The Borgias

by G. J. Meyer

  At this point the story rises to tragedy and descends into farce. The head of a Franciscan monastery in Florence, fed up with the successes and presumption of the Dominican Savonarola, challenged him to a trial by fire—a test in which the two of them would be simultaneously burned at the stake, and God would be given the opportunity to intervene and save the life of whichever he favored. The Franciscan was obviously calling Savonarola’s bluff; he was said to be prepared for both of them to perish if his challenge was accepted, and to believe that his sacrifice would be worthwhile if it delivered the people of Florence from the grip of a lunatic.

  Savonarola disappointed his adherents by not accepting. He then amused the cynics by allowing one of his associates to accept in his place, making it impossible to believe that he had refused on principle and difficult not to wonder if he might be a coward and a fraud. From Rome, Alexander and the College of Cardinals condemned the whole affair as barbaric and superstitious, but it went ahead anyway. When on April 7 thousands of people gathered in Florence’s great central piazza to witness what they hoped would be an immolation and perhaps a miracle as well, they found themselves having to listen to a tedious and interminable address in which Savonarola laid down conditions that he insisted must be fulfilled before the ordeal could proceed. He demanded that his surrogate, for example, be allowed to hold in his hands a consecrated communion host. When at length the flames were lit, a spring shower arrived to put them out. That ended it. The dampened crowd dispersed in a mood of surly dissatisfaction. Savonarola returned to his friary with his credibility in tatters.

  He was so diminished a figure that Pope Alexander found it possible to leave his fate to the signoria in Florence, thereby sparing himself no end of trouble. Three trials ensued, in the course of which the friar was physically tortured and confessed himself guilty of a list of offenses that filled forty-two pages. A number of his most impressive prophecies, he said, had been based on information that his fellow Dominicans acquired in hearing confessions. On one occasion, he said, he had arranged for his prediction of attempted murder to be fulfilled by having a dish of poisoned lampreys fed to a cat (which promptly died) instead of to the man he had identified as the intended victim. Being the fruits of torture, these tales should have been given no weight, but they destroyed what remained of Savonarola’s reputation all the same. He and his two closest associates were condemned to death by hanging. They died with dignity, and in his final hour Savonarola denied everything that he had earlier confessed. Afterward his body was burned, the charred remains thrown into the River Arno to prevent the collection of relics. His removal had no impact on Florentine policy, which remained openly friendly to France.

  Cesare, meanwhile, was moving to center stage in Rome. This was happening in part as a result of his own actions, starting with his role in the dissolution of Lucrezia’s marriage. Just why he was so determined to break the link that Pope Alexander had forged between the Borgias and the Sforzas is not clear—though the marriage had lost its political value, it was not a serious liability—and of Lucrezia’s attitude nothing at all is known. In spite of Cesare’s willingness to use his sister for his own ends it is impossible to doubt that the two were genuinely close, as we shall see repeatedly. Though there is no evidence that he was doing as Lucrezia wished in ridding her of her husband, there is also no evidence that he was ignoring or overriding her wishes. He certainly shared his late brother’s dislike for their brother-in-law, apparently a glum and passive figure with no appetite for the kinds of escapades in which the young Borgias were constantly involved, and it was his failure to conceal his antipathy that had provoked Sforza’s flight in disguise from Rome. Possibly Cesare regarded him, though he was a count and ruler of the handsome and prosperous seaside city of Pesaro, as unworthy of the beautiful Lucrezia. What mattered most, however, was Cesare’s growing awareness, as his ambition expanded in daring new directions, of just how useful his sister would be if she could be returned to the market as a virginal prospective bride.

  This was proving to be difficult, however, because of Sforza’s refusal to cooperate. He could not be induced to confess to impotence, the grounds on which an annulment of the marriage was being sought, or to give up either Lucrezia or her dowry of thirty thousand florins. He was acutely aware that, as lord of a papal fief, he would be vastly more secure if he could restore good relations with the pope’s family, but in the absence of a way of making that happen he could only keep himself walled up inside his great moated rocca at Pesaro. The pressure, however, mounted steadily. Even the head of the Sforza family, Ludovico il Moro of Milan, declined to side with him, sensibly regarding a cousin’s marital difficulties as not worth a showdown with Rome. At last, having been promised that he could keep the dowry, Giovanni signed an admission that his marriage had never been consummated. Later he would write to Il Moro complaining that he had been coerced into doing so. The truth of the matter is anyone’s guess. On one hand, it is surely significant that in a later marriage Sforza would sire two children. On the other hand, it is at least curious that this was the only one of Lucrezia’s marriages that did not result in her rather quickly becoming pregnant.

  In any case things worked out well enough from Cesare’s perspective. In December 1497 Lucrezia was summoned to the Vatican to hear the nullification of her marriage pronounced—to hear it declared that she had never been married, was at eighteen still virga intacta, and so remained entirely worthy of whatever lofty union the pope and her brother might be able to arrange for her. But suddenly new problems loomed—rumors that threatened to plunge her into irreversible disgrace. The gossips of Rome were saying that, in appearing at the Vatican, Lucrezia had been dressed in such a way as to conceal pregnancy. That her pregnancy was the result of a love affair with a young Spaniard named Pedro Calderón, a Vatican chamberlain. And that the two had become involved when Calderón (also referred to in various accounts as Pedro Caldes, and as Perotto or Pierotto) was employed as Pope Alexander’s courier, carrying messages to and from Lucrezia when she was living at the convent of San Sisto.

  What makes this episode impossible to dismiss out of hand is the macabre fact that in February 1498, two months after the annulment, Calderón’s decomposing body, bound hand and foot, was pulled out of the Tiber. In the most colorful account of what had been going on, found in a report by the Venetian ambassador, Calderón had not been drowned but stabbed to death. By none other than Cardinal Cesare Borgia personally. After fleeing in terror to Pope Alexander, who was spattered with blood when the furious Cesare ran Calderón through with his sword. It is not easy to know what to make of this, and the varying opinions of writers across the centuries are so contradictory that they simply compound the uncertainty. Suffice it to say here that, judged against Lucrezia’s whole life story, the pregnancy seems highly improbable, the story about how Cesare supposedly murdered her lover in the presence of the pope extremely so. (For more on this question, and on how it has been treated by historians, the reader is directed to this page.)

  The princes of Italy obviously gave little credence to the gossip, because as soon as her marriage was annulled, Alexander and Cesare had an impressive array of eager suitors to choose from. Among them were a young Orsini duke; the Riario who as Caterina Sforza’s eldest son was titular lord of Imola and Forlì; a leading member of the baronial Sanseverino clan of Naples; and a member of Naples’s royal family. There were expressions of interest from Spain as well. But the matter remained undecided when developments beyond the Alps changed the political status quo and confronted the Borgias with an entirely new set of challenges.

  What happened first was that Charles VIII of France and Ferdinand of Spain astonished all Europe by announcing, in November 1497, that they were setting aside their differences and making peace. This was done largely for financial reasons, both kingdoms being nearly insolvent after years of conflict with numerous adversaries including each other, and no one could have expected it to last long. It was significan
t all the same, and not least for the Borgias: for the first time they found themselves free to deal on friendly terms with France without appearing to betray Spain. Within limits, of course. So long as they did nothing that conflicted directly with Ferdinand’s view of his own interests, they could explore possibilities that had been closed to them through all the years when keeping the friendship of Spain required shunning France.

  But then, another and far bigger thunderbolt. Word came that Charles VIII was dead. It is appropriate that this incorrigibly foolish young monarch, still only twenty-seven and by all accounts sweet-natured and charming even when dealing face-to-face with enemies, should have perished in an odd, boyish, and distinctly unheroic way. He cracked his skull against the stone lintel of a castle doorway while playing jeu de paume—handball—and a short time later fell into a coma from which he never recovered. The ancient and royal House of Valois was at this time in the process of petering out, as one monarch after another either failed to produce heirs (who had to be male under France’s Salic law) or watched all his sons die early. Charles himself, sickly and ill formed, had not been born until his father was nearly fifty and was the only one of five brothers to live beyond infancy. Though he himself produced three legitimate sons and a daughter in the last six years of his life, not one of them survived him. Because he had no paternal uncles or male first cousins, his heir was his second cousin Louis, the same duke of Orléans who had joined him on the march to Naples and claimed to be rightful duke of Milan. Now King Louis XII, he was himself thirty-five and childless in spite of having been married for more than twenty years. He was also a seasoned and shrewd politician who had been through some hard times, including three years as a prisoner of his father-in-law King Louis XI, Charles VIII’s father. It was obvious from the start that his coronation was likely to have consequences for the Italians. He immediately reasserted his old claim to Milan as well as appropriating to himself Charles’s claim to Naples.

  While the ruling families of Milan and Naples should have been frightened and undoubtedly were, for Cesare Borgia the new situation was rich in promise. He remained enthralled by the thought of a princess he had never met, Don Fadrique of Naples’s daughter Carlotta. What he knew of her made her seem the perfect bride: eldest child of a king whose only son was still a boy; great-granddaughter of a king of France; a lady-in-waiting at the French court, where she had been sent to be brought up when her mother died not long after her birth. The man who married her could be confident of becoming one of the leading lords of Naples and of being accepted into the French royal family. And only one life, that of a very young brother-in-law, would stand between Carlotta herself and the Neapolitan crown.

  Soundings were taken in Naples, and the results were not encouraging: Don Fadrique showed no interest in marrying his daughter to Cesare. The fact that Cesare was a cardinal of the Church is itself sufficient to explain the king’s wariness, but beyond that the summer that Cesare had spent in Naples had obviously done nothing to enhance his attractiveness as a possible son-in-law. Whatever his opinion of Cesare personally, Don Fadrique probably thought that his father Ferrante and brother Alfonso II had bestowed quite enough Neapolitan riches on various Borgias, especially in connection with Sancia’s marriage to Jofrè. But with a new king of France now in the picture, and Carlotta virtually that king’s ward, Don Fadrique’s feelings would not necessarily decide the issue. If Louis could be won over, Don Fadrique might find it difficult not to go along.

  And there were ways of winning Louis over. The pope, as it happened, had the power to grant something that the French king wanted at least as much as he wanted Milan, probably even more: the annulment of his marriage. Alexander for his part, having by this time digested whatever regrets he may have felt over Cesare’s determination to abandon his clerical career, made it known to Louis that he wanted essentially nothing for himself but several big things for Cesare. He wanted Carlotta, plus a high place in the French nobility, plus sources of income commensurate with that place. Pope and king alike could see that the ingredients were in place for a thoroughly satisfactory arrangement. Soon they were well along with intricate, and secret, negotiations.

  Rather oddly, it was Cesare’s determination to make Carlotta his wife, Alexander’s acquiescence, and above all Don Fadrique’s reluctance that decided Lucrezia’s fate. The pope’s representatives in Naples reported that, whatever his doubts about Cesare, Don Fadrique was quite open to a marriage of the cardinal’s sister to his late brother Alfonso’s illegitimate son and namesake, the brother of Sancia Borgia. He was more than just open, actually; to Fadrique such a marriage seemed an opportunity, a necessary gesture of goodwill, a way of tempering his rejection of Cesare and preventing it from spoiling his relations with the papal court. Cesare for his part must have seen it as a step toward winning Carlotta, and the pope was agreeable. In preparation for a wedding young Alfonso was elevated to duke of Bisceglie, and Don Fadrique agreed to Alexander’s request that Lucrezia never be required to live in Naples so long as he remained alive. (That the aging pontiff made this request is the most poignant testimony we possess to the neediness in his attachment to Lucrezia.) A simple wedding was performed in Rome in July 1498, with a lack of pomp that was in sharp contrast to the bride’s first wedding.

  It was fortuitous, considering the cynical calculations that brought it about, that the marriage turned out to be a happy one. Bride and groom were well suited: Alfonso charming, cheerful, handsome, and almost exactly Lucrezia’s age, Lucrezia a well-bred, intelligent, beguilingly good-natured beauty. Together they settled into a life of easeful enjoyment at the center of a social set of high-born young Romans in which Alfonso’s sister Sancia, who with her husband Jofrè had been allowed to return from Squillace, also figured prominently. The House of Borgia and the House of Aragon were now connected not only through Jofrè’s and Lucrezia’s marriages but also because, back in Spain, the late Juan’s little son the third duke of Gandía was related to Ferdinand and Isabella through his mother. One more such union, of Cesare and Princess Carlotta, must have seemed an entirely realistic objective. It would require nothing more than a single repetition of an established pattern.

  What next commanded attention was Louis XII’s annulment. He had an admirable queen—she would be canonized a saint four and a half centuries after her death—but his wish to be rid of her is not hard to understand. She was Jeanne of France, so called because her father was King Louis XI; it was at his direction that she had been married to her cousin Louis duke of Orléans when both were about twelve years old. The marriage was amicable enough though childless and devoid of passion, but the unexpected death of Jeanne’s younger brother Charles VIII had not only made her husband king but given him reason to question whether the union should continue. At issue was not only Louis’s new status as a monarch without a son and heir but the equally big question of whether the great duchy of Brittany was going to remain part of France or revert to what it had been for centuries, a separate and sovereign principality.

  Brittany had become loosely and not irrevocably united with France as a result of the 1491 marriage of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany, sole living child of Brittany’s last duke. That marriage appears to have been a surprisingly happy one; the dignified, devout, and rather beautiful Anne loved her gnomish little husband despite his physical and moral deficiencies, and in spite also of his promiscuity and his practice of sharing their bedchamber with his groomsmen and hunting dogs. But when all four of their children died in infancy and then Charles met his end on a handball court, France lost its claim to Brittany, which reverted to being an independent state with Anne as its sovereign. The only way for Louis XII to recover it, and keep it out of other hands, was to marry Anne himself. Which was not possible if he already had a wife. Which is why he wanted something only the Church could grant.

  Alexander set out not only to accommodate Louis, but to do so in accordance with the letter of the law. In July 1498 he established a tri
bunal to hear the king’s case, signaling his eagerness to be helpful by appointing as one of its two leaders Archbishop Georges d’Amboise of Rouen, a trusted friend of Louis and for years his chief minister. The proceedings, however, soon turned unpleasant, a precursor of what would happen a generation later when Henry VIII of England demanded that the Church rid him of Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter Catherine of Aragon. When Louis testified that Jeanne’s deformities had made it impossible to consummate their marriage, the queen tearfully denied that this was true.

  While the commissioners continued with the tedious business of assembling evidence and hearing arguments in France and Rome, pope and king entered into a secret agreement that shows how much Louis was prepared to pay. With respect to Cesare’s matrimonial hopes, he would promise only to encourage Carlotta to consent, insisting that everything must depend, in the end, on her doing so freely. But beyond that, he promised everything the pope had asked and more: for Cesare the title duke of Valentinois; the lordship of two French counties that together would bring him twenty thousand gold ducats per annum; a royal subsidy in the same amount; command of a thousand or more mounted soldiers to be maintained at royal expense; and the lordship of Asti as soon as France won possession of Milan. These were extraordinary benefactions. And Louis capped them by offering to make Cesare a member of his hyperexclusive Order of St. Michel, a kind of French Round Table that he regarded as the highest honor within his power to bestow.