Book the Second (continued 5)
Reading edition
On hearing of Duke Cesare’s disgrazia, Madonna Lucrezia earnestly wrote to the Marquess of Mantua, and to her friend, sister-in-law, and confidante, the Marchioness Isabella, begging them to use the influence of their House of Gonzaga with the Lord Julius P.P. II to procure his freedom. The times were out of joint for Este personally to interfere; for Madonna Lucrezia was stricken down with the effects of an ἄμβλωσις, and the old Duke Ercole was breathing his last sigh.
On the nineteenth of January 1505, the Lord Julius P.P. II issued His notorious Bull against Simony; striking a new blow at the House of Borgia, by the aspersion cast upon the memory of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI.
Duke Alfonso d’Este and his Duchess Lucrezia ascended the throne of their duchy in due course; and negotiations with the Holiness of the Pope, for the enfranchisement of Duke Cesare, might have been, and would have been instituted: but, early in the spring of the year Ferrara was threatened by famine, and the hands of the young sovereigns were entirely occupied. Had Duke Cesare been own brother to the Duchess Lucrezia, perhaps more urgent steps would have been taken: but she never seems to have regarded him otherwise than as a half-brother, who was her Father’s most useful servant, and her mother’s shame. Duke Alfonso proceeded to Venice to buy food stuffs in view of the famine, for the patriarchal rule obtained in Ferrara; and left the Duchess Lucrezia as Regent of his state. Her lovely womanly character may be seen in an edict which she issued for the protection of Jews, who were attacked and pillaged by Christians rioting for food; and in the sweet indignant letter, abounding in mis-spelt words (as do all good and distinguished women’s letters,) and enjoining the Podesta (mayor) to be energetic about securing 267to the Jews protection of their lives and property equally with the Christians.
When Duke Alfonso returned, after some months’ absence during which the Duchess sent him periodical and frequent accounts of her regency, addressed “To the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord, My Most Honourable Lord and Consort, These, with speed—speed—speed—” the summer brought plague on the heels of famine. The visitation was most severe. The unselfish exertions of the Duke and Duchess were noble and untiring. The health of the Duchess Lucrezia suffered; and before the year was over she gave birth to a dead child.
In 1506, Duke Cesare de Valentinois escaped from his Spanish prison, and made his way into the neighbouring realm of Navarre, where the King Jean d’Albret was brother to his wife Madame Charlotte d’Albret, Duchess of Valentinois. The events of the last three years had not broken his splendid spirit. All his triumphs, all the results of his strenuous energy and talent had been nullified for him. At the age of thirty-three years he was despoiled of his life’s work, and was a ruined man. The Romagna for ever was gone from him. His French duchy seems to have been of small account. Still, he was not crushed, he had the courage to begin again to carve out a career in a new country; and to this end he took service in the army of his brother-in law King Jean of Navarre.
The Lord Julius P.P. II having decreed Himself and His Successors to be the heir-at-law, next-of-kin, residuary and sole legatee, of all cardinals, and of all clergy who die within the walls of Rome, an era of sumptuous premortal cenotaphs and sepulchres set in among the Illustrissimi Colendissimi ed Osservantissimi Porporati, as well as among the lesser ecclesiastical dignitaries; to the end that as little as possible of their riches, after their demise, should go to the pontifical exchequer.
There is a codicil to the will of the Genoese mariner, Messer Cristoforo Colombi of this date, the fourth of May 1506, by which the Inventor of America bequeathed to his 268native Republic of Genoa “the prayer-book which Pope Alexander gave him; and which, in prison, in conflict, and in every kind of adversity, had been to him the greatest of comforts.” How simply bright a light does this incident throw upon the relations of a great and good man with the Lord Alexander P.P. VI!
The Lord Julius P.P. II was capable of doing without Duke Cesare in the Romagna. The Pope’s Holiness Himself was a man of war, Who found it consistent to wear cuirass and casque on battlefields equally with pluviale and triregno in the Vatican Basilica. Men called Him Il Pontifice Terribile. “Give Us in Our hands no stupid book, but a bare blade,” He impatiently roared to the painter of His portrait, now in the National Gallery. But Messer Rafaele Sanzio, despite all his conventional macaronics, was for once in his life artist enough to omit both book and blade, and to concentrate on the painting of the character of those fierce vulgar insatiable empty hands gripping the arms of the chair. And the Romagna found the whips of Duke Cesare to be preferred before the scorpions of the Lord Julius P.P. II. Perugia was the seat of the Baglioni. Twenty years before, in 1487, there had been an outbreak of the feud of Baglioni and Oddi, months of continual rioting, the gutters running blood, the city like a slaughterhouse; until Oddi was driven away, and Baglioni turned the place into a fortress and the churches into barracks. In 1491, in another outbreak, Baglioni hanged a hundred and thirty conspirators from the windows of the Palazzo Communale in a single day; and, (with the quick reversion from carnage to piety which is a characteristic of the age,) incontinently erected five and thirty altars in the public square, and caused continuous masses to be said and processions to be performed, to purify the city and to procure repose for the souls of the slain. Duke Cesare made a marked impression on these brigands, who learned to give him little trouble: but, when he was dispossessed and his long sword sealed in its scabbard, Baglioni took the bit between their teeth and reared, refused tribute to their sovereign Over-lord, and broke out in rebellion in the customary manner. The Lord Julius P.P. II promptly 269raised an army which He led in person; and reduced Perugia. Without precautions for His safety, trusting to the moral effect of His presence for the inviolability of His sacrosanct person, He adventured Himself in the heart of the rebel city, and beat Don Giampaolo Baglioni to his knees. In a man of sensibility this hardihood would indicate a very dare-devil: in the case of the Supreme Pontiff a distinction must be made between courage and mere plebeian callousness. Messer Niccolo Machiavelli sneered at this miserable Don Giampaolo Baglioni, because he lacked the boldness to strangle his unwelcome visitor, the Lord Julius P.P. II, and so crown his life of crime with a signal act of “Magnanimità”! Certainly a man would need some boldness to strangle the Pope, the Ruler of the World, the Father of Princes and of Kings, the Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour! Certainly, a man who would strangle in cold blood the Sovereign Pontiff coming to him as his guest, unarmed, under a flag of truce, would win fame, or infamy, for endless ages. But that such a deed should deserve the epithet “magnanimous,” should be considered to be indicative of greatness of soul, is a matter of opinion. Evidently the Twentieth Century considerably has curtailed and straitened the signification and the application which the word Magnanimity bore in the Fifteenth. Now, we call a man magnanimous who, at huge self-sacrifice, does noble deeds. Then, Messer Niccolo Machiavelli thought that startling actions, good, or bad, proclaimed the greatness of their agent’s soul!
The Lord Julius P.P. II was not without His flatterers. No man is, if he can pay. Literary petits maîtres like Messer Baltassare Castiglioni found it profitable to address the Terrible Pontiff in terms like these:
“O Pater, O Pastor populorum, O Maxime mundi “O Father, O Shepherd of the people, O Supreme
Arbiter, humanum qui genus omne regis; Master of the world, Who rulest all the human race;
Iustitiae pacisque Dator placidaeque quietis, Giver of Justice, Peace, and tranquil Ease,
Credita Cui soli est vita salusque hominum; Thou to Whom alone is committed the life and salvation of men;
270Quem Deus Ipse Erebi fecit caelique potentem, Whom God Himself has made Lord of heaven and hell,
Ut nutu pateant utraque regno Tuo;— That either realm might open at Thy nod—
“When the spiritual authority of the Popes came thus to be expressed in Latin verse, it was impossible not to treat them as deities. The temptation to apply to them the language of Roman religion was too great; the double opportunity of flattering their vanity as pontiffs, and their ears as scholars, was too attractive to be missed.”[86]
The Terrible Pontiff, however, was no scholar, but an unadulterated plebeian. It is true that He, as Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, bought that vastly over-rated piece known as the Apollo of the Belvedere, when first it was discovered at Porto d’Anzio (Antium). It is true that He bought, in 1506, for six hundred gold crowns (?) the Laocoon, (which Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti saw unearthed in the Baths of Titus,) to the supreme disgust of his “art-adviser” who declared that the two sons of the Thymbraian priest were not boys, but little men. It is true that He bought the Ariadne (which He called Cleopatra), the Torso of Herakles, and the Commodus, unearthed on Campo di Fiori, and now in the Vatican. He did these things because they were modish things to do in 1506. One gained more κῦδος in the pose of a Sixteenth Century Maecenas, than as Successor of the Galilean Fisherman. The plebeian pontiff of the Sixteenth Century was ashamed of His plebeian predecessor of the First. The times were changed, he argued, as the faithful vainly argue to excuse prelatical vagaries now. He preferred competition with “men of the world” to the cure of souls. He was quite unable to appreciate intellect. He was congenitally incapable of appreciating the delicacy, or the validity, of Letters. The plebeian chiefly is touched by way of the sense of sight; and the Lord Julius P.P. II understood naked statues, things which He could see: wherefore He bought Apollo and Laocoon and the rest. There is not the slightest credit due to Him for discrimination in His purchases, or for a deliberate choice of what was beautiful. Men happened to dig up those marbles in Roman territory 271just then. Any one could see them to be beyond the ordinary. Any one could see them to be antiques. It was the fashion to buy antiques; and the Terrible Pontiff bought—bought as retired grocers buy, who buy their libraries by the cwt. Also, He had Messer Michelangelo Buonarroti at His ankle, with whose advice it would have been difficult for a sardonic goat to commit an artistic blunder. They were a pair, those two, the artist and the pontiff, uomini terribili, terrible men, both. Messer Michelangelo had been educated at the expense of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Palazzo Medici of Florence and the Villa Medici of Fiesole. There, at the suggestion of Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano), he had sculptured his Battle of Herakles with the Centaurs, while listening to Fra Girolamo Savonarola and Messer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola surnamed the Phoenix of Genius (Fenice degli iugegni.) Could any man but Poliziano have suggested a more admirable subject for Michelangelo than this of weird muscular gigantic energy? In 1500, in the reign of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, he had carved his lily-pure Pietà of the Vatican Basilica, the most divinely pure presentment of God’s Maiden Mother, of the Μητροπάρθενος, save those of Alessandro Filipepi (detto Botticelli) since Byzantine art had faded. Now, he was in Rome, “art-adviser” to the Terrible Pontiff, eating his own heart in inactivity, burning and yearning to work with his own hands, with all the passionate excruciating torture suffered by every artist who may not put his talent “out to the exchangers.” It was the lust of creation in Michelangelo that made him terrible to his fellow men. His incivilities to his colleagues are proverbial. “Goffo nell’ arte” he flung with contemptuous scorn to Messer Pietro di Cristoforo Vanucci of città della Pieve (detto Perugino) who had a picture-shop at Florence, and bought estates with the proceeds of his smooth and stony saints and seraphs, stencilled by his pupils on the canvases, and touched by himself in his workshop or picture-factory at Perugia, at the very time when Oddi and Baglioni each were tearing the other’s throats to tatters outside his door. Then in 1508 the Lord Julius P.P. II ordered Messer 272Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Xystine Chapel. The gods on high Olympos never allow a man to do the thing that he wants to do: they are jealous lest a man should create a god. Messer Michelangelo wanted to practise sculpture; wherefore he was told to paint a ceiling. “I’m not a painter!” (Nè io pittore!) he roared to the Terrible Pontiff, who fulminated and thundered in reply. They both were terrible men; and they unrestrainedly spoke with perfect frankness as between man and man, using no set form whatever.
The Terrible Pontiff, like all clerical patrons, was an infernal nuisance to the Terrible Painter, who well-nigh killed himself by years of ceaseless toil, lying on his back upon a scaffold in the filthy air that hangs about a ceiling. He would have no assistant save a boy or two. He lived, and ate, and slept on the scene of his labour. Many times the Terrible Pontiff came to see what was being done; and every time the Terrible Painter instructed Him in the art and mystery of anathema, and drove Him away. At last the Lord Julius P.P. II threatened to have Messer Michelangelo flung down, and the scaffold pulled about his ears: but this was when the work was done. The Terrible Painter had the scaffold removed, and invited his patron to view the sumptuous ceiling. The Terrible Pontiff came; and saw; and suggested that the scaffold should be reerected so that the work might be touched up with—ultramarine and gold-leaf!
In Ferrara, the year 1506 was marked by one of those tragical expositions of naked human passion which afflict humanity in every age. Madonna Angela de Borja y Lançol, a cousin of the Duchess Lucrezia—being the daughter of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI’s sister, Doña Juana, by her marriage with Don Guillelmo de Lançol, and sister to Cardinal Juan de Borja y Lançol (detto Giovanni Seniore), Archbishop of Monreale, and Cardinal Pedro Luis de Borja y Lançol,—was a maid-of-honour attached to the suite of the Duchess of Ferrara. She was very beautiful, and is called in the chronicle “a most elegant damsel”—damigella elegantissima. Two younger brothers of Duke 273Alfonso, the athletic Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, and Don Giulio d’Este (bastard of the old Duke Ercole) fell in love with her. Madonna Angela favoured the Bastard Giulio whose lovely eyes she unreservedly admired—consequently, as the manner was, his rival the Cardinal hired four professionals to put out those eyes. Naif unpaltering straightforwardness of the Sixteenth Century! The operation failed of execution, for the Bastard Giulio, being forewarned, escaped with his eyes unharmed. But such conduct does not make for the peace of a state, brawling royalties affording disedification to the mob. The laws of Ferrara, paternal in character, ordained a scale of penances graduated to the rank of culprits: for example, a working man, who obscenely swore, would pay a fine; a swearing burgess paid a double fine and a swearing noble was mulcted of a triple fine. Therefore Duke Alfonso put the ban on his brother, the Lord Cardinal Ippolito, who retired to Rome to nurse his discontent and plan his next move against the Bastard Giulio. Madonna Angela, who was no more to be blamed than any other girl whose charms have inflamed a lusty pair of rivals to desperation, married the third, Don Alessandro Pio Estense di Savoja, Count of Sassuolo. The bandit[87] Cardinal Ippolito had not long to wait in exile. If he had been the Master of Fate, he could not have devised a neater or completer vengeance than that which came to him. It is one thing to attempt to blind a bastard brother who is a royal prince. It is another thing to compass the death of a brother who is a reigning sovereign. The robust young Cardinal was equal to the first: but above the second.
Duke Alfonso’s brothers, Don Ferdinando d’Este and the Bastard Giulio, engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate him. News of the plot reached Cardinal Ippolito in Rome. He promptly warned Duke Alfonso of his danger. Finding themselves discovered, the conspirators fled. Don Ferdinando was caught: but the Bastard Giulio, good at escapes, took refuge in sanctuary with his brother-in-law the Marquess of Mantua, who replied to Duke Alfonso’s demand for extradition that, if evidence of guilt were shewn, the criminal should be delivered up to justice. Evidence was shewn, in 274the shape of the full confession of Don Ferdinando; and the Bastard Giulio passed into his sovereign brother’s hands. Brought to the common block in the square of Ferrara, the two detected traitors were allowed to suffer all the pangs of the approach of death: but, at the last moment, Duke Alfonso in his mercy granted a reprieve, commuting their penance to life-imprisonment.
Early in 1507, died Duke Cesare de Valentinois (detto Borgia), by a mean inglorious death for one who had been in life so mighty a man. While commanding a small squadron on behalf of the King of Navarre, he was killed in a petty skirmish by the castle of Viana. His corpse was quietly interred in the cathedral of Pampeluna, which, by a curious coincidence, had been the first piece of ecclesiastical preferment conferred on him by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. So ended a phenomenal personality in which superb and tawny beauty of physique, prodigious force of character, fierce all-conquering energy, swift unerring almost-feline agility of action, and transcendent splendour of achievement, were blasted and nullified and marred, humanly speaking, by one single delicacy of respectful conscientious self-sacrifice and supreme confidence in clerical honour. His beautiful elegy by Ercole Strozzi,
“Ille diu, qui dum caelestibus auris
Visitur, implet onus laudis, caelumque meretur”
is too well-known to be quoted at length. He left three children,
(α)
Madame Eloise de Valentinois; who married, first, the Sieur Louis de la Tremouille, second, the Sieur Philippe de Bourbon, Comte de Busset, whose direct descendants flourish in France at the present day:
(β)
Don Girolamo de Valentinois; who, by marriage with Madonna Isabella Carpi patrician of Ferrara, had issue Madonna Lucrezia de Valentinois married, in 1562, to Don Bartolomeo Oroboni patrician of Ferrara, who died in 1565.
(γ)
a bastard Madonna Camilla Lucrezia; (evidently the offspring of an intrigue carried on when Duke Cesare 275was in Ferrara in 1500–1 arranging the marriage of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia to the heir of Duke Ercole d’Este;) born of Duke Cesare and a married woman in Ferrara; according to the deed of legitimation,[88] dated 1509, where Madonna Camilla Lucrezia is said to be “of the age of more than seven years”: she became Abbess of San Bernardino in Ferrara, in 1545; and died in 1573.
The Duchess Lucrezia Borgia d’Este was deeply grieved by the death of Duke Cesare her half-brother. There is a very touching letter written by her friend and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua, to Duke Alfonso who at that time was in Rome. It is dated the eighteenth of April 1507; and describes how that the Duchess of Ferrara, on receiving the sad news, immediately went to the church of the monastery of Corpus Domini and remained during two days and nights, praying for the repose of the soul of Duke Cesare de Valentinois. A simple act; and precisely what any good Christian woman would do in similar circumstances.
A year later, on the fourth of April 1508, at the Castle of Ferrara to the immense joy of all, formosus puer est formoso natus Aprili, says Benedetto Lampridii in his Carmina Inedita, the Duchess Lucrezia bore to Duke Alfonso a son and heir, who was baptized by the name Ercole.
During this year, a league of the Powers was formed under the Elect-Emperor Maximilian directed against Venice; and Duke Alfonso, whose dominions marched with those of that Republic, threw in his lot with its foes. While he was engaging the Venetians on the Romagna frontier, 276the Duchess Lucrezia ruled as Regent in Ferrara. She administered government of the state with the same sweet womanly thoroughness as she shewed in the administration of the government of her domestic affairs. History is rich in records relating to this lovely lady. She superintended the household matters of her palaces with a minute attention to detail which, to the modern middle-classes, would appear amazing in a Sovereign Duchess. To set a fashion of rare liberal-mindedness she appointed the Jewess Mazzolino to the care of her extensive wardrobe, and Messer Ludovico as her physician. Her régime was of the simple patriarchal type of the old Duke Ercole, who, on the occasion of an outbreak of plague in 1500, issued an Edict which said that “Duke Ercole d’Este, for good reasons to him known, and because it always is well to be on good terms with God,” ordained religious processions every day throughout Ferrara. A second quaint Edict of the same fatherly potentate, (which incidentally speaks for the meticulously cleanly personal habits of the Borgian Era, so strenuously maintained on a previous page of this book,) proclaims that “inasmuch as bakers are known to knead their dough with feet that, frequently, are unclean, such practices must not continue except on penalty of fine or imprisonment: but the dough must be worked with clean hands and nails.”
Evildoers, all the same, had a shocking time. Maria Equicola gives exact particulars of a certain Madonna Laura (name suppressed) who, being caught in adultery, was immured alive; that is to say, she was publicly confined in a cell a few feet square, with a little window, outside the episcopal palace, near the entrance on the right of the high altar of the cathedral of Ferrara. Perjurers went about after their conviction with their tongues securely nailed to little logs of wood. The accounts for the nails and logs exist. Duchess Lucrezia’s sumptuary laws were unsuccessful. The sex of the legislator prevented her from manufacturing laws to regulate fashion, which could be put into practical effect. That was perfectly natural; nor does the failure in any way reflect upon the excellence of the intentions of her ducal highness. She ordained that no woman should wear a gown whose value was higher than the sum 277of fifteen ducats (say £30), nor jewellery worth more than fifty ducats (say £100). She furnished a specification of the gems which might be worn, and of the fabrics of which gowns might be made. Also, she precisely specified the quantity of material that might be used, and the cut and fashion that was to be adopted. Further, in order to secure the observation of these laws, she ordained a box, having a slit in its lid like a modern letter-box, to be placed in the cathedral by the holy water-stoup; so that fathers, husbands, or lovers, who found themselves outraged by the length or the rotundity of the skirts, or the bulk of the sleeves, or the violence of the style of their women-folk,—and the cost of the same,—secretly might drop in denunciations while in the act of taking holy water; the said denunciations afterwards to be attended-to in a legal manner by the justiciary. Delightfully solemn and futile effort of a charming woman. Well, it failed; not on account of the female peacocks of Ferrara, but by reason of the very skewbald harlequins whose propriety and purses it had aimed to benefit. How many denunciations secretly were dropped into Duchess Lucrezia’s precious box, how many scandalized fathers, husbands, and lovers, sneaked about their daughters, wives, and lemans, is not known. Only one thing is known,—there was not a justiciar in all the duchy of Ferrara, married or unmarried, who dared even to allude to, much less to act upon, the said denunciations, and enforce the law.
On the twenty-fifth of August 1509, the Duchess Lucrezia gave birth to a second son, Don Ippolito d’Este, named after his uncle the heraklean Cardinal; and who, in after years, became Archbishop and Cardinal of Milan.
All through 1508 and 1509 the war went on. In December of the latter year, a powerful Venetian fleet advanced to the mouth of the Po, devastating the country on both banks, and invading the duchy of Ferrara with frightful atrocities. Duke Alfonso, hurrying to meet the foe, won a glorious victory at Policella: but the war dragged on till 1512, keeping him in camp, away from his capital, which almost exclusively was governed by the Duchess Lucrezia (she bore Don Alessandro d’Este in 1511), 278assisted by Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, now no longer a bandit, but completely in the confidence and favour of his sovereign brother.
On the fifth of February 1510 died the noble and strenuous knight Don Pietro Gregorio Borgia of the Junior Branch. He had been high in honour with Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna since he saved him from the clutches of the Christian King Charles VIII in 1495; and had served him as mounted scale-armoured arbalister, lieutenant, and standard-bearer. On the fall of the Duke, he returned to his allegiance to the Regno now ruled by the Catholic King Don Hernando. He was Viceroy of the province of the Abruzzi when he died, and was buried in the Church of San Clemente at Velletri, his native city.[89] His fine epitaph[90] runs:
“Hic requiescit Nob. et Strenuus Eques Dom. Petrus Borgia, Cataphractor. Locum-tenens, ac Signifer Cesaris Borgiae Ispani Valentini Ducis, Qui objit An. Dni. MDX. D. qv. Men. Feb.”
The year 1511 is remarkable for a wildly frenetic insurrection on the part of the gentle old Cardinal Francisco de Borja, which cost that Most Worshipful Lord his rank and his life. There is a limit to human endurance. In some men it is wide; in others narrow: but human nature subjected to unnatural suppression and restraint, sooner or later desperately will struggle to burst its bonds. This principle has never been understood by the clergy. It is one of the disabilities under which they labour in dealing with men. History teems with examples of amiable, would-be obedient, and respectable characters, tried beyond their strength by inconsiderate ignorant oppressive injustice on the part of churchmen, and transformed into savagely bitter and appallingly destructive suicides. There is no better example than Cardinal Francisco de Borja.
He was of the age of seventy years. Though his illustrious House had been predominant in Christendom 279during more than fifty of those years, he had never sought to benefit by the fact that his father was the Lord Calixtus P.P. III, nor to intrude himself among the mighty who were his blood-relations. Not till he was on the verge of his sixtieth year did he become a personage; and then his august cousin, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, in admiration of his enchanting disposition, dignified him with the scarlet hat and the rank of Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Lucia in Silice, (Atti Consistoriali). Later, he proceeded to the Title of Santa Cecilia, (Ciacconi and Moroni); thence again to the Title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (Atti Consistoriali); and last to the Title of San Clemente. He also was Treasurer of the Holy See, Bishop of Teano, and Archbishop of Cosenza.
Seeing the exacerbating measures which the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II was using against the House of Borgia, and especially the spoliation of the two little boys Duke Roderico and Duke Giovanni, this very sympathetic old cardinal had the indiscretion to put his frank opinion of the Pope’s Holiness into certain letters which he wrote to the Orator of Ferrara at the Court of Rome. This opinion could not fail to be unfavourable and the reverse of complimentary. No doubt the Orator was in direct communication with his sovereign, Duke Alfonso d’Este, whom he would keep advised of the trend of sentiments and of events in Rome. These letters came, by means which it would be improper to describe, into the anointed hands of God’s Vicegerent. His Holiness read them; and vehemently enraged himself against the Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara, and upon Cardinal Francisco de Borja, whom he incontinently flung into prison with every species of indignity. The Sacred College, tremorous for its own security if such treatment of a Purpled One should pass without remonstrance, exerted its influence on the Holiness of the Pope, and procured the ungracious liberation of Cardinal Francisco de Borja.
But the ill was done. The milk of human kindness effectually had been soured; the placid amiable old gentleman had been changed into a violent malcontent breathing 280threatenings and slaughter, and whose fiery Spanish blood at last was boiling over. Two other cardinals joined in his savage revolt, the Lord Bernardino Lopez de Caravajal Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, and the Lord Guillaume de Briçonnet Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina). These three decamped from Rome to Pisa, where, a fourth, the Lord Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, having joined them, they constituted themselves as a General Council; and dared to cite the Lord Julius P.P. II to shew cause before them why He should not be declared a Pseudopontiff, and deposed from Peter’s Throne, by reason of the irregularity of His election due to Simony and other crimes:—an excellent example of the sauce for the goose being served to the gander.
Melpomene is own sister to Thalia; and never has a ghastlier tragedy been more comically played. This self-styled Council of Pisa laboured under the disadvantage of being radically schismatic. Only the Roman Pontiff can summon, or confirm the decrees of, a General Council. The acts of the Schismatic Council of Pisa, therefore, were hopelessly and irretrievably invalid. The very impossibility of the whole affair is proof conclusive that these four well-intentioned, well-living pathetic old men had been tried beyond their strength, beyond all patience, goaded by insult and by gross injustice into frenzy. Their conduct was simply frenetic.
The Lord Julius P.P. II replied to Cardinal Francisco de Borja with short incisive action. By His supreme authority He issued a Bull of Deposition from the cardinalate; and denounced him to all Christendom as an heresiarch and schismatic with whom none might have to do. A Bull (Bulla Monitorii Apostolici) was issued on the twenty-eighth of July 1511 “cõtra tres reverendissimos cardinales ... ut redeãt ad obediẽtâ S.d.n. ne Schisma in eccl. in sancta dei oriẽt.” This was followed by a second “Bulla intimatiõis Generalis Concilii apud Lateranum per S.d.n. Juliũ Papâ II edita,” directed, with the scrupulous politeness of a cleric about to crush, against “dilectũ filiũ nostrũ Franciscũ Tituli Sancti Clementis p̃byterum Cardinalem”; 281who “in seipsis armis assumptis et pro sacerdotalibus vestis Thorace[91] indutis et gladiis armati Papā se cõtulerãt.” Printed contemporary copies of these two Bulls are in the British Museum; and, bound with them, but, strange to say, uncatalogued (A.D. 1900)—(strange, because of the unique perfection of everything at the British Museum)—is the momentous Brief announcing the issue of the Bull of Deposition. Its title is “Breve Julii Secũdi Pont. Max. ad reges, duces, et principes christianos, etc. “Julius Papa II” addresses Himself to
“Our well-beloved son in Christ Maximilian, Elect-Emperor, Always August;
„ „ „ Louis (XII), of the French, the Most Christian King;
„ „ „ Hernando, of Aragon and the Two Sicilies, the Catholic King;
„ „ „ Emanuele, of Portugal, the Illustrious King;
„ „ „ Henry (VII), of England, the Illustrious King;[92]
„ „ „ James (V), of the Scots, the Illustrious King;
„ „ „ Wladislaf, of Hungary and Bohemia, the Illustrious King;
„ „ „ Jean and Katharine, King and Queen of Navarre;
„ „ „ Sigismund, King of Poland;
„ „ „ John, King of Denmark;
„ „ „ Carlo, Duke of Savoja;
„ „ „ Lionardo Lauredano, Doge of Venice;”
and proclaims that “this day, in Public Consistory, We have deprived” of all things ecclesiastical, and of the cardinalitial hat, (galero cardinalatus), Bernardino Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, Guillaume Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina), Francisco Cardinal-Presbyter of the title of San 282Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (a clerical error for his Title, as given above in the Bull, was San Clemente), and Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, that they no longer may be considered Cardinals, nor called Cardinals, by word or by writing. The Brief is Dated at Rome at St. Peters, and given Under the Fisherman’s Ring, the twenty-fourth of October 1511 and the eighth year of Our Pontificate. This summary is appended here as an example of form.
Death had hurled his dart before the Terrible Pontiff. Cardinal Francisco de Borja died of an apoplexy at Pisa, before the sentence of his disgrace and deposition reached him there.
The student of history, who seeks a field wherein few yet have walked, will be well advised to investigate the life of this gentle and quiet cardinal, who departed in the tragic blaze of madness and revolt.
In 1512 death relieved the Lord Julius P.P. II of two more of the Borgia whom He loathed: for there died in his Neapolitan exile the Most Worshipful Lord Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Via Lata, Arch-presbyter of the Liberian Basilica (Santa Maria Maggiore), Abbot of San Simpliciano at Milan, and Archbishop of Valencia in Spain. Having heard a rumour of the death of the Supreme Pontiff, he was on the verge of returning to Rome for the Conclave; but he was killed by falling from his mule at Naples, where he is buried in the church of San Piercelestino without any memorial.
This year also died Don Roderico de Aragona e Borgia, at the age of thirteen years, the son of Madonna Lucrezia by her first legitimate marriage with Don Alonso de Aragona Prince of Bisceglia. He had been despoiled of his duchy of Sermoneta in favour of Caïetani by the Lord Julius P.P. II; and his existence as a step-son was embarrassing in Ferrara, except to his mother, who most sincerely mourned him.
The Duchess Lucrezia was to suffer much this year. The Lord Julius P.P. II put the ban of Greater Excommunication upon her beloved husband Duke Alfonso. 283As the consort of a Borgia—a Borgia universally adored, a sovereign Borgia, a Borgia of unblemished character,—the Duke of Ferrara naturally was intensely antipathetic to the Holiness of the Pope. If that were not enough, the facts remained that Duke Alfonso was the friend of France, (as the Supreme Pontiff’s predecessor also had been); and, he was cognizant of Cardinal Francisco’s disesteem for the Lord Julius P.P. II. Naturally the Pope’s Holiness found the Duke’s Excellency most annoying. The awful import of Excommunication barely can be realized at the present time. People idly wonder why the excommunicated take their case so seriously—why they do not turn to find amusement, or satisfaction, in another channel,—why they persist in lying prone in the mire where the fulmination struck them. And, indeed, in modern times the formal sentence rarely is promulgated, and only against personages of distinction, like the German Dr. Döllinger or the Sabaudo King Vittoremanuele II di Savoja, whose very circumstances provided them with the means to allay the temporal irritation of the blow. There are excommunications “gerendae sententiae” and “latae sententiae.” In the former, excommunication is threatened for some act: but the offender must have sentence passed upon him. In the latter, the offender is excommunicate the moment he performs the act forbidden, (“ipso facto”). This however operates only “in foro interno,” and in the Eyes of God. To make it effectual “in foro externo” it is necessary that the guilt be proved and be declared to be so by some “competent judge.” Excommunication latae sententiae appears not to have been uncommon in the Victorian Era. A Leading Case occurred in December 1882, when it was enforced against a Scots clergyman on the strength of the following letter:—
“Rome, 6 December 1882.
“My dear Lord Archbishop (of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh),—I have just received a message from the Cardinal-Prefect (of Propaganda, Cardãl Simeoni,) to tell your Grace ‘che il noto sacerdote il quale voleva citare i Vescovi incorrerebbe senza dubbio la censura al primo atto efficace che ponesse, ossia all’ atto della citazione, come cogens Ecclesiasticum ad 284tribunal laicum. Se fosse ancora in tempo sarebbe bene che l’Arcivescovo ne avvertisse il Sacerdote per distoglierlo da tale atto.’
“Yours very respectfully,
“F. A. Campbell,
“(then Rector of the Scots College of Rome.)”
The censure was Excommunicatio latae sententiae speciali modo reservatae Romano Pontifici. Bulla Apostolicae Sedis. VII.[93] Seldom does a case of Excommunication terminate in a perridiculous collapse, as this one did, when the Cardinal-Prefect denied having sent the quoted message. Seldom, on the whole, is Excommunication latae sententiae made effectual by proof of guilt and declaration of proof of guilt by a competent judge. The effect can be produced in another and far more exitial way. Simple secret instructions, or even hints, can be given by bishops to clergy, or adverse opinions can be expressed by one clerk to another, suggesting that it would be well (that it would tend ad majorem Dei gloriam, some say,) to obstruct the worldly welfare of such and such an one, to refuse him his rites and sacraments, or at least to offer the last upon such conditions as the “proper pride” in human nature will disdain to accept. This mode is purely devilish. It is capable of abuse by unworthy clerks for personal ends. It admits of no defence, of no appeal, of no redress, by the very reason of its intangibility. It constricts a man in phantom folds. It blanches him with venomous breath. The world, ever ready to pity some obscene dog who manifests his pain, here sees nothing save one bruised and broken; desperately digladiant, struggling with some invisible (and therefore incredible) foe. The civilized world goes in terror of the invisible; goes by “on the other side.” Excommunication of any kind is a fearsome thing for him to whom the Faith once delivered to the saints is the only prize worth having. To the man who, in defect of spiritual advice, is convinced of his own integrity, to 285whom the sacraments are as “odorifera panacea,”[94] to whom the sacraments are the only means which keep him from Despair, their deprivation, by the revenge of a personal enemy, of an offended vanity abasing spiritual powers to satiate secular ambition, signifies that, for the excommunicate, the light goes out of life, love is eradicated from the heart, confidence in man is killed, hope is banished from death. Sympathy he may have from aliens, if he can humiliate himself to expose his grievous wounds: but he may have it only at a price which in honour he cannot pay—the price of insincerity to his convictions—the price of apostasy. The dire Ban of excommunication, formal or informal, drives a man wild; turns his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him; he is savage; he is a Bandit, actually and literally. Sometimes he becomes criminal. Ostracism practised is a school for scoundrels. Far more merciful—divinely merciful, not humanly—it would be to slay outright the body; than to doom a soul to live a solivagous life of torture—the torture of Hopelessness. That is why Excommunication is so horrible in this present age of works. That is why it was so trenchant a weapon in the ages of faith. It was, and is, perfectly impossible to be resisted by one who is, and was, sincerely faithful. Often enough, an excommunicate sovereign would try resistance; for sovereigns are stronger than ordinary plebeians in the matter of resources. Then, when an interval for consideration had elapsed, the second blow of the Flail would fall—Interdict: his demesne would be made to suffer loss of the means of grace, the sacraments, which were denied to him. His subjects generally rose, resentful and revolting. There was no reason why they should be afflicted, when submission of their sovereign to God’s Vicegerent would suffice for their enfranchisement. But sometimes Interdict also failed. The third blow came. Subjects were absolved from their oath of allegiance to the excommunicate; his throne was declared vacant; kings and princes of Christendom were invited to invade his realm, to take his crown and sceptre, to expel him a homeless friendless connudate outcast in a world that shunned him like a pestilence, like the 286horrid leprous scab of creeping things which his blasted human body inevitably would become. Then, suppliant, submissive, he crawled to his Canossa; as the late Duke of Lauenberg crawled to the Lord Leo P.P. XIII the other day; as Caesar Fridericus Ahenobarbus Semper Augustus abjectly crawled to, and waited at, the gates of the huge Englishman, Nicholas Breakespeare, the Lord Hadrian P.P. IV, who ruled the world eight hundred years ago, “Not for thee, but for Peter,” that indignant Emperor muttered, perforce doing groom’s service for Peter’s Successor, holding the stirrup of the pontifical palfrey. “For Us, and for Peter,” the superb English Pope retorted, as He bent Caesar to His unconquerable will. Arrogant? Arrogant——of any miserable mortal man who did not believe himself to be, who had not been officially crowned and saluted, and to whom every emperor and king and prince of Christendom, every Christian sovereign and subject of Europe, had not sworn allegiance as, “Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and of Kings, Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour.”
When the action of the human mind is inspired by the principle endeavoured here to be set down, the inexpugnable face of Excommunication, (magnified by the assent to its validity of the excommunicated one,) perhaps, may be realized. Duke Alfonso d’Este could not hope to stand where Caesar Semper Augustus fell. Naturally, he went in desperate and horrid fear. He knew that he had not deserved to be gibbeted as a Bandit before the world: but he knew also that, before the Holiness of the Pope, he, a sovereign-regnant, was crushable as a worm. He lost no time in omitting to seek release from the hideous ban.
Early in 1513, he chose the poet Messer Ludovico Ariosto, with his beautiful Greek profile and noble intellect, secretary and laureate of Cardinal Ippolito; and named him as his Orator to open negotiations with the Pope.
The Lord Julius P.P. II was perfectly implacable. He had not pardoned the indiscreet criticisms of Cardinal Francisco de Borja, who had passed beyond His power. It was the complete ruin of Borgia that alone would slake His passionate thirst for vengeance;—and a Borgia was 287Duchess of Ferrara. He did not intend kindness to the consort of that Duchess: and He resolved to begin, in a clerical manner, with intimidation. Accordingly, He admitted Messer Ludovico Ariosto to an audience; and immediately ordered him to quit the Vatican by the door before he should be thrown from the window. After this reception of a proffered olive-branch, the Pope’s Holiness coolly awaited Duke Alfonso’s next move.
Don Fabrizio Colonna flourished in the favour of the Lord Julius P.P. II; and he, also, was under many vital obligations to the Duke of Ferrara. He, in his turn, tried the role of peacemaker between pontiff and sovereign; and so far succeeded, that the Holy Father farcically permitted the Duke to come to Rome, assured of a favourable reception, to plead his cause and to arrange the terms of his submission.
He came. He saw the Ruler of the World. He was conquered. The Terrible Pontiff named the sole conditions on which He would consent to remit the ban of excommunication. Nothing could be more enormously radical and sweeping. They were, abdication of his sovereignty over the city and whole duchy of Ferrara, with absolute renunciation for himself and his heirs for ever of all rights therein, in favour of the Holy See; also, his retirement to voluntary life-long exile at the little city of Asti in the province of Lombardy. Death and obliteration of the Borgia, not by vulgar assassination but by constitutional withdrawal of the means to live, was the aim of the Terrible Pontiff; wherefore He would strip naked Duke Alfonso, as aforetime He had stripped naked Duke Cesare.
Duke Alfonso d’Este refused to purchase release from excommunication on these disgraceful terms. The Lord Julius P.P. II let him have hints which gave to understand that the said terms might be mitigated. By various subterfuges he was detained in Rome.
The army of the Terrible Pontiff stealthily was advancing on Ferrara.
There was only a woman there.
Duke Alfonso chanced to hear of the pontifical stratagem. On the instant, he made his plans for quitting Rome. But 288he found that he was in a prison. The Terrible Pontiff held him; and would not let him go. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI may not have been a Saint: but He never dirtied His honour like this.
This treachery of the Holiness of the Pope disgusted the Ghibellinism of Don Fabrizio Colonna. This was not what he had contemplated, when he persuaded Duke Alfonso to adventure his right hand in the jaws of the Wolf of Rome. Considering himself to be responsible, his own honour at stake, he played a counter-stratagem upon the Lord Julius P.P. II. By his aid, the Duke broke prison; and, under his protection, in his fortress of Marino fifteen miles from Rome, a safe asylum was provided. Duke Alfonso desired to hasten to defend his duchy now menaced by the Pope: and all Colonna acclaimed his resolution. Don Prospero Colonna undertook to bring him there where he would be. Travelling by night through hostile territory, environed by ever-present dangers, at length, disguised as Don Prospero’s cook, the royal and ducal Bandit reached Ferrara.
In the city there was joy. In the duchy there was confidence restored. In the heart of the Duchess Lucrezia there was gratitude for the safety of her much-loved lord. Ferrara was fresh from four years successful war: an excessively dangerous enemy to assault, now that her leader led her. The pontifical army executed a second strategic movement at the double—to the rear.
And, before the year 1513 was three months old, the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II, (Who, according to Monsignor Paris de Grassis, successor to Burchard as Papal Caerimonarius, suffered from the French Disease,) died at Rome, raving in His last delirium “Frenchmen, begone from Italy! Begone from Italy, Alfonso d’Este!”
Dreadful end of a furious revengeful disappointed plebeian who was Ruler of the World! The monstrous Moses of Michelangelo, in San Pietro ad Vincula, marks His ambitious unfinished tomb.
The Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Domnica, was the son of 289Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, born the eleventh of December 1475. His mother was Madonna Clarice Orsini, one of the sweetest and best of good mothers. Her husband said that his own mother chose her for him,
“Tolsi donna ... ovvero mi fu data.
When Don Giovanni was of the age of seven years (the age of reason, technically,) the Christian King named him Abbot of Fonte Dolce, on the nineteenth of May 1483, in which preferment the Lord Sixtus P.P IV. confirmed him twelve days later by Brief dated the thirty-first of May 1843. On the first of June he received the ecclesiastical tonsure, when episcopal hands wielded scissors to cut the child-clerk’s hair in five places—on the front, the back, the right, the left, and the crown, of the head—while bishop and boy recited the psalm verse:
“The Lord is the portion— “Dominus pars—
“Of mine inheritance— “Haereditatis meae—
“And of my cup— “Et calicis mei—
“Thou art He Who shall restore— “Tu es Qui restitues—
“Mine inheritance to me— “Haereditatem meam mihi—
and finally the bishop endued him with the fair white linen surplice, (super pellicem) the official vesture of his clerical estate. The symbolism of this mystery seems to be that the clerk enlists himself in the regular army of the Church Militant, sacrificing an actual piece of his person as a pledge of his fidelity, and receiving as handsel, so to speak, his uniform. From this date the child was called in his family Messer Giovanni, (Mr. John). On the first of March 1484, he was named Abbot of Passignano. He grew up a good and manly boy, fond of nice things, grave, quietly merry, and a perfect gentleman. On the third of March 1489, his father’s friend the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII created him Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Domnica; but, as he was only of the age of thirteen years, the creation was reserved in petto, while he continued his studies under Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano); who, in 1492 wrote to the Pope about his pupil,
290“This youth is so formed by nature and education that, being inferior to none in genius, he yields not to his equals in industry, nor to his teachers in learning, nor to old men in gravity of demeanour. He naturally is honest and ingenuous, and he has been so strictly bred that never from his mouth there comes a lewd, or even a light, expression. Though he be so young, his judgement is so secure that even the old respect him as a father. He sucked piety and religion with his mother’s milk, preparing himself for his sacred office even from his cradle. (Ep. v. Lib. VIII)”
In the Publick Consistory of the twenty-second of March 1492, he was admitted to the Sacred College, receiving the scarlet hat and the cardinalitial sapphire ring, (whose value was six hundred zecchini d’oro—say, £1200); and he was of the age of sixteen years, three months, eleven days.
During his cardinalate his most delightful trait was the loving kindness which he shewed to his young cousin Giulio, (Botticelli’s most precious model), the bastard of Don Giuliano de’ Medici, by Madonna Antonia Gorini of Florence, and who ended his life as the Lord Clement P.P. VII. Cardinal Giovanni got him ennobled as a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta, and Prior of Capua; and gave him an honourable position in his household as confidential counsellor: and, indeed, it was to Don Giulio, attending him as esquire in the Conclave of March 1513, that Cardinal Giovanni generously said, when the result of the squittino (scrutiny) was made known, “Come Giulio, let us enjoy the Papacy, since God hath given it to Us:” and he immediately raised His cousin to the purple, giving him His Own vacated rank of Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Domnica.[95]
Cardinal Giovanni, like all the Medici, was congenitally myopic. In all presentments of him, there is the slight forward bend or set of the neck which marks the short-sighted man. Messer Paolo Giovio says that he surveyed the world through a concave crystal, and that this affected his skill as a sportsman. Messer Rafaele Sanzio’s portrait 291of him and his cousin shows him with this concave crystal spy-glass in his hand. No doubt his physical incompleteness wonderfully aided in developing his enchanting taste and temperament; for it is well-known that the best artist is the man who does not see all.[96]
The crowd, waiting outside the Conclave of 1513 for the annunciation of the new Pope, were confronted by a doorway builded of the fragments of other buildings. Some of the stones bore portions of mutilated inscriptions; and the crowd amused itself by piecing these together. But there was one large stone above the lintel, whose inscription baffled explanation. It bore the letters
M. C. C. C. C. X. L.
and presumably had come from some edifice dated 1440. Presently, the door was flung open; and the scarlet Cardinal-Archdeacon proclaimed, “I announce to you great joy. We have for a Pope the Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in Domnica, who wills to be called Leo the Tenth.” And in the doorway stood the white figure of the new Successor of St. Peter, of the age of thirty eight years, His head straining a little forward, peering through His half-closed bright eyes, lifting His hand in Apostolic Benediction. Instantly a wag in the kneeling crowd explained the cryptic inscription Multi Caeci Cardinales Creaverunt Caecum X (decimum) Leonem; “Many short-sighted cardinals created a short-sighted one Leo the Tenth.” That is a specimen of wit in the year 1513, bright, quick, direct, pungent, and finished.
The election of the Lord Leo P.P. X was an immense relief to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara. It meant deliverance from unscrupulous persecution for the Pope’s Holiness now was patrician, and at least a gentleman, though no enemy to the House of Borgia. So Ferrara and Borgia went in peace. The duchy had been at war for nearly six years, almost without cessation; her resources were quite exhausted; her exchequer was empty. So keen was the distress, that, in order not to add to his people’s 292burden by pressing for his revenues, Duke Alfonso pawned his plate, and Duchess Lucrezia her jewels which were of enormous value. These were redeemed three years later: and it is to the inventory, made when they were pawned, that modern knowledge of their extraordinary rarity and worth is due.
On the thirteenth of September 1513 was born in Rome, of Don Tarquinio Poplicola di Santacroce and Madonna Ersilia his wife, the Noble Don Prospero Poplicola di Santacroce, afterwards Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Girolamo degli Schiavoni and Nuncio, who introduced Tobacco into Italy and gave it the name Erba Santacroce, Holycross Herb.
The life of the Duchess Lucrezia, during the next few years, was a life of calm after storm, post tot naufragias tuta. She won fresh fame by her goodness to young girls, whom she provided with dowries, to tempt them to keep continency by marrying well. Delightfully practical age, which went directly to the point attempting no maudlin half-measures, “so sweetly mawkish and so smoothly dull”! The ideal of the professional philanthropist, then, was to make virtue easy, and vice difficult. The ideal of the professional philanthropist, now, is to make virtue horribly vulgar and vice an imperious necessity. The Duchess Lucrezia had observed that the lack of money is the root of all evil; and, at that root she struck.
Charming descriptions are extant of the evenings which this egregious lady spent in conversation with poets and scholars, listening to music, and working on the lovely embroidery for which she was so celebrated. On the third of July 1515, she presented her lord with a daughter. The same year she was grieved by the death of her friend, the great printer, Messer Aldo Manuzio. That cool-headed, shrewd, and very learned Venetian, the hereditary enemy of Ferrara, has left laudations of the Duchess Lucrezia which are sincere and unsurpassable. It is not singular that the great and good among her intimate contemporaries should be those who praise her; and that her defamers should be 293professional squibbers, notoriously base and venal. The following year, the eleventh of July, 1516, she suffered the loss of her little son who was of the age of five years. Is the touching letter, by which she conveyed the news to her confidante and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua, the letter of a wicked woman or of a good? She says,
“——the Most Illustrious Don Alessandro, my youngest son, after a long and painful illness, in which remedies were of no avail, was seized by a cruel dysentery. Yesterday, at the fourth hour of the night, (say, midnight,) the poor little man (poverino) yielded his blessed soul into the hands of our Lord God, leaving me much afflicted and full of sorrow; as Your Excellency, being a woman and a tender mother yourself, may easily believe.[97]”
On the Festival of All Saints, she bore another son to Duke Alfonso, who was baptized by the name Francesco.
On the twenty-sixth of November 1517, there died in Rome Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, the mother of the Duchess Lucrezia; and was buried in Santa Maria del Popolo by the Flaminian Gate. Nine of her letters to her daughter, and rather crabbed letters too, are preserved in the Archives of Modena. They are subscribed, “La felice ed infelice madre;” which seems precisely to describe her condition. She was a happy mother; happy in the gorgeous loveliness of her children, happy in their good fortune, happy in being the mother of two dukes, a prince duke, and a sovereign duchess: but unhappy, in that human law made their father not her husband. Another letter of hers, dated from Rome the fifteenth of December 1515, and signed “Perpetua Oratrice Vanozza,” has been the means of causing some uncertainty as to her real name. The following is suggested as an explanation.
“Vanozza”, of course, is a familiar abbreviation of “Giovanozza”, which is equivalent to “Big Jenny”. Italians are deliciously disrespectfully inoffensive in their use of universal and personal nicknames; which are taken conferred without the least aggrievance. “Perpetua 294Oratrice[98]” is not a name at all: but a quasi-official style.
In England at the present day, one frequently is startled by the receipt of a letter, from some fervent member of that devout female sex (for which Holy Church, knowing needs, diurnally prays), bearing as signature the names of the writer, with the addition “E de M”. If one has not yet seen the lions, (as the Fifteenth Century said of a novice,) one looks for the university degree, knightly order, municipal or parochial rank, of which those letters are the sign. But, when one knows them to stand for “Enfant de Marie,” one remembers that a pious sodality, of French origin and called “The Children of Mary,” is an excessively and universally fashionable one among females; and doubts are at an end.
It is probable that there was some such pious association for females of the Borgian Era. Madonna Giovanna always was a respectable well-living character: but we know that she found salvation, was converted, became dévote, in 1508, when she sat under Frat’ Egidio da Viterbo preaching a course of Lent sermons in Rome.
It is suggested, then, that at once she began “to make her soul,” to prepare to meet her God, for she was well on in years; and that she became a member of some Confraternity of Perpetual Prayer, resembling those of the present day whose members divide among themselves the duty of praying the clock round, so that an unending stream of supplication shall flow toward the Throne of Grace. It is suggested, that, being a human woman, cherishing no objection to a little perfectly legitimate advertisement of virtue (like the ladies of the “E de M” description), Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei formed the habit of signing her private letters “The Perpetual Suppliant, Big Jenny.”
Her epitaph has been given on p. 261.
There are two documents of this year 1517, which go to prove that, at this time, there existed no idea of 295concealing the parentage of Don Giovanni Borgia the sometime Duke of Nepi and Camerino. The boy appears to have made his home with his sister, the Duchess Lucrezia; for both documents are issued under her protection and authority. She was nineteen years older than her brother, who now was of the age of twenty-one years; and her notable good nature, as well as her royal estate, make it natural enough that she should be more mother than sister to her august Father’s youngest son.
The first brief (they both are quoted in Cittadella,) is dated “sub die Iº Nov. 1517”; and names the Bishop of Adria as Don Giovanni’s agent in some pecuniary transaction, he being less than twenty-five, and more than eighteen, years old. It begins, “Ferrariae in palatio habitationis Illmi ... Illmus Dominus Joannes Borgia, frater Illmae Dominae Lucretiae Borgiae Ducissae Ferrariae, minor annis vigintiquinque, maior tamen decem octo,——.”
The second brief is addressed to Messer Filippo Strozzi; and claims, from the consuls of Pesaro, the baggage which the young noble had lost after his shipwreck in sight of that city! It is dated the second of December 1517; and begins, “Mandatum Illmae Dominae Ducissae Ferrariae in palatio Ducali ... Illma Domina Lucretia Borgia Estensis ... suo nomine, et nomine ac Tanquam coniuncta persona Illmi Domini Joannis Borgiae eius frater——.”
Little or nothing further has been discovered regarding the life of this youth. His history, with that of his brother Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace, waits to reward research in the archives of Naples, Nepi, Camerino and Ferrara. Reluctantly, they must be left here among the Sparks That Die.
The following announcement closes the second epoch of the House of Borgia. It is dated the twenty-first day of June 1519; and was sent by flying posts to his nephew, the Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua: “It hath pleased the Lord God to take unto Himself the soul of the 296Illustrious Duchess, my much-beloved Consort. (Signed) Alfonsus Dux Feraria.”
The “Illustrious Duchess” Lucrezia Borgia was buried in her favourite church at the monastery of Corpus Domini, by side of her husband’s mother the Duchess Leonor de Aragona, deeply and sincerely mourned by her children, and her husband Duke Alfonso d’Este, and, indeed, by all Ferrara duchy crowding round her bier. She was only in the forty-second year of her age.
May she rest in the fragrant peace of her good deeds.
297