Lucrezia Borgia

by Sarah Bradford

  Alfonso finally found an opportunity of presenting Giovanni to the King in the presence of M. de la Trémouïlle and the Gran Scudero, when he was ‘seen and accepted’, Bonaventura Pistofilo reported to Lucrezia on 23 December, but since the King was in such company he (Alfonso) could not present him with Lucrezia’s letter of recommendation. Giovanni told Pistofilo that he wanted to send the letter to the Queen and Madama (instead of waiting to present it in person) whereupon Pistofilo reminded him that they could make him great and hold him dear. Borgia replied that he was ready to do any service but complained that they were too cold. ‘For my part,’ the harassed Pistofilo reported, ‘I reminded this Don Giovanni of that which seemed to me to be of profit to him.’ Eventually Giovanni succeeded in showing Lucrezia’s letter to the King and Madama, ‘by whom he is seen and welcomed very amiably when he attends them every day’, but Pistofilo had to report that nothing had yet been decided about his service and Borgia was running short of money. By 21 January he was also running out of hope: ‘The great promises made to Your Ladyship for the Lord Don Giovanni, seem to me to be very coldly executed, and I doubt that he will wish to stay here longer at his own expense. It pains me to have to write to Your Ladyship things that will be grievous, but . . . I feel I must because Your Ladyship should know everything.’ Giovanni was to remain behind when the Ferrarese party left, with Alfonso’s commendation to Madama and M. de Gramont (Gabriel, Cardinal-Bishop of Tarbes), but whether the tiresome and demanding young man ever received anything from them is not recorded. Lucrezia for her part thanked Alfonso warmly for all the care and favour he had shown Giovanni Borgia, ‘that brother of mine’.

  Alfonso’s departure from Paris was delayed; the English ambassadors did not leave until 15 January but still he could not depart as Madama and the Gran Scudero were both ill and the King had left with his court for Saint-Germain to hunt stag. The Duke was therefore forced to wait until his return for a chance to talk about his affairs. He had written letters of thanks to the King and Cardinal (Thomas Wolsey) of England which the King had had read out in the English tongue, ‘vulgar inglese’, to all the lords and gentlemen attending him. The King had said many ‘amiable and honourable words about the Lord Duke and Your Illustrious Ladyship, as I will demonstrate when I return to Ferrara,’ Pistofilo reported. The papal legate had told him how much he wished to see Lucrezia if he could obtain licence from the Pope to pass by Ferrara. Meanwhile, Alfonso, with the leisure to go shopping, bought some civet cats which, Pistofilo wrote, ‘have become very tame, so that His Excellency unleashes them and they allow themselves to be treated like dogs, they are young and beautiful, the male particularly so. Messer Poteghino has bought a little pony [‘ubinetto’] for Ercole but it might be better for Francesco because it is very small.’

  Alfonso finally left Paris on 24 January; on the eve of his departure he had dined privately with M. de Gramont and the Admiral (Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, admiral of France) together at his lodging. ‘They told him the best things in the world’, and when he left de Gramont presented him with the gift of a mule richly harnessed. For all the fine words, however, the mule seems to have been all that Alfonso actually received.

  According to Pistofilo, the Duke was longing above everyone else to return to Ferrara. When Lucrezia heard the news she immediately wrote to Alfonso that ‘any remnants of sorrow’ for her mother’s death in her heart had been effaced by her ‘great joy and immense consolation at the news of your much desired swift return and the continuing good hope you give me of your affairs for which I thank the Lord God and await with high desire to hear from you personally of many other things which are too lengthy to write down . . .’ Ippolito and Francesco were well, she told him, although Francesco had lost a little weight. ‘I as usual listen to the readings of Galeazzo Boschetto with Ercole, who is very well.’

  Alfonso arrived home on 20 February, having passed by Mantua. He went straight to see Lucrezia.

  17. The End

  ‘Having suffered greatly for more than two months because of a difficult pregnancy; as it has pleased God on the 14th of this month at dawn I had a daughter: and I hoped that having given birth my illness also must be alleviated: but the contrary happened: so that I must yield to nature: Our most clement Creator has given me so many gifts, that I recognize the end of my life and feel that within a few hours I shall be out of it . . .’

  – Lucrezia to Pope Leo X, dictated on her deathbed, 22 June 1519

  Alfonso celebrated his arrival home by proclaiming that carnival should be celebrated with masking and tilting at the quintain. He saw his sons – Ippolito had what may have been measles or chicken pox (varoli doppio) and Ercole had a fever which was thought to be the beginning of the same illness. Francesco, however, was described by di Prosperi as in fine health ‘and handsome and fresh as a rose, a very sweet little lord’. The elder boys soon recovered and took part in the carnival masking and tilted at the quintain but there were soon rumours that Lucrezia was pregnant, and indeed, said di Prosperi, these days she had appeared very troubled. Alfonso, therefore, had begun again to give audiences and to take the Examine: ‘after which he retires with a few people he likes’. He had issued new orders for his camerini that no one should enter without permission except his pages and men of his chamber. I

  On 24 March, Francesco Gonzaga died of the syphilis which had stalked him for years. Lucrezia had kept up her regular and affectionate correspondence with him almost to the end. She had written all through the previous winter and they had exchanged international news, including the death of the Emperor Maximilian and speculation as to his succession. Francesco had sent her the latest news from Germany which he received from his agent there; she had written to him separately from Isabella of Alfonso’s doings at the French court and of the Anglo-French negotiations. While expressing great affection for Francesco, she did not hesitate to tell him how much she was longing for Alfonso’s arrival. And, beyond politics, there was religion, or rather superstition. On 24 January she had written to him in the most pious language congratulating him on the miraculous apparition of a dead nun in Mantua who had been seen to take the arm of a living nun, Sister Stephana: ‘From this we must draw the conclusion that Our Lord God does not rest for the sins of our age to demonstrate his power, so that, moved by such a stupendous occurrence, we are disposed to have recourse to his mercy. And surely Your Lordship must rejoice that this should happen in your city, because where such cases occur, [people] are always turned to greater penitence, which alone can placate the wrath of God. And so I congratulate you . . .’

  It is ironic that these two, one certainly committed to sins of the flesh, the other the daughter of the carnal Alexander and sister of the amoral Cesare, should have turned towards God in their later years. The reforming spirit expressed by Savonarola, the Ferrarese friar who had been the confidant of Duke Ercole and was executed at the stake in the reign of Alexander VI, had risen again under the stress of war and plague, for which the simple explanation was God’s anger at ‘the sins of our age’. Just over a year earlier, on 1 November 1517, Martin Luther had committed the act which let loose the Reformation when he nailed to the door of the church at Wittenberg the copy of his ninety—five theses against the buying, selling and offering of indulgences, which he saw as the flagrant ecclesiastical abuse of the time. No one yet foresaw the outcome of this act, least of all the current pope, Leo, who confined himself to ordering the head of Luther’s monastic order, the Augustinian Eremites, to keep his monks quiet. Lucrezia herself saw nothing wrong in this ancient practice (nor did most of her contemporaries who eagerly abused the system: greedy Isabella d’Este was wont to seek indulgence or dispensation in order to eat cheese on meatless days).

  Lucrezia’s last surviving letter to Francesco, dated 19 March 1519, was loving with a note of valediction when she wrote thanking him for forwarding letters from Barcelona concerning ‘Signor Hercule’s’ Spanish mission. The diligence he had shown in sendin
g them expressly by the posts had once more shown her ‘how you love me with [all] your heart, which although you have made this clear to me many times, still it pleases me on every occasion [whenever it happens] to realize it once again . . .’

  After Francesco died, she sent a handwritten letter of condolence to Isabella to be taken to Mantua by messenger. She was too ill to go herself to offer her condolences, as Alfonso would – she was suffering another difficult pregnancy – yet her handwriting was still strong. It was hard to write an appropriate letter to the wife of a former lover, and she resorted to pious exhortation, begging Isabella to take this sorrow from the hand of God with her accustomed prudence, hoping that in his mercy some great good would come of it.2 She also sent an official letter dated the same day, and wrote in her own hand to Francesco’s son and successor, Federico, a rather more affectionate and personal letter than she had addressed to his mother, expressing her affection for him and wishing him ‘every good and happiness’ in his new estate.3 One of the last letters she was to write would be to her delightful nephew, via a messenger, on 8 June 1519.

  Lucrezia felt very unwell; the death of Francesco had unnerved her, as indeed had that of the Cardinal d’Aragona in January. On 26 April she wrote a curious letter to Alfonso, almost a premonition of her own death:

  Talking the other day to a religious person, whose name I will tell Your Lordship when I see you, they said that everyone should be warned to take good care of themselves in these two months of which they hinted that they feared some danger. Although there is no other foundation than this which I have told you and you should give it no more faith than seems good to you, nonetheless I spoke of it to Hieronymo Ziliolo and since I could not write for finding myself somewhat stupefied in the head, I asked him to write to Messer Niccolò to advise you as you will now see, it seeming to me that the person of Your Lordship is of such importance that one could not fail to consider your security not to let you know of anything, however small.

  Lucrezia was clearly anxious enough about this prognostication to take up her pen herself as soon as she felt well enough, so that there should be no misunderstanding or underestimation of the seriousness with which she herself regarded it.4

  On 10 May, di Prosperi wrote of the ‘love and concord’ which demonstrably existed between Alfonso and Lucrezia, that she was pregnant and ill, praying that she would be cured of her infirmity ‘to their contentment’. Their youngest son Francesco had almost died but was now well. On 15 June, the news was worse: ‘The Duchess continues in her difficult pregnancy and not without great danger to herself so that she is very weak and cannot eat.’ Bonaccioli counselled that it would be best if they induced or aborted the pregnancy so that she could regain her appetite and ‘purge herself of the bad material that causes her illness’. But after she had produced ‘a certain water which they say is a sign and preamble to imminent birth, they decided to go no further’. Alfonso showed great anxiety and spent a great deal of time at her side. ‘God grant her a happy birth,’ di Prosperi prayed, ‘but people doubt it principally because of her weakness and because several women here have recently died of the same cause.’

  He was unaware that, on 14 June, after an hour and a half’s labour, Lucrezia had given birth to a baby girl so weak that she would not feed till the next day. Afraid that she might die unbaptized, Alfonso had her christened straightway, naming her Isabella Maria, with Eleonora della Mirandola, Count Alexandro Serafino and El Modenese del Forno as her godparents. Lucrezia had a little fever but it was hoped that she would soon be well. But by 20 June she was in a dangerous state and her doctors feared for her life, the more so since she had not been purged of the ‘bad material’ – believed to have been the accumulation of menstrual blood during pregnancy – and she was very weak. On the previous two nights she had had fits and the doctors prepared to bleed her. They cut off her hair. That morning blood flowed from her nose. Alfonso was frantic and the people of Ferrara anxious. Her life was despaired of and she was given just a few hours to live. She was incapable of speech and lost her sight. Alfonso remained by her side; suddenly she regained her senses and continued to improve until the thirteenth hour. ‘If another paroxysm does not overtake her, the doctors give some hope of her convalescence,’ di Prosperi wrote. ‘God grant the Lord consolation because he is in such distress that more he could not be. And all this city will greatly grieve if she were to die.’ That night and the following morning, the 22nd, she continued to improve and people began to think she might survive.

  Lucrezia, however, was under no such illusion. As she was facing death, she dictated a letter to Leo X with her remaining strength:

  Most Holy Father . . .

  With every possible reverence of spirit I kiss the holy feet of Your Beatitude, and humbly recommend myself to the grace of Your Holiness: Having suffered greatly for more than two months because of a difficult pregnancy; as it has pleased God on the 14th of this month at dawn I had a daughter: and I hoped that having given birth my illness also must be alleviated: but the contrary happened: so that I must yield to nature: Our most clement Creator has given me so many gifts, that I recognize the end of my life and feel that within a few hours I shall be out of it, having however first received all the holy sacraments of the Church: And at this point, as a Christian although a sinner, it came to me to beseech your Beatitude that through your benignity you might deign to give from the spiritual Treasury some suffrage with your holy benediction to my soul: and thus devotedly I pray you: And to your grace I commend my lord Consort and my children, all servants of your Beatitude. ‘In Ferrara the 22nd day of June 1519 at the fourteenth hour.’ The humble servant of your Beatitude, Lucretia da este.5

  Still Lucrezia did not die, but clung to life. Despite her piety, she felt in need of the highest benediction in the world to help her in the next. The Borgia past weighed heavily upon her; she had her young children and she did not want to leave them. In a postscript to his letter of the 22nd di Prosperi wrote, ‘at this 23rd hour the Duchess still lives’, but her burial had already been arranged. Even her death was not easy: on the morning of the 24th the doctors gave her up for dead, ‘seeing the great fits and convulsions that came upon her’. They tried every way they could ‘to open up the ways to purgation as they are wont to do in treating births’, but whatever they tried failed, as did the continual orations and prayers of the convents of Ferrara. Alfonso never left her except to eat and rest a little. ‘And thus the poor little woman is in her death throes without recognizing anyone or being able to speak . . .’, di Prosperi wrote.‘. . . May God have mercy on her soul and give comfort and good patience to the Lord when she does die, because truly his Excellency is grieving greatly. And yesterday in the procession he was as weak as if he had suffered a fever for some days. Wherefore it is now known truly the love that he bore her.’

  Lucrezia died that night ’at the fifth hour’, just over two months past her thirty-ninth birthday. Alfonso, ‘in anguish of my soul’, wrote two personal letters, to Federico Gonzaga, his nephew, and to an unnamed friend. To the first, he wrote, ‘I cannot write without tears, so grave is it to find myself deprived of such a sweet, dear companion as she was to me, for her good ways and for the tender love there was between us. In so bitter a case I ask your consoling help but I know that you too will share my grief; and I would prefer someone to accompany my tears than to offer me consolation . . .’6 To the second, he wrote how his ‘most beloved consort, after an illness of several days with continual fever and catarro of the worst kind [which may have been tubercular], having received the sacraments of the Church with that devotion which was in conformity with the rest of her life, has given up her spirit to God: leaving me in the greatest imaginable anguish of soul [for it is] the most unexpected and the greatest loss. I am writing to you about this grief that oppresses me so greatly and to those who love me because . . . it seems that it may give me some relief in my sorrow . . .’7

  Postscript

  Lucrezia
was buried in the convent of Corpus Domini. Today she lies under a simple marble slab with Alfonso and two of their children, Alessandro and Isabella, her last born, who survived her by only two years, and Alfonso’s mother, Eleonora d’Aragona. Beside them is the tomb of Lucrezia and Alfonso’s eldest son, Duke Ercole II; in another lie his daughter, Lucrezia’s granddaughter, also named Lucrezia, who died as a nun in the convent, and Eleonora d’Este, Lucrezia’s only surviving daughter, who also became a nun in Corpus Domini.

  In 1570 a devastating earthquake struck Ferrara, shattering much of the beauty of the city Lucrezia had known. Her grandson, Alfonso II, rebuilt the Castello but many churches and palaces still lay in ruins when he died, the last ruler of Lucrezia and Alfonso’s legitimate line, in 1597. The following year, Cesare d’Este, Alfonso’s illegitimate grandson by Laura Dianti, whom he took as mistress after Lucrezia’s death, was expelled from the city by Pope Clement VIII who finally succeeded where Popes Julius and Leo had failed. Cesare d’Este retreated to Modena with what remained of the Este inheritance. The papal legate, Cardinal Aldobrandini, stripped Alfonso I’s treasures, his ‘Titians, from the camerini, and took them to Rome.