Scandalous rumour surrounded them as they resumed their family pleasures in the Pope’s palace in late October. Cesare did what he could to shun publicity, and once again his now customary secrecy and solitude were remarked upon. On 30 October the Ferrarese envoy reported that he never went out without a mask – ‘The rest of the time he remains shut up in his apartments.’ Nonetheless lurid details of the Borgias’ activities within the walls of their private apartments did leak out, providing the eager diplomats with salacious details to fill out their reports. On the same night that the Ferrarese sat down to pen his dispatch, Cesare gave a party in his apartments that became notorious. Here is Burchard’s account of the night:
On Sunday evening, the last day of October 1501, there took place in the apartments of Duke Valentino in the Apostolic Palace, a supper, participated in by fifty honest prostitutes of those who are called courtesans. After supper they danced with the servants and others who were there, first clothed, then naked. After supper the lighted candelabra which had been on the table were placed on the floor, and chestnuts thrown among them which the prostitutes had to pick up as they crawled between the candles. The Pope, the Duke, and Lucrezia, his sister, were present looking on. At the end they displayed prizes, silk mantles, boots, caps, and other objects, which were promised to whomsoever should have made love to those prostitutes the greatest number of times; the prizes were distributed to the winners according to the arbitration of those present.
If Burchard is to be believed, here was an orgy in the true Roman tradition, held in the palace of the spiritual ruler of Christendom. The story of the naked courtesans crawling after hot chestnuts, and of the virility contest, may have been prurient embroideries, but that Cesare did give a party for his father and sister, which included courtesans, is attested by another source. On 4 November the Florentine orator Pepi reported that the Pope had not attended mass in St Peter’s or in the papal chapel on the days of All Saints and All Souls because of an indisposition, ‘which’, he added cautiously in cipher, ‘did not however impede him on Sunday night, the vigil of All Saints, from spending the night until the twelfth hour with the Duke, who had brought into the palace that night singers, courtesans, and all the night they spent in pleasures, dancing and laughter …’ Pepi’s account of the evening sounds harmless enough, and contains nothing which, in normal circumstances, an Italian of the day would have found especially shocking. Courtesans, the hetaerae of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Rome, were an essential part of a lively informal party, as the pages of Cellini’s autobiography record. Yet this supper, which would otherwise have passed unremarked, took place in the Vatican in the presence of the Pope, a fact which gave it an additional piquancy even in the eyes of seasoned observers of the princely courts of the Renaissance.
It is hardly surprising that Alexander’s reputation for sensuality should have grown to exaggerated proportions. Agostino Vespucci wrote to Machiavelli in July of that year: ‘It remains for me to say that it is known by everyone that the Pope, who is surrounded there by his illicit flock, has brought in from outside every evening to the palace, twenty-five women or more, from the Ave Maria to one o’clock, so that the Palace is manifestly made the brothel of all filth. I do not wish to give you other news from here now, but if you answer this I will send you more and finer …’ Where the Borgias were concerned there was always more and ‘finer’ news; family vignettes which could be painted into a great canvas of colourful vice by the watchful envoys, waiting with pens poised, avid as gossip columnists for spicy titbits to enliven their dispatches. A few days after Cesare’s chestnut supper, Burchard reported what he called ‘another incident’ on 11 November, involving mares loaded with wood which a peasant had brought into Rome through the Viridaria gate near the Vatican.
When the mares reached the Piazza San Pietro, some of the palace guard came up, cut through the straps and threw off the saddles and the wood in order to lead the mares into the courtyard immediately inside the palace gate. Four stallions were then freed from their reins and harness and let out of the palace stables. They immediately ran to the mares, over whom they proceeded to fight furiously and noisily amongst themselves, biting and kicking in their efforts to mount them and seriously wounding them with their hoofs. The Pope and Donna Lucrezia, laughing and with evident satisfaction, watched all that was happening from a window above the palace gate.
A delighted, Rabelaisian view of life was part of the fifteenth-century Renaissance mentality, a bawdily vital period when manners were not yet cloaked in the cold formal impotence of the later sixteenth-century princely courts. Lorenzo de’ Medici wrote bawdy poems, and Machiavelli pornographic letters, to delight their friends. It is illustrative of the atmosphere in which the Borgias lived, and the intense interest and enmity with which they were surrounded, that this crudely earthy incident could be repeated all over Italy, its sexual overtones magnified and distorted, as in Matarazzo’s chronicle of Perugia, where he adds: ‘And as if this were not enough, [the Pope] returning to the hall, had all the lights put out, and then all the women who were there, and as many men as well, took off all their clothes; and there was much festivity and play.’
One wonders how the Borgias saw themselves, if they reflected at all on the picture they presented to the world. Did Alexander see any dichotomy between the unabashed profanity of his private life and his official position as spiritual head of Christendom, between the majesty of his public appearances and his often undignified postures in private? It is quite evident that he regarded his official position as Pope as having no bearing on his personal life as a man. As Pope, he took his duties as seriously as he had when he was a Cardinal, defending the temporal interest of the Papacy to the utmost of his powers, while in spiritual matters he never compromised on questions of dogma. He was sincere in promoting a crusade against the Turks, and it was largely due to the apathy of the Christian secular powers that his efforts failed. He was also a deeply religious man in the devotional sense, with a particular reverence for the cult of the Virgin, and in this he differed from his son. While Lucrezia was conventionally pious in her religious observances and became increasingly so later in life, Cesare never seems even to have paid lip-service to religion, nor did he, as so many of his contemporaries did, buy remission for his sins by lavish endowments of religious foundations. Whether he was an atheist, as Leonardo da Vinci was, is impossible to know. It is more likely that he never troubled himself over the question of the existence of God. Fortune was his deity, and he relied on his own talents to make his way in the world; God, as far as he was concerned, did not enter into it. He differed also from his father in an obsession with privacy that bordered on mania, rarely leaving his apartments, and when he did so going abroad masked or in disguise; veiling his movements in mystery, planning his moves, receiving spies and informants away from the prying eyes of inquisitive ambassadors.
There are signs that the eccentricity of his ways irritated his father, who liked to contrast Lucrezia’s easy accessibility with Cesare’s elusiveness. ‘When the Pope discovered’, wrote Saraceni, ‘that we had so far been unable to secure an audience with the illustrious Duke, he showed great annoyance, declaring that it was a mistake which could only injure His Majesty, and he added that the ambassadors of Rimini had been here two months without succeeding in speaking with him, as he was in the habit of turning day into night and night into day. He severely criticized his son’s mode of living.’ Whereas Lucrezia, Saraceni continued, ‘was always gracious and granted audiences readily, and whenever there was need she knew how to cajole … he also said that Her Majesty always knew how to carry her point – even with himself.’ Although it is unwise to accept Alexander’s words at their face value, it is feasible to conjecture that there was a certain friction between him and his son. However well the two may have worked together, and however proud Alexander was of his son’s successes, the presence of two such strong personalities living side by side for a prolonged period cannot have made
for any easy relationship. It is not unnatural that Alexander, accustomed to dominate those around him, and his family in particular, should have been resentful of his son’s independence, secretiveness and eccentric way of life. Lucrezia had always been his favourite and, with brief exceptions, pliable to his will, while Cesare, with a growing sense of his own power, was becoming increasingly difficult to manage.
While Cesare shunned the limelight, and his father openly enjoyed it, they were soon made aware of the light in which others saw them. In mid-November one of the most-bitterly anti-Borgia documents ever drafted came into the hands of the Pope. It was written in the form of a letter addressed to Silvio Savelli, a Roman nobleman allied to the Colonnas, whose lands had been seized with theirs, and purported to have been sent from the camp of Gonsalvo de Cordoba at Taranto, probably by a member or partisan of the Colonna family. After congratulating Savelli, who had taken refuge at the court of Maximilian, on having escaped ‘the fury and rage of these brigands’, the letter went on to accuse the Borgias of being worse than the Scythians, more perfidious than the Carthaginians, and surpassing in cruelty both Caligula and Nero. It included every charge hitherto levelled against them: murder, specificially of Bisceglie and Perotto, robbery and incest, adding the tales of the chestnut supper and the rutting stallions for good measure. Cesare in particular was attacked for having used crusade funds to finance his unjustified Romagna conquests, while the anonymous writer accused him of further aggressive intentions against Urbino and Camerino. The terms in which it referred to Alexander and Cesare are typical of the letter’s tone:
His father favours him [Cesare] because he has his own perversity, his own cruelty; it is difficult to say which of these two is the most execrable. The cardinals see all and keep quiet and flatter and admire the Pope. But all fear him and above all fear his fratricide son, who from being a cardinal has made himself into an assassin. He lives like the Turks, surrounded by a flock of prostitutes, guarded by armed soldiers. At his order or decree men are killed, wounded, thrown into the Tiber, poisoned, despoiled of all their possessions …
It was typical of Alexander that when he read this diatribe he laughed; when the addressee, Silvio Savelli, came to Rome a year later, he received him with the utmost amiability. In his long years as Cardinal he had become inured to public criticism, which the Romans were wont to express in biting and often obscene satires and epigrams, frequently pinned to the famous statue of Pasquino. Cesare’s opinion of the Savelli Letter is not recorded, but his normal reaction to insult was swift and cruel. In the first week of December shortly after the publication of the letter, a man who had been going about the Borgo masked uttering scurrilous language against il Valentino was arrested on Cesare’s orders and thrown into the Savelli prison, where his right hand and part of his tongue were cut out and exposed, with the tongue hanging from the little finger, for two days at the window of the prison. Alexander liked to contrast his son’s hard vengefulness with his own tolerance. ‘The Duke,’ he told the Ferrarese Beltrando Costabili, ‘is a good-hearted man, but he cannot tolerate insults,’ adding, in a remark that was more illustrative of his way of thinking than of his vaunted clemency: ‘I could easily have had the Vice-Chancellor [Ascanio Sforza] and Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere killed; but I did not wish to harm anyone …’
There was perhaps another reason why Alexander refused to take the outrageous charges penned in the Savelli Letter seriously: he had heard them all before. The letter’s accusations, even the language in which they were formulated, bear a close resemblance to Capello’s Relazione of the previous year, recorded by Sanuto, and it is not improbable that the document was concocted as a deliberate piece of anti-Borgia propaganda in Venice. Venice, secretly inimical to the Borgias, gave political asylum to most of the princely refugees dispossessed by Cesare, including Pandolfo Malatesta and Giovanni Sforza. With the Colonnas, the Savellis and the Gaetanis already added to the list of those injured by the Borgias, it is not surprising that they should have wished to blacken Alexander and Cesare in the eyes of the world by drawing up the most sensational indictment possible. As such, the Savelli Letter was successful; its charges against the Borgias not only appeared in contemporary chronicles but were taken up and repeated by historians over the centuries, giving them the currency of truth.
In view of the nature of the scandalous rumours emanating from Rome in mid-winter of 1501, the Ferrarese envoys – who, it may be noted, had mentioned neither the story of the chestnuts nor that of the mares in their dispatches at the time – felt it necessary to reassure Ercole d’Este as to the character of his prospective daughter-in-law:
Lucrezia is a most intelligent and lovely, also exceedingly gracious lady. Besides being extremely graceful in every way, she is modest and lovable and decorous. Moreover she is a devout and god-fearing Christian. Tomorrow she is going to confession, and during Christmas week she will receive communion. She is very beautiful, but her charm of manner is still more striking. In short, her character is such that it is impossible to suspect anything ‘sinister’ of her …
In fact Ercole, reluctant to take the final step into the Borgias’ arms, had been deliberately delaying the wedding; he postponed the departure of the bridegroom’s procession from Ferrara, pleading the onset of winter, and demanded the cession of the castles of Cento and Pieve as guarantees for the payment of the dowry. Alexander told the Ferrarese envoys in a rage that their master was ‘behaving like a tradesman’, but the matter was finally settled at the end of November by Cesare, who allowed the Ferrarese temporary possession of his own castles of Rossi, Solarolo and Granarolo instead. On 7 December, in the teeth of winter, the procession finally left Ferrara.
In Rome the Borgias were determined to impress the aristocratic Estes. The most extravagant preparations were made for their reception; while Cesare spent with his usual prodigality, even the careful Alexander opened his purse-strings unstintingly to do honour to his beloved daughter. The bourgeois Pepi was shocked by the lavishness of the expenditure: ‘The things that are ordered here for these festivities are unheard of; and for a minor feast the shoes of the Duke’s staff-bearers are made of gold brocade, and the same for the Pope’s grooms: and he and the Duke vie with each other in producing the most magnificent, the latest, and the most expensive things …’ When Cesare rode to meet the Ferrarese procession headed by Alfonso d’Este’s brothers, Ferrante, Sigismodo and Ippolito, on their entry into Rome on 23 December, he made an impressive show not only of luxury but of armed power. Two thousand cavalry and infantry marched before him, the same number behind, all superbly equipped and wearing his personal livery. Cesare’s own dress is not recorded – perhaps he wore simple black – but his horse made a glittering impression, an echo of the entry into Chinon: ‘The Duke rode a most beautiful strong horse, so fine that it seemed to have wings … and its trappings were estimated at 10,000 ducats because one could see nothing but gold, pearls and other jewels …’
After a welcoming ceremony with the customary orations, which lasted two hours, the huge procession, swollen by the retinues of the cardinals, ambassadors and city officials, wound its way in the failing light of a winter afternoon through the streets of the city. At the bridge of Sant’Angelo leading to the Vatican so many bombards were fired from the castle that the noise deafened everyone, and the horses were so frightened they could hardly be persuaded to cross the bridge. At the Vatican Alexander greeted the Este brothers with effusive delight; Cesare then led them across the piazza of St Peter’s to meet his sister. With the true Borgia instinct for showmanship, Lucrezia greeted them at the entrance to the palace, leaning on the arm of an elderly cavalier dressed in black, whose age and dark costume enhanced her own youthful beauty and shimmering white dress. Her golden hair, of which she was extremely proud, shone under a gossamer net of green gauze, held in place by a fine gold band and two rows of pearls encircling her forehead. The Estes were charmed by their new sister-in-law, who offered them ‘a beautiful collat
ion, and many presents’.
Cesare emerged from his seclusion to celebrate his sister’s wedding in a bout of feverish pleasure. Carnival that year was ordered to begin the day after Christmas, and he and the young Ferrarese roamed masked in the city streets where, Isabella Gonzaga’s agent II Prete reported, ‘one sees nothing but courtesans wearing masks’. The rich courtesans, splendidly equipped at their lovers’ expense, often dressed as boys and rode about Rome throwing gilded eggs filled with rose water at passers-by, and indulging in every kind of escapade until the twenty-fourth hour, when by law they were forbidden the streets. When the courtesans retired, Cesare and the Estes attended a ball at Lucrezia’s palace. II Prete, who had been dispatched to Rome by Isabella with special instructions to report every detail of her sister-in-law’s dress, described the scene:
A nobleman from Valencia and a lady of the court, Niccola, led the dance. They were followed by Don Ferrante [d’Este] and Madonna [Lucrezia], who danced with extreme grace and animation. She wore a camorra of black velvet, with gold borders and black sleeves; the cuffs tight, the sleeves slashed at the shoulders. Her breast was covered up to the neck with a veil of gold thread. About her neck she wore a string of pearls, and on her head a green net and a chain of rubies. She had an overskirt of black velvet trimmed with fur, coloured and very beautiful. Two or three of her women are very pretty … one, Angela, is charming. Without telling her, I picked her out as my favourite …
Cesare Borgia Page 21
