Preface

Great Houses win and lose undying fame in a century. They shoot, bud, bloom, bear fruit;—from obscurity they rise to dominate their Age, indelibly to write their names in History: and, after a hundred years, giving place to others who in turn shall take the stage, they descend into the crowd, and live on, insignificant, retired, unknown.

Once upon a time, Caesars were masters of the world; and the genius of Divus Julius, of Divus Augustus, was worshipped everywhere on altars. There are Cesarini at this day in Rome, cosa grande ch’ il sole, masters of wide domains, but not of empires. Once upon time, Buonaparte held Europe in its grip. Buonaparte at this day keeps exile in Muscovy or Flanders. Once upon a time, the Sforza were sovereigns-regnant; and of their daughters were made an empress and a queen. There are Sforza at this day at Santafiora and at Rome; peers of princes only, not of kings. Once upon a time, Borgia was supreme in Christendom. There are Borgia at this day, peers of France; or patricians whose names are written in the Golden Book of Rome.

In little more than a century, from 1455 to 1572, Borgia sprang to the pedestal of fame; leaping at a bound, from little bishoprics and cardinalates, to the terrible altitude of Peter’s Throne; producing, in those few years, two Popes, and a Saint and General of Jesuits. It is true that there died, in the nineteenth century, another Borgia of renown,—the Lord Stefano Borgia, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of viiiSan Clemente—a great and good man, admirable by Englishmen for a certain gracious deed which is not yet written in English History; and who preferred a second place to that giddy pre-eminence on which his kin formerly had played their part.

The history of the House of Borgia is the history of the healing of the Great Schism; of the Renascence of letters and the arts; of the Invention of Printing; of the Muslim Invasion of Europe; of the consolidation of that Pontifical Sovereignty which endured till 1870; the history of the Discovery of a World; the history of the Discovery, by man, of Man.

“To penetrate the abyss of any human personality is impossible. No man truly sees his living neighbour’s, brother’s, wife’s,—nay, even his own, soul.” (John Addington Symonds.) Much more obscure must be his friend’s; and darker still, his enemy’s;—and these alive. What, then, can be known of personalities, who are but distant, perhaps uninteresting, mere names?

Chronicles there are, and chroniclers; and no more reliance can be placed in those, than in modern morning and evening newspapers. The same defect is common to both,—the personal equation, the human nature of the writer, historian, journalist.

Cardinal Bartolomeo Sacchi (detto Platina) was “a heathen, and a bad one.” He had to stand his trial on a charge of worshipping false gods, was acquitted for want of evidence, and departed this life in the Odour of Sanctity. Modern discoveries, in the secret recesses of the catacombs, have proved that he was used to carry on his nefarious practices there, with a handful of other extravagant athenians of like kidney. He wrote a History of the Popes, which fairly deserves to be called veracious: but he had a personal grudge against the Lord Paul P.P. II. Who had put him to trial for paganism and grieved him with the torture called The Question; wherefore, he got even with ixHis Holiness when he wrote His life, and a more singular example of truth untruly told would be hard to find. Platina died in the reign of the Lord Xystus P.P. IV; and his History of the Popes was continued by Onofrio Panvinii, who, according to Sir Paul Rycaut, gravely states that, in 1489, the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII permitted mass to be said without wine, in Norway; because, that country being cold and the distance far, the wine either was frozen, or was turned to vinegar, before it could be brought thither. Obviously, Platina and Panvinii require credible corroboration.

Messer Stefano Infessura lays himself open to suspicion, as to his bona fides and as to his knowledge, by his remarks on the Lord Xystus P.P. IV.

Monsignor Hans Burchard, whose original Diarium awaits discovery, is careless, Teutonic, and petty.

The Orators of the Powers compile their state-dispatches from what they have picked up when hanging about the doors of palaces, or from the observations of bribed flunkeys.

Messer Paolo Giovio, preconised Bishop of Nocera by the Lord Clement P.P. VII, Messer Francesco Guicciardini, and Messer Benedetto Varchi, were Florentines, who wrote in the Florentine manner, of Rome and Roman affairs, from an antipathetic point of view, and solely on the gossip and tittle-tattle that filtered through to Florence after long years. Yet they wrote in stately delicate language, “Dante’s desiderata,—that illustrious cardinal courtly curial mother-tongue, proper to each Italian state, special to none, whereby the local idioms of every city are to be measured, weighed, compared.” Only—only—the student of their work must know that, (in common with all professional manufacturers of squibs, libels, and lampoons, in every age,) what they liked they praised; and what they loathed they rhetorically and categorically damned, compiling concise catalogues of all the worst crimes known to casuistry, to lay at their foe’s door. Therefore, the student of history must xlearn the personal sympathies and antipathies of these historians; he must find their personal equation: and, when he has deducted that, he may arrive at least in juxtaposition with truth. This method has been attempted in the present work—in the absence of impersonal authorities.

Mi sembra che la storia si sia servita della famiglia Borgia come di tela sopra la quale abbia voluto dipingere le sfenatezze dei secoli XV, XVI. “It appears to me that history has made the House of Borgia to serve as a canvas whereon to depict the unbridled licence of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” (Ragguali, sulla vita di Marino Sanuto, 207, note.) By some historians, the Borgia women are delineated as “poison-bearing maenads,” or “veneficous bacchantes”; the Borgia men as monsters utterly flagitious: both men and women of a wickedness perfectly impossible to human nature, perfectly improbable even in nature kakodaimoniacal. By other historians, chiefly, strange to say, of the French School, and afflicted with the modern itch for rehabilitation, the identical Borgia are displayed in the character of stainless innocents who shine in the light of inconceivable virtue.

No man, save One, since Adam, has been wholly good. Not one has been wholly bad. The truth about the Borgia, no doubt, lies between the two extremes. They are accused of loose morals, and of having been addicted to improper practices and amusements.

Well; what then? Does anybody want to judge them? Popes, and kings, and lovers, and men of intellect, and men of war cannot be judged by the narrow code, the stunted standard, of the journalist and the lodging-house keeper, or the plumber and the haberdasher. So indecently unjust a suggestion only could emanate from persons who expect to gain in comparison.

Why should good hours of sunlight be wasted on the judgment seat, by those who, presently, will have to take xitheir turn in the dock? Why not leave the affairs of Borgia to the Recording Angel?

All about the Borgia quite truly will be known, some day; and, in the interim, more profitable entertainment may be gained by frankly and openly studying that swift vivid violent age, when “the Pope was an Italian Despot with sundry sacerdotal additions;” when “what Mill, in his Essay on Liberty, desired,—what seems every day more unattainable in modern life,—was enjoyed by the Italians; there was no check to the growth of personality, no grinding of men down to match the average.”

“Amorist, agonist, man, that, incessantly toiling and striving,

“Snatches the glory of life only from love and from war—

that is the formula in which the Borgia best may find expression. For they, also, were human beings, who were born, struggled through life, and died.

In this Ideal Content of the House of Borgia, there is matter for a score of specialists. The present writer lays no claim to any special knowledge whatever; although his studies obviously have led him more in one direction than in another. Curbed by his limitations, he makes no pretensions to the discovery of new or striking facts: but he humbly trusts that he has been enabled to throw new and natural light on myths and legends, and to re-arrange causes and events in a humanly probable sequence.

In dealing with circumstantial calumny, he has adopted an unworn system; e.g., in the case of persons said to have been raised to the purple in reward for criminal services. Here, he furnishes complete lists of the persons raised to the purple; and, when the names of those accused of crime do not appear therein, he takes the fact as direct and positive refutation of the calumny.

Touching the matter of names and styles, he has made an attempt to correct the slipshod and corrupt translations xiiof the same, which, at present, are the vogue. To allude to Personages in terms which are appropriate enough for one’s terrier, or for one’s slave; to speak of sovereigns as mere John, or of pontiffs as plain Paul; are breaches of etiquette of unpardonable grossness. The present writer has tried, at least, to accord to his characters the use of the names, and the courtesy of the styles that they actually bore.

In his manner of writing, he has endeavoured to rush from mood to mood, in consonance with the subject under consideration, with something of the flippant breathless masterful versatility which Nature uses. For men were very natural in the Borgian Era.

It is said that the style of a history should be grave and stately; and so it should be, when History is written in epic form. But to write of men and women,—human men and women,—on those inhuman lines, is nothing but an unnatural crime; and, also, as ridiculously incongruous and inconsistent, as it would be to sing the Miserere mei Deus to the tune of the Marseillaise. For human nature is not at all times grave and stately; but has its dressing-gown-and-slipper periods,—being human nature. The aim of this work is to display the Borgia alive and picturesque and unconventional, as indeed they were; not monumentally to freeze them into ideally heroic moulds, or to chisel them into conventionally unrecognisable effigies.

The writer does not write with the simple object of “white-washing” the House of Borgia; his present opinion being that all men are too vile for words to tell.

Further, he does not write in the Roman Catholic interest; nor in the Jesuit interest; nor in the interest of any creed, or corporation, or even human being: but solely as one who has scratched together some sherds of knowledge, which he perforce must sell, to live.

It should be unnecessary to say that no persuasion of, xiiiand no offence to, any man, or any school of thought, is intended in these pages; and that the writer, in the absence of desired advice, has written what he has written under correction.

He returns thanks to the officers of the Oxford University Galleries, of the Bodleian Library, and of the British Museum, for courteous and valuable assistance.

xv

The following works have been studied for the purpose of this history; and thanks are due to the authors for copious extracts made therefrom;

Ambrogini. (Angelo, detto Poliziano,) Orfeo. 1749.

Ammirato. (Scip,) Tutti i duchi di Milano. Fiorenza. 1576.

Anales de la Nobleza de España. Madrid. 1890.

Annuaire de la Noblesse de France. Paris. 1898.

Annuario della Nobilitā d’ Italia. Bari 1882–3 1893–9.

Antiquary. (The,) London. 1882.

Annario de la Nobilita. Madrid. 1882–5–9, 1890.

Baluzii. (Stephani,) Miscellanea. 1761–4.

Beccadelli. (Antonio, detto Panhormita). Quinque illustrium poetarum Carmina. Paris. 1791.

Berni. (Francesco,) (Milosio. G. pseud.) Rime Piacevole. 1627.

„ „ Capitoli burleschi. 1645.

Blythe. (A. Winter,) Poisons. London. 1895.

Borgia. (Alessandro, Prince-Archbishop of Fermo.) Istoria della chiesa e città di Velletri, in IV lib. Nocera. 1723.

Borgia. (Bartolomeo,) La sua Vita. Milan. 1888.

Borgia. (Giuseppe di Lorenzo,) Noto. 1882.

Borgia Mexican Manuscript and Monograph. Rome. 1898.

Borgia. (Rosario,) Poesie in idioma Calabrese. Naples. 1839.

Borgia. (Stefano, Cardl̃e,) Dissertazione filologica sopra un antica gemma intagliata. 1775.

„ „ „ De cruce Veliterna. Rome. 1780.

Bourdeilles. (P. de,) Memoires—les vies des hommes illustrés. Leyde. 1665.

Bryce. (J.) Holy Roman Empire. Lond. 1880.

Bulla Monitorii Apostolici. Rome. 1512.

Buonarrotti. (Michelangelo,) Le Rime. Firenze. 1863.

Burchard (Hans,) Diarium. Edited by L. Thuasne. Paris. 1883–5.

Burgos. (Aug. de,) Blason de España. Madrid. 1853–60.

Burckhardt. (Jacob,) The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. London. 1890.

Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum. 1719.

Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum. Bergamo. 1753.

Cennini. (Cennino,) Treatise on Painting. Lond. 1844.

Cherubinus (Laertius,) Bullarium. (Vols. ij. iij. containing the Bulls of Xystus P.P. iiij, Innocent P.P. viij, Alexander P.P. vj.) Rome. 1617.

Chieregatus (L., Bishop of Concordia) Oration at Funeral of Innocent P.P. viij. Eucherius Silber. Rome. 1492.

xviCiacconi. Vitae Pontificum.

Cienfuegos. (Alvaro, Cardãl). La heroyca vida virtudes y milagros del grande San Francisco de Borja autes duque quarto de Gandia. Madrid. 1717.

Circular, addressed to the Princes of Europe, announcing the demise of the Lord Alexander P.P. vi, enjoining prayers for the repose of His soul. Cologne. 1503.

Cittadella. (L. N.) Genealogy of the House of Borgia. Torino. 1872.

Clarke. (A. M.) St. Francis Borgia S. J. London. 1872. etc.

Coluthus. (St.) Fragmentum Copticum etc. Romae. 1781.

Conti. (Sigismondo de’) Le Storie de’ suoi tempi (1475–1510) Roma, Firenze. 1883.

Coronelli. (V. M.) Bibliotheca Universale. Venezia. 1701–6.

Cortesii. (Paolo, Bishop of Urbino) De cardinalatu. 1510.

Corvus. (Andrea) Excellentissimi et singularis viri in chiromatia exercitatissimi Magistri Andree Corvi Mirandulensis. Venice. 1500.

Crawford. (F. M.) Ave Roma Immortalis. Lond. 1898.

Creighton. (Mandell) History of the Papacy. Lond. 1897

Crescenzi. (Romani) Corona della Nobilta d’ Italia. Bologna. 1639–42.

„ „ Il Nobile Romano. Bologna. 1693.

Dumas. (Alexandre) Crimes Célèbrés. Paris. 1842.

English Historical Review. Vol. vii. Lond. 1886 etc.

Escolano. (Gasparo) La historia de Valencia. Valencia. 1610–11.

Filelfo. (F.) Poesie inedite. Milano. 1892.

Gibbon. (E.) Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edited by J. B. Bury. Lond. 1896.

Gilbert. (É.) Autrefois—Aujourd ’hui. Sorciers et Magiciens. Moulins. 1895.

„ „ La pharmacie à travers les siècles. Toulouse. 1886.

„ „ Les plantes magiques et la Sorcellerie. Moulins. 1899.

„ „ Philtres, charmes, poisons. Paris. 1880.

Gilbert. (W.) Lucrezia Borgia. Lond. 1869.

Giustiniani. (Antonio) Dispacci di A. G. Ambasciatore Veneto in Roma. 1502–1505. Fiorenza. 1876.

Gordon. (A.) Life of Alexander the Sixth. Lond. 1729.

Gould. (Sabine Baring,) Lives of the Saints. (San Francisco de Borja). Lond. 1897.

Gregorovius. (F.) History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. Lond. 1894. etc.

Gresswell. (W. P.) Memoirs of Angelus Politianus. 1801.

Guasti. (Cesare,) Opere. Prato. 1894. etc.

Guicciardini. (Francesco,) L’ historia d’ Italia. Fiorenza. 1561.

Heminges. (Hieronymus,) Theatrum Genealogicum. Magdeburg. 1598.

Infessura. (Stefano,) Diarium Rerum Romanum, edited by Eckhart. (J. G. von) 1723.

Infessura. (Stefano,) Diarium Rerum Romanum, edited by Tommassini. (Oreste,) Fonti per la Storia d’ Italia No. 5. Roma. 1887. etc.

Inveges. (Agostino,) Annali della felice città di Palermo. Palermo. 1649–51.

Jennings. (C. E.) Transfusion of Blood. Lond. 1883.

Lacroix. (P.) Science and Literature in the Middle Ages. Lond. 1878.

Litta. (Pompeo, Conte,) Celebri famiglie Italiane: Disp. 137–150, 151–163. Milano. 1819. etc.

Lucas. (Fr. H; S. J.) Fra Girolamo Savonarola. 1899.

Luther. (Martin, signed by:) Stercoraceous Prints, relating to Papal Persons; especially to the Lord Alexander P.P. vj. 1545.

xviiMachiavelli. (Niccolo,) Lettere famigliari di, (Alvisi. E.) Firenze. 1883.

„ „ (Farnworth. E.) Lond. 1775.

Maimon. (Moses ben-.) Traité des Poisons de Maimonide. (I. M. Rabbinowicz. 1865.)

Maricourt. (Réné de, Baron de Moncy,) Les procès des Borgia. Paris. 1882.

Martyrology. Roman, Romae. 1873.

Martène (Edm.) et Durand (Ursin) Veterum Scriptorum ... amplissima collectio. Parisiis. 1724–1733.

Menghini (C. Canon) Opinion ... upon the question whether ... John Carmont, D.D. incurred the Major Excommunication, etc. Dumfries. 1886.

Monumenta Historica Societatis Jesu. Madrid. 1894–5.

Moroni. (Gaetanino,) Dizionario di Erudizione Storico Ecclesiastica.

Muntz. Eug. Les Antiquités de la Ville de Rome.... Paris. 1886.

„ „ Les Arts à la cour des Papes. 1877.

„ „ La Renaissance en Italie. Paris. 1885.

Muntz and Frothingham. Il Tesoro della Basilica di S. Pietro in Vaticano. Roma. 1883.

Museum Mazzuchellianum. (Gaetani P. A.) Venetiis. 1761–3.

North British Review. vol. liiij. Edinburgh. 1843 etc.

Ollivier. (M. J. N.) Le Pope Alexandre VI et les Borgias. Paris. 1870.

Panciroli. Tesori nascosti di Roma. Roma. 1625.

Pasolini. (dall’ Onda, Conte) Caterina Sforza. Roma. 1893.

Pastor. (Ludwig,) History of the Popes; edited by Fr. Frederick Ignatius Antrobus, of the Oratory. Lond. 1894–8.

Pelissier. (L. X.) Archivio della R. Societa Romana di Storia Patria. Voi. xvj. Rome. 1894.

Petrus Paulinus. (a Sancto Bartholomaeo) Vitae Synopsis. Stef. Borgiae. S. R. E. Card. Ampliss. Romae. 1805.

Pontanus. (Johan-Jovian,) Opera Omnia. Aldus, Venetiis. 1518–9.

Porta. (Giambattista della,) Caelestis Physiognomiae. Neapoli. 1603.

„ „ De Occultis Literarum Notis. Montisbeligardi. 1593.

Procter. (J.) The Dominican Savonarola. 1895.

Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Carmina. (P. Bembi: A. Navgerii: B. Castiglioni: J. Cottae: M. A. Flaminii. Venetiis. 1548.)

Revue des Questions historiques. Paris. April 1881.

Ricchi. (Ant.) Teatro degli uomini illustri. Romae. 1721.

Ritus Servandus ... in Aperitione Portae Sanctae Vaticanae. Romae. 1775.

„ „ in Clausura „ „ „ „ „

Roscoe. (T.) Italian Novelists. Lond. 1825.

„ (W.) Life of Leo the Tenth. Lond. 1846 etc.

„ „ Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Lond. 1846 etc.

Sacchi. (B. de Platina) Historia de Vitis Pontificum Romanorum. Coloniae Agr. 1610.

Sanzio. (Rafaele) Peinture de la Sala Borgia. Paris, Rome. 1836.

Serdonati. (F.) Vita d’ Innocenzo viij. per M. P. Angeli da Barga. Milano. 1829.

Silvagni. (D.) La Corte e la Società Romana. Firenze. 1882–5.

Steinmann. (E.) Botticelli. 1897.

Storia della Controversia di Fra Girolamo Savonarola coi Frati Minori. Archivio Storico Italiano. Terza Serie. xiij. Firenze. 1871.

Strennius. (Richardus) Gentium et familiarum Romanorum Stemmata. H. Stephanus. Paris. 1559.

Symonds. (John Addington,) Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. Lond. 1896.

xviiiSymonds. (John Addington,) Sonnets of Michelangelo Buonarroti. Lond. 1878.

„ „ Renascence in Italy. Lond. 1875–86.

Tenhove. (N.) Memoirs of the House of Medici. 1797.

Theuli. (Bonaventura, Abp.,) Teatro Historico di Velletri. Velletri. 1644.

Trithemii. (Johan. Abb.,) Libri Polygraphiae VI. Argentinae. 1600.

„ „ „ Tractulus Chemicus Nobilis. 1611.

Thuasne. (L.) Djim Sultan. Paris. 1892.

Varchi. (Benedetto) Storia Fiorentina. Fiorenza. 1857–8.

Varillas. ἀνεκδοτα. Lond. 1686.

Vebron. (C. de) Les Borgia. Paris. 1882.

Vialardi. (F. M.) Vite de’ Somm: Pont: Innocent viij. etc. Venezia. 1613.

Villani. (G.) Croniche, etc. 1537.

Villanueva. (J. L.) Viage literario à las Iglesias de Espana. Madrid, Valencia. 1803–52.

Vrbs Romae. ([M] J. P. [Foresti] Bergomensis, Opus praeclarum supplementum chronicay vulgo appellatũ. fol. 49) Venetiis. 1484 ? 1490.

Warburg. (A.) Botticelli. 1893.

Worde. (Wynkyn de) Innocenti’ et Alexand’ pontifices predicti.... (Addition to Broadside Proclamation issued at the landing in Cornwall of Duke Richard Plantagenet of York (vulgarly called Perkyn Werbecke). Lond. 1497.)

Yriarte. (Charles) Autour des Borgia. 1891.

„ „ Un condottiere au XV siècle. Paris. 1882.

Zurita. (Gerónimo) Indices rerum ab Aragoniae regibus gestarum.... Caesar-augustae. 1578.

etc. etc. etc.

xix