Housed in a separate part of the palace were the men who organized his transport—a master of horse with a small army of grooms and stablemen, wheelwrights, carpenters. The master's task was no easy one: at a moment's notice he could be called upon to provide transport to move the entire household hundreds of miles distant and furnish an efficient escort for it. Admittedly, Cardinal Borgia rarely left Rome if he could help it and, when he did, he was usually bound no further than one of the villas in the Alban Hills. But if His Holiness decided to go on a tour, then those cardinals who valued their careers prepared to go with him and there would be a scurrying in Rome as a score of masters of horse feverishly set about hiring the necessary equipment, vehicles and animals for a journey which could last weeks.
The hiring of an escort was the responsibility of the cardinal's chamberlain. If a cardinal was traveling with the pope, then a papal guard would provide a more than adequate escort, but if he was bound on a private journey, then it was necessary to find his own soldiers as guard. There
was never any difficulty in raising a force even at a moment's notice: it was even possible to indulge a preference for nationality if a great man felt safer under the protection of Swiss pikemen than that of Spanish swordsmen or Burgundian halberdiers.
Those with an eye for change could detect another new element in the city, a sinister counterpart to the new gaiety of jeweled clothes, the new dignity of palaces and churches, and that was the increasing number of bands of armed men. For over a century, the endless wars between the city-states of Italy had been conducted by bands of mercenaries, each under its condottiere who would bargain on behalf of his followers, plan tactics on behalf of his employer, and hope to win fame and fortune for himself. The reign of the condottieri was now, in fact, just past its noonday splendor. No longer would it be possible for such a man as Sforza in Milan, or Malatesta in Rimini or Montefeltro in Urbino to found a state of legal banditry. But the tens of thousands of men who had followed the condottieri and made fortunes for them remained still at large, not yet aware that their sun was declining, seeking employment among the rich and the envious and the ambitious. Until now, the trade of mercenary had been bloodless enough, but the changed nature of warfare was made evident by the ubiquity of those bronze tubes with which Cardinal Borgia had entertained his adopted fellow-citizens. Cannon now ringed the great upper platform of Sant' Angelo, poking their snouts forward and downward, indifferently prepared to hurl their stone balls into an attacking army or into the roofs of Rome. Cannon commanded the bridges and guarded the Vatican: they appeared in a dozen unexpected places throughout the city—beside the Mint, in embrasures on the ancient Torre delle Milizie from whose height, men said, Nero had regarded the burning city, and in private palaces. Young bravos still swaggered with sword and dagger, but one or two of them carried, for strictly professional purposes, those long slender tubes set in a stock of wood which were the terrible children of the great bronze cannon. There was peace for the moment, but when war came again it would come in a new and most terrible form.
And at the heart of the political machine itself—in the cramped lobbies of the Vatican offices, in the gorgeous throne rooms of the cardinals' palaces, in whatever place the handful of men who ran the Curia met—occurred the most profound and far-reaching change of all. "I remember the time when the Sacred College was full of learned and virtuous men," Lorenzo de' Medici wrote sadly to his young son Giovanni, who was about to take his place in the College. "Theirs is the example for you to follow. The less your conduct resembles that of those who now compose it the more beloved and respected you will be."9 Gone was the pure love of learning which had enabled Nicholas to dedicate the infant Renaissance to Christ; gone the fierce loyalty that had led Calixtus to challenge the apathy of Europe; gone the gentle Christianity of Pius. In its place was a struggle for power that not merely ignored the sacred nature of the organization but used it as an instrument. In part, the change in the College was a product of the Renaissance itself, for that bubbling ferment, in bursting apart the constricting intellectual ties of the old order, burst too the moral bonds which held society together. It seemed that the purely pagan element had triumphed as old Calixtus had feared it would. Scholars drew mocking parallels between Christ and Apollo and were applauded for their skills; the courtesan flaunted her pride and her beauty on the very steps of St. Peter's; even the merchant had his concubine and was less disposed to hold up his hands in horror at a cardinal's mistress. The College was a symptom of change, but under Pope Sixtus IV, it was also a cause of change, beginning a cycle of corruption that would be almost impossible to break.
Sixtus had fought his way to the top almost unaided. His father was commonly reputed to have been a boatman in Genoa harbor and the future pope's career was a classic example of the manner in which an able man could ascend the heights via the path of church preferment. He entered the Franciscan order, studied law and obtained a solid reputation for learning and, indeed, piety which probably contributed toward his election, for the College was still mainly composed of men who had been under the influence of Pius. The election wholly changed his character, as it had changed Pius's, but whereas Piccolomini had passed from worldliness to an almost ascetic austerity, in Sixtus's case ambitions long suppressed under a monk's habit burst forth like some monstrous flower under the influence of the tiara. Displaying the same energy with which he had tackled the task of restoring Rome, he set about promoting his family, in particular two nephews, Girolamo and Piero Riario.
Five months after his election he poured out the papal cornucopia before Piero in so blatant and doting a manner as to give substance to the belief that the young man was, in fact, his son. Bishoprics, archbishoprics, and finally a cardinal's hat were rapidly bestowed upon a youth who a few months earlier had been hard-pressed for the necessities of life. The result was predictable. "Although of very low origin and mean rearing, no sooner had he obtained the scarlet hat than he displayed a pride and ambition so vast that the pontificate seemed too small for him—he gave a feast in Rome which would have seemed extraordinary for a king, the expense exceeding twenty thousand florins."
10
Sixtus did refuse Piero one small request—he declined to abdicate in his favor—but there was nothing else he would not grant.
Piero enjoyed his new splendor for barely two years before he died at the age of twenty-eight—probably the victim of his own excesses. Upon his death, his brother Girolamo became the object of the pope's love. That young man was provided with a beautiful and influential bride— Caterina Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of the duke of Milan. Girolamo was installed as lord of the papal cities of Imola and Forli and the temporal and spiritual arms of the Church were activated for his advantage.
The Medici of Florence presented a threat, so their assassination was arranged. The young and handsome Giuliano was hewed down in the cathedral but Lorenzo escaped, the Florentines rallied round him and central Italy was plunged into war.
Borgia took care to avoid commitment to either side in the ensuing line-up. It was not too difficult: He had no family ties to drag him into the Italian whirlpool and so could afford the luxury of choosing friends and allies according to purely personal advantage, collecting good opinions as efficiently and as assiduously as he collected rich offices. The Roman diarists, ever prepared like some pack of hunting dogs to drag down whoever emerged from the herd, were as beguiled as the rest, speaking warmly of his intellectual abilities, noting admiringly, not censoriously, his steady accumulation of wealth. "Intellectually he is capable of everything," the emigre Jacopo of Volterra noted.
He is a fluent speaker, writes well—though not in a literary style—is extremely astute and very energetic and skillful in business matters. He is enormously wealthy, and through his connection with kings and princes, commands great influence. He has built a beautiful and comfortable palace for himself between the Bridge of Sant' Angelo and the Campo di Fiori. His revenues from his papal office
s, his abbeys in Italy and Spain, his three bishoprics of Valencia, Portus and Cartagena, are vast. His office of vice-chancellor alone yields him eight thousand gold ducats annually. His plate, his pearls, his stuffs embroidered with gold and silk, his books are all of such quality as would befit a king or pope. I need hardly mention the sumptuous bed-hangings, trappings for his horses and similar things of gold, silver and silk, nor the vast quantity of gold coin which he possesses. Altogether, it is believed that he possessed more gold and riches of every sort than all the cardinals put together, excepting only Estouteville.11
It occurred to no one to wonder how a cardinal who was possessed of no great family estates was able to live "as would befit a king or a pope." There was an ineradicable streak of vulgarity in the Roman consciousness and a recital of Cardinal Borgia's wealth was, for long, considered the equivalent of a catalogue of virtues. Rome and the cardinal were eminently suited to each other.
Camillo Beneimbene had performed many a discreet little service for Cardinal Borgia during the seven years that
Beneimbene had been his notary. But undoubtedly the oddest was the wedding ceremony he was called upon to supervise in the cardinal's palace in the autumn of 1474. Externally, there was nothing particularly remarkable about it. The cardinal himself was present, affable and jovial as ever, his robes of princely purple lending a portentous air to an otherwise simple occasion. The bride, a darkly handsome girl in her early twenties, was a little old for a first marriage, but in these days of soaring dowries a girl's family had to be very rich or noble to marry her off in her teens. And Vannozza Catanei's family, Beneimbene knew, was certainly neither rich nor noble. The bridegroom's family was even less exalted and Beneimbene had been forced to describe Messer Domenico d'Arignano, the bridegroom, simply as an "officer of the Church" on the marriage contract. All together, the occasion might have been the wedding of a poor but favored relative of the cardinal, taking place in such exalted surroundings only through his generosity.
But Beneimbene knew better. This solemn wedding ceremony was simply a front, the marriage contract the first of a complex series of devices with which Borgia sought to provide legal protection for the children he would have by this woman. The first of them, Cesare, was born just a year after the ceremony. D'Arignano died not long afterward and Vannozza remained a widow for four years during which she had two children, a boy, Juan, and a girl, Lucrezia. Over the following four years she married twice more and gave birth to two more children, both boys. One of them was given the Spanish name Joffre and the other the resounding Roman name of Ottaviano. All three husbands were chosen by Borgia: each accepted the position because of strong financial inducements and presumably each gave Borgia certain undertakings regarding the more intimate side of the relationship. How he ensured that none of the three took advantage of their curious position was a matter of some mystery to his contemporaries. The system seems to have broken down toward the end because Vannozza's fifth child, Ottaviano, was publicly acknowledged to be the son of her legal husband, and Borgia himself declared in moments of anger that the fourth child—-Joffre— was no child of his. Why Borgia should have gone to such extraordinary length, creating a situation which bristled with future complexities, was equally unknown. His was a legalistic mind, careful always to observe the letter if not the substance of the law, perhaps even convincing himself that, by granting his mistress the protection of marriage, he removed in some degree the stigma of illegitimacy from his children by her.
In later years, the charge was to be made that Vannozza Catanei came from the glittering class of courtesan that the wealth and corruption of Rome had produced over the preceding few decades. The few certain facts about her origin indicate that her family was probably from the lowest ranks of the nobility. And she was, in addition, ineradicably middle-class in her approach to life. The dominant characteristics of the courtesan were generosity and improvidence. Few died wealthy, most died in utter want, justifying the belief and hope of the respectable that "Venus reduces her worshipers to her own nudity." Vannozza, on the contrary, kept a wary eye on the future. Presumably she received the usual gifts of jewels and perfumes and precious stuffs for garments, for Borgia was both generous and fond of gaudy show. But she put her faith in humdrum, unglamorous property. After d'Arignano died, Borgia established her in a large house near his own palace, and all its furnishings were in her name. Later, she acquired another house and that, too, was in her name, although she had by then married her second husband, Giorgio di Croce. She bought a vineyard near the baths of Diocletian and build a villa upon it. She acquired a controlling interest in three important inns, including the great Lion which stood near the bridge of Sant' Angelo and so had first choice of all travelers entering Rome. Vannozza also made gains indirectly through her husbands, for each benefited financially from Borgia's patronage. Carlo Canale, her third husband, was made jailer of Rome's civil prison, the Torre Nona. The job was more than merely an honorary position, for a prisoner's comfort was in exact proportion to the bribe he was prepared to pay his jailer, and many wealthy prisoners passed through the Torre Nona. She even obtained for herself and Canale the grant of the Borgia arms and with it the nobleman's exemption from certain classes of tax.
In return Vannozza gave Borgia—what? A sense of stability, probably: a home in a land that was and would remain essentially alien to him. He had had his share, and more, of the glittering creatures whose generosity toward casual lovers was equaled only by their rapacity toward their protectors. Vannozza never demanded, always acquiesced—even in the last and most bitter acquiescence of all when Borgia took her only daughter Lucrezia and placed her in the keeping of another woman. Vannozza's and Borgia's relationship was the sober affection of the married couple rather than the passion between lovers. Toward her, Borgia never showed the almost frantic jealousy which he displayed for her successor, yet he was remarkably faithful to Vannozza during the ten years of their active association. There may have been other women, but if so they were transient affairs unknown to or ignored by Rome and certainly there were no other children born to him during Vannozza's reign. Despite the unsympathetic picture she presents posterity, Vannozza Catanei must have possessed very unusual qualities that enabled her to bind this most volatile lover to herself when he had the pick of Rome; to retain his affection and protection even after she had been supplanted by a younger and more glamorous rival; and above all, to direct his interest almost exclusively upon the four children she had borne him and not upon the children of his previous liaison.
For, at that time when he installed Vannozza as his official mistress, Borgia already had a family consisting of two little girls, Isabella and Gerolama, and a boy Pedro, approaching manhood. No one outside the tiny circle of his intimates knew the name of their mother. She, whoever she was, had given birth to her firstborn during the reign of Pius, and Pope Pius had held the inconvenient belief that he was responsible for the spiritual as well as the financial well-being of his subordinates. To maintain Pius's favor, Cardinal Borgia had to keep both her and her children well in the background. Even when the necessity for secrecy disappeared, the existence of these children caused scarcely a ripple compared with the storm of notoriety that would swirl round the cardinal's four children by Vannozza. This was largely because they posed no threat to the great Italian families. Borgia used his influence in Spain to obtain for his eldest son, Pedro, the Dukedom of Gandia and it was entirely in Spain that the young man pursued an active and honorable career as soldier until his death, in 1488, at the early age of thirty. Pedro's sisters, Isabella and Gerolama, were quietly married off into the minor Roman nobility. Gerolama, too, died young, but Isabella lived well into the next century, outliving all the children of Vannozza. Their names became legendary even in their lifetime, but Isabella ignored them and was ignored by them.
The reason why Cardinal Borgia concentrated his love and interest upon his second family, instead of his first, is almost beyond conjecture. The f
act that Pedro and Gerolama died before he became pope necessarily limited the scope of his ambition for them; nevertheless, even as cardinal he possessed wealth and influence enough to make of them more than he did. It is possible that he remembered the almost disastrous results of his uncle's too blatant nepotism and bided his time until his position was unassailable. It is possible that he fell genuinely in love with Vannozza and, in consequence, turned aside from his first children after having done his duty by them. Almost any explanation is possible, for Borgia, behind his open, affable front, could be as close and secretive as a peasant. There were certain matters about his family that he did not want the world to learn of, and the world never did learn of them, despite the endless probings first of enemies and then of generations of scholars. The greatest mystery stemmed from precisely this ability of the Borgia family to keep its secrets to itself. Few families in Italy—or for that matter in all Europe—attracted such wide, sustained and detailed attention as did the four children of Rodrigo Borgia by Vannozza Catanei. Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia, Joffre —each in turn came under a scrutiny that ranged from the bitterly hostile to the coldly legal, expressed not only in the ferocious satire of political enemies but also in the precise statements of lawyers. The ambitious matrimonial plans that their father prepared for them over a decade ensured that, again and again, some aspect of their antecedents would come under close inspection. Politically, the motives and the interrelationships between the members of the family—in particular between the father and his son Cesare —provided the key to the tumultuous events in Italy during the closing years of the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, despite this enduring interest, despite the swarms of courtiers and ambassadors who surrounded the family for some twenty years and who were paid to ferret out every last detail about its members, despite the profuse legal documentation, the relationship of these Borgias one with another remains rooted in obscurity.
The Fall of the House of Borgia Page 5