Cesare Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Alexander’s grief for his handsome son was indescribable; even the stolid Burchard was moved:

  The Pope, when he heard that the Duke had been killed and flung into the river like dung, was thrown into a paroxysm of grief, and for the pain and bitterness of his heart shut himself in his room and wept most bitterly. The Cardinal of Segovia and some of his servants went to the door, persuading him to open it, which he did only after many hours. The Pope neither ate nor drank anything from the Wednesday evening until the following Saturday, nor from the morning of Thursday to the following Sunday did he know a moment’s peace.

  By Monday 19th, however, contrary to everyone’s expectations, Alexander had recovered himself sufficiently to hold a public consistory in which he announced Gandia’s death in emotional terms to the assembled ambassadors and cardinals:

  The Duke of Gandia is dead. His death has given us the greatest sorrow, and no greater pain than this could we suffer, because we loved him above all things, and esteemed not more the Papacy nor anything else. Rather, had we seven papacies we would give them all to have the Duke alive again. God has done this perhaps for some sin of ours, and not because he deserved such a cruel death; nor do we know who killed him and threw him into the Tiber.

  In order to scotch the rumours flying round Rome as to the authors of the crime, Alexander went on to exculpate some of those who had been mentioned as principal suspects – Giovanni Sforza, whose motive was held to be resentment over Lucrezia, Jofre, out of jealousy concerning Sancia, and the Duke of Urbino, in revenge for his imprisonment after the Orsini war.

  Who did kill Gandia? Within a week of his death, the searchers for the murderer or murderers were abruptly called off, and it seems that Alexander had learned the truth, although he said nothing publicly, in order, as the Florentine envoy Alessandro Bracci put it, ‘to catch the authors of the crime in their sleep’. On 1 July he wrote: ‘since the Pope no longer shows great curiosity as to the finding of those who murdered the Duke of Gandia, it is held to be certain beyond doubt that His Holiness has now discovered the truth, and that he thinks of nothing else but the manner in which he may safely lay hands on them.’ It was the general opinion in Rome that whoever was responsible for the murder was un gran maestro, a master-mind, and a man of importance and power. Suspicion first rested on the Sforzas, Cardinal Ascanio and his nephew Giovanni, not only on account of Lucrezia and the divorce but because of a skirmish between Juan’s household in which some of Gandia’s Spaniards were killed, for which Gandia in revenge had arrested several of Ascanio’s grooms and had them hanged from the ramparts of the Torre di Nona. The Mantuan envoy Scalona, in his report of Gandia’s death, specifically says that there was bad blood between Juan and Cesare on the one side and Ascanio on the other because of this affair. But Ascanio’s letters to his brother Ludovico written in the week after Juan’s death give absolutely no intimation of his having had any hand in the crime; while his nephew Giovanni was not even in Rome at the time, but in Milan, having left Pesaro to seek Ludovico’s support. And although Alexander had Ascanio’s house searched on 16 June, he seems soon to have come to the same conclusion. At the consistory of the 19th he told the Spanish ambassador, Garcilaso de la Vega; ‘God forbid that I should harbour any such horrible suspicions of the Cardinal [Ascanio]. I have always looked upon him as a brother and he will be welcome whenever he comes.’ In fact, Ascanio, who had not dared attend consistory because of wild threats made against him by Spaniards of Juan’s and Cesare’s households, upon receiving friendly assurances from both Alexander and Cesare visited the Pope on the 21st and had long interviews both with him and with Cesare separately, at which the subject of discussion was not Gandia’s murder but Lucrezia’s divorce.

  By far the most likely suspects were the Orsinis, whose names significantly had not even been mentioned by Alexander in his exculpations of the 19th. Of all Gandia’s many enemies, they had the strongest motives for a vendetta and, with their connections in the city, the best means of carrying it out. Gandia had been the spearhead of the Borgia attack on them the previous winter, and it was he for whom their lands had been intended. Moreover they held Alexander responsible for the death of their leader Virginio in the dungeons of Castel dell’Uovo on 13 January. Virginio was believed to have been poisoned, since reports alleged that the day before he died he was seen to be in perfect health, and the Orsinis did not hesitate to lay responsibility at the Pope’s door. By the laws of the vendetta, Virginio’s death called for revenge, and how better could his family avenge themselves on Alexander than by engineering the death of his favourite son?

  It seems that the plan for Juan’s murder had been laid at least a month beforehand, possibly at the time when Virginio’s corpse was brought through Rome from Naples en route for burial at Bracciano at the end of April. Burchard noted that the mysterious masked man who figures in all contemporary accounts of the murder, and whom he averred had had a brief interview with Gandia at Vannozza’s supper, had already visited him at the Vatican almost every day throughout the previous month. The bait seems to have been the beautiful and respectable daughter of Count Antonio della Mirandola, with whom Gandia was known to be madly in love. It seems probable that Juan, whose senses had been carefully titillated, was lured to his death with the promise of a final assignation with the lady; in any event his mule was found wandering near her father’s house. As soon as the hue and cry against the Sforzas died down, the Orsinis began to be mentioned in connection with the affair, and references to the Pope’s suspicions of them recur with increasing frequency during the following months. As early as 8 August the Florentine government received the news that ‘the Orsinis were nervous of the Pope, and above all Bartolomeo d’Alviano [Virginio’s brother-in-law] to whom the death of the Duke of Gandia is imputed’, and Paolo Orsini was also specifically mentioned. On 22 December Manfredo Manfredi wrote to his master the Duke of Ferrara: ‘It seems that more than ever the Pope gives signs of blaming the Orsinis for the murder of his son, for which it is thought that he is disposed to revenge the said injury and death of his son …’ At the same time a Venetian source reported: ‘This Pope plotted to ruin the Orsinis because the Orsinis for sure caused the death of his son the Duke of Gandia.’ But the Orsinis were powerful enemies, and their punishment was not to be undertaken lightly, as the Borgias had recently learned to their cost. And so they nursed their vendetta patiently and cunningly, biding their time until they could be certain of their prey.

  Within less than a year of Gandia’s death, in February 1498, a rumour began to circulate in Venice (where, it may be noted, the Orsinis had many friends) that Cesare was responsible for his brother’s death. This accusation was later to be embodied in the Venetian envoy’s official report of September 1500, at a time when Cesare was openly seen to be guilty of at least one murder, and gained currency at the court of Spain, where he had many enemies. Maria Enriquez, his brother’s widow, at least seems to have believed it, as did Queen Isabella, who violently disapproved of Cesare, The story was picked up by Guicciardini, who embroidered it with lurid details. Cesare, he said, envious of Gandia’s secular position and jealous that he occupied a greater place than himself in Lucrezia’s affections, ‘inflamed with lust and ambition … had him killed and secretly thrown into the Tiber’. The story gained strength over the years, and formed the basis of the theory put forward by the authoritative German historian Gregorovius, that Alexander’s condoning of Cesare’s crime was the cause of Cesare’s ‘satanic hold’ over his father.

  Cesare was capable of murder if he stood to gain by it, he certainly benefited later from his brother’s removal from the scene, but there is absolutely no contemporary evidence that he did do it, and the whole case against him rests on his alleged jealousy of Gandia, his supposedly incestuous relations with Lucrezia, and the fact that over a year later he was seen to have profited by it. Not one of the accounts written at the time of the murder points at Cesare as the author of the crime. Ascanio Sforza,
who was close to the Vatican, on bad terms with Cesare, and had every interest in casting suspicion on others than himself, makes not the faintest allusion to such an accusation in his letters to his brother. Moreover there is no contemporary evidence that Alexander was frightened of, or dominated by, his twenty-two-year-old son in the months following Gandia’s death, or that Cesare was discontent with his role as an influential Cardinal, a career which might well lead him to the Papacy itself.

  Indeed it was as Cardinal Legate for the coronation of King Federigo of Naples that Cesare left Rome six weeks after his brother’s death accompanied by a small army of retainers, prelates and camp-followers, including 700 horses, bound for Capua, where the coronation was to take place on 6 August. He reached Capua on 2 August, but fell ill shortly after his arrival, and the ceremony had to be postponed. Sancia, trailed by Jofre, was hurriedly dispatched from Rome to nurse him, but he recovered quickly enough to crown King Federigo on 11 August. Splendid in a grown of crimson velvet ‘with more than ducal sleeves’, and a flowing mantle of cloth of gold, Cesare was carried in a sedia gestatoria into Capua Cathedral, where he performed the coronation ceremony with all the theatrical dignity he had learned from his father; he had a strong histrionic streak, and liked nothing better than to play a part. Yet despite the splendour of the occasion, the ceremony fell rather flat; the Angevin barons of the kingdom of Naples, who opposed the Aragonese dynasty and whom Cesare as Legate had been supposed to reconcile with the King, boycotted it totally, and had it not been for the presence of the Prince and Princess of Squillace the congregation would have consisted almost entirely of ambassadors and the populace.

  Cesare failed in his role as peacemaker, but the real object of his visit was to squeeze further advantages for his family from a gratefully dependent King Federigo. There was the question of Juan’s rich estates in the Kingdom, whose investiture Cesare was to demand from the King himself in his nephew’s name, and there was another more delicate matter to be explored, namely the possibility of a Neapolitan marriage for Lucrezia, as soon as her divorce from Sforza, upon which the Borgias were absolutely determined, could be pushed through. But while bargaining with his host on his family’s behalf, the young Legate was determined to enjoy the delights of Naples, which he reached in company with the King on 14 August. The kingdom of Naples and Sicily had once been the richest territory in Italy, and although it had been in steady decline since the days of the Norman kingdom in the twelfth century, Naples was still a beautiful city, famous for its palaces, its gardens in the Arab tradition (Charles VIII had taken a Neapolitan gardener back with him in 1495), and for its cultivated, sensual and pleasure-loving court. Cesare is said to have fallen in love with Maria Diaz Garlon, daughter of the Count d’ Aliffe, and to have spent 200,000 ducats to win her favours. Cesare, with his handsome face and athletic figure, had his father’s physical attraction for women and had no need to buy their favours. But his extravagance was already becoming notorious, and no doubt he spent a great deal of money on rich stuffs and Barbary horses. The impoverished King Federigo was forced to bear the expenses of entertaining the luxury-loving Legate and his entire suite throughout their stay in Naples, and must have been heartily relieved when Cesare finally left for Rome on 22 August.

  Cesare took with him a lasting memento of the tainted delights of the city which had proved such a fatal honey-trap to the troops of Charles VII three years earlier. Isabella d’Este’s agent, Donato de’ Preti, reported to his mistress: ‘Monsignor of Valencia has returned from the Kingdom after crowning King Federigo and he too is sick of the French disease.’ Cesare’s Spanish physician, Gaspare Torella, wrote a treatise on the subject, which he dedicated to his patron, ‘because, illustrious prince, you asked me what might be this pestilent malady which some call “the disease of San Semente” and the French say is “the Naples disease” or the great pox, while the Italians call it the French disease, and since you asked me if the doctors have written on the subject and for what reason in so long a time no specific remedy has been discovered …’ Torella condemned the use of mercury in treating syphilis and prescribed a course of ointments, potions and sweating in hot baths. He no doubt claimed credit for curing his master, but in fact his treatments can have made little or no difference: primary syphilis lasts from between ten to ninety days, and within a few months of returning to Rome the disease would seemingly have disappeared of itself, and Cesare would have considered himself cured.

  V

  Crossing the Rubicon

  CESARE arrived back in Rome on 5 September, and spent the night in the monastery of his titular church, Santa Maria Nuova. The next day he rode to the Vatican to be solemnly received by the Pope. The formality of his reception by Alexander, who silently bestowed on him the ceremonial kiss, has been interpreted as indicating that the Pope knew that Cesare was responsible for Juan’s murder, and could not bring himself to speak to him. In fact his reception on the 6th was a purely ceremonial occasion; Cesare had already reported to his father the previous day.

  Father and son must have had important matters to discuss. In the six hectic weeks which followed the discovery of Juan’s mutilated body in the Tiber, the Borgias had been obliged to rethink their entire dynastic scheme. Juan was dead. Jofre, not yet sixteen, was too young to play a part in either war or politics. Furthermore it was openly rumoured in Rome that he had not consummated his marriage with Sancia, while there were no doubts as to his elder brother’s virility, especially where Sancia was concerned. Clearly, hopes for the establishment of a Borgia dynasty rested with Cesare, but he was a cardinal, and as such was not permitted to marry. The Borgia solution to the dilemma was immediate and simple: if Cesare as a, cardinal could not marry, then he must renounce the cardinalate (an unheard-of step), and a wife and state must be found for him.

  This project had clearly been discussed even before Cesare left for Naples; on 20 August Ascanio reported in cipher to Ludovico that there was talk of secularizing Cesare and marrying him to Sancia, while Jofre in compensation was to become a cardinal and to exchange his wife for Cesare’s benefices. By late September rumours of the Borgias’ new plans had reached Venice. Sanuto wrote: ‘It was rumoured throughout Rome that Cardinal Valencia, called Cesar, son of the pontiff, who had benefices of circa 35,000 ducats a year, and was the second richest cardinal in terms of revenues, how, desirous of exercising himself in warlike undertakings, wanted to renounce the cardinalate and his other benefices … The Pope would make him Captain of the Church.’ The Borgias looked to Naples to provide a wife and state for Cesare. The Aragonese dynasty was insecure, faced with internal dissension and the omnipresent external threat from France. In the circumstances it was not surprising that they thought that by turning the screws on the helpless Federigo they could obtain what they wanted in return for their support. They were after bigger game than Sancia, who was only an illegitimate daughter of the house of Aragon. Cesare and Alexander had fixed their eyes on the kingdom of Naples for Cesare, and marriage to Federigo’s legitimate daughter Carlotta as a necessary step towards the throne. A Neapolitan marriage for Lucrezia was designed to prepare the ground for Cesare, the first move in a Borgia takeover of the Kingdom. Before either of these projects could be realized, it was essential that Cesare should renounce his cardinal’s hat, and Lucrezia her husband, Giovanni Sforza.

  Lucrezia’s divorce, and the Borgias’ obsessive pursuit of the matter, became something of a cause célèbre in the summer and autumn of 1497. Even in the tragic days following Gandia’s death, annulment had been in the forefront of their minds. At the consistory on 19 June, Alexander had announced his intention of starting proceedings on the basis of non-consummation, and had pursued the matter in his long conversation with Ascanio Sforza on the 21st, while Cesare separately told Ascanio that neither of them would rest until the divorce was concluded. The atmosphere surrounding the case rapidly became extremely unsavoury as the Borgias used Ascanio and Ludovico to put pressure on Giovanni Sforza to sw
ear to his own impotence and thus gain an annulment on the grounds that he had been unable to consummate the marriage. When Giovanni, whose first wife died in childbirth, angrily denied the charge of impotence, his uncle Ludovico cynically suggested he should refute it by a public demonstration of his virility. The Ferrarese envoy quoted Giovanni as asserting ‘that he had known his wife an infinity of times, but that the Pope had taken her from him for no other purpose than to sleep with her himself. However, neither Ascanio nor Ludovico was prepared to sacrifice the Pope’s friendship for the sake of their expendable nephew, and was the second richest cardinal in terms of revenues, now, desirous was forced to give in. He signed a paper attesting to his non-consummation of the marriage which also obliged him to return Lucrezia’s dowry of 31,000 ducats. The divorce was officially promulgated in the Vatican on 20 December, but by the end of September the commission appointed by Alexander to examine the matter had already concluded that the marriage had never been consummated, and that Lucrezia was still a virgin. ‘A conclusion,’ wrote the Perugian chronicler Matarazzo, ‘that set all Italy laughing … it was common knowledge that she had been and was then the greatest whore there ever was in Rome.’

  Lucrezia’s reputation was to come into question again within less than two months of the divorce, with the mysterious disappearance of one of the Pope’s favourite Spanish chamberlains, Pedro Calderon, known as Perotto. Early in February 1498 Cristoforo Poggio, agent of the Bentivoglio family, wrote from Rome to Mantua that Perotto had vanished, and was thought to be in prison, ‘for having got His Holiness’ daughter, Lucrezia, with child’. On 14 February Burchard noted dryly in his diary: ‘Perotto, who last Thursday, the 8th of this month, fell not of his own will into the Tiber, was fished up today in that river, concerning which affair there are many rumours running through Rome.’ Just nine months before, on 19 June 1497, Donato Aretino had reported: ‘Madonna Lucrezia has left the palace, where she was no longer welcome, and gone to a convent known as San Sisto … Some say she will turn nun, while others say many other things which one cannot entrust to a letter.’ Lucrezia’s exile to the chaste atmosphere of a convent may well have been caused by the discovery of her affair with Perotto, at the very time when her father and brother were anxious to establish her virginity for the purposes of her divorce. There were reports that Perotto’s body was found with that of one of Lucrezia’s women, Pantasilea, and his death was probably not only an act of vengeance but also the removal of evidence of Lucrezia’s misconduct at a time when negotiations for her remarriage were being carried on. Perotto’s death was later attributed to Cesare in the most melodramatic fashion, and it is not unlikely that he had a hand in it. Nothing would have been allowed to stand in the way of his plans for Lucrezia, which were so intimately allied with his own. In March 1498 an isolated report from the Ferrarese envoy to the Duke of Ferrara alleged that Lucrezia had given birth to a child, and the whole affair was complicated by the undoubted birth at the same time of the mysterious Giovanni Borgia, known as the ‘Infans Romanus’, whose paternity was first attributed to Cesare, but later in a secret bull of September 1502 admitted to be Alexander’s, possibly by Giulia Farnese. As with so many stories about the Borgias, the truth, concealed beneath a web of gossip, intrigue and deception, is impossible to discover.