One
can make this generalisation about men: they are
ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, they shun
danger
and are greedy for profit.
-
Machiavelli, The Prince
Such was the
impact of the Borgias upon the world of the Renaissance that their name still
retains its power to evoke thoughts of treachery, debauchery and murder. The
head of the Borgia clan was something else too: a pope. The Roman Catholic
Church has long sighed with resignation about its numerous “bad popes”, but to
many eyes Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, was the baddest of the bad, bad to
the bone. Whether this is the truth is still a matter of debate among mediaeval
historians, where reputations have been forged by the latest revision upwards
of his reputation, or a freshly penned scathing rebuttal.
It is perhaps fitting that the coat of arms
of the Borgia family is a bull: Rodrigo Borgia was the bull in the china shop
of the Vatican. He lived with faint regard to the moral code of his Church or
his times, wielded papal authority like a grasping duke, and instilled fear
into friend and foe alike, a practice refined into an art form by his even more
notorious son, Cesare, upon whose statecraft of cynicism, or realpolitik, Niccolo Machiavelli in
part, at the least, wrought The Prince. Accounts
of Cesare’s sister Lucrezia as a seductress and poisoner, a definitive femme fatale, have also spiced the pages
of history and popular fiction.
The first hurdle Rodrigo Borgia had to
cross on his way to the Church’s highest office, was that he was a Spaniard. He
was born in Valencia in 1531, but the ambitious young cleric was fortunate to
arrive in Rome under the patronage of a fellow Borgia, his uncle Pope Calixtus
III, who later made him a cardinal. Calixtus also brought Rodrigo’s elder
brother Pedro to Rome, and invested him with titles, but Pedro’s avarice for
the gold of the leading families of Rome eventually brought about his downfall,
and he died in exile.
At the age of 30, after Rodrigo had already
fathered three children with various mistresses, he took a Roman aristocrat,
Vanozzi dei Cataneis, as his lover. It would prove no mere fling: they remained
together for more than a quarter of a century, and she bore him four children,
including Cesare and Lucrezia.1
It is said of the sometimes jovial but
often querulous and endlessly scheming Rodrigo, that at least he loved his
family, as he certainly did. Eventually, however, he took the younger and more
glamorous Guilia Farnese as his mistress, when he was in his fifties and
approaching the apogee of his power.
Rodrigo made little attempt to mask his
worldly appetites, and on the contrary so flaunted them as a rising young
cardinal that Pope Pius II was caused to chastise him severely.
‘Beloved Son, We have heard that, four days
ago, several ladies of Siena - women entirely given over to worldly frivolities
- were assembled in the gardens of the Giovanni di Bichis... We have heard that the most licentious dances
were indulged in, none of the allurements of love were lacking and you
conducted yourself in a wholly worldly manner. Shame forbids mention of all
that took place - not only the acts themselves but their very names are
unworthy of your position... All Siena is talking about this orgy...’2
Despite such admonishments, Rodrigo Borgia
maintained a steady march upward through the Church hierarchy, and when Pope
Innocent VIII died in 1492, he considered the papal tiara itself within his
grasp. By then he was one of the most experienced operators in the Vatican, and
only too aware the votes of the conclave of cardinals were open to the highest
bidder. He had amassed a fortune from his offices in the Church, and was
determined to outbid his Italian rivals for the prize.
‘His revenues from his papal offices, his
abbeys in Italy and Spain, and his three bishoprics are vast. His office of
Vice Chancellor alone yields him 8000 gold ducats annually. His plate, his
pearls, his stuffs embroidered with silk and gold, his books are all of such
high quality as would befit a king or pope. Altogether it is believed that he
possesses more gold and riches of every sort than all the other cardinals put
together.’3
The conclave reached an easy decision in
his favour, the smoke poured from the chimneys of the Vatican announcing his
election, and unlikely as it might have appeared to powerbrokers in the years
beforehand, the sexagenarian Spaniard had won the papal prize. As such he was
the best pope money could buy, even if later events revealed the quality of the
goods unsatisfactory in the end.
This is not to say that he did not possess
personal virtues, or was unable at least to conjure the outline of them. As his
official secretary remarked: ‘He knew how to dominate, how to shine in conversation,
how to appear dignified. Majestic in stature, he had the advantage over lesser
men. He was just at that age, sixty, at which Aristotle says men are wisest. He
was robust in body and vigourous in mind and so was perfectly suited to his new
position.’4
Not all who dealt with him were so easily
charmed. The Florentine scholar
Francesco Guicciardini wrote: ‘His manner was dissolute. He knew neither shame
nor sincerity, neither faith nor religion. Moreover he was possessed by an
insatiable greed, and overwhelming ambition and a burning passion for the
advancement of his many children who, in order to carry out his iniquitous
decrees, did not scruple to employ the most heinous means.’5
Rodrigo Borgia had however inherited a
papacy already diminished by many years of profligate and scandalous behaviour:
‘the corruption, which seemed to culminate in this family, was already far
advanced when they came to Rome.’6
As such it was not their notorious personal
behaviour which would bring abiding opprobrium to the house of Borgia, but
their methods of achieving their ends, a melding of terror and treachery later
proclaimed the ideal for rulers by Machiavelli. ‘Their (the Borgias) immediate
purpose, which in fact, they attained, was the complete subjugation of the
Pontifical State.’7
To bolster his authority, on assuming the
papacy Alexander made his son Cesare a cardinal, even if the young man had
limited training and even less interest in clerical matters. He also schemed to
break marriage vows exchanged on behalf of his teenage daughter Lucrezia with a
Spanish dynasty of no further use to him, betrothing her to Giovanni Sforza, an
Italian prince of promise and influence, lord of Pesaro and kin to the rulers
of Milan.
Giovanni and Lucrezia were married with
great pomp in the Vatican in 1493, the year after Alexander’s accession. The
marriage was not fated to last long however. When shifting allegiances rendered
the Sforzas of little more use, the young Giovanni was compelled to sign a
statement that he was impotent and the marriage to Lucrezia unconsummated, and
Alexander annulled the union. After the marriage was dissolved and while she
was staying in a convent, Lucrezia became pregnant to an emissary sent by her
father, but this detail did not prevent him issuing a bull declaring her a
virgin. Such brazen behaviour had tongues wagging in Rome, and up and down the
boot of Italy.
‘Throughout his papacy... Alexander VI was
surrounded by a buzz of scandal. Gossiping about popes has always been a
favourite Italian pastime, but probably no other pope has ever afforded so much
occasion for juicy gossip. Other popes had kept mistresses in the Vatican, and
simony and immorality were no more rife in Rome under the Borgia Pope than they
had been under his predecessors and would be under his successors. But there
was a sort of childlike shamelessness about Alexander VI which invited comment.
Other popes had auctioned off high ecclesiastical offices, doublecrossed their
associates and allies, and used their exalted position for the advancement of
their families and base personal ends, but usually they pretended to be doing
something else. Rodrigo Borgia had either an honest scorn for hypocrisy or a
naive ignorance of the force of public opinion. Other popes had thrown wild
parties at the Vatican, but no other pope had made the parties so flamboyant or
public. And no other pope had had a portrait of his official mistress, robed as
the Virgin Mary, painted over the door of his bedchamber.’8
In this respect at least, he did break new
ground for sexual shenanigans in the Vatican. But ironically enough, although
he was a career womaniser, and his official mistress had numerous rivals,
Alexander was in some other respects quite abstemious, and despite his
corporeal bulk more sparing than some with food and drink. He is also
considered to have acquitted himself as an able if not conscientious
administrator, determined to make the Roman streets safer, and to trim the
Vatican’s notorious reels of red tape, as well as being something of a patron
of the arts.
But it was his carnal activities which
inevitably aroused the keenest interest, and soon after he took the papal
throne the rumours spread of wild parties and orgies in the Vatican, even
private bullfights in the courtyards. Some accused him of treating the Vatican
as a high class brothel. The rude Spaniards aroused the ire of the old ruling
families of Rome, who despite any activities of their own demanded at least a
degree of decorum. There was even
talk of incest between the Borgias, chatter in part instigated and fanned along
by powerful rivals and jilted allies. All this led to agitation at home and
abroad by Alexander’s most bitter enemy, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, but it
was an allegation of collusion by Alexander with the Muslim Sultan Bazajet that
prompted the young French king, Charles VIII, to the view that the Borgia pope
was a traitor to Christendom. A French invasion of the Italian peninsula
followed.
The powerful French army met little
resistance as it swept south. Charles and his men were welcomed into Florence
by the preacher Girolamo Savonarola, who
saw in Charles “the sword of God” he had prophesied, and with French help he
overthrew the ruling Medici and installed himself as Florentine ruler. Charles
continued south, and entered Rome unopposed. As the new year 1495 dawned, his
troops controlled the city, and his advisors urged him to depose Alexander at
once. But the young king was unsure of how to proceed.
‘Once more the vast, undefinable, intangible
power of the supreme pontiff and universal pope came to the aid of the Italian
prince... could the rest of Christendom be persuaded that they were acting from
love of the Holy Church and not from plain politics? How would Charles’s deeply
religious subjects take it? And in any case, who would fill the vacant throne?
In the last analysis, the decision was Charles’s - a decision which the weak
young man did not dare to make.’9
Instead of overthrowing the Pope, he
exacted favours, and taking Alexander’s son Cesare as a hostage, continued
south to threaten the kingdom of Naples, to which he asserted a family claim.
Cesare escaped and returned to Rome, and although the French took Naples with
little effort and indulged themselves in extended looting of its treasures, the
entire campaign turned to sand in Charles’s fingers. While Charles entertained
himself in Naples, Alexander organised the powerful Venetians and Milanese
against the French, with support from Spain, into the coalition of the Holy
League.
By the time Charles returned north he found
himself pitted against very powerful forces, fighting every step of the way.
The French saw their Neapolitan booty eaten away bit by bit, spent on sorely
needed provisions and arms, and gone to vapour on the battlefield. In Florence,
Charles’s erstwhile friend Savonarola castigated him, saying he was incurring
the wrath of God because he had failed in his holy duty to reform Rome. The
climax came in July 1495, when troops of the Holy League vanquished the French in
the Battle of Fornuovo near Parma in northern Italy. Charles lost nearly all
his remaining loot, and the French straggled home across the Alps a harried,
battered force.
Having dealt with Charles, Alexander now
turned his attention to the problem of Florence itself, and the outspoken friar
whose name he added to his death list. Savonarola was born into the
aristocracy, and entered the Dominican order, rising to become Vicar-General in
1493. As word filtered back from Rome about the excesses of newly-installed
Alexander, Savonarola started preaching fire and brimstone sermons against
Christendom’s moral decline, of sexual licentiousness, corruption and the
luxuries of earthly wealth.
He also spoke out against Florence’s ruler,
the now ailing Lorenzo de Medici, although his words may also have been
double-pointed, simultaneously aimed at Rome. ‘Tyrants are incorrigible because
they are proud, because they love flattery, because they will not restore their
ill-gotten gains. They allow bad officials to have their way; they yield to
adulation; they neither heed the poor nor condemn the rich...’ 10
After the arrival of the French army and his
usurpation of Medici power, Savonarola became in effect head of his own
theocratic state, the so-called Catholic Commonwealth, backed by followers
called the Piagnoni, the “Weepers” or “Snivellers”, so named for the emotional
reaction he elicited from them through his sermons. Savonarola sought to purge
the wealthy city of Florence of its treasure trove of earthly finery, which
went up in flames in his infamous Bonfire of the Vanities.
Although there was more than one such
Bonfire - and there had been previous instances of similar events in other
parts of Italy - the most famous occurred at the onset of Lent in February 1497,
when Savonarola sent his minions around the city collecting books and works of
art, women’s dresses and jewellery, cosmetics and mirrors, gambling tables,
even chess sets, which were put to the torch on bonfires in the Piazza della
Signoria.10A
The Bonfires of the Vanities are believed
to have devoured some fine Renaissance works, including some by the young
Michelangelo. There were even accounts of young artists, among them Sandro
Botticelli, a follower of Savonarola, becoming swept up in the fervour and
tossing their own works onto the pyres.
Although Savonarola loathed Alexander and
largely ignored his edicts from Rome, the friar’s claims to the gift of
prophecy led to an investigation of heresy in Florence, and he was forbidden to
preach. His end came when the apocalypse he had predicted failed to eventuate,
and a populace which had been urged to destroy its most precious possessions
rioted a few months later, in May 1497, and drinking, gambling and bawdy
behaviour spread through the city. With calls to restore the Medici,
Savonarola’s reign was effectively over.
Alexander had the last word against his
enemy when he signed his death warrant in 1498. Savonarola and two of his
disciples were strangled and burned in the Piazza della Signoria, where his
infamous Bonfire had burned only a year before.
from my book, Tales of the Popes: From Eden to El Dorado.
1. He went on
to father nine children in all, by various women, two of them conceived in the
Vatican while he was pope.
2. The letter
ws written in 1460, when Rodrigo Borgia was 29. quoted in Chamberlin, R., The Bad Popes, p161.
3. Chamberlin,
E.R., Cesare Borgia, p2
4. Chamberlin,
R., The Bad Popes, p172
5. ibid, p173
6. Burckhardt,
J., The Civilization of the Renaissance
in Italy, p109
7. ibid, p 109
8. Mattingly,
G., Machiavelli in Plumb, J.H. (ed), Renaissance Profiles, p23
9. Chamberlin,
R., op cit, pp184-5
10. Roeder,
R., in Plumb, J.H. (ed), Renaissance
Profiles, p68
