Lucretia Borgia Part 10

For the purpose of driving Ludovico il Moro from Milan, Louis XII had concluded an alliance with Venice, which the Pope also joined on the condition that France would help his son to acquire Romagna.

Ascanio Sforza, who was unable to prevent the loss of Milan, and who knew that his own life was in danger in Rome, fled July 13, 1499, to Genazzano and subsequently to Genoa.

His example was followed by Lucretia's youthful consort. We do not know what occurred in the Vatican to cause Don Alfonso quietly to leave Rome, where he had spent but a single year with Lucretia. We can only say that his decision must have been brought about by some turn which the Pope's politics had taken. The object of the expedition of Louis XII was not only the overthrow of the Sforza dynasty in Milan, but also the seizure of Naples; it was intended to be a sequel to the attempt of Charles VIII, which was defeated by the great League. The young prince was aware of the Pope's intention to destroy his uncle Federico, who had deeply offended him by refusing to grant Caesar the hand of his daughter Carlotta. After this occurrence the relations of Lucretia's husband with the Pope had altogether changed.

Ascanio was the only friend the unfortunate prince had in Rome, and it was probably he who advised him to save himself from certain death by flight, as Lucretia's other husband had done. Alfonso slipped away August 2, 1499. The Pope sent some troopers after him, but they failed to catch him. It is uncertain whether Lucretia knew of his intended flight. A letter written in Rome by a Venetian, August 4th, merely says: "The Duke of Biseglia, Madonna Lucretia's husband, has secretly fled and gone to the Colonna in Genazzano; he deserted his wife, who has been with child for six months, and she is constantly in tears."[64]

She was in the power of her father, who, highly incensed by the prince's flight, banished Alfonso's sister Donna Sancia to Naples.

Lucretia's position, owing to these circ.u.mstances, became exceedingly trying. Her tears show that she possessed a heart. She loved, and perhaps for the first time. Alfonso wrote her from Genazzano, urgently imploring her to follow him, and his letters fell into the hands of the Pope, who compelled her to write her husband and ask him to return. It was doubtless his daughter's complaining that induced Alexander to send her away from Rome. August 8th he made her Regent of Spoleto. Hitherto papal legates, usually cardinals, had governed this city and the surrounding territory; but now the Pope entrusted its administration to a young woman of nineteen, his own daughter, and thither she repaired.

He gave her a letter to the priors of Spoleto which was as follows:

DEAR SONS: Greeting and the Apostolic Blessing! We have entrusted to our beloved daughter in Christ, the n.o.ble lady, Lucretia de Borgia, d.u.c.h.ess of Biseglia, the office of keeper of the castle, as well as the government of our cities of Spoleto and Foligno, and of the county and district about them. Having perfect confidence in the intelligence, the fidelity, and probity of the d.u.c.h.ess, which We have dwelt upon in previous letters, and likewise in your unfailing obedience to Us and to the Holy See, We trust that you will receive the d.u.c.h.ess Lucretia, as is your duty, with all due honor as your regent, and show her submission in all things. As We wish her to be received and accepted by you with special honor and respect, so do We command you in this epistle--as you value Our favor and wish to avoid Our displeasure--to obey the d.u.c.h.ess Lucretia, your regent, in all things collectively and severally, in so far as law and custom dictate in the government of the city, and whatever she may think proper to exact of you, even as you would obey Ourselves, and to execute her commands with all diligence and promptness, so that your devotion may receive due approbation. Given in Rome, in St. Peter's, under the papal seal, August 8, 1499.

HADRIa.n.u.s (Secretary).[65]

Lucretia left Rome for her new home the same day. She set out with a large retinue, and accompanied by her brother Don Giuffre; Fabio Orsini, now the consort of Girolama Borgia, her kinswoman; and a company of archers. She left the Vatican mounted on horseback, the governor of the city, the Neapolitan amba.s.sador, and a number of other gentlemen forming an escort to act as a guard of honor, while her father took a position in a loggia over the portal of the palace of the Vatican to watch his departing daughter and her cavalcade. For the first time he found himself in Rome deprived of all his children.

Lucretia made the journey partly on horseback and partly in a litter, and the trip from Rome to Spoleto required not less than six days. At Porcaria, in Umbria, she found a deputation of citizens of Spoleto waiting to greet her, and to accompany her to the city, which had been famous since the time of Hannibal, and which had been the seat of the mighty Lombard dukes. The castle of Spoleto is very ancient, its earliest portions dating from the Dukes Faroald and Grimoald. In the fourteenth century it was restored by the great Gil d'Albornoz, the contemporary of Cola di Rienzi, and it was completed shortly afterwards by Nicholas V. It is a magnificent piece of Renaissance architecture, overlooking the old city and the deep ravine which separates it from Monte Luco. From its high windows one may look out over the valley of the c.l.i.tunno and that of the Tiber, the fertile Umbrian plain, and, on the east, to the Apennines.

August 15th Lucretia Borgia received the priors of the city, to whom she presented her papal appointment, whereupon they swore allegiance to her.

Later the commune gave a banquet in her honor.

Lucretia's stay in Spoleto was short. Her regency there was merely intended to signify the actual taking possession of the territory which Alexander desired to bestow upon his daughter.

In the meantime her husband Alfonso had decided, unfortunately for himself, to obey Alexander's command and return to his wife--perhaps because he really loved her. The Pope ordered him to go to Spoleto by way of Foligno, and then to come with his spouse to Nepi, where he himself intended to be. The purpose of this meeting was to establish his daughter as sovereign there also.

Nepi had never been a baronial fief, although the prefects of Vico and the Orsini had held the place at different times. The Church through its deputies governed the town and surrounding country. When Alexander was a cardinal his uncle Calixtus had made him governor of the city, and such he remained until he was raised to the papal throne, when he conferred Nepi upon Cardinal Ascanio Sforza. The neatly written parchment containing the munic.i.p.al statute confirming Ascanio's appointment, which is dated January 1, 1495, is still preserved in the archives of the city. At the beginning of the year 1499, however, Alexander again a.s.sumed control of Nepi by compelling the castellan, who commanded the fortress for the truant Ascanio, to surrender it to him. He now invested his daughter with the castle, the city, and the domain of Nepi.[66]

September 4, 1499, Frances...o...b..rgia, the Pope's treasurer, who was also Bishop of Teano, took possession of the city in her name.

September 25th Alexander himself, accompanied by four cardinals, went to Nepi. In the castle, which he had restored, he met Lucretia and her husband, and also her brother Don Giuffre. He returned to Rome almost immediately--October 1st. On the tenth he addressed a brief from there to the city of Nepi, in which he commanded the munic.i.p.ality thenceforth to obey Lucretia, d.u.c.h.ess of Biselli, as their true sovereign. On the twelfth he sent his daughter a communication in which he empowered her to remit certain taxes to which the citizens of Nepi had hitherto been subject.[67]

Lucretia, therefore, had become the mistress of two large domains--a fact which clearly shows that she stood in high favor with her father.

She did not again return to Spoleto, but entrusted its government to a lieutenant. Although Alexander made Cardinal Gurk legate for Perugia and Todi early in October, he reserved Spoleto for his daughter. Later, August 10, 1500, he made Ludovico Borgia--who was Archbishop of Valencia--governor of this city, without, however, impairing his daughter's rights to the large revenue which the territory yielded.

As early as October 14th Lucretia returned to Rome. November 1, 1499, she gave birth to a son, who was named, in honor of the Pope, Rodrigo.

Her firstborn was baptized with great pomp November 11th in the Sistine Chapel--not the chapel now known by that name, but the one which Sixtus IV had built in S. Peter's. Giovanni Cervillon held the child in his arms, and near by were the Governor of Rome and a representative of the Emperor Maximilian. All the cardinals, the amba.s.sadors of England, Venice, Naples, Savoy, Siena, and the Republic of Florence were present at the ceremony. The governor of the city held the child over the font.

The G.o.dfathers were Podocatharo, Bishop of Caputaqua, and Ferrari, Bishop of Modena.

In the meantime, October 6th, Louis XII had taken possession of Milan, Ludovico Sforza having fled, on the approach of the French forces, to the Emperor Maximilian. In accordance with his agreement with Alexander, the king now lent troops to Caesar Borgia to enable him to seize the Romagna, where it was proclaimed that the va.s.sals of the Church, the Malatesta of Rimini, the Sforza of Pesaro, the Riario of Imola and Forli, the Varano of Camerino, and the Manfredi of Faenza had forfeited their fiefs to the Pope.

Caesar went to Rome, November 18, 1499. He stayed in the Vatican three days and then set forth again to join his army, which was besieging Imola. It was his intention first to take this city and then attack Forli, in the castle of which the mistress of the two cities, Catarina Sforza, had established herself for the purpose of resisting him.

While he was engaged in his campaigns in Romagna, his father was endeavoring to seize the hereditary possessions of the Roman barons. He first attacked the Gaetani. From the end of the thirteenth century this ancient family had held large landed estates in the Campagna and Maritima. It had divided into several branches, one of which was settled in the vicinity of Naples. There the Gaetani were Dukes of Traetto, Counts of Fundi and Caserta, and likewise va.s.sals and favorites of the crown of Naples.

Sermoneta, the center of the domain of the Gaetani family in the Roman Campagna, was an ancient city with a feudal castle, situated in the foothills of the Volscian mountains. Above it and to one side were the ruins of the great castle of Norba; below were the beautiful remains of Nymsa; while at its foot, extending to the sea, lay the Pontine marshes.

The greater part of this territory, which was traversed by the Appian Way, including the Cape of Circello, was the property of the Gaetani, to whom it still belongs.

At the time of which we are speaking it was ruled by the sons of Honoratus II, a powerful personality, who had raised his house from ruin. He died in the year 1490, leaving a widow, Catarina Orsini, and three sons--Nicola the prothonotary; Giacomo, and Guglielmo. His daughter Giovanella was the wife of Pierluigi Farnese and mother of Giulia. Nicola, who had married Eleonora Orsini, died in the year 1494; consequently, next to the prothonotary Giacomo, Guglielmo Gaetani was head of the house of Sermoneta.

Alexander lured the prothonotary to Rome and, having confined him in the castle of S. Angelo, began a process against him. Guglielmo succeeded in escaping to Mantua, but Nicola's little son Bernardino was murdered by the Borgia hirelings. Sermoneta was besieged, and its inhabitants surrendered without resistance.

As early as March 9, 1499, Alexander compelled the apostolic chamber to sell his daughter the possessions of the Gaetani for eighty thousand ducats. He stated in a doc.u.ment, which was signed by eighteen cardinals, that the magnitude of the expenditures which he had recently made in the interests of the Holy See compelled him to increase the Church property; and for this purpose there were Sermoneta, Ba.s.siano, Ninfa and Norma, Tivera, Cisterna, San Felice (the Cape of Circello), and San Donato, which, owing to the rebellion of the Gaetani, might be confiscated. This transaction was concluded in February, 1500, and Lucretia, who was already mistress of Spoleto and Nepi, thus became ruler of Sermoneta.[68] In vain did the unfortunate Giacomo Gaetani protest from his prison; July 5, 1500, he was poisoned. His mother and sisters buried him in S. Bartolomeo, which stands on an island in the Tiber, where the Gaetani had owned a palace for a great many years.

Giulia Farnese, therefore, was unable to save her own uncle. She was reminded that Giacomo and Nicola had stood beside her when she was married to the youthful Orsini in 1489 in the Borgia palace. We do not know whether Giulia was living in Rome at this time. We occasionally find her name in the epigrams of the day, and it appears in a satire, _Dialogue between Death and the Pope, sick of a Fever_, in which he called upon Giulia to save him, whereupon Death replied that his mistress had borne him three or four children. As the satire was written in the summer of 1500, when Alexander was suffering from the fever, it is probable that his relations with Giulia still continued.

Caesar, who had taken Imola, December 1, 1499, was far from pleased when he saw the great estates of the Gaetani, whose revenues he himself could use to good advantage, bestowed upon his sister; and, as he himself wished absolutely to control the will of his father, her growing influence in the Vatican caused him no little annoyance. He had sinister plans for whose execution the time was soon to prove propitious.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] Despatch of Joh. Lucidus Cataneus, Rome, August 8, 1498. Gonzaga archives.

[61] The briefs are in the state archives of Venice.

[62] The instrument is in Beneimbene's protocol-book.

[63] The instrument is in Beneimbene's protocol-book.

[64] Diary of Marino Saruto, ii, 751.

[65] This brief is in the state archives of Spoleto.

[66] The Bull of Invest.i.ture, written on parchment, is dated Rome, 1499, Non. (the month is not given). It is an absolute _donum_. The doc.u.ment is now in the archives of Modena.

[67] Both briefs are preserved in the archives of the State-house of Nepi.

[68] The doc.u.ments concerning this sale, dated February 11 to 15, 1500, are preserved in the archives of Modena.

CHAPTER XIV

SOCIAL LIFE OF THE BORGIAS

Lucretia certainly must have been pleased by her brother's long absence; the Vatican was less turbulent. Besides herself only Don Giuffre and Donna Sancia, who had effected her return, maintained a court there.

We might avail ourselves of this period of quiet to depict Lucretia's private life, her court, and the people about her; but it is impossible to do this, none of her contemporaries having left any description of it. Even Burchard shows us Lucretia but rarely, and when he does it is always in connection with affairs in the Vatican. Only once does he give us a fleeting view of her palace--on February 27, 1496--when Giovanni Borgia, Juan de Castro, and the recently created Cardinal Martinus of Segovia were calling upon her.

None of the foreign diplomatists of that time, so far as we may learn from their despatches, made any reports regarding Lucretia's private life. We have only a few letters written by her during her residence in Rome, and there is not a single poem dedicated to her or which mentions her; therefore it is due to the malicious epigrams of Sannazzaro and Ponta.n.u.s that she has been branded as the most depraved of courtesans.

If there ever was a young woman, however, likely to excite the imagination of the poet, Lucretia Borgia in the bloom of her youth and beauty was that woman. Her connection with the Vatican, the mystery which surrounded her, and the fate she suffered, make her one of the most fascinating women of her age. Doubtless there are buried in various libraries numerous verses dedicated to her by the Roman poets who must have swarmed at the court of the Pope's daughter to render homage to her beauty and to seek her patronage.

In Rome, Lucretia had an opportunity to enjoy, if she were so disposed, the society of many brilliant men, for even during the sovereignty of the Borgias the Muses were banished neither from the Vatican nor from Rome. It can not be denied, however, that the daughters of princely houses were allowed to devote themselves to the cultivation of the intellect more freely at the secular courts of Italy than they were at the papal court. Not until Lucretia went to Ferrara to live was she able to endeavor to emulate the example of the princesses of Mantua and Urbino. While living in Rome she was too young and her environment too narrow for her to have had any influence upon the literary and aesthetic circles of that city, although, owing to her position, she must have been acquainted with them.

Her father was not incapable of intellectual pleasures; he had his court minstrels and poets. The famous Aurelio Brandolini, who died in 1497, was wont to improvise to the strains of the lute during banquets in the Vatican and in Lucretia's palace. Caesar's favorite, Serafino of Aquila, the Petrarch of his age, who died in Rome in the year 1500, still a young man, aspired to the same honor.