Lucrezia Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Whatever the real truth – and only the Borgia inner circle knew it – Lucrezia was still in San Sisto when a tragedy took place which shook Rome – and the Borgias – to the core. While Lucrezia was apparently out of favour, Alexander had conferred singular favours on her brothers: in a secret consistory (a council of cardinals) on 8 June, Cesare was nominated legate for King Federigo’s coronation in Naples, a blatantly nepotistic appointment in view of his youth and lack of seniority But it was the investiture of Juan, in another secret consistory held the previous day, with the Duchy of Benevento and the cities of Terracina and Pontecorvo, which caused the greatest resentment. The alienation of these important papal cities as hereditary fiefs to Gandia was regarded as an intolerable scandal. Juan, whose arrogance had already earned him powerful enemies, became the primary target of anti-Borgia hostility

  On Wednesday 14 June, exactly one week after his investiture, Juan Gandia disappeared. On the afternoon of that day he had ridden out with Cesare and Cardinal Juan Borgia of Monreale to have supper with Vannozza at her vineyard, or country villa, near Monte San Martino dei Monti. Returning as night was falling, they reached the bridge of Sant’Angelo leading to the Vatican, where Juan told the others that he must leave them as he had to go somewhere alone. Both the cardinals and Gandia’s ’s servants, according to Scalona’s report, did everything possible so that he should not go unaccompanied; the streets of Rome were not safe at night for a rich young man alone, especially with the enemies Gandia had. But Juan was adamant; the most he would do for his own safety was to send one of his grooms back to his rooms in the Vatican to fetch his light ‘night armour’, and then tell him to wait for him in the Piazza Judea. He took leave of Cesare and Cardinal Borgia and turned his mule in the direction of the Ghetto. As he did so, a masked man in a black cloak was seen to mount the mule behind him and the two rode off together.

  Cesare and Cardinal Borgia, not unnaturally uneasy over these mysterious proceedings, waited some time by the bridge for him to return. When he did not, they rode back to the Vatican ‘with considerable anxiety and doubt in their minds’. Juan’s groom was attacked on his way to fetch the armour, receiving slight stab wounds but, ‘as he was a strong man’, says Scalona, he returned to the Piazza Judea to wait for his master. When Gandia did not return, he went back to the Vatican, thinking that Juan was spending the night with some Roman woman, as was frequently his custom. Neither the groom nor Cesare, for the same reason, reported Juan’s escapade to the Pope that night.

  The following morning Gandia’s household informed Alexander that he had not returned. The Pope was still not greatly concerned, being accustomed to Juan’s amorous adventures, but his alarm mounted as the day passed with no sign of him and in the evening Alexander sent for Cesare and Cardinal Borgia and begged them to tell him what had happened. They told him what they had learned from Juan’s groom, whereupon Alexander, according to Scalona, said ‘that if he was dead, he knew the origin and the cause’. Then, ‘seized with mortal terror’, in the words of the diarist Johannes Burchard, the German papal master of ceremonies, he ordered a search to be made. As Alexander’s agents scoured the streets, the city was in uproar: fearful of a vendetta, many Romans closed their shops and barricaded their doors. The Colonna, Savelli, Orsini and Caetani fortified their palaces while parties of excited and angry Spaniards roamed the streets with drawn swords. Finally, on Friday 16 June, feverish inquiries brought to light the report of a timber dealer, Giorgio Schiavi, who was accustomed to keep watch over the wood which he unloaded on the river bank near the Ospedale of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni. On Wednesday night, he said:

  about the hour of two, while I was guarding my wood, lying in my boat, two men on foot came out of the alley on the left of the Ospedale degli Schiavoni, onto the open way by the river. They looked cautiously about them to see that no one was passing, and not having found anyone, returned the way they had come into the same alley. Shortly afterwards two other men came out of that same alley, also looking furtively round them; not seeing anybody, they made a signal to their companions. Then there appeared a rider on a white horse, carrying a body slung across its crupper behind him, the head and arms hanging to one side, the legs to the other, supported on the right by the two first men so that it should not fall off. Having reached the point from which refuse is thrown into the river, the horseman turned his horse so that its tail faced the river, then the two men who were standing on either side, taking the body, one by the hands and arms, the other by the feet and legs, flung it with all their strength into the river. To the horseman’s demand whether the body had sunk, they replied, ‘Yes, sir’, then the horseman looked again at the river and saw the dead man’s cloak floating on the water, and asked what it was. They answered, ‘Sir, the cloak’. Then he threw some stones at it and made it sink. This done, all five, including the other two who had come out of the alley to keep watch, went away by an alley which leads to the Hospital of San Giacomo.

  Asked why he had not reported the incident to the authorities, Schiavi answered simply: ‘In the course of my life, on various nights, I have seen more than a hundred bodies thrown into the river right at this spot, and never heard of anyone troubling himself about them.’

  Following this report, all the fishermen and boatmen of Rome were called in to search the river with promise of a reward. First the body of an unknown man was discovered; then around midday, near the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, a fisherman named Battistino da Taglia brought up in his net the body of a young man, fully clothed, with his gloves and a purse containing 30 ducats still hanging from his belt. Nine stab wounds were counted on his body, in the neck, head, body and legs. It was Juan Gandia.

  Juan’s body was taken to the Castel Sant’Angelo where it was washed and dressed in brocade with the insignia of Captain General of the Church. At six o’clock that evening it was borne by the noblemen of Gandia’s household in procession from Sant’ Angelo to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo to be buried in the family chapel, in a procession led by twelve torch bearers, the palace clerics, the papal chamberlains and squires, ‘all marching along weeping and wailing and in considerable disorder’, as Burchard commented. ‘The body was borne on a magnificent bier so that all could see it, and it seemed that the Duke were not dead but sleeping’, he recorded, while another observer remarked that Juan looked ‘almost more handsome than when he was alive’. An elegant funeral oration was performed for the dead Duke by the humanist Tommaso Inghirami, known as Fedra.

  Alexander’s grief for his beloved son was indescribable; even the stolid and normally unsympathetic 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 Segorbe (Bartolomeu Martì, a cousin of Rodrigo) 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 19 June, Alexander had recovered himself sufficiently to hold a public consistory in which he referred to his son’s death in emotional terms: ‘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.’

  Rumours flew around the city as to the author, or authors, of the crime: the names of Giovanni Sforza, Guidobaldo da Montefeltro and Ascanio Sforza were mentioned. Within a week, however, after Alexander had exonerated those named, all inquiries were suspended. It seemed that the Borgias now ha
d a good idea of who was responsible and intended to bide their time to pursue their vendetta. The most likely candidates were the Orsini, whose vendetta with the Borgias went back to the first year of Alexander’s papacy when they had conspired to encircle him by acquiring the castles of Cerveteri and Anguillara; Alexander could not forgive them their desertion to the French at the end of 1494. He had retaliated with his attempt to seize their lands for Gandia in 1496 but the real spark which lit the fuse of Orsini anger was the death of the clan leader, Virginio Orsini, still in prison in Naples for his treachery in 1494, on 13 January 1497, which they held to have been instigated by the Borgias. 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? As a Venetian source reported at the end of the year: ‘This Pope plotted to ruin the Orsini because the Orsini for sure caused the death of his son the Duke of Gandia.’ The Borgias’ pursuit of the vendetta would be carried out with great subtlety and cruelty by Cesare in the years to come.

  Grief and anger, however, did not prevent the Borgias from pursuing their political and dynastic aims. At the same consistory in which he had mourned Juan Gandia’s death, Alexander had returned to the subject of Lucrezia’s divorce from Giovanni Sforza. He and Cesare had already laid their plans for a new marriage for Lucrezia even before the murder. The plan, hatched at the time of the announcement of Cesare as legate for the coronation of King Federigo in Naples, was for Cesare to squeeze every advantage he could from the grateful King. This included a Neapolitan marriage for Lucrezia, once her divorce from Giovanni Sforza was obtained. Gandia’s murder deferred the plan; Cesare left Rome six weeks after his brother’s death, and the coronation of Federigo at Capua took place on 11 August. King and legate then travelled together to enjoy the tainted pleasures of Naples: when Cesare returned to Rome on 5 September, Isabella d’Este’s agent reported: ‘Monsignor of Valencia has returned from the Kingdom after crowning King Federigo and he too is sick of the French disease [syphilis].’ Even before he returned, Ascanio Sforza reported in a cipher letter to Ludovico that negotiations were going on between the Pope and the Prince of Salerno ‘to give Dona Lucretia . . . to the son of the prince with certain conditions which, if true and put into effect, I believe will not result to the benefit either of the King or of Italy . . .’23

  Lucrezia’s second marriage was to be to Alfonso, natural son of Alfonso II of Naples and brother of Sancia, and merely a stepping stone to the realization of Cesare’s new ambitions. Gandia’s death had changed everything: now Cesare was to be the foundation of the family’s earthly ambitions which, in 1497, focused on a marriage between him and Carlotta, legitimate daughter of King Federigo. In September a commission headed by two cardinals pronounced sentence of divorce between Lucrezia and Giovanni on the grounds of the latter’s impotence.24 The Borgias pushed hard to get Giovanni Sforza to agree to the divorce, and in order to accommodate the Pope the senior Sforza were prepared to abandon him. Throughout the autumn they pressed him relentlessly to sign a mandate agreeing to the Pope’s terms, that is, of non-consummation. The wretched Sforza twisted and turned. He wanted the sentence nullifying the marriage to be based on grounds other than his non-consummation, as less offensive to his honour; he wanted the return of those of his possessions which were in the hands of Lucrezia, and to keep her dowry, with a clause agreed by the Pope and Lucrezia on behalf of herself and any future heirs guaranteeing its non-returnability.25

  Apparently having already signed a mandate agreeing to the divorce on the grounds of non-consummation he now wished to substitute it for one simply nullifying the marriage.26 Ludovico’s chancellor, Thomasino Tormelli, who had been sent to fetch ‘this blessed mandate’ (‘questo benedetto Mandato’, Sforza’s signed statement agreeing to the divorce) from Pesaro, told Ludovico in exasperation that if he were to present this form to the Pope, Alexander would explode with fury and probably proceed to the sentence without further delay anyway.27 In response to a long wail from Giovanni Sforza, Ludovico told him firmly on 12 December to submit to the decisions of Ascanio in dealing with the Pope. On 21 December, Tormelli wrote to Ludovico informing him of the Pope’s joy at the settlement of the matter and the pronouncement of the divorce the previous day, and of his great gratitude to Ludovico for his intervention: ‘The joy which you have given him is as great as if you had given him 200,000 ducats.’28 Alexander had every reason to be joyful as he had obtained everything he wanted – Giovanni Sforza’s mandate attesting to non-consummation (signed in Pesaro on 18 November) and the return of the dowry of 30,000 ducats. A letter from a weary Ascanio Sforza revealed the difficult negotiations behind the final settlement: all he had secured for the ‘small benefit’ of Giovanni Sforza was the return of jewels and things given by him to Lucrezia which, according to the Pope, were worth several thousand ducats.29 Lucrezia herself seems to have had no regrets over her enforced separation from her husband of more than four years. According to Taberna, she appeared at the Vatican on 20 December 1497 for the promulgation of her divorce, when she made a graceful speech which he described as worthy of Cicero in its eloquence. Within just over six months she would be married for a second time.

  4. The Tragic Duchess of Bisceglie

  ‘We have entrusted to our beloved daughter in Christ, the noble lady, Lucretia de Borgia, Duchess of Biseglia [sic], the office of keeper of the castle, as well as the government of our cities of Spoleto and Foligno, and of the county and district about them. Having perfect confidence in the intelligence, fidelity and probity of the Duchess . . . We trust that you will receive the Duchess Lucretia as is your duty, with all due honour as your regent, and show her submission in all things . . .’

  – Alexander VI to the Priors of Spoleto, 18 August 1499

  Alexander may have got what he wanted but the cost to Lucrezia’s reputation was high. Few believed that her marriage had not been consummated or that Giovanni Sforza was impotent, since his first wife had died in childbirth (his third wife would bear him two children). The idea that Lucrezia was a virgin, so necessary for her remarriage, was regarded as ludicrous. As Matarazzo, a Perugian chronicler unfavourable to the Borgias, put it: ‘[it was] a conclusion that set all Italy laughing . . . it was common knowledge that she had been and was then the greatest whore there ever was in Rome’. Sforza’s allegation that Alexander had taken Lucrezia from him to sleep with her himself became common currency. It may even be that he believed it. The closeness of the Borgias made the accusation of incest feasible; even Juan Gandia had been charged with sleeping with his sister. Both Alexander and Cesare loved Lucrezia deeply: in fact it seems that she was the only woman whom Cesare ever cared for.

  Within months of the divorce Lucrezia was involved in further sexual scandal. On 14 February 1498, the body of Pedro Calderon, known as Perotto, a handsome young Spaniard who served in the Pope’s chamber, was discovered in the Tiber. According to Burchard who in his position as papal master of ceremonies was well up in palace gossip, on the night of the 8th Perotto ‘fell, not of his own will, into the Tiber . . . of which there is much said in the city’. And according to Marin Sanudo, the drowned body of Pantasilea, one of Lucrezia’s women, was found with him. It seems likely that Cesare had them both killed for reasons intimately connected with Lucrezia, who was almost certainly having an affair with Perotto. Knowledge of this affair may well have been a reason for her seclusion in San Sisto at a time when her divorce from Sforza was being planned by Alexander and Cesare in June the previous year. Shortly before the discovery of Perotto’s body in February 1498, Cristoforo Poggio, agent of the Bentivoglio family of Bologna, reported that Perotto had vanished mysteriously and was thought to be in prison ‘for having got His Holiness’s daughter, Lucrezia, with child’.1 In March 1498, a report by the Ferrarese envoy to Duke Ercole alleged that Lucrezia had given birth to a child. Since at that very moment negotiations for a second marriage for Lucrezia were going on,
Cesare had every reason to remove any evidence of misconduct on his sister’s part by avenging himself on Perotto. Nothing and no one would be allowed to come in the way of his plans for Lucrezia which were so closely allied with his own.