Lucretia Borgia Part 3

[13] Jacobus Burgomensis _de claris mulieribus_, Paris, 1521.

CHAPTER V

NEPOTISM--GIULIA FARNESE--LUCRETIA'S BETROTHALS

It is not difficult to imagine what emotions were aroused in Lucretia when she first became aware of the real condition of her family. Her mother's husband was not her father; she discovered that she and her brothers were the children of a cardinal, and the awakening of her conscience was accompanied by a realization of circ.u.mstances which--frowned on by the Church--it was necessary to conceal from the world. She herself had always. .h.i.therto been treated as a niece of the cardinal, and she now beheld in her father one of the most prominent princes of the Church of Rome, whom she heard mentioned as a future pope.

The knowledge of the great advantages to be derived from these circ.u.mstances certainly must have affected Lucretia's fancy much more actively than the conception of their immorality. The world in which she lived concerned itself but little with moral scruples, and rarely in the history of mankind has there been a time in which the theory that it is proper to obtain the greatest possible profit from existing conditions has been so generally accepted. She soon learned how common were these relations in Rome. She heard that most of the cardinals lived with their mistresses, and provided in a princely way for their children. They told her about those of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere and those of Piccolomini; she saw with her own eyes the sons and daughters of Estouteville, and heard of the baronies which their wealthy father had acquired for them in the Alban mountains. She saw the children of Pope Innocent raised to the highest honors; to her were pointed out his son Franceschetto Cib and his ill.u.s.trious spouse Maddalena Medici. She knew that the Vatican was the home of other children and grandchildren of the Pope, and she frequently saw his daughter Madonna Teodorina, the consort of the Genoese Uso di Mare, going and coming. She was eight years old when his daughter Donna Peretta was married in the Vatican to the Marchese Alfonso del Carretto with such magnificent pomp that it set all Rome to talking.

Lucretia first became conscious of the position to which she and her brothers might be called by their birth when she learned that her eldest brother, Don Pedro Luis, was a Spanish duke. We do not know when the young Borgia was raised to this dignity, but it was some time after 1482. The strong ties which existed between the cardinal and the Spanish court doubtless enabled him to have his son created Duke of Gandia in the kingdom of Valencia. As Mariana remarks, he bought this dukedom for his son.

Don Pedro Luis, however, when still a young man, died in Spain, for a doc.u.ment of the year 1491 speaks of him as deceased, and mentions a legacy left by his will to his sister Lucretia. The duchy of Gandia pa.s.sed to Rodrigo's second son, Don Giovanni, who hastened to Valencia to take possession of it.

Meanwhile the fancy of the licentious cardinal had turned to other women. In May, 1489, when Lucretia was nine years old, appears for the first time the most celebrated of his mistresses, Giulia Farnese, a young woman of extraordinary beauty, to whose charms the cardinal and future pope, who was growing old, yielded with all the ardor of a young man.

It was the adulterous love of this Giulia which first brought the Farnese house into the history of Rome, and subsequently into that of the world; for Rodrigo Borgia laid the foundation of the greatness of this family when he made Giulia's brother Alessandro a cardinal. In this manner he prepared the way to the papacy for the future Paul III, the founder of the house of Farnese of Parma, a distinguished family which died out in 1758 in the person of Queen Elisabeth, who occupied the throne of Spain.

The Farnese, up to the time of the Borgias, were of no importance in Rome, where two of the most beautiful buildings of the Renaissance have since helped to make their name immortal. They did not even live in Rome, but in Roman Etruria, where they owned a few towns--Farneto, from which, doubtless, their name was derived, Ischia, Capracola, and Capodimonte. Some time later, though just when is not known, they were temporarily in possession of Isola Farnese, an ancient castle in the ruins of Veii, which from the fourteenth century had belonged to the Orsini.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FARNESE PALACE, ROME.]

The origin of the Farnese family is uncertain, but the tradition, according to which they were descended from the Lombards or the Franks, appears to be true. It is supported by the fact that the name Ranuccio, which is the Italian form of Rainer, is of frequent occurrence in the family. The Farnese became prominent in Etruria as a small dynasty of robber barons, without, however, being able to attain to the power of their neighbors, the Orsini of Anguillara and Bracciano, and the famous Counts of Vico, who were of German descent and who ruled over the Tuscan prefecture for more than a hundred years, until that country was swallowed up by Eugene IV. While these prefects were the most active Ghibellines and the bitterest enemies of the popes, the Farnese, like the Este, always stood by the Guelphs. From the eleventh century they were consuls and podestas in Orvieto, and they appeared later in various places as captains of the Church in the numerous little wars with the cities and barons in Umbria and in the domain of S. Peter. Ranuccio, Giulia's grandfather, was one of the ablest of the generals of Eugene IV, and he had been a comrade of the great tyrant-conqueror Vitelleschi, and through him his house had won great renown. His son, Pierluigi, married Donna Giovanella of the Gaetani family of Sermoneta. His children were Alessandro, Bartolomeo, Angiolo, Girolama, and Giulia.

Alessandro Farnese, born February 28, 1468, was a young man of intellect and culture, but notorious for his unbridled pa.s.sions. He had his own mother committed to prison in 1487 under the gravest charges, whereupon he himself was confined in the castle of S. Angelo by Innocent VIII. He escaped from prison, and the matter was allowed to drop. He was a prothonotary of the Church. His elder sister was married to Puccio Pucci, one of the most ill.u.s.trious statesmen of Florence, a member of a large family which was on terms of close friendship with the Medici.

On the twentieth of May, 1489, the youthful Giulia Farnese, together with the equally youthful Orsino Orsini, appeared in the "Star Chamber"

of the Borgia palace to sign their marriage contract. It is worthy of note that this occurred in the house of Cardinal Rodrigo. His name appears as the first of the witnesses to this doc.u.ment, as if he had const.i.tuted himself the protector of the couple and had brought about their marriage. This union, however, had been arranged when the betrothed were minors, by their parents, Ludovico Orsini, lord of Ba.s.sanello, and Pierluigi Farnese, both of whom had died before 1489. In those days little children were often legally betrothed, and the marriage was consummated later, as was the custom in ancient Rome, where frequently boys and girls only thirteen years of age were affianced.

Giulia was barely fifteen, May 20, 1489, and she was still under the guardianship of her brothers and her uncles of the house of Gaetani; while the young Orsini was under the control of his mother, Adriana, who was Adriana de Mila, the kinswoman of Cardinal Rodrigo, and Lucretia's governess. This, therefore, sufficiently explains the part, personal and official, which the cardinal took in the ceremony of Giulia's betrothal.

The witnesses to the marriage contract, which was drawn up by the notary Beneimbene, were, in addition to the cardinal, Bishop Martini of Segovia, the Spanish Canons Garcetto and Caranza, and a Roman n.o.bleman named Giovanni Astalli. The bride's brothers should have supported her, but only the younger, Angiolo, was present, Alessandro remaining away.

His failure to attend such an important family function in the Borgia palace is strange, although it may have been occasioned by some accident. The bride's uncles, the prothonotary Giacomo, and his brother Don Nicola Gaetani were present. Giulia's dowry consisted of three thousand gold florins, a large amount for that time.

The civil marriage of the young couple took place the following day, May 21st, in this same palace of the Borgias. Many great n.o.bles were present, among whom were specially mentioned the kinsmen of the groom, Cardinal Gianbattista Orsini and Raynaldo Orsini, Archbishop of Florence. The young couple, as the season was charming, may have gone to Castle Ba.s.sanello, or, if not, may have taken up their abode in the Orsini palace on Monte Giordano.

Before her marriage Cardinal Rodrigo must have known, and often seen Giulia Farnese in the palace of Madonna Adriana, the mother of the young Orsini. There, likewise, Lucretia, who was several years younger, made her acquaintance. Like Lucretia, Giulia had golden hair, and her beauty won for her the name La Bella. It was in Adriana's house that this tender, lovely child became ensnared in the coils of the libertine Rodrigo. She succ.u.mbed to his seductions either shortly before or soon after her marriage to the young Orsini. Perhaps she first aroused the pa.s.sion of the cardinal, a man at that time fifty-eight years old, when she stood before him in his palace a bride in the full bloom of youth.

Be that as it may, it is certain that two years after her marriage Giulia was the cardinal's acknowledged mistress. When Madonna Adriana discovered the liason she winked at it, and was an accessory to the shame of her daughter-in-law. By so doing she became the most powerful and the most influential person in the house of Borgia.

Two of the three sons of the cardinal, Giovanni and Caesar, had in the meantime reached manhood. In 1490 neither of them was in Rome; the former was in Spain, and the latter was studying at the University of Perugia, which he later left for Pisa. As early as 1488 Caesar must have attended one of these inst.i.tutions, probably the University of Perugia, for in that year Paolo Pompilio dedicated to him his _Syllabica_, a work on the art of versification. In it he lauded the budding genius of Caesar, who was the hope and ornament of the house of Borgia, his progress in the sciences, and his maturity of intellect--astonishing in one so young--and he predicted his future fame.[14]

His father had intended him for the Church, although Caesar himself felt for it nothing but aversion. From Innocent VIII he had secured his son's appointment as prothonotary of the Church and even as Bishop of Pamplona. He appears as a prothonotary in a doc.u.ment of February, 1491, and at the same time the youngest of Rodrigo's sons, Giuffre, a boy of about nine years, was made Canon and Archdeacon of Valencia.

Caesar went to Pisa, probably in 1491. Its university attracted a great many of the sons of the prominent Italian families, chiefly on account of the fame of its professor of jurisprudence, Philippo Decio of Milan.

At the university the young Borgia had two Spanish companions, who were favorites of his father, Francesco Romolini of Ilerda and Juan Vera of Arcilla in the kingdom of Valencia. The latter was master of his household, as Caesar himself states in a letter written in October, 1492, in which he also calls Romolini his "most faithful comrade."[15]

Francesco Romolini was more than thirty years of age in 1491. He was a diligent student of law, and became deeply learned in it. He is the same Romolini who afterwards conducted the prosecution of Savonarola in Florence. In 1503 Alexander made him a cardinal, to which dignity Vera had been raised in 1500. His father's wealth enabled the youthful Caesar to live in Pisa in princely style, and his connections brought him into friendly relations with the Medici.

The cardinal was still making special exertions to further the fortunes of his children in Spain. Even for his daughter Lucretia he could see no future more brilliant than a Spanish marriage; and he must indeed have regarded it as a special act of condescension for the son of an old and n.o.ble house to consent to become the husband of the illegitimate daughter of a cardinal. The n.o.ble concerned was Don Cherubino Juan de Centelles, lord of Val d'Ayora in the kingdom of Valencia, and brother of the Count of Oliva.

The nuptial contract was drawn up in the Valencian dialect in Rome, February 26 and June 16, 1491. The youthful groom was in Valencia, the young bride in Rome, and her father had appointed the Roman n.o.bleman Antonio Porcaro her proxy. In the marriage contract it was specified that Lucretia's portion should be three hundred thousand timbres or sous in Valencian money, which she was to bring Don Cherubino as dowry, part in coin and part in jewels and other valuables. It was specially stated that of this sum eleven thousand timbres should consist of the amount bequeathed by the will of the deceased Don Pedro Luis de Borgia, Duke of Gandia, to his sister for her marriage portion, while eight thousand were given her by her other brothers, Caesar and Giuffre, for the same purpose, presumably also from the estate left by the brother. It was provided that Donna Lucretia should be taken to Valencia at the cardinal's expense within one year from the signing of the contract, and that the church ceremony should be performed within six months after her arrival in Spain.[16]

Thus Lucretia, when only a child eleven years of age, found her hand and life happiness subjected to the will of another, and from that time she was no longer the shaper of her own destiny. This was the usual fate of the daughters of the great houses, and even of the lesser ones. Shortly before her father became pope it seemed as if her life was to be spent in Spain, and she would have found no place in the history of the papacy and of Italy if she and Don Cherubino had been married. However, the marriage was never performed. Obstacles of which we are ignorant, or changes in the plans of her father, caused the betrothal of Lucretia to Don Cherubino to be annulled. At the very moment this was being done for her by proxy, her father was planning another alliance for his daughter.

The husband he had selected, Don Gasparo, was also a young Spaniard, son of Don Juan Francesco of Procida, Count of Aversa. This family had probably removed to Naples with the house of Aragon. Don Juan Francesco's mother was Donna Leonora de Procida y Castelleta, Countess of Aversa. Gasparo's father lived in Aversa, but in 1491 the son was in Valencia, where, probably, he was being educated under the care of some of his kinsmen, for he was still a boy of less than fifteen years. In an instrument drawn by the notary Beneimbene, dated November 9, 1492, it is explicitly stated that on the thirtieth of April of the preceding year, 1491, the marriage contract of Lucretia and Gasparo had been executed by proxy with all due form, and that in it Cardinal Rodrigo had bound himself to send his daughter to the city of Valencia at his expense, where the church ceremony was to be performed. However, since the marriage contract between Lucretia and the young Centelles had been legally executed on the twenty-sixth of February of the same year, 1491, and was recognized as late as the following June, there is room for doubt regarding the correctness of the date; but both the instrument in Beneimbene's protocol-book, and an abstract of the same in the archives of the Hospital Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, give the last of April as the date of the marriage contract of Lucretia and Don Gasparo. In these proceedings her proxies were, not Antonio Porcaro, but Don Giuffre Borgia, Baron of Villa Longa, the Canon Jacopo Serra of Valencia, and the vicar-general of the same place, Mateo Cucia. Hence follows the curious fact that Lucretia was the betrothed at one and the same time of two young Spaniards.

In spite of the rejection of her first affianced, the Centelles family appears to have remained on good terms with the Borgias, for, later, when Rodrigo became Pope, a certain Gulielmus de Centelles is to be found among his most trusted chamberlains, while Raymondo of the same house was prothonotary and treasurer of Perugia.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Accedit studium illud tuum et perquam fertile bonarum litterarum in quo hac in aetate seris.... Non deerit surgenti tuae virtuti commodus aliquando et idoneus praeco.--At tu Caesar profecto non parum laudandus es; qui in hac aetate tam facile senem agis. Perge nostri temporis Borgiae familiae spes et decus. Introduction to the Syllabica. Rome, 1488.

Gennarelli's Edition of Burchard's Diary.

[15] Regarding Caesar's studies at Pisa, see Angelo Fabroni, Hist. Acad.

Pisan. i, 160, 201.

[16] On June 16, 1491, some changes were made in this contract, which Beneimbene has noted in the same protocol-book.

CHAPTER VI

HER FATHER BECOMES POPE--GIOVANNI SFORZA

On July 25, 1492, occurred the event to which the Borgias had long eagerly looked forward, the death of Innocent VIII. Above all the other candidates for the Papacy were four cardinals: Rafael Riario and Giuliano della Rovere--both powerful nephews of Sixtus IV--Ascanio Sforza, and Rodrigo Borgia.

Before the election was decided there were days of feverish expectation for the cardinal's family. Of his children only Lucretia and Giuffre were in Rome at the time, and both were living with Madonna Adriana.

Vannozza was occupying her own house with her husband, Ca.n.a.le, who for some time had held the office of secretary of the penitentiary court.

She was now fifty years old, and there was but one event to which she looked forward, and upon it depended the gratification of her greatest wish; namely, to see her children's father ascend the papal throne. What prayers and vows she and Madonna Adriana, Lucretia, and Giulia Farnese must have made to the saints for the fulfilment of that wish!

Early on the morning of August 11th breathless messengers brought these women the news from the Vatican--Rodrigo Borgia had won the great prize.

To him, the highest bidder, the papacy had been sold. In the election, Cardinal Ascanio Sforza had turned the scale, and for his reward he received the city of Nepi; the office of vice-chancellor, and the Borgia palace, which ever since has borne the name Sforza-Cesarini.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEXANDER VI.

From an engraving published in 1580.]

On the morning of this momentous day, when Alexander VI was carried from the conclave hall to S. Peter's there to receive the first expressions of homage, his joyful glance discovered many of his kinsmen in the dense crowd, for thither they had hastened to celebrate his great triumph. It was a long time since Rome had beheld a pope of such majesty, of such beauty of person. His conduct was notorious throughout the city, and no one knew him better in that hour than that woman, Vannozza Catanei, who was kneeling in S. Peter's during the ma.s.s, her soul filled with the memories of a sinful past.

Borgia's election did not cause all the Powers anxiety. In Milan, Ludovico il Moro celebrated the event with public festivals; he now hoped to become, through the influence of his brother Ascanio, a "half pope." While the Medici expected much from Alexander, the Aragonese of Naples looked for little. Bitterly did Venice express herself. Her amba.s.sador in Milan publicly declared in August that the papacy had been sold by simony and a thousand deceptions, and that the signory of Venice was convinced that France and Spain would refuse to obey the Pope when they learned of these enormities.[17]

In the meantime, Alexander VI had received the professions of loyalty of all the Italian States, together with their profuse expressions of homage. The festival of his coronation was celebrated with unparalleled pomp, August 26th. The Borgia arms, a grazing steer, was displayed so generally in the decorations, and was the subject of so many epigrams, that a satirist remarked that Rome was celebrating the discovery of the Sacred Apis. Subsequently the Borgia bull was frequently the object of the keenest satire; but at the beginning of Alexander's reign it was, navely enough, the pictorial embodiment of the Pope's magnificence.

To-day such symbolism would excite only derision and mirth, but the plastic taste of the Italian of that day was not offended by it.