Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (17 page)

Nonetheless, Ercole wished it to be understood that only a desire to serve the King of France and preserve good relations between him and the Pope had induced him ‘to condescend to such an unequal relationship’, as he wrote to Cavalleri on 5 September.
²¹
Because of his loyalty to the King of France, he added, he had resisted the angry opposition of the Emperor Maximilian to the marriage, and he had underlined the reason for his agreement to the marriage in the nuptial contract by specifying that it was the wish of the King of France. In a later letter he admitted that fear of the Borgias had played its part: ‘. . . we would have made His Holiness our greatest enemy if we had refused, and having the Lord Duke of Romagna [Cesare], with a great and fine State beside ours, there is no doubt that His Holiness would be able to damage us greatly . . .’
²²

To Lucrezia he wrote a graceful if wry letter announcing the completion of the marriage
‘per parola de
presente’:
‘We rejoice for this with you whom first we loved uncommonly for your singular virtues and for our reverence for The Holiness of Our Lord and as the sister of the Most Illustrious Duke of Romagna who we hold as an honoured brother: now we love you intimately as more than daughter, hoping that through you there will come the continuation of our posterity: and we will operate so that you should be with us as soon as possible . . .’
²³

Lucrezia no doubt took this letter in the spirit it was intended. She cannot have been unaware of the difficulties her father and brother had encountered in pressing the reluctant Duke into acceptance of a marriage to which he had an extreme aversion. She had been entrusted by her father with the administration of the Vatican in July, while he toured Sermoneta and the lands recently acquired from the Caetani.
²⁴
As Burchard had reported: ‘Before His Holiness, our Master, left the city, he turned over the palace and all the business affairs to his daughter Lucretia, authorizing her to open all letters which should come addressed to him . . .’ This time she was no mere pawn in the process managed by her father and brother but an active participant in the negotiations for her proposed marriage, as Ercole himself acknowledged in a postscript to a letter he wrote her on 2 September: ‘Lady Lucretia. Because in the instrument drawn up concerning your dowry a certain article has been remitted to your decision and judgement and that of the Most Illustrious Lord Duke of Romagna. We would urge Your Ladyship not to come to any declaration until you have first discussed it with our representatives who are on their way to you.’

The historian Guicciardini, no friend to the Borgias, gave his verdict on the marriage:

Although this marriage was most unworthy of the house of Este, wont to make the most noble alliances, and all the more unworthy because Lucrezia was illegitimate and stained with great infamy, Ercole and Alfonso consented because the French King, desiring to satisfy the Pope in all things, made strong importunities for this union. Besides this they were motivated by a desire for securing themselves by such means from the arms and ambitions of Valentino (if, against such perfidy, any security whatever were sufficient). For Valentino, now powerful with the monies and authority of the Apostolic See and the favour which the French King bore him, was already formidable throughout a great part of Italy, and everyone knew that his cupidity had neither limit nor bridle.
²⁵

6. Farewell to Rome

‘His Holiness went from window to window of the Palace to catch the last glimpse of his beloved daughter’

– Beltrando Costabili, Ferrarese envoy in Rome, to Duke Ercole, describing Lucrezia’s departure from the city for Ferrara, 6 January 1502

The news of Lucrezia’s marriage became public in Rome on 4 September ‘around the hour of vespers’, celebrated by the firing of continual rounds of cannon from Sant’Angelo. The next day Lucrezia, wearing a dress of golden brocade ornamented with curled gold thread, rode from the Palazzo Santa Maria in Portico to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo accompanied by three hundred horsemen and preceded by four bishops and followed by her considerable household. ‘On the same day,’ recorded Burchard, ‘from the hour of supper until the third hour of night, the great bell of the Capitol was rung, and many fires and beacons lit on the castle of Sant’Angelo and all over the city, and lights on the towers of the castle and the Capitol and elsewhere, inciting everyone to celebrate with joy. The next day, two jesters to whom Lucrezia had given her golden dress worth 300 ducats and other clothing, went about the city shouting ‘Viva the most illustrious Duchess of Ferrara! Viva Pope Alexander!’

On 15 September, Cesare arrived back from the Naples campaign; the next day the Borgia family celebrations in the Vatican began in earnest. The Florentine envoy Francesco Pepi reported on the 17th: ‘Although yesterday and today I went to the Palace to see the Pope, he has given audience to no one because he was occupied all yesterday concerning the marriage and dowry of Madonna Lucrezia, and in dancing, music and singing . . .’
¹
Alexander adored the sight of beautiful women dancing and of his daughter in particular. One evening he called the Ferrarese ambassadors to him to watch her, joking ‘that they might see the Duchess was not lame’. Both Cesare and Lucrezia were exhausted by the constant round of entertainments organized by their indomitable father. On 23 September, Gherardo Saraceni, one of the Ferrarese envoys, reported that Cesare had received them fully dressed but lying on his bed: ‘I feared that he was sick, for last evening he danced without intermission, which he will do again tonight at the Pope’s palace, where the illustrious Duchess (Lucrezia) is going to sup.’ Two days later he wrote of Lucrezia: ‘The illustrious lady continues somewhat ailing and is greatly fatigued . . . The rest which she will have while His Holiness is away will do her good; for whenever she is at the Pope’s palace, the entire night, until two or three o’clock, is spent at dancing and at play, which fatigues her greatly.’ Lucrezia may have inherited her father’s mental resilience but not his physical robustness: her health was never strong. Alexander on the other hand never tired; one day when he was suffering from a bad cold and had lost a tooth, he remarked to the Ferrarese ambassador: ‘If the Duke [Ercole] were here, I would, even if my face were tied up, invite him to go and hunt wild boar.’

On 25 September, Alexander and Cesare left Rome to inspect the fortifications at Nepi and Civita Castellana, north-east of Rome. Once again Lucrezia was appointed her father’s regent in the Vatican. Saraceni and his fellow envoy Berlinguer visited her constantly, attempting, they told Ercole, to find a way to present themselves to the Pope through her. They reported her state of health:

The illustrious Madonna persists still in her little indisposition, saying that it is no more than weakness, nor for this nor otherwise because of [taking] medicine will she cease to carry on her affairs: and she gives audiences as she is accustomed to nor do we believe that this indisposition will last longer because in truth Her Ladyship looks after herself very well and also we believe that the rest of these few days . . . must do her good, because these times that Her Ladyship visited the Pope, they spent in dancing and celebration until the eighth or ninth hour, something that very much harmed Her Ladyship.
²

Lucrezia had quite won over the Ferrarese who were impressed by her constantly expressed desire to be in Ferrara: ‘Her Ladyship does not cease every day to ask when we believe that she may be leaving here, because in truth one hour seems a thousand until she is able to be at Ferrara to do reverence to Your Excellency and find herself in the sight of the Most Illustrious Don Alfonso . . . and here now seems a prison to her . . . so great is her desire to come: and the fear of bad weather [which would delay her journey], that she with most great affection seeks to know the time which Your Excellency has established to send for [her] . . .’
³
Lucrezia was only too aware that many things could go wrong: she did not trust the Este, her marriage depended on the continuance in power of her father and her brother; she could not be sure of the outcome until she was safely in Ferrara, her marriage to Alfonso – who had resolutely remained distant and out of touch—consummated. Ercole, however, was determined that she should stay in Rome until he had got everything he wanted out of the Pope. When she expressed herself as ‘most impatient’ to leave Rome, the ambassadors told her that her arrival was much desired in Ferrara but equally ‘her presence in Rome was too necessary to conduct to a good end all the conventions through the great influence she has on the mind of His Holiness’.

One unspoken condition of the marriage was the most personally difficult for her. On 27 September, after dinner, Lucrezia offered to show the envoys round the Vatican: her son, Rodrigo Bisceglie, not quite two years old, was with her. When the envoys tactfully raised the subject of his future, she replied, apparently with no show of emotion, that he would remain in Rome with an allowance of 15,000 ducats. It could be deduced that the Este had indicated that they would prefer Lucrezia to come to Ferrara with the appearance at least of a virgin bride and without any of the baggage of her previous life. The spectre of the murdered Alfonso Bisceglie hung over his son as an unpleasant reminder of Lucrezia’s scandalous past. It was terrible for Lucrezia to be parted from the son who had been with her since birth but as a realist, a Borgia and a woman of her time, she accepted it, apparently without question. The infant Rodrigo had his part to play in the Borgias’ dynastic plans to consolidate their power around Rome at the expense of the local barons. That month of September 1501, the child was entrusted to the guardianship of Francesco Borgia, Cardinal Cosenza, and created Duke of Sermoneta with estates including the Caetani lands purchased by Lucrezia and some of the recently confiscated Colonna lands in a new Borgia duchy Giovanni Borgia, born in 1498, had his part to play in this reshuffle of Borgia lands necessitated by Lucrezia’s departure for Ferrara. He was legitimized in two successive Bulls, the first declaring him to be the son of Cesare before his marriage, the second acknowledging him as Alexander’s son. As the Borgias’ historian Michael Mallett has pointed out, the timing of these Bulls may have been designed to counteract the rumours that Giovanni Borgia was an illegitimate son of Lucrezia; copies of them were among the many documents that the careful Lucrezia took with her to Ferrara. Again to avoid awkward memories, the Pope had requested that Giovanni Sforza, despite being linked to the Este family, should not be present in Ferrara when Lucrezia arrived for the nuptials. Among the subjects raised with Lucrezia was that of the census which Ercole now wished to be remitted to his heirs in perpetuity, though the Pope had not wished to change the terms of the Bull. The envoys had appealed both to Lucrezia and Cesare to change Alexander’s mind: ‘The Duchess had spoken to him of this the previous evening but without result; and she thought it was necessary to put off the demand to another time.’ The Pope had apparently told her that it would be necessary to pawn her jewels to raise the cash for her dowry since Ercole had refused to take them in lieu. But she said they would not be taken from her and she still hoped the Pope would find other means to raise the money. She cunningly told them that ‘His Holiness increasingly believed her to be too zealous for the interests of the Estensi’.
⁴

Lucrezia hastened to give Ercole the same impression, assuring him in her letters that she would do everything possible to serve him. ‘As to the particulars to negotiate with His Holiness I will make every effort to execute justly my debt to you [and] with every reverence and swiftness to observe your orders as you will see at greater length in the letters of your ambassadors . . .’ she wrote on 28 September, following it up with an even more ingratiating letter on 8 October. She was taking the opportunity of the departure of the messenger for Ferrara to send Ercole a few lines in her own hand in place of a visit in person: ‘meanwhile with the help of God I will be able to revere and serve you as is my only desire: concerning the other things which are being negotiated, I am sure Your Illustrious Lordship will be informed by your most diligent envoys . . .’
⁵

In return, Lucrezia received the most charming letter from her prospective father-in-law:

So great is the love and affection we bear Your Illustrious Ladyship and so pleasing is everything to do with you that, having received your letter of the 8th which you sent me in place of a personal visit which has brought us greater pleasure, delight and content than any visit, even personal which could be made by any other person, because reading Your Ladyship’s letter so full of sweetness, it seems as if we were seeing you and talking to you whose presence we desire as much as anything else we have ever had to heart, to be able to welcome you and treat you in a manner suited to a most beloved daughter. And thus we as you see are not failing on our side to do everything necessary so that your arrival here should not be delayed . . .
⁶

Behind the sweet words, however, the haggling between Pope and Duke continued. Lucrezia played her part, assuring Ercole that she was on his side. She had understood from the envoys, she wrote on 11 October, how great was his desire for the extension of the remission of the census beyond the third generation of his descendants:

So desirous as your devoted and most obedient daughter to do all I possibly can in everything . . . I have recently with great insistence besought His Holiness Our Lord [about this] and although I understand it to be a somewhat difficult matter yet Your Excellency can be certain that for my part here I will endeavour to work on His Holiness so that you will recognize how great is my desire to serve and to please you: for this reason I have today been with the Cardinal of Modena who is most devoted to you and begun to set the matter in order: so that I hope that on the return of the aforesaid Holiness, I will be able to do something pleasing to Your Excellency, whom I again beseech to be of quiet and tranquil mind.
⁷

Engaged in preparations for the bride’s sumptuous reception in Ferrara, Ercole sent to Rome asking for details of the Borgia ancestry to be used in the customary welcoming orations at the wedding festivities.
⁸
A fake genealogy was hastily cobbled together representing the Borgias as descendants of Don Pedro de Atares, feudal lord of Borja and pretender to the throne of Aragon. The claim was entirely baseless since Don Pedro died without successors, although this was either not known or not admitted at the time.
⁹
The ambassadors had to report that, although in Spain the house of Borgia was certainly most noble and ancient, they had had trouble finding outstanding deeds by their forebears and suggested that the oration should concentrate on the achievements of Popes Calixtus and Alexander. Since tales of high deeds and chivalric romance (such as Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso
featuring the house of Este) were considered an essential part of the history of noble families, the Borgias’ failure to produce anything better than a dubious relationship to the shadowy Don Pedro de Atares was of particular embarrassment, emphasizing the difference in social standing between their family and the Este.

While wrangling continued through the medium of the envoys on such subjects as whether the dowry was to be calculated in
‘fiorini di camera’,
as the Pope wished, or
ducati larghi,
as the Duke demanded, Lucrezia found a new way in which she could earn Ercole’s gratitude. Ercole was extremely pious and his hobby was collecting nuns. And of all nuns, those who showed the sign of the stigmata, or Christ’s wounds on their bodies, were the most prized. Whatever modern Catholics may think of the phenomenon, to deeply religious people such as Ercole they were a new manifestation of Christ’s passion: ‘These things,’ he wrote, ‘are shown by the Supreme Craftsman in the bodies of His servants to confirm and strengthen our Faith, and to remove the incredulity of impious men and hard of heart.’
¹⁰
Such nuns were considered a badge of honour, even a tourist attraction in their local towns. The three most famous women of the time were Sister Columba of Rieti, who lived in a convent in Perugia, Sister Osanna Andreassi of Mantua and Ercole’s particular target, Sister Lucia Brocadelli of Narni, at the time in a convent in Viterbo. He had even tried to persuade his daughter Isabella d’Este to bring Sister Osanna (who was later to predict, to everyone’s satisfaction, that Cesare’s rule in the Romagna would be ‘like unto a straw fire’) to Ferrara, a request which Isabella cunningly evaded. He had, however, after a series of cloak-and-dagger episodes, succeeded in having Sister Lucia smuggled out of her Dominican convent in Viterbo and brought to Ferrara on May 1499. Less than a month later, he had laid the first stone of the convent he had promised to build for her and on 29 May 1500 he had obtained from Alexander a Bull enabling him to establish for Lucia a convent of sisters of the third order of St Dominic, followers of St Catherine of Siena, and conferring special privileges and chief authority upon ‘our beloved daughter in Christ, Lucia da Narni . . .’ By the summer of 1501, the fame of Sister Lucia had spread even to the French court where the Queen sent messages to Ercole asking him to obtain Sister Lucia’s prayers to God to give her a son.
¹¹
In order to make Lucia happy, Ercole had resolved to get some of her former friends, nuns from Narni and Viterbo, and had sent his emissary Bartolommeo Bresciano for the purpose, only to meet with an absolute refusal from the prior of the Dominicans. In this impasse, Ercole turned to the one person he knew to have influence with the Pope – Lucrezia.