Lucretia Borgia Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAVONAROLA.

From a painting by Fra Bartolommeo]

It was not long before Donna Sancia caused herself to be freely gossiped about. She was beautiful and thoughtless; she appreciated her position as the daughter of a king. From the most vicious of courts she was transplanted into the depravity of Rome as the wife of an immature boy.

It was said that her brothers-in-law Gandia and Caesar quarreled over her and possessed her in turn, and that young n.o.bles and cardinals like Ippolito d'Este could boast of having enjoyed her favors.

Savonarola may have had these nepot-courts in mind when, from the pulpit of S. Marco in Florence, he declaimed in burning words against the Roman Sodom.

Even if the voice of the great preacher, whose words were filling all Italy, did not reach Lucretia's ears, from her own experience she must have known how profligate was the world in which she lived. About her she saw vice shamelessly displayed or cloaked in sacerdotal robes; she was conscious of the ambition and avarice which hesitated at no crime; she beheld a religion more pagan than paganism itself, and a church service in which the sacred actors,--with whose conduct behind the scenes she was perfectly familiar,--were the priests, the cardinals, her brother Caesar, and her own father. All this Lucretia beheld, but they are wrong who believe that she or others like her saw and regarded it as we do now, or as a few pure-minded persons of that age did; for familiarity always dulls the average person's perception of the truth.

In that age the conceptions of religion, of decency, and of morality were entirely different from those of to-day. When the rupture between the Middle Ages and its ascetic Church and the Renaissance was complete, human pa.s.sions threw off every restraint. All that had hitherto been regarded as sacred was now derided. The freethinkers of Italy created a literature never equaled for bold cynicism. From the _Hermaphroditus_ of Beccadeli to the works of Berni and Pietro Aretino, a foul stream of novelle, epigrams, and comedies, from which the serious Dante would have turned his eyes in disgust, overflowed the land.

Even in the less sensual novelle, the first of which was Piccolomini's _Euryalus_, and the less obscene comedies, adultery and derision of marriage are the leading motives. The harlots were the Muses of belles-lettres during the Renaissance. They boldly took their place by the side of the saints of the Church, and contended with them for fame's laurels. There is a ma.n.u.script collection of poems of the time of Alexander VI which contains a series of epigrams beginning with a number in praise of the Holy Virgin and the Saints, and then, without word or warning, are several glorifying the famous cyprians of the day; following a stanza on S. Pauline is an epigram on Meretricis Nichine, a well-known courtesan of Siena, with several more of the same sort. The saints of heaven and the priestesses of Venus are placed side by side, without comment, as equally admirable women.[47]

No self-respecting woman would now attend the performance of a comedy of the Renaissance, whose characters frequently represented the popes, the princes, and the n.o.ble women of the day; and their presentation, even before audiences composed entirely of men, would now be prohibited by the censor of the theater in every land.

The naturalness with which women of the South even now discuss subjects which people in the North are careful to conceal excites astonishment; but what was tolerated by the taste or morals of the Renaissance is absolutely incredible. We must remember, however, that this obscene literature was by no means so diffused as novels are at the present time, and also that Southern familiarity with whatever is natural also served to protect women. Much was external, and was so treated that it had no effect whatever upon the imagination. In the midst of the vices of the society of the cities there were n.o.ble women who kept themselves pure.

To form an idea of the morals of the great, and especially of the courts of that day, we must read the history of the Visconti, the Sforza, the Malatesta of Rimini, the Baglione of Perugia, and the Borgias of Rome.

They were not more immoral than the members of the courts of Louis XIV and XV and of August of Saxony, but their murders rendered them more terrible. Human life was held to be of little value, but criminal egotism often was qualified by greatness of mind (magnanimitas), so that a b.l.o.o.d.y deed prompted by avarice and ambition was often condoned.

Egotism and the selfish use of conditions and men for the profit of the individual were never so universal as in the country of Macchiavelli, where unfortunately they still are frequently in evidence. Free from the pedantic opinions of the Germans and the reverence for condition, rank, and birth which they have inherited from the Middle Ages, the Italians, on the other hand, always recognized the force of personality--no matter whether it was that of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d or not--but they, nevertheless, were just as likely to become the slaves of the successful. Macchiavelli maintains that the Church and the priests were responsible for the moral ruin of the peninsula--but were not the Church and these priests themselves products of Italy? He should have said that characteristics which were inherent in the Germanic races were foreign to the Italians.

Luther could never have appeared among them.

While our opinion of Alexander VI and Caesar is governed by ethical considerations, this was not the case with Guicciardini, and less still with Macchiavelli. They examined not the moral but the political man, not his motives but his acts. The terrible was not terrible when it was the deed of a strong will, nor was crime disgraceful when it excited astonishment as a work of art. The terrible way in which Ferdinand of Naples handled the conspiracy of the n.o.bles of his kingdom made him, in the eyes of Italy, not horrible but great; and Macchiavelli speaks of the trick with which Caesar Borgia outwitted his treacherous condottieri at Sinigaglia as a "masterstroke," while the Bishop Paolo Giovio called it "the most beautiful piece of deception." In that world of egotism where there was no tribunal of public opinion, man could preserve himself only by overpowering power and by outwitting cunning with craft. While the French regarded, and still regard, "ridiculous" as the worst of epithets, the Italian dreaded none more than that of "simpleton."

Macchiavelli, in a well-known pa.s.sage in his _Discorsi_ (i. 27), explains his theory with terrible frankness, and his words are the exact keynote of the ethics of his age. He relates how Julius II ventured into Perugia, although Giampolo Baglione had gathered a large number of troops there, and how the latter, overawed by the Pope, surrendered the city to him. His comment is verbatim as follows: "People of judgment who were with the Pope wondered at his foolhardiness, and at Giampolo's cowardice; they could not understand why the latter did not, to his everlasting fame, crush his enemy with one blow and enrich himself with the plunder, for the Pope was accompanied by all his cardinals with their jewels. They could not believe that he refrained on account of any goodness or any conscientious scruples, for the heart of a wicked man, who committed incest with his sister, and destroyed his cousins and nephews so he might rule, could not be accessible to any feelings of respect. So they came to the conclusion that there are men who can neither be honorably bad nor yet perfectly good, who do not know how to go about committing a crime, great in itself or possessing a certain splendor. This was the case with Giampolo; he who thought nothing of incest and the murder of his kinsmen did not know how, or rather did not dare, in spite of the propitious moment, to perform a deed which would have caused every one to admire his courage, and would have won for him an immortal name. For he would first have shown the priests how small men are in reality who live and rule as they do, and he would have been the first to accomplish a deed whose greatness would have dazzled every one, and would have removed every danger which might have arisen from it."

Is it any wonder that in view of such a prost.i.tution of morals to the conception of success, fame, and magnificence, as Macchiavelli here and in _Il Principe_ advocates, men like the Borgias found the widest field for their bold crimes? They well knew that the greatness of a crime concealed the shame of it. The celebrated poet Strozzi in Ferrara placed Caesar Borgia, after his fall, among the heroes of Olympus; and the famous Bembo, one of the first men of the age, endeavors to console Lucretia Borgia on the death of the "miserable little" Alexander VI, whom he at the same time calls her "great" father.

No upright man, conscious of his own worth, would now enter the service of a prince stained by such crimes as were the Borgias, if it were possible for such a one now to exist, which is wholly unlikely. But then the best and most upright of men sought, without any scruples whatever, the presence and favors of the Borgias. Pinturicchio and Perugino painted for Alexander VI, and the most wonderful genius of the century, Leonardo da Vinci, did not hesitate to enter the service of Caesar Borgia as his engineer, to erect fortresses for him in the same Romagna which he had appropriated by such devilish means.

The men of the Renaissance were in a high degree energetic and creative; they shaped the world with a revolutionary energy and a feverish activity, in comparison with which the modern processes of civilization almost vanish. Their instincts were rougher and more powerful, and their nerves stronger than those of the present race. It will always appear strange that the tenderest blossoms of art, the most ideal creations of the painter, put forth in the midst of a society whose moral perversity and inward brutality are to us moderns altogether loathsome.

If we could take a man such as our civilization now produces and transfer him into the Renaissance, the daily brutality which made no impression whatever on the men of that age would shatter his nervous system and probably upset his reason.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI.

From an engraving by G. Marri.]

Lucretia Borgia lived in Rome surrounded by these pa.s.sions, and she was neither better nor worse than the women of her time. She was thoughtless and was filled with the joy of living. We do not know that she ever went through any moral struggles or whether she ever found herself in conscious conflict with the actualities of her life and of her environment. Her father maintained an elaborate household for her, and she was in daily intercourse with her brothers' courts. She was their companion and the ornament of their banquets; she was entrusted with the secret of all the Vatican intrigues which had any connection with the future of the Borgias, and all her vital interests were soon to be concentrated there.

Never, even in the later years of her life, does she appear as a woman of unusual genius; she had none of the characteristics of the _viragos_ Catarina Sforza and Ginevra Bentivoglio; nor did she possess the deceitful soul of an Isotta da Rimini, or the spirituelle genius of Isabella Gonzaga. If she had not been the daughter of Alexander VI and the sister of Caesar Borgia, she would have been unnoticed by the historians of her age or, at most, would have been mentioned only as one of the many charming women who const.i.tuted the society of Rome. In the hands of her father and her brother, however, she became the tool and also the victim of their political machinations, against which she had not the strength to make any resistance.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] This information is given by Marino Sanuto, Venuta di Carlo VIII, in Italia; original in the Paris library, also a copy in the Marciana.

He calls Giulia "favorita del Pontefice, di eta giovane, et bellissima savia accorda et mansueta."

[38] According to one of Brognolo's despatches (Mantuan archives) Giulia and Adriana returned December 1st, on which date Pandolfo Collenuccio, who was in Rome, wrote, "Una optima novella ce e per alcuno. Che Ma Julia si e recuperata, et and Messer Joan Marrades per Lei. Et e venuta in Roma: e dicesi, che Domenica de nocte allogi in Palazzo." Archives of Modena.

[39] Despatch of Giacomo Trotti, Milan, December 21, 1494. Archives of Modena.

[40] Che li pareva ogni hora vedere messer Bartolomeo da Calche venire a Sua Eccia c.u.m una staffetta, chel papa fosse preso, e li fosse taliata la testa.

[41] Trotti to the Duke of Ferrara, Milan, December 24, 1494.

[42] This is the date given by Marino Sanuto in his Ms. History of the Invasion of Charles VIII, fol. 470.

[43] These dates are from the Diary of Marino Sanuto, vol. i. fol. 55, 58, 85.

[44] Il di de S. Laurentio il Duca de Gandia figliuolo del Papa, intr in Roma accompagnato dal Card. de Valentia, et tutta la corte con grandissima pompa. Despatch of Ludovico Carissimi to the Duke of Ferrara, Rome, August 15, 1496. Archives of Modena.

[45] Boccaccio to Ercole, March 24, 1495.

[46] The report is given in Diar. Marino Sanuto, vol. i, 258, and is reprinted in part in the Civilta Cattolica, March 15, 1873, p. 727. The entire pa.s.sage is as follows: Da Roma per le lettere del orator nostro se intese et etiam de private persone cossa a.s.sai abominevole in la chiesa di Dio che al papa erra nato un fiolo di una dona romana maridata ch'el padre l'havea rufianata e di questa il marito invit il suocero ala vigna el lo uccise tagliandoli el capo ponendo quello sopra uno legno con letere che dicera questo e il capo de mio suocero che a rufianato sua fiola al papa et che inteso questo il papa fece metter el dito in exilio di Roma con Taglia. Questa nova vene per letere particular etiam si G.o.dea con la sua spagnola menatali di spagna per suo fiol duca di Gandia novamente li venuto.

[47] Epitaphia clarissimarum mulierum que virtute: arte: aut aliqua nota claruerunt. Codex Hartmann Schedel in the State Library of Munich.

CHAPTER XII

THE DIVORCE AND SECOND MARRIAGE

After the surrender of the remnant of the French forces in the fall of 1496, Giovanni Sforza returned from Naples. There is no doubt that he went to Rome for the purpose of taking Lucretia home with him to Pesaro, where we find him about the close of the year, and where he spent the winter. The chroniclers of Pesaro, however, state that he left the city in disguise, January 15, 1497, and that Lucretia followed him a few days later for the purpose of going to Rome.[48] Both were present at the Easter festivities in the papal city.

Sforza was now a worn-out plaything which Alexander was preparing to cast away, for his daughter's marriage to the tyrant of Pesaro promised him nothing more, the house of Sforza having lost all its influence; moreover, the times were propitious for establis.h.i.+ng connections which would be of greater advantage to the Borgias. The Pope was unwilling to give his son-in-law a command in the war against the Orsini, which he had begun immediately after the return of his son Don Giovanni from Spain, for whom he wanted to confiscate the property of these mighty lords. He secured the services of Duke Guidobaldo of Urbino, who likewise had served in the allied armies of Naples, and whom the Venetians released in order that he might a.s.sume supreme command of the papal troops.

This n.o.ble man was the last of the house of Montefeltre, and the Borgias already had their eyes on his possessions. His sister Giovanna was married in 1478 to the munic.i.p.al prefect, Giovanni della Rovere, a brother of Cardinal Giuliano, and in 1490 she bore him a daughter, Francesca Maria, a child who was looked upon as heir of Urbino.

Guidobaldo did not disdain to serve as a condottiere for pay and in the hope of winning honors; he was also a va.s.sal of the Church. Fear of the Borgias led him to seek their friends.h.i.+p although he hated them.

In the war against the Orsini the young Duke of Gandia was next in command under Guidobaldo, and Alexander made him the standard-bearer of the Church and Rector of Viterbo, and of the entire Patrimonium after he had removed Alessandro Farnese from that position. This appears to have been due to a dislike he felt for Giulia's brother. September 17, 1496, the Mantuan agent in Rome, John Carolus, wrote to the Marchioness Gonzaga: "Cardinal Farnese is shut up in his residence in the Patrimonium, and will lose it unless he is saved by the prompt return of Giulia."

The same amba.s.sador reported to his sovereign as follows: "Although every effort is made to conceal the fact that these sons of the Pope are consumed with envy of each other, the life of the Cardinal of S. Giorgio (Rafael Riario) is in danger; should he die, Caesar would be given the office of chancellor and the palace of the dead Cardinal of Mantua, which is the most beautiful in Rome, and also his most lucrative benefices. Your Excellency may guess how this plot will terminate."[49]

The war against the Orsini ended with the ignominious defeat of the papal forces at Soriano, January 23, 1497, whence Don Giovanni, wounded, fled to Rome, and where Guidobaldo was taken prisoner. The victors immediately forced a peace on most advantageous terms.

Not until the conclusion of the war did Lucretia's husband return to Rome. We shall see him again there, for the last time, at the Easter festivities of 1497, when, as Alexander's son-in-law, he a.s.sumed his official place during the celebration in S. Peter's, and, standing near Caesar and Gandia, received the Easter palm from the Pope's hand. His position in the Vatican had, however, become untenable; Alexander was anxious to dissolve his marriage with Lucretia. Sforza was asked to give her up of his own free will, and, when he refused, was threatened with extreme measures.

Flight alone saved him from the dagger or poison of his brothers-in-law.

According to statements of the chroniclers of Pesaro, it was Lucretia herself who helped her husband to flee and thus caused the suspicion that she was also a partic.i.p.ant in the conspiracy. It is related that, one evening when Jacomino, Lord Giovanni's chamberlain, was in Madonna's room, her brother Caesar entered, and on her command the chamberlain concealed himself behind a screen. Caesar talked freely with his sister, and among other things said that the order had been given to kill Sforza. When he had departed, Lucretia said to Jacomino: "Did you hear what was said? Go and tell him." This the chamberlain immediately did, and Giovanni Sforza threw himself on a Turkish horse and rode in twenty-four hours to Pesaro, where the beast dropped dead.[50]

According to letters of the Venetian envoy in Rome, Sforza fled in March, in Holy Week. Under some pretext he went to the Church of S.

Onofrio, where he found the horse waiting for him.[51]

The request for the divorce was probably not made by Lucretia, but by her father and brothers, who wished her to be free to enter into a marriage which would advance their plans. We are ignorant of what was now taking place in the Vatican, and we do not know that Lucretia made any resistance; but if she did, it certainly was not of long duration, for she does not appear to have loved her husband. Pesaro's escape did not please the Borgias. They would have preferred to have silenced this man forever; but now that he had gotten away and raised an objection, it would be necessary to dissolve the marriage by process of law, which would cause a great scandal.