The Fall of the House of Borgia

by E R Chamberlin

  The fact that Alexander was both portly and aging had a direct effect upon the drum itself. He declined to puff his way up the long, winding passageway to the top but also disliked being carried in a litter. San Gallo therefore hewed a corridor diagonally through the drum with an access to a raised walkway outside. The new corridor passed directly through the central sepulchral chamber, and for the first time in fourteen hundred years daylight penetrated, if wanly, into the heart of the mausoleum. That apart, there was little to be done with the enormous drum, and San Gallo directed his attention mainly to the defensive fortifications ringing it, and the surface of the drum itself. The castle was an easy stroll distant from the Vatican, but if its shelter were urgently required then that quarter of a mile or so could be a lethal journey. Years earlier there had been a raised walkway running high over the roofs of the intervening houses, leading from the first floor of the Vatican to the top of the defensive outer walls of Sant' Angelo. San Gallo restored and extended the walkway so that, in an emergency, the pope could proceed in dignity and safety from palace to castle. On the river side of the castle, the defenses were extended and given a new, enormous round tower: all wanting to cross the bridge automatically came under the direct surveillance of the castle itself. Near the top of the drum, stores for oil and grain were hewn out of the stone; the architect designed them to hold at least 185 tons of grain and some 5,000 gallons of oil respectively— rations enough to last the garrison at least three years. Adjoining the stores was a row of windowless cells. Some had already witnessed the despair of entombed prisoners for perhaps a thousand years but others were newly adapted cells. One of the big triangular air vents which penetrated the surface of the drum to ventilate the winding passage below was made use of by San Gallo. The bottom was sealed off, creating a peculiarly horrible kind of oubliette into which a prisoner was lowered by rope. Ben- venuto Cellini came to know this particular cell; at least it was dry, a marked improvement over another which that connoisseur of prison cells also experienced in Sant' Angelo. This was "a gloomy dungeon below the level of a garden which swam with water and was full of spiders and many venomous worms. They flung me a wretched mattress of coarse hemp, gave me no supper and locked four doors upon me. In three days that rotten mattress soaked up water like a sponge. I could hardly stir because of my broken leg and when I had to get out of bed to answer a call of nature I crawled on all fours with extreme distress in order not to foul the place I slept in. For one hour and a half each day I got a little glimmering of light which penetrated that unhappy cavern through a very narrow aperture. Only for so short a space of time could I read, the rest of the day and night I abode in darkness." 27 He survived largely because "my vigorous temperament became adapted to that purgatory." Others were not so vigorous or fortunate, but the Tiber ran conveniently close to dispose of the remains of those, the majority, for whom imprisonment in Sant' Angelo was simply a long-drawn-out death sentence.

  But the fortifications, the walkway, the stores, the cells were only the expression of the military aspect of Sant' Angelo; almost incredibly San Gallo managed to turn part of this forbidding monument into an attractive, elegant residence. On the riverfront of the castle he created a roof garden which became one of Alexander's favorite spots. Eventually the garden disappeared, for it made a vulnerable point in the otherwise sheer front of the castle, but the low halls that San Gallo built on the surface of the drum remained to form a nucleus for what was to become a city in the sky. The great central tower remained but the chambers within it were turned over to the treasury and archives. The line of new buildings divided the surface of the drum into two semi-circular courtyards, the whole forming probably the safest residence in Europe. Once a visitor had penetrated the lower defenses and made his way up the ramp, he passed a final guardroom on entering the first of the two courtyards. The main mass of new buildings rose to the left, and here Alexander held court during visits. Surrounding the top of the drum was a wall, high enough to ward off arrows of the ill-disposed, low enough to provide a superb panorama during peace. Here Alexander loved to walk, cool above the choking heat of the city, secure among a handpicked garrison, attended by his beloved family. From this vantage point the vast, forbidding drum of stone below seemed a natural feature supporting an independent community—an intimate, self-contained little city tucked under the broad iron wings of its protecting archangel. In 1497 lightning struck the angel with an effect like a bomb burst, destroying most of the buildings beneath it. Alexander ordered their immediate reconstruction, and in one of them Pinturicchio painted the authentic portraits of the Borgia children. Later, these rooms were demoted, becoming simply the guard commander's apartments, and the murals, the only certain representation of the most notorious family of Renaissance Rome, disappeared.

  The court over which Alexander presided was not the largest in Europe. The king of France, for one, would have regarded life as insupportable unless his most trivial needs and wishes were the sole responsibility of some nobleman proud to bear a menial's title, so long as it gained him proximity to the royal person. But the papal Curia was undoubtedly the oldest court. For more than a millennium it had evolved an extraordinary complex of rituals and offices on a purely ad hoc basis, creating a jungle of etiquette only the adept could penetrate. Alexander's guide through the jungle—where a false step could embroil the papacy in deep embarrassment—was the German master of ceremonies, Johannes Burchard, whom he had inherited from his predecessor. Alexander was fortunate, for Burchard was as competent as he was unlikeable. Never would Burchard make the mistake of offending some powerful ambassador or encouraging an unimportant man by some error in precedence. Posterity was perhaps even more fortunate because Burchard kept a voluminous diary and it is through this diary that the Borgia can be seen as human beings going about their daily affairs, not the incredible monsters of propaganda delivering the world to Satan. Yet even as Pinturicchio's painstaking murals unwittingly created a mystery around the Borgia, so Burchard's pedantic diary added another enigmatic dimension. Unlike the painter's, however, his motives were deliberate.

  The little of Burchard's own personality that emerges from his pages is remarkably unattractive. He was a courtier in the fullest, pejorative sense, permanently on the lookout for his own advantage, as avid for four ducats as for four hundred, capable of launching a complicated scheme to blacken a rival's character. A man who could not merely retain, but increase, his power under three such different popes as Innocent, Alexander and Julius must certainly have been an operator of rare skill. Nevertheless, in Bur- chard's work and the diary that made it possible, he displays impressive professional integrity.

  His reason for keeping the diary is succinct. "Seeing that it behoves a master of ceremonies to pay heed to individuals I, Johannes Burchard, Master of Ceremonies to His Holiness our lord the pope, will note below the things which happened in my time which appeared to be connected with ceremonies together with at least some external affairs, so that I may the more readily give account of the office entrusted to me." 28 He was obsessed by detail, for not only were the complex rituals of the Roman rite his responsibility, but also the ceremonies of a most ancient court which was, above all, bound by precedent and custom. He records more than once how visiting ambassadors would come to the verge of blows even in the chapel on a question of precedence. At even minor ceremonials Burchard would record exactly what the pope wore for future reference in order that continuity might be maintained.

  Despite the impression Burchard gives of being simply a recorder, he in fact seems to have enjoyed considerable influence in the Curia. At a meeting of Congregation during the reign of Innocent VIII a discussion arose as to the correct ceremony for the reception of the holy lance, the priceless relic which Sultan Bajacet had sent the pope. It was decided that a public fast would be an appropriate gesture, until Burchard pointed out that if the Romans were given a fast instead of the feast they were expecting there would be trouble. He behaved imperiously with
equals, and even superiors, in the performance of his duties. "The bishop of Glasgow had a tunic of faded crimson under his cape, which was most unsuitable. I therefore advised him not to appear in public with it again." During an argument with a cardinal over a question of ritual, Burchard proved himself right by citing precedent. "So saying, I dismissed the cardinal." It is difficult to imagine any other court official dismissing a prince of the Church.

  Burchard's decision to keep a journal was personal; no one in his position had ever troubled to do so before, and it was long before it became a formal part of the office of clerk of the ceremonies. Nevertheless, he appears to have expected it to be read by eyes other than his own and went to considerable lengths either to substantiate his statements or give their provenance when he was writing from hearsay or long after the described event. After noting the appointment of Robert Sanseverino as gonfalonier he added, "I should say that the above account of the creation of the gonfaloniere was noted down or rewritten by me long after it occurred, from a memorandum made by me for it long before." Elsewhere he notes on another matter, "I do not report the proceedings in greater detail because I was not present, but I have understood from others that it was as I have described." The painstaking search for accuracy and precision was undoubtedly merely the self- protective device of a bureaucrat, but the result was the creation of a record virtually unique in Renaissance Rome. Compared with the lush fantasies of his contemporary, Infessura, or the more sober but still imaginative despatches of ambassadors seeking to glean information to justify their expensive presence in Rome, the diary of Johannes Burchard achieves almost actuarial status.

  The first section of the journal, that dealing with the eight-year pontificate of Innocent VIII, is devoted almost entirely to ceremonial—tens of thousands of words exclusively concerned with the problems of who should sit where, precede whom, wear what. It is therefore understandable why references to the Borgia family should be sparse in this section, despite the fact that Rome was becoming very much aware of them. But with Alexander's pontificate, the nature of the diary changes totally. Naturally, ceremonial still occupied a very large part but, following his plan to give information concerning external affairs as they affected the Vatican, Burchard produced an astonishing number of vivid sketches of both persons and events. He still acted as recorder, giving little or no indication of his personal opinion of any particular affair, but the reader is able to follow the twists and turns of policy in terms of human personality, gaining an unusually clear idea of the motives of those concerned. Except those of the Borgia family.

  Burchard's reticence arose from no sense of delicacy, for he gives not the slightest indication of surprise or disapproval that the Holy Father of Christendom should also be the earthly father of a flourishing family of bastards. Burchard had, after all, been hardened in the previous pontificate. His main problem with the Borgia was how to integrate the mistress, daughter and daughter-in-law of the pope into ancient ceremonials intended exclusively for males. Breach of tradition alone could shock him and produce a disapproving note. He remarked the occasion when Giulia Farnese, Lucrezia, and her sister-in-law Sancia, bored by a lengthy sermon, scrambled out of their seats and parodied the speaker, much to Alexander's delight and Burchard's shocked dismay. Efficiently and without protest he organized Lucrezia's wedding in the Vatican, for a precedent had been established in the previous reign when he had planned the wedding of Innocent's granddaughter in the same place. Burchard did note, however, that the girls in Lucrezia's train, overcome by excitement, did not genuflect to the pope. That solecism was grimly noted to ensure that such a breach of the proprieties should never occur again, nor did they when Lucrezia was married for the second time in the same place.

  It was not the existence of the Borgia children which restrained his pen, nor does he appear to have feared repercussions from using blunt words. Quite casually he could refer to Giulia Farnese as "the pope's concubine" although, in general, he employed colorless terms. But later in the reign, when Cesare's influence grew paramount, Burchard became correspondingly tight-lipped. When Cardinal Orsini died in prison in 1503, almost certainly at the behest of Cesare, Burchard noted, "Our Holy Father commanded Bernard Gutteri, my colleague, to arrange the funeral. I myself will not attend the ceremony nor have anything to do with it, as I do not wish to learn aught that does not concern me."29 Nevertheless, his very act in recording his decision to keep his hands clean argues forcefully that he had good reason to do so, giving substance to the specific accusations of other, overtly hostile, writers. None knew better than he that the Vatican and, hence, Italy, revolved around the Borgia family. In accordance with his own intention he should have left a record of them fuller than the bare accounts of their presence in certain places at certain times. He did not do so. What he did was to outline a series of portraits and then leave it to other hands to paint in the details with increasingly lurid colors. Johannes Burchard, master of ceremonies to three popes, had brought the art of survival to a very high level indeed.

  5 The Dynast

  In the spring of 1493 Ferrante, king of Naples, unburdened himself to his kinsman Ferdinand, king of Spain.

  This pope leads a life that is the abomination of all, without respect for the seat he occupies. He cares for nothing save to aggrandize his children by fair means or foul, and this is his sole desire. From the beginning of his pontificate he has done nothing but disturb the peace. Rome is more full of soldiers than of priests and when he goes abroad it is with troops of men-at-arms about him, all his thoughts being given to war and to our hurt. ... In all things he proceeds with the fraud and dissimulation natural to him, and to make money he sells even the smallest office and preferment.30

  No one reading that letter could have guessed that just six weeks earlier, Ferrante had been eagerly trying

  to arrange a marriage between his own children and those of the abominable pope, nor that in a year's time he would succeed in doing exactly that. The letter was pure propaganda, produced by his uneasy awareness of the close relationship between Alexander and Their Catholic Majesties of Spain, who still looked upon Ferrante as a usurper in Naples. In Italy the hard-won balance of forces was on the point of destruction, and a sensible man like Ferrante had long since learned to get in the first blow. But like all good propaganda, the letter had its basis in fact and Ferrante at least had the honor of being the first to voice that accusation which was to be the leitmotif of Alexander's enemies: "He cares for nothing save to aggrandize his children."

  That was true enough as the world saw it. Certainly the most conspicuous feature of his pontificate, and one which gave the impression of a fixed and constant purpose, was that aggrandizement of his children. But Alexander VI was essentially a man of moods and emotions, ever swinging from one extreme to the other. At the beginning of his reign he gave the impression of one who desired to put the past behind him, to discharge as well as he could the awesome responsibilities of the role which he had grasped so eagerly. No matter that society, and Roman society in particular, accepted the existence of his children as something unworthy of note. The fact remained that their existence was a standing reproach to a man in his situation. With rather remarkable self-discipline, this man who loved his children above all other human beings deliberately excluded them from his coronation festivities. The most outstanding testimony to that desire for a new start was the fact that his eldest son, Cesare, was not even officially summoned to Rome.

  Cesare was not quite eighteen years old when his father became pope. Apart from a few brief visits home, he had been absent from Rome for the past four years on that wandering course of studies prescribed for a young man of good family. At the age of fourteen he went to Perugia to study canon law at the famous Sapienza. He had no particular interest in the subject. His father intended him for the Church, and canon law was therefore an inescapable study. Nevertheless, even in this unattractive field he acquitted himself brilliantly, displaying at this very early age h
is ability to grasp the essentials of a situation and present it with logic and eloquence. His tutor and all the fellow students in his call were Spaniards, and among them he made the first of those friends and allies who were to remain with him, in a curiously strong attachment, throughout his brief, fantastic career. From Perugia he went to the university at Pisa and it was there, at about midnight on August 11, 1492, that a courier arrived from Rome with the news that his father had been elected pope. Cesare left Pisa a few days afterward and took the road south. Doubtless he went on to Rome, but quietly, discreetly—a private citizen whose presence in the city went unnoticed. Immediately after the coronation he moved on to Spoleto, the beautiful little hill city which was papal territory, and there he remained until March of the following year when, officially, he entered Rome and took up residence at his father's side.

  By this time, Alexander's brief-lived desire for respectability had waned and died, and as rapidly the Romans began to revise their original optimistic forecast for his reign. The usual swarm of kinsmen and compatriots had flocked into Rome on news of the election; and though Alexander refused to let his love of kin affect his judgments as statesman, and appointed only competent men to high office, there was evidence enough to justify the old hatred and fear of the Catalan. "Ten papacies would not be sufficient to satisfy this swarm of relatives," the Ferrarese ambassador wrote to his master as the outlandish Spanish names reappeared in the Apostolic registers. And if the Spanish pope was generous to men whose only claim on him was their common birthplace, how much more generous should he be to those who were of his own flesh? The children of Alexander's first family were already provided for: Pedro was dead and the two girls decently married off. It was the turn now of the children of the second family, and Cesare was the first to receive the full fruits, although they were fruits that tasted bitter in his mouth for they were not of his choosing or desire. On the first anniversary of his coronation, Alexander made his son a cardinal of Holy Church.