The Borgias

by Paul Strathern

  Only Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s mission had achieved success of lasting value and Sixtus IV would not forget this. The extent of Borgia’s success can be seen in the fact that when Ferdinand and Isabella produced their first son, they would ask their friend the cardinal to be his godfather.

  During Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s fourteen-month visit to Spain he appears to have been on his best behaviour. The papal legate provoked not a hint of scandal – apart from his visit to his three illegitimate children in Xàtiva, which was passed off as a purely familial visit to see his ‘nephews’. However, on his return to Italy, the vice-chancellor quickly became involved in a relationship with a striking red-headed thirty-two-year-old called Vanozza de’ Cattanei. According to one story, during his recuperation in Pisa following the shipwreck, he was invited as a guest of honour to a banquet. Most contemporary commentators agree that Vanozza was a courtesan, born of the numerous families of minor nobility who had fallen on hard times during this period. For an unmarried (or ‘fallen’) daughter, opportunities were stark: the nunnery, or spinsterhood as a virtual servant in the family. In Vanozza’s case it appears she was previously married, but her husband died. As a widow, her choice to become a discreet courtesan would not have been so difficult. At any rate, her beauty and intelligence appear to have fascinated the forty-three-year-old cardinal – to such an extent that he quickly became close to her. This is no euphemism. Beside the evident sexual attraction, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia soon began to feel a deep emotional attachment to Vanozza. Indeed, their relationship would eventually become as close to a marriage as his position permitted. He quickly instructed his trusted legal adviser and confidant Camillo Beneimbene to arrange for Vanozza to be married to an elderly lawyer named Domenico di Rignano, who would have been fully cognizant of the situation, being handsomely rewarded for his tact and complaisance. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia would even go so far as to attend the wedding ceremony: the most striking figure present in the full panoply of his scarlet cardinal’s robes and hat.

  The following year, Vanozza would give birth to a son, who was named Cesare. An indication of Sixtus IV’s closeness to his vice-chancellor can be seen in the fact that five years later he would legitimize Cesare in an official document which explicitly stated that Cesare was ‘the son of a cardinal and a married woman’. It now emerges that some years previously Sixtus IV had also legitimized Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s oldest son Pedro Luis. This generosity on Sixtus IV’s behalf would prove of vital significance in the years to come. For a start, it meant that Pedro Luis and Cesare were now free to enter the Church, if their father so wished it. And there is no doubting that Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia already had ambitions for his sons.

  Sources indicate that Vanozza’s husband soon died, but this did not prevent the widow from producing three more children: Juan in 1476, Lucrezia in 1480 and Jofrè in 1482. Vanozza’s children would from the outset be Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s favourites, held in far higher regard than his previous three children. It is also known that he publicly acknowledged them as his own, though it is uncertain as to when precisely this took place. Cardinal Borgia ensured that Vanozza was set up in some comfort in her own apartments in Rome, as well as purchasing for her a plot of land close to the ancient Baths of Diocletian, where she would build a house of her own. Later, Vanozza is known to have acquired three of Rome’s finest hostelries, accommodation for visiting minor foreign dignitaries on their pilgrimages to the eternal city. In this way, she also became a woman of means in her own right, while Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia obtained for her another suitably aged, complaisant husband. In time, a third husband would be required to fill this post – a certain Carlo Canale, who was appointed a governor of the city gaol known as Torre Nuova.

  When these four Borgia children grew beyond infancy, they were removed from the care of their mother Vanozza and placed under the charge of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s cousin Adriana de Milà. She was the niece of his cousin Cardinal Luis Juan del Milà (who had now, of course, long since removed himself permanently to Spain). Adriana de Milà was married into the powerful Roman aristocratic Orsini family, providing a useful alliance for Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. Evidently, Vanozza was not considered capable of providing a suitable upbringing for the positions Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia had in mind for his favourite children. The full extent of these sensational filial ambitions remained, for the time being, confined to the vice-chancellor’s mind alone.

  ________________

  *A mercenary general, with his own army for hire.

  *It has been suggested that the vice-chancellor’s disease was in fact syphilis; but this could not have been the case, as the modern outbreak of syphilis would not arrive in western Europe until 1493.

  *Over the centuries this palace would become known as the Palazzo Venezia, until in the 1930s it acted as the residence of Mussolini, who was in the habit of delivering his grandiose, posturing speeches from the balcony.

  *Pope Formosus I ruled at the end of the ninth century. He is best remembered for the fact that his body was exhumed and clad in his papal vestments, so that he could face charges at the so-called Cadaver Synod, where he was belatedly found to have been ‘unworthy of the pontificate’.

  *Not to be mistaken for his nephew Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who would later become Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia’s sworn enemy.

  *Originally known as the Capella Magna, the name of the original chapel it replaced on this site. The chapel would only receive its present name, in honour of Sixtus IV, after his death.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE WAY TO THE TOP

  IN 1474 IT BECAME clear that Sixtus IV had ambitions for further expanding his papal power. By now he had created no less than six ‘nephew cardinals’ amongst the della Rovere family and the closely related Riario family. In the summer he ordered his nephew Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere to lead the Papal Forces into the Papal States and reassert papal control over the towns of Todi and Spoleto, some eighty miles north of Rome. And in October he announced that Giovanni della Rovere, the younger brother of Cardinal Giuliano, was betrothed to Giovanna, daughter of the powerful condottiere Federigo da Montefeltro, whom he created Duke of Urbino.

  The new-style Jubilee year in 1475 (which Paul II had so hoped to celebrate) opened with a visit to Rome by King Ferrante of Naples. Sixtus IV despatched Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere to greet the king as he entered Papal Territory at Terracina, some fifty miles south-east of Rome, and then to escort the royal procession to the Holy City. This was a signal honour for Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, but also suggested that Borgia was no longer regarded as the senior cardinal amongst the College of Cardinals. Instead, he would be expected to share this role with the Pope’s nephew Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. King Ferrante brought with him a ‘brilliant suite’ consisting of his knights and leading attendants. According to Pastor, ‘the number of falcons which the Neapolitans brought with them completely cleared the City and all the neighbourhood of owls’. Ferrante’s visit was to cement relations between the Pope and his powerful southern neighbour; but Sixtus IV also held secret talks with Ferrante, with the aim of establishing a league of Italian and European powers, and calling for a council to decide on action against the Ottomans. Yet, as ever, this idea failed to attract much support, especially amongst the European powers. ‘The wars in France, Burgundy, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Spain, and other countries were . . . the reason why so few people came.’

  Despite the growing della Rovere family power, Sixtus IV made sure that Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was still accorded the importance that was his due. In 1477 the Pope entrusted his vice-chancellor with the important task of acting as papal legate to Naples. This was hardly surprising, as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia had gone out of his way to charm King Ferrante during his visit to Rome – to such an extent that the fifty-four-year-old king had personally requested the Pope to send him as papal legate to Naples to officiate at his marriage to his twenty-two-year-old first cousi
n Joanna of Aragon.* Thus in August Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia travelled to Naples in suitable pomp, where he not only married the royal couple, but was honoured with the task of conducting the coronation of Queen Joanna. Later, Ferrante would name Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia as the godfather of the royal couple’s first son: Juan, Prince of Asturias. The Vice-Chancellor was forging a close personal alliance with Naples.

  Such is the history as it appears. On the other hand, a good indication of the real daily dealings in Italy of the period is given by the following extended story, garnered from the papal records by Peter de Roo. King Ferrante may have been well disposed towards his friend Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, but there were limits to his generosity when it came to more tangible matters. Owing to ‘the scarcity of bread in the city of Rome at the time’, Sixtus IV had entrusted his legate with the delicate task of persuading King Ferrante to allow Naples to export wheat to Rome. This was a perennial problem. Since the ancient Roman era, the city of Rome itself had always been nothing more than a centre of power: it actually produced nothing. Everything had to be imported: from food to commodities, as well as materials of all kinds.

  King Ferrante assured his friend Cardinal Borgia that he would export the required wheat. But this promise proved empty. In increasing desperation, Sixtus IV would write to Ferrante no less than three times, but nothing happened. At last, when Cardinal Borgia was finally leaving Naples, Ferrante conveyed to the Pope ‘that he had given orders to transport the cereals to the City straightway’. Yet when Borgia arrived back in Rome, he found that:

  No wheat came in sight, food grew ever scarcer in Rome and the prices rose in such a manner that the Pope was obliged to exhaust his treasury and to contract heavy debts in order to keep his people alive.

  With the treasury empty, Sixtus IV was forced to borrow 25,000 gold ducats from Cardinal d’Estouteville, pledging him the ‘rights and revenues’ for the castles of Frascati and other localities. Sixtus IV also called upon Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia for assistance, involving ‘all that the latter could afford, namely, in two instalments, the sum of fifteen thousand gold ducats’. In return, the Pope mortgaged to Borgia the city of Nepi, as well as other nearby properties and castles in the papal territories – on condition that Borgia spent 2,500 florins repairing and equipping these fortresses. Fortunately, during his long years as vice-chancellor, Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia had developed an eagle eye where the accounts were concerned. This meant that when the Pope came to repay his debt to his loyal friend, ‘A mistake in the calculation was . . . discovered.’ Although the Pope had borrowed the money from Borgia in gold florins, he was paying it back in ‘baiocchi’ (copper florins).

  The College of Cardinals begged the Pope to make some compensation for this loss of their colleague, but the destitute Pontiff, unable to find any means to do so, resolved to grant him Nepi and the other cities for the whole of his lifetime.

  All this gives but a glimpse of the difficulties encountered – and created – by Italian leaders of the period, as well as how they dealt with them. Such circumstances should be borne in mind as a constant background to the more plain facts which describe the surface history.

  At this point, possibly in an attempt to relieve his financial situation, Sixtus IV became involved in a daring plan which would shock the entire Italian peninsula. Florence was officially a republic, but for the last thirty-five years its de facto rulers had been the powerful Medici banking family, whose head was now Lorenzo de’ Medici (known as ‘the Magnificent’). For half a century or so, the Medici Bank, with its branches all over western Europe, had acted as the papal bankers, facilitating the transfer of papal dues, benefices and other assets to Rome in the form of bankable money. This could prove a complex undertaking, yet one which allowed for considerable profit. For instance, at one point the Greenland bishopric had paid its papal dues to the Bruges branch of the Medici bank in the form of sealskins. The bank would estimate the worth of these items and transmit a receipt to its Rome branch, ordering payment of this amount into the papal account. On top of this, the bank also made money on the various and varying exchange rates, e.g. the Florentine florin was at this time worth around four pence more in Florence than it was in London.

  However, four years previously Sixtus IV had transferred the lucrative papal bank account to the rival Salviati Bank in Florence, when the Medici Bank refused to grant him a loan of 40,000 ducats to purchase the town of Imola. This small Romagna city happened to be a vital link in the trade route from Florence across the Apennines to the Adriatic Coast, and the Medici were correctly suspicious of Sixtus IV’s motives. Since then the Salviati Bank, led by the powerful Pazzi family in Florence, had sought means of trying to overthrow the Medici rulers. In this they had been covertly backed by Sixtus IV.

  The excuse for the Pazzi to strike was provided by Lorenzo de’ Medici, when he refused to let Sixtus IV’s new appointment as Archbishop of Pisa,* his relative Francesco Salviati Riario, from entering Florentine territory to take up his post. Under normal circumstances, the Medici knew that in time of trouble they could always hire the nearby army of Federigo da Montefeltro to defend the Republic, and their position as its rulers. However, there had been a subtle shift of allegiances here, now that Sixtus IV had familial ties by marriage with Montefeltro, and had also declared him Duke of Urbino. Word was secretly passed by the Pazzi conspirators to Montefeltro that he should surreptitiously send his troops to the western border of Urbino, ready to march into Florentine territory. Such was the clandestine nature of this move that conclusive evidence of it only came to light as late as 2004 with the discovery of a coded letter. Whether or not this word was passed by the Pazzi conspirators, or possibly through the indirect orders of Sixtus IV himself, remains unknown. For centuries the accepted version has been that the Pazzi conspirators approached Sixtus IV with their plan to assassinate Lorenzo the Magnificent and topple the Medici, but were informed that as pope he could not sanction the taking of life. On the other hand: ‘he was content to give all favour and the support of troops or whatever else might be necessary to attain our ends’.

  In this instance, Sixtus IV did not take his vice-chancellor into his confidence, for he knew that Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and Lorenzo the Magnificent had formed a close friendship. Lorenzo the Magnificent had recently endowed the University of Pisa, with the aim of educating his son Giovanni there, prior to him taking high office in the Church. Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, knowing his son Cesare to be the same age as Giovanni, and also having great ambitions for his son in the Church, had written to Lorenzo the Magnificent that he wished to send his son to the University of Pisa as a ‘pledge of the great love’ he felt for the Medici family, and so that Cesare would be under Lorenzo’s ‘wing and protection’. There could be no question of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia suspecting the slightest hint of any plot against the Medici.

  On 26 April 1478 the Pazzi conspirators launched their daring plot to assassinate Lorenzo de’ Medici and members of his family, then take over Florence. In the event, the plot went disastrously wrong when Lorenzo de’ Medici managed to elude his assassins – though his beloved brother Giuliano was less fortunate, being stabbed to death in Florence Cathedral. In the aftermath, chaos reigned throughout the city. Cardinal Raffaele Riario, the Pope’s cousin, who happened to be passing through the city that day, was lucky to be merely arrested by the authorities. Francesco Salviati Riario, the Pope’s appointee as Archbishop of Pisa, had no such luck. Having secretly made his way into Florence in an attempt to aid the plotters, he was taken captive by a mob of Medici supporters. Dressed in the full panoply of his archbishop’s robes, he was publicly hanged from a widow of the Palazzo Vecchio (the Old Palace, Florence’s town hall), while the mobbed cheered below.

  Although Sixtus IV publicly denied all knowledge of the plot, there was no doubting his outrage at the treatment of his two relatives, both senior officers of the Church. The imprisonment of a cardinal and the lynching of an archbishop – in his full ceremonial r
obes, no less – were not to be forgiven. This was nothing less than sacrilege! Sixtus IV forthwith excommunicated the entire population of Florence and declared war upon the city state, urging his ally King Ferrante of Naples to invade.

  The following year, the Neapolitan army, under Ferrante’s son Alphonse, Duke of Calabria, defeated the Florentine forces at Poggio Imperiale. Consequently, Lorenzo de’ Medici decided to make a move of foolhardy daring: he would travel to Naples and visit Ferrante, to see if they could sort out their differences. In the event, Ferrante was so impressed at Lorenzo’s brave gesture that he made peace with Florence.

  Sixtus IV’s ventures into foreign policy had been – and would prove to be – disastrous. Suffice to say that his complex finagling eventually caused the main Italian powers to unite against him, forcing him to embark upon a policy of peace, rather than interference. His reign would also be notorious for the issue of two significant papal bulls. In November 1478 he published the bull which established the Spanish Inquisition in Castile – though admittedly he was later to be alarmed by the excesses of this institution which he had set in motion. Secondly, in 1481 he would grant the Portuguese the right to buy slaves along the West African coast.