Lucretia Borgia Part 31

Whether Loyola's brilliant pupil had any knowledge of the religious att.i.tude of Calvin's friend is not known. The presence of this man in Savonarola's native city and at Lucretia's former residence is, on account of the contrast, remarkable. Francesco left for Rome almost immediately, and then returned to Spain. On the death of Lainez, in 1565, he became general,--the third in order,--of the Society of Jesus.

He still held this position at the time of his death, which occurred in Rome in the year 1572. The Church p.r.o.nounced him holy, and thus a descendant of Alexander VI became a saint.[248]

The descendants of this Borgia married into the greatest families of Spain. His eldest son, Don Carlos, Duke of Gandia, married Donna Maddalena, daughter of the Count of Oliva, of the house of Centelles, and thus the family to which Lucretia's first suitor belonged, after the lapse of fifty years, became connected with the Borgias. The Gandia branch survived until the eighteenth century, when there were two cardinals of the name of Borgia who were members of it.

Ercole II did not discover the heretical tendencies of his wife Renee until 1554, when he placed her in a convent. The n.o.ble princess remained true to the Reformation. As the Inquisition stamped out the reform movement in Ferrara while her son was reigning duke, she returned to France, where she lived with the Huguenots in her Castle of Montargis, dying in 1575. It is worthy of note that the Duke of Guise was her son-in-law.

Renee had borne her husband several children,--the hereditary Prince Alfonso Luigi, who subsequently became a cardinal; Donna Anna, who married the Duke of Guise; Donna Lucretia, who became d.u.c.h.ess of Urbino; and Donna Leonora, who remained single.

Her son Alfonso II succeeded to the throne of Ferrara in 1559. This was the duke whom Ta.s.so made immortal. Just as Ariosto, during the reign of the first Alfonso and Lucretia, had celebrated the house of Este in a monumental poem, so Torquato Ta.s.so now continued to do at the home of his descendant, Alfonso II. By a curious coincidence the two greatest epic poets of Italy were in the service of the same family. Ta.s.so's fate is one of the darkest memories of the house of Este, and is also the last of any special importance in the history of the court of Ferrara.

His poem may be regarded as the death song of this famous family, for the legitimate line of the house of Este died out October 27, 1597, in Alfonso II, Lucretia Borgia's grandson. Don Caesar, a grandson of Alfonso I, and son of that Alfonso whom Laura Dianti had borne him and of Donna Giulia Rovere of Urbino, ascended the ducal throne of Ferrara on the death of Alfonso II as his heir. The Pope, however, would not recognize him. In vain he endeavored to prove that his grandfather, shortly before his death, had legally married Laura Dianti, and that consequently he was the legitimate heir to the throne. It availed nothing for the contestants to appear before the tribunal of emperor and pope and endeavor to make Don Caesar's pretensions good, nor does it now avail for the Ferrarese, who, following Muratori, still seek to substantiate these claims. Don Caesar was forced to yield to Clement VIII, January 13, 1598, the grandson of Alfonso I renouncing the Duchy of Ferrara. Together with his wife, Virginia Medici and his children, he left the old palace of his ancestors and betook himself to Modena, the t.i.tle of duke of that city and the estates of Reggio and Carpi having been conferred upon him.

Don Caesar continued the branch line of the Este. At the end of the eighteenth century it pa.s.sed into the Austrian Este house in the person of Archduke Ferdinand, and in the nineteenth century this line also became extinct.

No longer do the popes control Ferrara. Where the castle of Tedaldo stood when Lucretia made her entry into the city in 1502, where Clement VIII later erected the great castle which was razed in 1859, there is now a wide field in the middle of which, lost and forgotten, is a melancholy statue of Paul V, and all about is a waste. There is still standing before the castle of Giovanni Sforza in Pesaro a column from which the statue has been overturned, and on the base is the inscription: "Statue of Urban VII--That is all that is left of it."

FOOTNOTES:

[244] This letter is quoted by Zucchetti.

[245] Printed in Zucchetti's work. Che da forse dieci anni in qua la portava el silizio.... This is not, as Zucchetti supposes, the goat-hair shirt.

[246] In this translation it appears on the cover.

[247] Di quella mala sorte che fu quella, e con tante disoneste parti.

See Ugolino Storia dei Duchi d'Urbino, ii, 242.

[248] J. M. S. Daurignac, Histoire de S. Francois de Borgia, Duc de Gandie, Troisieme General de la Compagnie de Jesus. Paris, 1863.