While the pope ruled the Roman court as an absolute sovereign, he enjoyed one advantage over secular princes in the spiritual weapons at his disposal. Excommunication was still feared; for a city the laying of a papal interdict could mean the loss of its trade, for a lord the endangering of his state, since both would then be open to attack by their enemies while their friends were forbidden to help. The granting of dispensations for marriages and annulments could be used to extract considerable sums of money and concessions from secular princes, and as a potent and profitable form of political blackmail.
But the pope’s personal enjoyment of this unique position was brief; the road to the Papacy was a long one, and most popes when elected were on the threshold of old age. The ephemeral nature of this power was the main reason for the rapacity of papal relatives, who saw the urgency of grabbing what they could while the going was good, and for the anxiety of the pope to see that his family was sufficiently endowed during his lifetime to enable them to maintain their position after his death. Since the way to the Papacy led through the College of Cardinals, the princes of Italy aimed at a cardinal’s hat for their younger sons at the earliest possible age, so that they might, through long years of accumulated wealth and seniority, stand a strong chance of changing the hat for the papal tiara. For this they intrigued and bribed their way through the labyrinths of the papal court, prepared to go to almost any lengths and pay any price to obtain the prize. Their understanding of the dual nature of the Papacy, its spiritual prestige combined with political power, is well illustrated by Lorenzo de’ Medici’s letter of advice to his son, the young Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici; exhorting him to cherish the honour and standing of the Church and the Holy See, he added: ‘While doing this it should not be difficult for you to aid the city [Florence] and our house … I think it is likely that a way will be found to save, as the proverb says, the goat and the cabbages …’
This emphasis on the secular role of the popes reflected a deep change in the nature of the Papacy, whose spiritual authority and universal character had suffered severely during the unedifying years of the Great Schism, when the rulers of Europe had seized the opportunity afforded by papal weakness to wring concessions from the popes over ecclesiastical patronage and financial contributions to the Holy See. This tendency had not been reversed when the popes returned to Rome in 1423; it had increased as the monarchies of Europe became stronger, more centralized, and unwilling to tolerate papal intervention. The Renaissance popes were still acknowledged as heads of Christendom, but their power and resources depended increasingly on their position as secular overlords. While the ‘spiritual’ income derived from international contributions steadily declined, they became more dependent on the ‘temporal’ income, which they received as overlords of the Papal States.
Sovereignty of the Papal States gave the Papacy its status as a major Italian power. The lands of the Church straddled central Italy, stretching from Bologna in the north to the frontier of the kingdom of Naples in the south, and included Emilia-Romagna, Le Marche, and the March of Ancona on the eastern side of the peninsula, Umbria and the papal cities of Orvieto, Viterbo and Spoleto in the centre, and the Patrimony of St Peter in Tuscany and the province of the Roman Campagna and Campagna Marittima to the west and south.
Yet before the accession of Alexander VI in 1492 much of this territory belonged to the Church in name only; to the north of Rome it was split up into lordships varying in size and importance from the prestigious dukedoms of Ferrara and Urbino with their princely courts, to the petty signories of the Romagna and the Marches. They were ruled by local families with the title of papal vicars, theoretically deriving their authority from the pope and obliged to pay a yearly tribute to him, but in practice acting as independent princes with little or no regard for their overlord. The Campagna around Rome was dominated by the great baronial families, the Colonnas, Orsinis, Caetanis and their adherents, who did not hesitate to threaten the pope on his home ground when it suited them, cutting off the city from its food supplies, bringing armed troops into Rome to brawl in the streets, and selling their services to the pope’s enemies.
Nonetheless, no one questioned the Church’s right to overlordship of the Papal States. For a pope with the will and the resources to assert that right by crushing the barons and overthrowing the signori, the Lands of the Church represented a vast potential of territorial wealth. It was this potential which the Borgias, father and son, using every weapon in the papal armoury, were to exploit.
But to do so Cesare and his father would have to confront the Italian political establishment, which was to a considerable extent based on family connections and personal relationships. Behind the power politics of the major states lay an intricate web of dynastic connections linking the members of the signorial ruling class from the north to the south of Italy. A chain of intermarriage joined Orsini to Medici, Este to Sforza, Gonzaga to Montefeltro, branching down to the smallest lordships, so that almost any petty signore could claim kinship with the great families. A recent historian has compared this family network with a passage in Dante’s Inferno: ‘So thick was the undergrowth of alliances among the signorial families that to strike one branch was to break another, like the dogs in the wood of suicides.’ It was this charmed circle into which Cesare Borgia was to irrupt like a conquistador; this family network which was to feel itself deeply threatened as his sword cut off the branches one by one. It was a world to which by birth he did not belong.
II
The Cardinal’s Bastard
SOMEWHERE in the neighbourhood of Rome in mid-September 1475, Vannozza de’ Gattanei, wife of Domenico Giannozzo da Rignano, gave birth to a son. The only certain fact about Cesare’s birth is that he was not the son of the obscure Domenico, who conveniently spent his time travelling on business for the Church, but of Rodrigo Borgia, Cardinal Bishop and Vice-Chancellor of the Church, the most powerful figure in the Roman hierarchy after the pope. Although Vannozza, for the sake of appearances, had been married to the complaisant Domenico some time before Cesare’s birth, she had been the Cardinal’s mistress for at least two years previously and there was no doubt whatsoever that her son was the latest descendant of an extraordinary Catalan family, the de Borjas, or, as they became known to history, the Borgias.
The Borgia story began in the remote town of Borja in the wild hill-country of Aragon. The fifteenth-century Borgias, in the manner of adventurers, later claimed royal descent from Pedro Atarés, great-grandson of Ramiro I of Aragon, who was lord of Borja in the twelfth century, but beyond family tradition there is no evidence to support their pretensions to royal blood. All that is certain is that the early Borgias came from Borja and owed their rise, as did their fifteenth-century descendants, to their courage, aggressiveness and opportunism. In the first half of the thirteenth century eight knights of the Borgia family marched with their King, Jaime I of Aragon, to free Valencia from the Moors. They distinguished themselves in this campaign, being inscribed as caballeros de la Conquista, and one of them, Esteban, was granted the towns of Jativa, Gandia and other lands in Valencia, taking as his device the grazing bull, emblem of his home town of Borja. Thus, by right of conquest, the Borgias became one of the leading families in Valencia, where for two hundred years they lived the humdrum lives of provincial nobility, until in 1444 Cesare’s great-uncle Alonso, the first Borgia to set foot on Italian soil, set sail for Rome to become Cardinal of Quattro Incoronati.
Alonso owed his career to that combination of intelligence, hard work and luck which characterized the later Borgias. The first two qualities earned him the favour of his King, Alfonso V of Aragon, who succeeded to the throne of Naples in 1442, and brought him the cardinalate, but it was his luck which, contrary to all expectations, gained him the Papacy and founded his family’s fortunes. In 1455, eleven years after his arrival in Italy, Alonso Borgia became Pope Calixtus III. He had been elected as a compromise candidate after a deadlock between two Italians; he was seventy-seven, i
n poor health, and not expected to live long. But Calixtus surprised them all by living a full three years after his election and proving to be an energetic and in many ways admirable Pope: pious, ascetic, frugal to the point of parsimony, and devoted to the cause of the crusade against the Turks. Among his less admirable qualities, however, was a nepotism which flooded Rome with a horde of Borgia relations and their hangers-on, all Valencians, or Catalans, as they were known to the Romans.
Among these Catalan relations two young Borgias enjoyed the Pope’s special favour: his nephews Pedro Luis and Rodrigo, sons of his sister Isabella. The doting Calixtus showered them with honours; Pedro Luis, the elder, a swashbuckling arrogant young man whose excesses were only restrained by the prudence of his younger brother Rodrigo, was made Prefect of Rome and Captain General of the Church; his successful campaign in this capacity against the great Orsini barons laid the foundations of a bitter running feud between Borgia and Orsini which was to have a bearing on Cesare’s own career thirty years later. While Pedro Luis reaped the honours in the secular sphere, Rodrigo Borgia rose swiftly to a position of power and wealth in the ranks of the Church. He was only eighteen when he accompanied his uncle to Italy to study law at the University of Bologna, twenty-five when Calixtus was elected Pope; within a year his uncle made him a cardinal, two years later he appointed him Vice-Chancellor of the Church, and in June 1458 gave him the see of Valencia, the richest in Spain, with a yearly income of 18,000 ducats.
Two months later, in August 1458, Calixtus lay on his deathbed, and a wave of pent-up Roman resentment broke over the heads of his two young nephews and their Catalan adherents. Pedro Luis fled Rome to die of fever at Civita Vecchia, but Rodrigo, displaying the physical courage in the face of danger which never deserted him, attended his uncle until the end came on 6 August. Rodrigo Borgia, unlike the hot-headed Pedro Luis, was a survivor; he was determined not to be overwhelmed by the tide of anti-Catalan feeling which had swept away his brother and fellow-countrymen. In the conclave which followed his uncle’s death, a contest between the Cardinal of Rouen and the Cardinal of Siena, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, his was the casting vote. Piccolomini, the successful candidate, who became Pope Pius II, described the scene at the deadlock: ‘All sat in their places, silent, pale, as though they had been struck senseless. No one spoke for some time, no one opened his mouth, no one moved any part of his body, except the eyes, which turned this way or that … Then the Vice-Chancellor Rodrigo rose and said: “I accede to the Cardinal of Siena!” And his words were like a sword through Rouen’s heart …’ Thus Rodrigo’s cool judgement not only enabled him to surmount the first crisis of his career, but, through the favour of the next ruler of the Church, ensured the continuation of his power and influence. At twenty-eight his feet were firmly placed on the long road which led to the highest office in Christendom. But the significance of the events of 1458 was not lost upon him; he had experienced the transient nature of papal power, seen how his uncle’s death had involved his brother’s destruction. It was a lesson he would not forget.
Rodrigo Borgia was a handsome man with a boundless zest for life. He was tall, with a strong, heavy body which never tired, a bull-like neck, and powerful features, black eyes and a great nose arching over full, sensual lips. He had a resilient nature, a boisterous gaiety and a quick sense of humour; easily bored, he loved singing and dancing, hunting and, above all, beautiful women. His tutor, Gaspare de Verona, wrote of him: ‘He is handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice eloquence. Beautiful women are attracted by him in a quite remarkable way, more powerfully than iron … by a magnet.’ Neither as Cardinal nor as Pope did Rodrigo make any attempt to control or conceal his strong sexuality. Yet despite the hedonistic side of his nature, he was a man to be reckoned with. ‘Of versatile intellect, great sense and imagination … above all he is brilliantly skilled in the conducting of affairs,’ wrote Jacopo Gherardi of Volterra. He was noted for his personal charm, the eloquence with which he expressed himself, and the dignity, even majesty of his bearing. But this smooth façade concealed an exceptionally able and hard-working administrator who took his duties as Vice-Chancellor seriously, a subtle and devious politician, and a skilful opportunist who was at the same time capable of long-term planning. He was, in short, a man with a quick understanding of other men, of money and the labyrinths which lead to power. He was also single-minded in the pursuit of his great ambition: the Papacy. To this end he exploited two avenues to build up his position: the favour of successive popes, and the interest of his fellow countryman, Ferdinand of Aragon.
Ferdinand, King of Aragon and of Sicily, was a hard-headed Catalan like Rodrigo himself, and they shared many of the same qualities. Essentially a pragmatist with a firm grasp on the realities of power, he had that outward-looking attitude to international affairs which had forged the Aragonese empire in the Mediterranean. He was a cautious politician, ‘a cunning old Catalan’ as Guicciardini later described him, whose reputation for trickery led Machiavelli to hold him up as a model for princes who wished ‘to play the fox’. He was deeply interested in the affairs of Italy; as we have seen, the throne of Naples was occupied by the junior illegitimate branch of his own house of Aragon, but he had hopes of seeing it restored to his own crown. Thus when Rodrigo visited Spain in 1472 as Papal Legate, Ferdinand saw in him a valuable ally to advance his interests at the papal court; while Rodrigo for his part was well aware of the advantages that a clever man could gain by playing the field of international politics. Rich rewards might be extracted from Ferdinand in return for favours procured for him at the Vatican. Rodrigo’s Spanish Legation cemented a mutually profitable alliance that was to last over twenty years, and he returned to Italy in September 1473 well satisfied with the results of his visit to his homeland.
It was some time after his return from Spain, in the winter of 1473 or the early spring of 1474, that Rodrigo met Cesare’s mother, Vannozza de’ Cattanei. He had had many mistresses and fathered three illegitimate children before he met her – Pedro Luis, born in 1462, Isabella, born in 1467, and Girolama, born in 1470 – but Vannozza is the only woman with whom he is known to have had a lasting relationship, and he seems to have cared more deeply for the four children she bore him than for any of the others whom he fathered. She was thirty-two, no longer young by Renaissance standards, when she met Rodrigo Borgia, and she must indeed have been a remarkable woman to have captured and held his affection.
Little is known of Vannozza’s origins beyond that she was the daughter of a man described in a document of 20 January 1483 as ‘Jacopo Pinctoris [the Painter] of the Ponte quarter [of Rome]’, and of Donna Menica, referred to in the same document as his widow. In the secret bull of September 1493 by which Rodrigo as Pope Alexander VI recognized Cesare as his son, his mother is described as ‘a Roman woman’. This, however, did not necessarily imply that she was a Roman by birth, only that she was living there at the time Cesare was conceived. Some authorities assert that she came from Mantua, since Cattaneo is a particularly common name there, and point to her daughter Lucrezia’s blonde hair as evidence of her northern origin. Yet even such an attentive observer of Borgia family life as the Mantuan envoy Gian Lucido Cattaneo, who would certainly have referred to Vannozza’s Mantuan origin had it been known, never made any mention of it. The document of 1483, which refers to two sons of a Magister Antonio da Brescia as her blood relatives, may indicate that her family came from the region of Brescia. Indeed, all the evidence seems to point to the conclusion that even if Vannozza was born in Rome, her family were not native Romans. Had they been so, Vannozza would have had a horde of relations in the city who would have climbed eagerly onto the Borgia bandwagon, but beyond Donna Menica and the two da Brescia brothers, none have come to light. If Vannozza’s father Jacopo was a painter, then it was highly probable that he, like hundreds of other artists and artisans from Tuscany, Umbria and Lombardy, would have migrated from a small northern background to the w
ider opportunities afforded by papal Rome.
The only known authentic portrait of Vannozza hangs in the Congregazione di Carità in Rome, of which she was a benefactress. It shows her well into middle age: her hair is covered by a veil, but does not appear to have been fair like Lucrezia’s; her face is oval, with a short chin, small well-shaped mouth, strongly arched eyebrows over almond-shaped eyes, and a long, high-bridged nose which she bequeathed to her son Cesare. Her strong features retained their fineness into middle age, and she must have been strikingly beautiful when young. (In any case it is difficult to imagine that a man with Rodrigo Borgia’s taste in women would have been so captivated by an ugly one.) Beyond beauty she must have had character. Rodrigo continued to regard her with respect and to protect her even after their physical relationship had ceased, and her children showed a firm attachment to her throughout their lives. Sensible she clearly was, and possessed of considerable commercial acumen; through her connection with Rodrigo she became a woman of property, owning three hostelries and several houses in Rome. The strong features depicted in her portrait indicate a woman of forceful character with a fierce temper. One unfortunate who crossed her in her commercial dealings called her ‘a woman possessed of the devil’, and she objected vociferously when some of her jewels were sent to Ferrara on the occasion of Lucrezia’s marriage to Alfonso d’Este. Cesare must have inherited his vindictive temperament from his mother: Rodrigo was essentially easy-going.
Cesare Borgia Page 2
