The Borgias (19 page)
His entry was recorded in detail by Burchard, who had arranged the whole event and was evidently displeased that not all of the participants shared his own desire for order:
The cardinals, learning that Don Cesare was approaching, mounted their mules and waited in customary fashion outside the gate. They doffed their hats to welcome him, and he in turn took off his own cap and graciously thanked them. The procession made its way to the Vatican, Don Cesare riding between Cardinals Pallavicini and Orsini, passing along the Via Lata to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva . . . and the Campo dei Fiori.
About a hundred packhorses in new black trappings led the cavalcade, walking in good order, and behind, rather more haphazardly strung out, were fifty more. I was unable to arrange the households in any sort of order since there were in the procession about a thousand infantry soldiers, Swiss and Gascons, who marched along in ranks of five each under their own separate standards, all blazoned with Don Cesare’s arms, and were not interested in our arrangements at all. When the Pope’s infantry approached, carrying their own banner, the Swiss, on meeting them, demanded that they should lower this standard. They absolutely refused to march
along with it, and this led to a considerable argument, but Don Cesare quickly settled it. Don Cesare had around him a hundred grooms, each one dressed in a cloak of black velvet reaching to his knees, with a collar of simple and severe design. There were a number of trumpeters in the procession, all wearing Don Cesare’s arms, and two of his own heralds, but both trumpeters and other musicians remained silent throughout the journey.The Duke of Bisceglie [Alfonso of Aragon] and Don Jofrè Borgia followed next in the procession, and then Don Cesare Borgia between two cardinals, with the bishops and ambassadors behind them riding two abreast. There was a wrangle over precedence between two ambassadors . . . [who] refused to take any further part in the ceremonies. The ambassadors for Venice, Florence, Savoy and other states were, however, present. Behind them came Vitellozzo Vitelli [the condottiere] in charge of the men-at-arms, who marched along in such disorder that the ecclesiastics could not take their places and consequently for the most part also withdrew.
To welcome Don Cesare at the Vatican, the Pope came to the room over the loggia of the entrance to the palace. When Don Cesare reached the Sala dei Paramenti, the Pope climbed to the Sala del Pappagallo, where he took his seat and had five brocaded cushions arranged, so that one was on the throne, one under his feet, and the other three on the floor in front of him. The door of the Pappagallo was then opened, and Don Cesare entered . . . kneeling before His Holiness, he made a brief speech in Spanish to thank him for being thought worthy of such an honour, and to this the Pope replied also in
Spanish. For this reason, I did not understand what he said. Don Cesare next kissed both feet and the right hand of the Pope, and following this ceremony, those lords who also so desired also kissed His Holiness’s foot.The Castel Sant’Angelo was most elaborately decorated on this occasion. Two banners were set up on the lower round tower overlooking the Ponte Sant’Angelo, whilst on the higher tower, where trumpeters played, there were displayed four or five more banners, all with the papal arms. Above the walls, and between each turret facing the bridge, there stood three men armed from head to foot and holding halberds in their hands, whilst above the walls of the round tower were fifteen soldiers and as many again where the trumpeters were blowing. Some two hundred or more explosions in turn shook the area with a great deal of noise . . . with reverberations that brought down several windows and shutters . . . I had never seen such a splendid nor triumphant display.
So delighted was the pope to welcome his son home to Rome as Lord of Imola and Forlì that he was reported as being unable to decide whether to laugh or cry and so did both alternately. Cesare had, indeed, achieved much and had done so at little cost to either his father’s purse or to the troops under his command. And, strikingly, in this moment of real triumph, he had chosen deliberately to dress both himself and his household more modestly than he had in the past. He and his bodyguard made their entry into the city all clothed in black, Cesare proudly wearing his golden collar of the Order of St Michael; and in black again, he appeared before his father in the Vatican to make his report.
The following day, February 27, Rome witnessed one of the highlights of the Carnival season, the cavalcade of elaborately decorated carts in the Piazza Navona, and it was watched eagerly by the crowds who had lined the streets to see the parade as it made its way from the piazza to the Vatican Palace. The theme that year was the Triumphs of Caesar and the tableaux depicted on the wagons celebrated the military successes of Julius Caesar, the victorious general of ancient Rome, who appeared on the final wagon, crowned with his victor’s wreath of laurels.
With his usual relish for such occasions, Cesare accompanied the cavalcade astride his magnificent charger. The pope, who was watching the display in the piazza of St Peter’s from a balcony in the Vatican Palace, was so impressed that he asked for an encore, and his son duly turned the procession around to allow it to pass once more beneath his father’s window.
The programme for the Carnival pageant, drawn up by humanists employed by the pope and executed by artists working on papal projects in the Vatican, was clearly designed to draw parallels between Caesar and Cesare. And the message would not have been missed by those onlookers who had watched Cesare’s triumphal entry into the city the day before, where they had seen the victorious soldier carrying his own sword, which was engraved with the letters
CESAR
, and the same letters embroidered on the clothes of his personal bodyguard. Cesare was soon to adopt as his motto ‘
aut Caesar aut nihil
’ – Caesar or nothing – a very ambitious declaration of intent.
HAPTER
16 —
‘T
HE
P
OPE INTENDS TO MAKE THE
D
UKE
V
ALENTINO A GREAT MAN AND
K
ING OF
I
TALY IF HE CAN
’
‘O
N THE MORNING
of the fourth Sunday of Lent, 29 March,’ Burchard recorded just a month after Cesare’s triumphant return to Rome as Lord of Imola and Forlì, ‘the cardinals assembled at the accustomed hour in the Sala del Pappagallo and were thence summoned more privately to meet His Holiness in his small audience chamber, where, having taken their advice,’ as the master of ceremonies euphemistically described the process whereby the pope informed the college of his intentions, ‘he decided to bestow the Golden Rose on the illustrious Cesare Borgia, his much-loved son, and to create him Captain-General and Gonfalonier [standard-bearer] of the Holy Roman Church.’
The ceremony had, of course, been planned well in advance. Directly after the meeting, the pope was carried on his throne into St Peter’s, with the Golden Rose in his left hand, followed by Cesare,
dressed in a coat of brocade, the cardinals, and other members of the papal court, to join the ambassadors, prelates, and officials assembled in the basilica. Inside Cesare was formally enrobed with the insignia of his new office: the great mantle and the gilded helmet with its ermine plumes crowned by the figure of a dove that glistened with pearls. Kneeling before his father, he made his solemn vows:
I, Cesare Borgia of France, Duke of Valence, Gonfalonier and standard-bearer, Captain-General of the Holy Roman Church, do solemnly swear from this day forwards that I will faithfully submit to St Peter, to the Holy Roman Church and to you, my most holy lord, Pope Alexander VI, and to your canonical successors. Never will I intend, plan or undertake to deprive you of life or limb, to take possession of your person in a wicked fashion, to lay my hands violently on you or your successors, whatever is done against me, whatever wrongs are propagated against me and under whatever pretext, and I will reveal to no one the plans that you or your successors confide in me.
‘Receive these standards,’ Alexander VI responded, giving his son the banners of the church, ‘which have been sanctified by the blessing of Heaven, and will be terrible to the enemies of Christendom.’ He then handed to his son the baton of command and finally the Golden Rose. At the end of the ceremony, the banners were hoisted by two men-at-arms, and the congregation followed them out of the basilica and into the piazza: the ambassadors, eight flautists, four drummers, three heralds, soldiers, cardinals, and
finally the duke himself, followed by the footmen and prelates and by Cesare’s men, ‘who marched,’ to Burchard’s obvious distress, ‘in inevitable disorder.’
The proud Cesare could now add the pontifical keys of St Peter to the Borgia bull and the lilies of France on his coat-of-arms, but his ambitions to enlarge his modest state in the Romagna, which depended heavily on the support of Louis XII, had, for the moment, stalled. After the euphoria, which was noticed in his behaviour at this time, he fell into one of those moods of deep gloom, symptoms of the manic-depressive. ‘I know that in my twenty-sixth year,’ he was quoted as having said, ‘I stand in danger of ending my life in arms and by arms.’ He also asked the German humanist Lorenz Behaim to cast his horoscope; and it seems that the result was not encouraging.
Ludovico Sforza’s campaign to seize his duchy back from the French had met with surprising success. He had succeeded in reconquering Milan, although the great Sforza castle remained in French hands, and on February 6 he had made his triumphant return, welcomed by his subjects with much joy. The French army had withdrawn to Novara, awaiting their chance to retake the city, Yves d’Alègre and his gunners, which Cesare needed for his Romagna campaign, among them. There was, however, much that the pope and his son could do to plan the next stage of their campaign, and much money to be raised to finance it.
The year 1500 was a Jubilee year in Rome, when thousands of pilgrims were expected to flock to the city, where, by visiting certain churches, fasting, praying, attending confession and Communion, and giving alms, they would receive pardon for all their sins. The tradition of the Christian Jubilee year was not an ancient
one; founded by Pope Boniface XIII in 1300, as a means of raising funds to fill the papal coffers, it had initially been intended as a celebration for the beginning of each century, though Paul II had decreed in 1470 that it should be held every twenty-five years.
Burchard gives a lengthy account of the preparations made in the city for the Jubilee; provision for housing the pilgrims, sweepers to clear the litter from church floors, special patrols to prevent tramps loitering around the porches, and ‘large strong casks,’ added Burchard, ‘were to be provided for freewill offerings next to the Chapel of St Andrew in St Peter’s, and they were to be protected with three different locks and keys, one key to be kept by the Datary, a second by one of the confessors and the third in another official’s hand.’
In an attempt to attract more pilgrims than usual, Alexander VI announced that for the 1500 Jubilee, the Holy Door of St Peter’s would be reopened. This door, which had long been walled up, was by tradition the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, through which Christ himself had entered the city on Palm Sunday. It had reputedly been brought to Rome by Emperor Vespasian after the Roman conquest of the Jewish capital in 70
A
.
D
., and it was widely believed that any sinner who walked through it, even a murderer, would have his sins forgiven.
Accordingly, on December 24, 1499, huge crowds assembled in the piazza in front of St Peter’s to watch the ceremonial opening of the Holy Door. The pope arrived amid much fanfare and celebration, and, according to Burchard, he was ‘handed an ordinary workman’s hammer’ by one of the builders, who had spent several days chiselling away at the Holy Door from inside the basilica to weaken it. The pope ‘gave three or more blows’ to the wall, thus creating a
small opening, before retiring to his papal chair a few yards away to watch the workmen demolishing the rest. ‘On this task they spent half an hour, during which time our choir sang continually,’ the master of ceremonies reported.
Alexander VI, dressed in full pontifical robes and wearing the triple tiara, led the ceremonial procession through the Holy Door into St Peter’s, holding a candle in his left hand and Burchard’s colleague supporting his right elbow, followed by the cardinals and the papal court (the builders themselves had been forbidden, ‘under penalty of losing their heads,’ to go through the doorway while they were demolishing it).