The Life of Cesare Borgia Part 7

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 amba.s.sador 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 ete moins austere qu'Infessura, n'est pas choque....")

1 La Vie de Cesar 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 circ.u.mstances may appear to modern notions, the circ.u.mstance 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d born of a n.o.ble, as n.o.ble as his father, displaying his father's arms without debruis.e.m.e.nt 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 n.o.ble House of Este and seated upon the throne of Ferrara. And before then we shall have seen the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Cesare married to a daughter of the royal House of Navarre. Already we have seen the b.a.s.t.a.r.d Francesco Cibo take to wife the daughter of the great Lorenzo de'Medici, and we have seen the b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 n.o.bile 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 s.h.i.+ver, 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 pa.s.sage 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d, 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 Princ.i.p.ality 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 circ.u.mstances, and refused to see the amba.s.ssador. 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, c.u.m 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 t.i.tle of Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria Nuova--notwithstanding which, however, he continues to be known in preference, and, indeed, to sign himself by the t.i.tle 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 mult.i.tude 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 circ.u.mstance 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 quoec.u.mque 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.