The Borgias

by Paul Strathern

  However, Alexander VI’s controversial move was not prompted so much by nepotism as by his diplomatic plans. Apart from his son and his mistress’s brother, ‘the rest were candidates for the rulers of Europe and the Italian states, with the marked exception of King Ferrante’. But then, as we have seen, he had favoured King Ferrante by marrying his young son Jofrè to the king’s illegitimate daughter.

  It is not difficult to determine Alexander VI’s ulterior motives behind all this diplomatic manipulation. Just over four months prior to his election, Lorenzo the Magnificent, ‘the needle of the Italian compass’, had died in Florence, succumbing to the family curse of gout at the age of just forty-nine. Alexander VI was striving to take over where Lorenzo had left off, continuing the policy of peace between the competing city states of the Italian peninsula. But it is evident that he wished to extend his own influence beyond Italy, too: hence the links with Spain. He had also covertly put out feelers with the aim of establishing links with France. At the same time, fortune had delivered a timely gift into his hands, which considerably lessened the threat from the Ottomans in the east.

  When Sultan Bayezid had ascended the Ottoman throne in 1481, after the ‘untimely’ death of his father Mehmed the Conqueror, his younger half-brother Cem had attempted to rally support for his own right to the throne. Eventually, Cem was defeated and fled for protection to the island of Rhodes, which was at the time ruled by the Knights of St John. Not wishing to antagonize the Ottomans, the Knights had contacted Sultan Bayezid II. Sultan Bayezid II had agreed to pay Cem’s captors an annual stipend of 45,000 ducats as long as they promised to detain Cem under house arrest. Subsequently Cem had been shipped to France and had eventually ended up in Rome, under the charge of the Pope. Sultan Bayezid II had then sent gifts to the Pope, at the same time continuing to pay the annual stipend to whoever held Cem captive. As far as Alexander VI was concerned, this not only provided a useful source of income, but as he understood from the Sultan in Istanbul it also ensured that the Ottomans would launch no further attacks on Italy. This freed his hand to pursue his diplomacy, seeking alliances with western powers such as France and Spain.

  In March 1493 Columbus arrived back in Spain with the sensational news that he had discovered lands on the western side of the Atlantic, which he assumed to be Cathay (China) or part of the Indies. ‘He brought back parrots, gold and several indigenous people from the lands he had visited.’ Alexander VI was quick to grasp the possibilities and dangers which this discovery presented to Christendom. Portuguese sailors, under the inspiration of Prince Henry the Navigator, had already laid claim to the mid-Atlantic Azores and Cape Verde Islands. From here they had pressed on to West Africa, where they had embarked upon the slave trade, which, as we have seen, received the blessing of Sixtus IV. Meanwhile, in 1488 Bartholomew Diaz had rounded the Cape of Good Hope.

  However, Columbus’s discovery opened up the prospect of competition, and even war, between two major Catholic countries – namely, Spain and Portugal. In order to avert this clash, Alexander VI hastily issued a papal bull, which would become incorporated in 1494 into the Treaty of Tordesillas. This would divide the world beyond Europe between Spain and Portugal. In order to achieve this division, Alexander VI drew a line on a map down the middle of the Atlantic, along the north–south meridian some 370 leagues* to the west of the Cape Verde Islands. All land discovered to the east of this line could be claimed by the Portuguese; all land to the west could be claimed by the Kingdom of Castile (effectively Spain.) This was seen as having favoured King Ferdinand of Aragon, further strengthening his ties with Alexander VI.

  The Treaty of Tordesillas was intended to gift what became known as America to Spain, with Portugal being gifted Africa, and the prospect of trade with India. Unfortunately, owing to the lack of knowledge of the coastline of South America at this time, the Pope’s line sliced through the eastern protuberance of the sub-continent. A lasting legacy of this mistake is that while most of South America is Spanish-speaking, its easternmost country, Brazil, speaks Portuguese. In the years to come, as Alexander VI’s legacy became more and more blackened by his enemies, the Treaty of Tordesillas would continue to be seen as his greatest and most lasting legacy. With this, he had incontestably left his mark upon the world.

  Despite all Alexander VI’s diplomatic efforts to befriend each of the major city states and unite Italy in peace, there was no doubting the fact that he had lasting enemies. As we have seen, immediately after Alexander VI’s election in August 1492 his rival Cardinal Guiliano della Rovere had fled to the fortress of Ostia. Eight months later, Cardinal della Rovere had slipped away and taken ship for France. Here he soon made contact with his backer in the election, King Charles VIII, and began scheming against Alexander VI. The other well-connected cardinal who had fled Rome after the election of Alexander VI was Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. The seventeen-year-old cardinal had taken up residence in Florence, where his older brother Piero de’ Medici had succeeded his father as ruler of the republic. The twenty-year-old Piero de’ Medici (who was to gain the nickname ‘Piero the Unfortunate’) was highly unsuited to his new role. Piero had been spoilt as a child and has been justly characterized as ‘impatient, arrogant and spiteful’. Such qualities were hardly aided by his tendency to sloth and his impatience with administrative details, which he largely handed on to his secretary. Meanwhile, to add to these difficulties, Florence itself was now in a state of increasing ferment, owing to the fire and brimstone sermons being delivered by the fundamentalist priest Girolamo Savonarola. As previously mentioned, Savonarola had famously prophesied the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent and Innocent VIII, as well as that of King Ferrante of Naples. Ferrante was now approaching his seventies, with his rule becoming increasingly tyrannical and paranoid. His mental state had barely been stable at the best of times. According to Burckhardt’s celebrated characterization of Ferrante: ‘Besides hunting, which he practised regardless of all rights of property, his pleasures were of two kinds: he liked to have his opponents near him, either alive in well-guarded prisons, or dead and embalmed, dressed in the costume which they wore in their lifetime.’ One of his favourite habits was to take his guests on a guided tour of this ‘museum of mummies’. It was now becoming evident to all, both from Ferrante’s behaviour and his physical health, that it would not be long before Savonarola’s third prophecy was fulfilled.

  Another of Savonarola’s prophecies spoke of how he had seen ‘the Sword of the Lord [suspended] over the Earth’, and he had now taken to cowing his fearful congregations with apocalyptic prophecies that ‘a new Cyrus* would cross the mountains to act as God’s scourge and destroy everything in his path’. Without naming the Medici rulers, he also began excoriating ‘the rich’ and ‘great lords’ for their extravagant decadence, as opposed to the poverty and simple way of life advocated by Jesus Christ.

  Alexander VI’s policy of uniting Italy and establishing good relations with neighbouring foreign powers such as Spain and France had in fact achieved a certain success. But although his diplomatic dealings were an astute blend of guile and wisdom, knowing precisely how to play the weaknesses and strengths of the leaders with whom he dwelt, the same cannot be said for his dealings with his children. Here, his undoubted love for them appears to have completely blinded him to their faults and frailties. As a result, the dynastic marriages he had arranged on their behalf soon proved not only unsuitable mismatches, but soon began to unravel under disastrous circumstances.

  The marriage of the twelve-year-old Lucrezia Borgia to Giovanni Sforza began to fall apart almost before it had begun. During the weeks following the somewhat excessive marriage ceremony, Sforza became increasingly dissatisfied with what he described as his ‘white marriage’ to his adolescent bride. It seems that the young girl had not in fact submitted to her bridegroom’s sexual demands, even on their wedding night, despite the claims of the witnesses to the contrary. This is hardly surprising,
given the protected and privileged upbringing the innocent bride-to-be had received in the palazzo of her aunt Adriana de Milà. From her earlier years, any romantic girlhood dreams of marriage which Lucrezia may have harboured had suffered a severe setback owing to the treatment of her beloved father, and his duplicitous political ambitions for his daughter.

  When Lucrezia was just ten years old, her father had promised her in marriage to the well-connected Spanish nobleman Querubí Joan de Centelles, Lord of Val d’Ayora, in an attempt to reinforce his standing in Spain. This had been a purely formal arrangement, performed by proxy, without requiring Lucrezia to leave the Roman palazzo of her guardian Adriana de Milà. Even so, Lucrezia must have harboured some secret expectations of the aristocratic Spanish lord whom she expected would one day become her husband. But she was to be disappointed. Within months, Lucrezia’s proposed bridegroom had broken the arrangement by marrying someone else. Yet her father was not to be put off, and just a year later Lucrezia had been betrothed once more to a Spanish grandee, this time to Don Gaspar de Procida, son of the Count of Almeira and Avisa. Again, the innocent young Lucrezia must have built up her hopes. But a year later her father had become Alexander VI and his ambitions for his daughter had changed a further time. As Lucrezia’s biographer Sarah Bradford put it:

  The new pope no longer saw his daughter’s future in Spain. As Alexander trod the difficult path of endeavouring to preserve the independence of the papacy between conflicting interests, Lucrezia would be the victim of his shifting pattern of alliances.

  It was hardly surprising that the thirteen-year-old Lucrezia was wary of her third fiancé, Giovanni Sforza. He was already a divorcee, and she had been married to him within months of their sudden and unexpected engagement. Even so, these traumatic manipulations by her father would prove to be only the beginning of her psychological problems.

  The marriage of Lucrezia’s older brother, the seventeen-year-old Juan, had if anything proved even more disastrous. As we have seen, Juan Borgia had now become the 2nd Duke of Gandia after the death of his older half-brother Pedro Luis, at the same time also inheriting his nineteen-year-old fiancée Maria Enriquez. During his adolescence, Juan had taken full advantage of his father’s power and wealth as vice-chancellor to lord it over his peers. Even at this early age he had quickly gained a reputation as a roisterer in the taverns and a womanizer. When news of this behaviour reached his father’s ears, the Pope decided it was time his young son took up his responsibilities. ‘Juan, Duke of Gandia . . . had been sent off to Spain in the care of a guardian appointed by Alexander and under a deluge of papal admonitions to behave himself.’ It was here that he was to marry Maria Enriquez in Barcelona Cathedral, deemed to be an occasion of such import that it would be graced by the attendance of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. If Alexander VI imagined that his worries over Juan were now a thing of the past he was to be much mistaken.

  Reports of Juan’s continuing misbehaviour soon began arriving at the Vatican. Worse was to come at his marriage, where,

  His tactless arrogance had offended the king and queen, and immediately after this wedding he went off on such a wild spree of drinking, gambling and whoring that it was said to be improbable that he had bothered to consummate the marriage.

  Far from strengthening relations with Spain, the 2nd Duke of Gandia’s behaviour appeared to be on the point of wrecking them.

  As for the marriage of Alexander VI’s youngest son Jofrè, this too was to prove an embarrassment, which would in time lead to even greater consequences. Jofrè had been just twelve years old when he married Sancia of Aragon, the sixteen-year-old illegitimate granddaughter of King Ferrante of Naples. As we have seen, her dowry to young Jofrè had been the gift of the royal princedom of Squillace, making Alexander’s son a princely member of the Neapolitan ruling dynasty; however, in return for this over-lavish gift, the ageing King Ferrante had extracted a promise from the Pope that on the king’s death the Pope would recognize as king of Naples his son Alfonso, the father of Sancia by one of his mistresses. In the light of previous claims to this throne by the Royal French House of Anjou during the time of Pius II some thirty-five years earlier, Alexander VI should have been wary of making such a promise. But in his estimation such matters were now all a thing of the distant past. Likewise, he had hardly foreseen the treatment which would be meted out to his innocent young son Jofrè. His bride Sancia, growing up amidst the louche and unnerving surroundings of King Ferrante’s Neapolitan court, had already established a reputation as a tempestuous and wilful young lady, who was hardly impressed by the courtly, reserved manners of the somewhat overawed, pubescent Jofrè. Here was yet a third Borgia marriage whose consummation would require further encouragement.

  On the other hand, no such encouragement was needed where the sexual exploits of Alexander VI’s older son Cesare was concerned. By now Cesare Borgia had grown into ‘the handsomest man in Italy’. During his university days at Pisa he had excelled, and even the contemporary historian Paolo Giovio, no friend of the Borgias, had been forced to concede: ‘he had gained such profit [from his studies] that, with ardent mind, he discussed learnedly the questions put to him both in canon and civil law’. However, Cesare’s intended friendship with Giovanni de’ Medici, so encouraged by both their fathers, failed to materialize. The young Cesare Borgia may have been Bishop of Pamplona, but Giovanni de’ Medici had already become a cardinal. Both were the same age and both were gifted with exceptional intellectual talent, but the competitive Cesare was evidently determined to outshine his fellow student in all departments. Cesare cut a striking figure: fashionably dressed, sporting a red-tinged beard, his long dark hair flowing about his shoulders. And just like his father he had an animal magnetism for women – a talent he put to a use hardly becoming for the Bishop of Pamplona. Cardinal Giovanni, on the other hand, was a podgy youth, less assured in his public manner, yet secretly convinced of his own superiority. As Cesare Borgia’s biographer Sarah Bradford puts it:

  Giovanni, legitimate son of one of the great families of Italy, probably secretly despised and resented the bastard son of the Catalan Borgia as an upstart, and possibly Cesare sensed this, for the two young men were never friends.

  This assessment reveals but half the truth. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici may well have despised the Borgias, but when he left Pisa and took up his position at the College of Cardinals in Rome he quickly learned to fear them. As we have seen, when Alexander VI became pope, Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici fled for Florence: the break between the Borgias and the Medici was now plain for all to see. And while Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici attempted to bolster the weak regime of his older brother Piero de’ Medici, Cesare inherited his father’s title of Archbishop of Valencia, and moved across to Trastevere to take up residence at the Vatican. A description of Cesare Borgia by a friend, dating from this period, is particularly revealing:

  The day before yesterday I went to find Cesare at his house in Trastevere. He was on the point of going out for the hunt; he was wearing a worldly garment of silk and had his sword at his side . . . He possesses marked genius and a charming personality. He has the manners of a son of a great prince; above all, he is lively and merry and fond of society. [He] has never had any inclination for the priesthood.

  The following year, his appointment by his father Alexander VI as a cardinal would provoke consternation. It is said that when Alexander VI’s unforgiving rival Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere heard of Cesare’s elevation he emitted ‘a loud exclamation’ and was overcome with such apoplectic rage that he was obliged to retire to his bed for several days. Typically, the news of his appointment reached Cesare Borgia when he was on holiday with his mother Vanozza de’ Cattanei in the countryside north of Rome. Here he was engaged in an angry dispute with the governors of Siena, who had disqualified his horse from winning the famous Palio because he had instructed his jockey to cheat. In fact, this would turn out to be more than just an outbreak of petulant arrogance on Cesare
’s behalf. By now the race had been awarded to Francesco Gonzaga, the Marquis of Mantua, and Cesare Borgia’s intemperate letters to the marquis threatened to have serious diplomatic consequences. Alexander VI’s political strategy required Gonzaga to be a reliable ally. This would be the first serious indication that Cesare Borgia would not always be amenable to his father’s wishes.

  ________________

  *This favour would in time take on some significance: forty years later, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese would become Pope Paul III.

  *Sometimes known by the Italian version of his name, Giovanni.

  *Approximately 1,110 miles.

  *The great sixth-century king of the Medes and the Persians, who had launched a fearsome conquest of the Middle East, and, in freeing the Israelites from Babylon, came to be seen as an unwitting instrument of God.

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘THE SCOURGE OF GOD’

  ON 22 JANUARY 1494 the aged King Ferrante of Naples was stricken by a fainting fit as he was dismounting from his horse. For two days he lay near to death, angrily waving away the priest in attendance to take his last confession. On 25 January he finally died, thus fulfilling Savonarola’s third prophecy. But this was not the only supernatural portent to be fulfilled at the opening of this fateful year. According to the generally sober words of the contemporary historian Guicciardini:

  Those who professed to tell the future, either by science or by divination, all claimed that the omens foretold that great changes and terrible events were about to happen. Strange things happened in all parts of Italy, giving rise to rumours. Three suns were seen one night in Puglia, surrounded by clouds and loud thunder and lightning. Near Arezzo soldiers on horseback were seen in the sky, accompanied by loud drumming and trumpeting. Sacred statues started to sweat in many places and monstrous births took place, filling the people with fear and dread.