Titans of History

THE BORGIAS: POPE ALEXANDER VI AND HIS CHILDREN CESARE & LUCREZIA

1431–1503, 1475–1507 & 1480–1519

Lucrezia was wanton in imagination, godless by nature, ambitious and designing … she carried the head of a Raphael Madonna and concealed the heart of a Messalina.

Alexandre Dumas, Celebrated Crimes (1843)

Rodrigo Borgia, great-nephew of Pope Calixtus III, was a ruthless master of intrigue and power, an expertise that made him and his children legendary for debauch and murder. A cardinal at twenty-five, he had served as vice chancellor of the Holy See during the reigns of four popes, amassing a vast fortune in the process. By the time it was his turn to be pope, Borgia had the cash to buy the papacy with four mule loads of bullion. Whatever his sins, he was clever, witty, charming, experienced and conscientious in his attendance of the Curia and seductive both in politics and the bedroom: “women were attracted to him like iron to a magnet,” commented a witness. Two years after his election as pope—he called himself Alexander VI—Rome was attacked and seized by King Charles VIII of France but the pope managed to win over the French king, who soon marched on to Naples. Once the French had returned to their homeland, Alexander VI set about the full enjoyment of his papacy: he had already managed to install his eldest son Giovanni as duke of Gandia but in June 1497 the twenty-year-old vanished, only to be found in the Tiber with his throat cut and nine stab wounds. Alexander was heartbroken but he did not pursue the case because the chief suspect was his younger son Cesare, already a cardinal.

In 1498, Cesare persuaded his father to release him from his cardinalate and appoint him papal military commander. Now a layman again, Cesare had ambitions in France and as the architect of his father’s new pro-French policies, he was rewarded with the French dukedom of Valentinois and allowed to marry the sister of the king of Navarre. The new Duke Cesare set about murdering or overthrowing all the rival lords in Italy who stood in the way of Borgia power. In the process Alexander and Cesare restored papal political power. But Cesare was hated: “every night,” wrote an ambassador in Rome, “four or five men are discovered assassinated, bishops and others, so that all Rome trembles for fear of being murdered by the Duke.” By now Cesare Borgia was literally decaying, riddled and raddled by syphilis that was eating away his face so that he only appeared in public with a sinister gold mask.

For all his notoriety, Cesare Borgia was in his way utterly exceptional: he was tireless, scarcely slept and lived in a state of demented and boundless activity. Fearless and uninhibited, he also possessed his father’s charm and intelligence. Cesare fathered at least eleven bastards and his orgies, often attended by his father and sister, were magnificent and brazen: at one famed banquet, the papal master of ceremonies recorded how “fifty decent prostitutes in attendance, who danced naked” got onto their hands and knees to play a game of picking up chestnuts that were spread around the floor. “Finally prizes were offered—silken doublets, pairs of shoes, hats—for those men who could perform the act most frequently with the prostitutes.” The orgy was not just attended by pope and duke but also Cesare’s sister Lucrezia Borgia.

Lucrezia became infamous throughout Renaissance Italy for her corruption, carnality and viciousness. Her monstrosity was probably exaggerated, but contemporaries regarded her as the embodiment of evil, and whispered that she wore a hollow ring from which she would discreetly pour poison into the wine of all those who stood in her way.

Lucrezia, a pretty, captivating child, grew into a great beauty. She was described by a contemporary as “of middle height and graceful of form … her hair is golden, her eyes gray, her mouth rather large, the teeth brilliantly white, her bosom smooth and white and admirably proportioned.” Her father Pope Alexander arranged for the eighteen-year-old Lucrezia to marry Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro, in order to build an alliance with the Sforzas—a powerful Milanese family—against the Aragonese of Naples.

The wedding, which took place at the Vatican, was a lavish affair, at which a scandalous play about pimps and mistresses was performed. Lucrezia spent two years in Pesaro, but was unhappy and returned to Rome. The Borgias, who already had a formidable reputation, suspected Giovanni of spying for Milan; when he visited his wife in Rome he became terrified when Lucrezia suddenly began to smile and show him signs of affection. Fearing for his life, he fled Rome in disguise. The alliance between Rome and Milan was no longer of use to the Borgias, who were now attempting to court Naples. Pope Alexander demanded that the Sforzas agree to a divorce, but the only legal way to do this was to force Giovanni to make a false confession that he was impotent and had therefore never consummated the marriage. Humiliated, he hit back with the allegation that Alexander had undermined the marriage in order that he could pursue a sexual interest in his own daughter.

In the midst of the divorce proceedings, Lucrezia—still claiming to be a virgin—retired to the Roman convent of San Sisto, where she was visited by a messenger from her father, the handsome courtier Pedro Calderon, with whom she soon began an affair. Within a year, a mysterious baby boy appeared among the Borgia clan, and shortly afterward Calderon was found floating in the River Tiber, apparently murdered on the orders of a jealous Cesare. The historian Potigliotto speculated that either Cesare or Alexander had sired the boy.

In 1498, having had her claim to virginity upheld by the divorce court, Lucrezia was offered to the seventeen-year-old Alfonso, duke of Bisceglie, an illegitimate son of Alfonso II of Naples. However, it wasn’t long before the Borgias fell out with Naples and moved closer to the French king, Louis XII. Lucrezia’s young husband fled Rome in fear of his life, and when his bride convinced him to return, he was savagely attacked on the steps of St. Peter’s in Rome. It is possible that Lucrezia was complicit in the assault, although contemporaries believed that she genuinely loved her second husband, pointing out that she tended to his wounds and nursed him back to health. But the court of the Borgias was not a safe place to convalesce, and, on Cesare’s orders, a month after the original attack, Alfonso was strangled while he lay in bed.

Lucrezia was said to be distraught at her young husband’s death. Nonetheless, she soon resumed her part in Borgia power politics. In 1501, the year after Alfonso’s murder, she married Alfonso d’Este, son of Ercole I, Duke of Ferrara.

In 1503, Alexander VI died of fever, at age seventy-two. His reputation is deserved but he was also successful in changing the papacy, improving its finances, administration and diplomatic influence. Cesare was left exposed. He was exiled to Spain where he was killed in battle at age thirty-one. His motto was “Caesar or nothing.” In the end, it was nothing.

Lucrezia became a respected patron of the arts and literature in Ferrara, where she became duchess in 1505, while still finding time to have an affair with her bisexual brother-in-law and the humanist poet Pietro Bembo. She died in childbirth at the age of thirty-nine.