Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (18 page)

Bresciano was sent on to Rome to Lucrezia with a letter from Ercole of 28 September asking her help. When he arrived on 11 October he was deeply impressed with Lucrezia and her eagerness to help: ‘In truth this Lady has taken up this thing with all her powers to gratify Your Lordship, and I find her so well disposed to you that she could not be more. I hope that Your Excellence will be well satisfied with the most Illustrious Madonna, for she is endowed with so much graciousness and goodness that she continually thinks of nothing else, save how to serve you.’
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The affair took on the aspect of comedy as the two nuns Bresciano had brought to Rome then absolutely refused on the feeblest of excuses to be sent to Ferrara, while the authorities in Viterbo and Narni in turn refused to let the women whom Sister Lucia had requested go. Lucrezia gave them a good scolding and the heads of the Dominican order, intimidated by the will of the Pope’s daughter, instructed them to give way. In a stream of impassioned, almost hysterical letters, Ercole implored Lucrezia’s help, which she, intent on her marriage and anxious to please her father-in-law, willingly gave. She had taken up his case with the Pope, she soothed him on 28 October, and she was sure that he would give Ercole entire satisfaction in this matter. ‘Be of good heart,’ she adjured him, ‘because in this and every other affair concerning you I hope to achieve what you desire.’
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By December the nuns Ercole had requested were on their way to Rome to be sent on to Ferrara: his letters to Lucrezia were effusive with gratitude: ‘We have heard . . . that all the sisters we have requested are now in Rome with the intention of being brought here,’ he wrote on 28 December. ‘We have received singular pleasure and content from this [and] incredible satisfaction: and we could not thank Your Ladyship more, seeing that with your prudence and favour you have brought this matter to this end . . .’
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She could have found no better way to win his heart.

From all the reports of the Ferrarese envoys in Rome to Ercole, it is clear that Lucrezia herself handled the negotiations and that the Ferrarese, rather than speaking directly to the Pope, generally used her as their intermediary This cleverly underlined her importance in the eyes of the Ferrarese, as it was made clear that any concessions made by the Pope were gained by her intercession. Indeed, Alexander and Cesare were out of Rome on two occasions that autumn – in late September visiting Nepi, Civita Castellana and other Borgia fortresses and from 10 to 17 October touring the former Colonna properties – Lucrezia being left as regent in the Vatican.

Lucrezia was involved in every aspect of the discussions, from Ercole’s demands for the archbishopric of Bologna for Ippolito d’Este, which necessitated her writing to Giuliano della Rovere asking him to renounce the archbishopric in Ippolito’s favour, to the wrangling over income of the Romagna castles to be given as pledges for the eventual consignment of Cento and La Pieve, and the financial agreements over the dowry. Saraceni and Berlinguer reported to Ercole the extreme difficulty they were having over the banker Jacopo de’Gianuzzi’s absolute refusal to deliver a sum of money to Ferrara. Then, they said, Lucrezia stepped in to resolve the situation: ‘When the Illustrious Lady heard of the difficulties over this matter, and understanding that perhaps this could delay her departure [for Ferrara], she sent for Messer Jacopo and spent a long time in discussion with him.’ The upshot was that the banker agreed to provide the cash within three days of presentation of the letters of exchange in agreed places without taking any commission. There was a discussion over jewels: the Pope asked in jest what he could expect to see from Ercole so that perhaps he would not have to provide them himself. The envoys replied in the same vein, that with the jewels she already possessed, those the Pope intended to give her and those which Ercole would give her ‘she will be the best-equipped Lady with jewels in Italy’. Alexander questioned the richness of the brocade which the Ferrarese intended to give her, considering that he would send her with four most beautiful lengths of golden brocade. ‘Thus the Pope was laughing and joking along these lines for a very considerable time,’ the envoys reported,

and in truth His Holiness being very splendid and high-spirited enjoyed this exchange because from every honour that has been done and will be done to the aforesaid Lady [Lucrezia] he derives as much joy as it is possible to describe, and thus holds it most dear that in all things she should be the chief, and moreover at the same time having said something about the investiture of Ferrara [the census] and the confirmation of matters relating to the bishopric of Ravenna, His Holiness said how the aforesaid Lady had spoken to him of them, and that everything will be done in good form, saying give the letters to the Duchess: because she is your good procurator [representative].
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Alexander never missed an opportunity to impress the Ferrarese with Lucrezia’s qualities. When they complained that they had not been able to obtain an audience with Cesare, the Pope sympathized with them, saying that Cesare had left the envoys of Rimini waiting for an audience for two months. ‘He lamented that [the Duke] turned night into day and day into night, comporting himself in such a manner that it left room for doubt that if his father died he would be able to keep what he had conquered. He commended the Duchess Lucrezia as the opposite for her prudence and willingness to receive [people] benevolently, praising the way in which she had governed Spoleto, and the way in which she could capture the heart of the pontiff in every matter she dealt with him . . .’
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On another occasion he praised her again as beautiful and prudent, comparing her with the Duchess of Urbino and the Marchioness of Mantua, both of whom were famous for their intelligence and culture.

Minute observers of Lucrezia’s life as they were, none of the four Ferrarese officials in Rome mentioned an extraordinary episode recorded by Burchard, of an orgy which he said took place in the Vatican on 30 October, five days after the Pope and Cesare returned from the tour of inspection of the Borgia fortress of Civita Castellana:

On Sunday evening, the last day of October, there took place in the apartments of the Duke Valentino in the Apostolic Palace, a supper, participated in by fifty honest prostitutes of those who are called courtesans. After supper they danced with the servants and others who were there, first clothed, then naked. After supper the lighted candelabra which had been on the table were placed on the floor, and chestnuts thrown among them which the prostitutes had to pick up as they crawled between the candles. The Pope, the Duke and Lucrezia, his sister, were present looking on. At the end they displayed prizes, silk mantles, boots, caps, and other objects which were promised to whomsoever should have made love to those prostitutes the greatest number of times . . .

That Cesare did at least give a party that night in the Vatican is attested by another source, the Florentine envoy Pepi, who reported on 4 November that the Pope had not attended mass in St Peter’s or the papal chapel on the days of All Saints’ and All Souls’ because of an indisposition which, he added cautiously in cipher, ‘did not impede him on Sunday night, the vigil of All Saints’, from spending the night until the twelfth hour with the Duke who had brought into the palace that night singers, courtesans, and all the night they spent in pleasures, dancing and laughter . . .’ Of the two accounts of the notorious ‘Chestnut Supper’, Pepi’s sounds the most plausible. Courtesans of the first rank, like Cesare’s Fiammetta, were an essential part of a lively, informal party in early sixteenth-century Rome; whether Lucrezia was actually there, Pepi does not say. As a Borgia, she was unshockable, and equally loved parties, dancing and singing, as the Ferrarese accounts of finding her worn out by Alexander’s late evenings attest. Hot chestnuts are traditional at that particular time of year but when it comes to nakedness and sexual contests the only witness is Burchard who must have had one eye to the keyhole and the other on posterity.

Just over two weeks later Burchard had another ‘incident’ to report, again heavily spiced with sexual connotations and specifically involving Lucrezia. A peasant had brought mares loaded with wood into the city through the Porta Viridaria near the Vatican:

When the mares reached the Piazza San Pietro, some of the palace guard came up, cut through the straps and threw off the saddles and the wood in order to lead the mares into the courtyard immediately inside the palace gate. Four stallions were then freed from their reins and harness and let out of the palace stables. They immediately ran to the mares, over whom they proceeded to fight furiously and noisily among themselves, biting and kicking in their attempts to mount them and seriously wounding them with their hoofs. The Pope and Madonna Lucrezia, laughing and with evident satisfaction, watched all that was happening from a window above the palace gate.

Although Burchard clearly disapproves, most people of the time had an earthy sense of humour and would have found it funny – if, indeed, it did occur. It found an echo with the rabidly anti-Borgia chronicler Matarazzo of Perugia, whose bloodthirsty lords, the Baglioni, had every reason to hate the Borgias. Matarazzo found it necessary to spice it up: ‘And as if this were not enough, [the Pope] returning to the hall, had all the lights put out, and then all the women who were there, and as many men as well, took off all their clothes; and there was much festivity and play.’

At about this time a vitriolic attack on the Borgias, apparently originating in Venice where several of Cesare’s enemies had taken refuge, circulated in the form of a letter to Silvio Savelli, one of the expropriated Roman barons. It accused them of being ‘worse than the Scythians, more perfidious than the Carthaginians, more cruel than Caligula and Nero’. It included every charge hitherto levelled against them including murder – of Bisceglie and Perotto – and incest. Burchard’s chestnut supper and rutting stallions were included (whether the anonymous author got these from Burchard or Burchard appropriated them to liven up his text one can only speculate). The terms used to describe Alexander and Cesare were particularly bitter:

His father favours him [Cesare] because he has his own perversity, his own cruelty: it is difficult to say which of these two is the most execrable. The cardinals see all and keep quiet and flatter and admire the Pope. But all fear him and above all fear his fratricide son, who from being a cardinal has made himself into an assassin. He lives like the Turks, surrounded by a flock of prostitutes, guarded by armed soldiers. At his order or decree men are killed, wounded, thrown into the Tiber, poisoned, despoiled of all their possessions.

It was typical of Alexander that this vicious diatribe made him laugh, and when Silvio Savelli came to Rome a year later he received him with the utmost amiability. Cesare, however, was far less relaxed than his father when it came to insult. In the first week of December, shortly after the publication of the letter, a man who had been going masked about the Borgo uttering scurrilous rumours about him was arrested on his orders and thrown into the Savelli prison where his right hand and part of his tongue were cut off and exposed at the window with the tongue hanging from the little finger. Alexander liked to contrast his own tolerance with his son’s vengefulness: ‘The Duke,’ he told Beltrando Costabili, ‘is a good-hearted man, but he cannot tolerate insults . . . I could easily have had the Vice-Chancellor [Ascanio Sforza] and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere killed: but I did not wish to harm anyone . . .’ It was a curious remark for a pope to make.

In the wake of all this, the Ferrarese envoy Gian Luca Pozzi felt obliged to reassure Ercole d’Este as to the virtuous character of his future daughter-in-law:
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‘Madonna Lucrezia is a most intelligent and lovely, also exceedingly gracious lady. Besides being extremely graceful in every way, she is modest and lovable and decorous. Moreover she is a devout and god-fearing Christian. Tomorrow she is going to confession, and during Christmas week she will receive communion. She is very beautiful, but her charm of manner is still more striking. In short, her character is such that it is impossible to suspect anything “sinister” of her . . .’

Finally, after endless delays instigated by Ercole who had originally sent the list of personnel to be included to the Pope for approval in October, the wedding escort left Ferrara on 9 December. It was headed by Ercole’s fourth son, Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, who with the ducal chancellor Giovanni (‘Zoanne’ in Ferrarese dialect) Ziliolo, took with him caskets of jewels for the bride, and an inventory signed on each page by Ercole the previous day. The remaining Este jewels were not to be given to Lucrezia until she actually reached Ferrara, and even the handing over of those to be delivered to her by Ippolito in Rome was to be governed by strict instructions based on Ercole’s mistrust of the Borgias.

The Borgias’ riposte to the Este was a display of astonishing richness. Lucrezia’s trousseau of dresses and jewels surpassed in splendour the most lavish of recent years, that of Bianca Maria Sforza to the Emperor Maximilian I in 1495. Recently, a papal chamberlain had died, leaving 13,000 ducats in money and goods; Lucrezia had asked for and obtained it as an addition to her funds. It was obvious from the Inventory of her Wardrobe made in Ferrara in 1502—3 that she had kept her wedding presents as well as her dowries from her previous marriages. Among the goods mentioned which she took with her to Ferrara was the magnificent silver service presented to her by Ascanio Sforza on her marriage to Giovanni in 1493, when her dowry of 30,000 ducats was supplemented by 10,000 ducats’ worth of dresses, jewels, plate, ornaments and ‘things for the use of illustrious women’. Her dowry at her marriage to Alfonso Bisceglie had been 40,000 ducats, half of which Alexander had given in kind – jewels, dresses etc.
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Lucrezia was a woman of her time in her awareness of the power of display, and her clothes, jewels and possessions were designed to impress the Este with her family’s wealth and prestige.