men, went to Ostia, October 17th, to spend
a few days. The large guard was made necessary by the proximity of the
Orsini. The Pope and his family were in grave danger, and now that
Gandia was dead who was to defend them? Giuffre was scarcely twenty,
and he had cast his fortunes with the House of Aragon; moreover, he
showed none of Caesar’s resoluteness.
At the coronation of the King of Naples the legate had used a sword
upon which was engraved the motto _Cum Numine Caesaris Amen_ and
_Caesar Borgia Cardinalis Valentianus_, and which is now in the
possession of the Gaetani family of Rome. All the engravings on the
blade represent scenes of war, and it is therefore reasonable to
assume that the cardinal’s dreams turned more to military glory than
to ecclesiastical honours, and Gregorovius says, “the allusions to the
Caesar of the Roman Empire show what ideas were already seething in
the cardinal’s brain.”
In November, 1497, the Spanish physician Gaspare Torrella dedicated
to the youthful cardinal a work on a loathsome disease which had
been spread in Italy by the soldiers of Charles VIII., and which
was in consequence called the “French sickness.” Caesar himself
evidently had suffered from it, for the author states that the world
owed the cardinal a debt of gratitude for subjecting himself to his
treatment.[18] A work by Sebastiano Aquilano of Padua on the same
subject was dedicated to Ludovico Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua.
February 14, 1498, the body of Pedro Calderon, one of the Pope’s
familiars, was found in the Tiber, into which he had fallen, _non
libenter_, as Burchard says, a few days before. In this connection the
Venetian ambassador, Capello, writes: “and another time he [Caesar]
murdered with his own hand messer Pierotto, under the very mantle of
the Pope, so that the blood spurted up into the face of his Holiness,
of whom Pierotto was a favourite.” This account agrees with that in
the letter to Silvio Savelli. Sanudo’s report of the affair is the
same as Burchard’s, but he adds that Pierotto was “found drowned in
the Tiber with a young woman called Madona Panthasilea, one of Madonna
Lucretia’s young women and a creature of this pontiff’s--and the cause
is not known.” Early in the year 1498 it was rumoured in Rome that
Caesar intended to leave the Church. A letter written by Alexander
in August, 1497--less than two months after the murder of the Duke
of Gandia--shows that the Pope was already considering a plan which
implied this step on his son’s part. Caesar now seldom appeared in the
garb of a cleric; he went everywhere dressed in the “French style” and
armed. His tastes were altogether martial.
It appears that his Holiness was scheming for Caesar to marry
either the widow of King Ferdinand of Naples or Doña Sancia, his
sister-in-law, who was to be separated from Giuffre for this purpose;
later the Prince of Squillace was to be made a cardinal to replace his
brother, in order that the number of Spanish members of the Sacred
College be kept the same.
In this connection Sanudo says in his diary: “Giuffre, younger than
his wife, has not yet consummated the marriage (he is not sixteen),
he is not a man, and according to what I have heard Doña Sancia has
for some months been the mistress of the Cardinal of Valencia.”
Fifteenth-century chroniclers went into minute particulars.
Lucretia Borgia’s marriage with Giovanni Sforza had been dissolved in
spite of the husband’s protests. For her the Pope was planning a more
brilliant future than the insignificant Lord of Pesaro could offer and
his Holiness readily found a pretext for getting rid of him; in his
project he was assisted by both Ascanio Sforza and the Duke of Milan.
Although every one was against him, Giovanni did not submit tamely, and
he it was who launched the charge of incest against the Pope and Caesar
and his own wife--a charge which, whether true or false, has done more
than anything else to blacken their memory.
Lucretia’s formal divorce took place December 2, 1497. It had been
brought about by the Pope and Caesar purely for political reasons, and
it was now rumoured in Rome that she was to marry Alfonso of Bisceglia,
Sancia’s brother.
The Pope had asked King Frederic for the hand of his daughter Carlotta
for Caesar, but both he and the princess absolutely refused. In his
anxiety, however, to escape the Pope’s wrath he made one sacrifice and
consented to the marriage of Lucretia and Don Alfonso, Sancia’s younger
brother. This youth of seventeen came to Rome unattended by any pomp
and the betrothal took place in the Vatican June 20, 1498, and the
marriage the 21st of the following month. Lucretia was about a year
older than her husband.