Pope Alexander VI and his Court E-Book

John Burchard

• Herausgeber: Ozymandias Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 250

Beschreibung

My dear Son:- We have learned that your Worthiness, forgetful of the high office with which you are invested, was present from the seventeenth to the twenty-second hour, four days ago, in the Gardens of John de Bichis, where there were several women of Siena, women wholly given over to worldly vanities. Your companion was one of your colleagues whom his years, if not the dignity of his office, ought to have reminded of his duty. We have heard that the dance was indulged in, in all wantonness. None of the allurements of love were lacking, and you conducted yourself in a wholly worldly manner. Shame forbids mention of all that took place, for not only the things themselves but their very names are unworthy of your rank. In order that your lust might be all the more unrestrained, the husbands, fathers, brothers and kinsmen of the young women and girls were not invited to be present. You and a few servants were the leaders and inspirers of this orgy. It is said that nothing is now talked of in Siena but your vanity which is the subject of universal ridicule. Certain it is that here at the baths, where churchmen and the laity are very numerous, your name is on every one's tongue."

Leseprobe

POPE ALEXANDER VI AND HIS COURT

John Burchard

OZYMANDIAS PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by John Burchard

Published by Ozymandias Press

Interior design by Pronoun

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ISBN: 9781531267650

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE DEATH AND FUNERAL OP POPE SIXTUS IV

THE CONCLAVE WHICH CHOSE INNOCENT VIII

THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REIGN OF INNOCENT VIII

THE LAST YEARS OF THE REIGN OF INNOCENT VIII

THE ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER VI

THE CORONATION OF THE KING OF NAPLES

KING CHARLES VIII IN ROME

ALEXANDER AND HIS FAMILY

LIFE IN ROME UNDER THE BORGIAS

THE AGGRANDIZEMENT OF THE BORGIAS

THE YEAR OF THE JUBILEE

FEASTS AND FEUDS IN ROME

CLOSING YEARS OF ALEXANDER’S REIGN

THE DEATH AND FUNERAL OF ALEXANDER

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION

~

“MY DEAR SON:— WE HAVE learned that your Worthiness, forgetful of the high office with which you are invested, was present from the seventeenth to the twenty-second hour, four days ago, in the Gardens of John de Bichis, where there were several women of Siena, women wholly given over to worldly vanities. Your companion was one of your colleagues whom his years, if not the dignity of his office, ought to have reminded of his duty. We have heard that the dance was indulged in, in all wantonness. None of the allurements of love were lacking, and you conducted yourself in a wholly worldly manner. Shame forbids mention of all that took place, for not only the things themselves but their very names are unworthy of your rank. In order that your lust might be all the more unrestrained, the husbands, fathers, brothers and kinsmen of the young women and girls were not invited to be present. You and a few servants were the leaders and inspirers of this orgy. It is said that nothing is now talked of in Siena but your vanity which is the subject of universal ridicule. Certain it is that here at the baths, where churchmen and the laity are very numerous, your name is on every one’s tongue.”

The words are taken from an admonitory letter of Pope Pius II to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia — better known to the world as Pope Alexander VI — written in June, 1460, when the young cardinal had not yet reached the thirties, and reproving him for having arranged a bacchanalian feast in Siena. No words could better characterize the personality of Alexander VI, for they show him as the man of the world he was as Cardinal Borgia and remained after he had become Pope Alexander.

The limelight of history has played in a rather oblique and unkind way on the Borgias. Pope Alexander’ personality has been distorted until he became a perfect monster; yet his greatest weakness was an easy freedom from moral scruples, and this might not have blurred his personal charm at all had he not become the tool of his son Cesare. More unjust still were most historians to his daughter Lucretia, who has been depicted as a kind of Messalina, although she was at the best the “indifferente” among the great women of her time, and at her worst a beauty without any will of her own. If it is the historian’s task to distribute praise and blame, some of the latter may fall on Alexander’s favorite son Cesare. Even if he was not such a perfect virtuoso of crime as he has been described, he certainly was not much better than some of the worst of his more prominent contemporaries.

Thus in considering the rise and fall of the Borgia family one ought to keep in mind that the Borgias were after all the creatures of an epoch, rich in extraordinary personalities as few others in human history have been. Before rendering judgment consideration must be given to the remarkably complex personalities of the Renaissance. The men and women of that epoch of transformation from the middle ages to modern times were so constituted that it was easily possible for them to turn from cruelty and crime and vice, from corruption and treachery, to religion with a fervid and impassioned sincerity. The Borgias, as will be seen, did not differ greatly from many of their contemporaries. To make them the scapegoats of their times shows, perhaps, a just indignation at their crimes, but little understanding of the conditions under which they lived.

Bearing in mind these conditions and the remarkable rise of the House of Borgia, one will be better prepared to understand the personality of Pope Alexander who with all his faults was certainly not without redeeming features. “Of his ability, of his genius even”, says Bishop A. H. Mathew, one of his recent biographers, “there can be no two opinions; indeed if vigor of body and mind were all that was required of a pope, Alexander VI would have been among the greatest. He had a remarkable capacity for hard mental work, and his buoyant, jovial nature enabled him to bear his burden of vice and crime with a lightness impossible to a man of a less sanguine disposition”. Such was the complex personality of this typical man of the Renaissance.

A fair estimate of Alexander VI must include in addition to his personal gifts and the complexities of his character a consideration of the remarkable rise of his family. It was from this source that he received a further impetus toward that most seductive of all human temptations — the abuse of power. The Borgias like the Bonapartes three centuries later in France were neither an old nor a native family. They had come from Spain where their ancestors had participated in the expulsion of the Moors in the thirteenth century, their family name being derived from their native place of Borjia on the borders of Aragon, Castile and Navarre.

But with the election of one of their family, Alonzo Borgia, as Pope Calixtus III, in the middle of the fifteenth century, they became prominent in the affairs of the European world just at the moment when Italy, then the most advanced country of that continent, had cast off the fetters of medieval envelopment and entered upon the most brilliant period of its cultural development. Calixtus III had been a professor of jurisprudence in Lerida in Spain, where he won the reputation of being one of the foremost jurists of his time. He had come to Rome as a legal adviser to King Alphonso of Naples. His knowledge and character and his extreme age which made it certain that he would not be long in the way of other aspirants to the papal tiara finally secured his elevation to the highest place in Christendom.

In contrast to the other papal elections of the time the nomination of Calixtus III was not accompanied by the sneering remarks which such occasions usually called forth. Although his reign lasted only three years he managed to secure a firm footing for the Borgia family in the Roman hierarchy. He may indeed be considered as one of the initiators of nepotism in the papacy, and the first ruler of the Roman church, who founded a kind of family dynasty through the promotion of his nephews. Two of these, Luis and Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI) became cardinals, while a third who was not a priest was promoted to the captaincy-general of the papal state and created duke of Spoleto. The latter, as prefect of Rome, had also to keep in check the old families of the Colonna and Orsini, the traditional enemies of the papal rule in the Holy City.

While Calixtus III kept on the defensive against his enemies in the city of his residence, he followed the papal tradition of crusading against the Turk. The latter had just taken possession of Constantinople and made it his capital. The power of the Turkish empire was spreading in South-Eastern Europe, and to war against it Calixtus brought great sacrifices, selling the jewels of the papal treasury and other possessions of the Church. For another and greater phenomenon of his time, the Renaissance in Italy, Pope Calixtus had no understanding. The humanists complained that he never gave them a helping hand, and that he even sold the precious golden bindings of Greek manuscripts in order to finance his expeditions against the Turks. The successors of Calixtus III held other views. Literature and the arts flourished under their patronage. Painters and sculptors, writers and savants, thronged the papal Court. This intrusion of scantily disguised agnosticism into the heart of the church frightened the pious and the conservatives who heard the first rumblings of the Reformation. Paul II restored the pagan monuments of Rome, and, after the Medici of Florence, was the greatest collector of the time. The successor of Paul, Sixtus IV, went even further. The principal result of his reign was the secularization of the papacy. For Sixtus IV was a worldly prince in the full sense of the word. The aim of his policy was not even the extension of the power of the Holy See, but primarily the enrichment of his relatives and favorites. With his approval the Medici were murdered by the Pazzi family, a design which could not be accomplished completely and which finally reacted to the disadvantage of the Pope himself. There was an increasing demand for a council which should depose this ruler of the church “without religion and conscience who was called the Pope”; a pious poet of the time wailed over the fact that everything was at sale in Rome: “Temples, priests, altars and even prayers, heaven and God”. In August, 1484, Sixtus died, at the age of seventy, a martyr to gout and worn out with rage at the news of the peace which had been made between the Duke of Ferrara and the Venetians without his consent.

In the eyes of the critics of the Holy See the reign of Innocent VIII (1484-1492) was no improvement. He was the first Pope who dared to acknowledge his son in public, and one of his chief aims was to procure him wealth and position. If Sixtus had secured money through the sale of spiritual indulgences and dignities, Innocent and his son obtained it through a bank of secular pardons where amnesty for murder could be had at high fees. A hundred and fifty ducats of every fine went to the papal treasury, the rest to the Pope’s son, Franceschetto Cibo. Special traps were set in Rome to catch the criminals who were able to pay the Pope for their misdeeds. In the meantime Innocent looked on complacently from his well-guarded palace at the increasing criminality in Rome. This Franceschetto had only one aim in life, and this was to get the papal treasure-chests in his hands as soon as his father died. When in 1490 a false rumor spread that the Pope had died, he attempted in fact to carry off all the available cash of the papal Camera. He even tried to take along the Turkish Prince Zizim who lived as a prisoner at the papal court, hoping to sell him at a high price to one of the many foreign rulers who were anxious to get possession of him.

Rodrigo Borgia, who succeeded Innocent VIII two years after this incident, was born at Xativa, Spain, in 1431, and became a priest in 1468. The man of the world, who was so admired in his later life, was foreshadowed in the boy, for at the age of scarcely eight years he was conspicuous in the streets of his home town for the grace and gallantry of his bearing. After having been educated at Valencia, he studied at the University of Bologna, and on his return to Spain he practiced successfully as an advocate. In 1456 Calixtus III bestowed the cardinal’s purple upon his nephew, and a year later the important office of vice-chancellor of the Church of Rome was conferred on him.

By the historian Gasparino of Verona the young Cardinal is thus described: “He is handsome; of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice eloquence. The beautiful women on whom his eyes are cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet influences iron”. It appears, however, that only three women played a prominent role in his life. The first was Vanozza dei Catanei, and in his later life the beautiful Giulia Farnese is openly mentioned as his mistress. In the intervening period his niece, Hadriana Orsini, seems to have had relations with him, but she patiently effaced herself when any other intimate acquaintance of Alexander was concerned. He never forgot Vanozza, whom he had met in his earlier life; she was born in 1442 and died in 1518, and was the mother of his dearest children. She always lived in magnificence, and enjoyed the possession of the various palaces which her lover had given her.

At the time when he was still practicing law Rodrigo Borgia made the acquaintance of a widow and her two daughters. He entered into intimate relations with the mother, and after her death became guardian of the girls. One of these he sent to a convent; the other he made his mistress. This was Vanozza, who is described by contemporaries as a combination of voluptuous beauty, amiability, and shrewdness. He had five children by her, but he did not recognize them openly until after he became Pope. The oldest was Pedro Luis, first Duke of Gandia, who was born about 1467; Giovanni was born in 1474 and assassinated 1498, and Cesare in 1476. The other two children were Donna Lucretia, born in 1480, and Don Jofre, born in 1481. About 1480 Cardinal Borgia in order to cover up his relations with Vanozza and to lighten his own burden found a husband for her. He obtained a position as apostolic secretary for him from Pope Sixtus IV. This is the only marriage mentioned.

None of Vanozza’s contemporaries have given any clue as to the gifts that enabled her to hold the pleasure-loving cardinal so securely and to obtain for her recognition as the mother of several of his acknowledged children. She was of Roman origin and came from a middle-class family. “We may imagine her”, says the historian Gregorovius, “to have been a strong and voluptuous woman like those still seen about the streets of Rome. They possess none of the grace of the ideal woman of the Umbrian school, but they have something of the magnificence of the imperial city — Juno and Venus are united in them. They would resemble the ideals of Titian and Paolo Veronese but for their black hair and dark complexion,— blond and red hair have always been rare among the Romans. But without doubt Vanozza was of great beauty and ardent passions; for if not, how could she have maintained her relations with the cardinal?”

Rodrigo Borgia secured his accession to the Holy See by buying the necessary majority through promises and bribery. A short while before the meeting of the Conclave, for instance, he had sent four mule-loads of silver to Cardinal Sforza’s house on the pretext that it might be more safely guarded there. After his election in 1492 he hurried on the same night to St. Peter’s for the inaugural ceremonies. A contemporary, Sigismondo de’ Conti, said of the hew Pope: “Few people understand etiquette so well as he did; he knew how to make most of himself, and took pains to shine in conversation and to be dignified in his manners. In the latter point his majestic stature gave him an advantage. Also he was just at the age (about sixty) at which Aristotle says that men are wisest. Robust in body and vigorous in mind, he was admirably well equipped for his new position. He was tall and powerfully built, and, though his eyes were blinking, they were penetrating and lively; in conversation he was extremely affable; he understood money matters thoroughly”. Another contemporary, Hieronymus Portius, describing him in 1493, says: “Alexander is tall and neither light nor dark, his eyes are black and his lips somewhat full. His health is robust, and he is able to bear any pain or fatigue. He is wonderfully eloquent and a thorough man of the world”. The celebrated Jason Mainus of Milan calls attention to his elegance of figure, his serene brow, his kingly forehead, his countenance with its expression of generosity and majesty, his genius, and the heroic beauty of his whole presence.

It was a happy combination of mind and body, and its power lay in the perfect balance of all its faculties. It was a personality which radiated serene brightness, for the picture often drawn of this Borgia, as a sinister monster, is not true to life.

Quite on the contrary, and unlike his son Cesare, says Bishop A. H. Mathew in his biography of Rodrigo Borgia, Alexander does not appear to have been wantonly inhuman although the prevalent belief that he poisoned his cardinals when his treasury needed replenishing can neither be proved nor disproved. But he did not revel in cruelty as cruelty though he certainly never let any humane scruples stand in the way of his own advancement. He was not a tyrant in the ordinary sense of the word, being preserved from that vice as a rule by his natural geniality.

The advancement of his family became, as the years of his reign went on, more and more the dominant passion of Alexander, but at the same time the organization of the Roman Curia was improved and the salaries of officials were paid punctually. The latter had not always been a custom under former Popes. The administration of justice in Rome and the Papal State was also made more effective, and in time of famine the poor were helped with supplies of corn from Sicily. “Nevertheless”, admits Mathew, “the populace detested their Pope with a deadly loathing, and the fact that Rodrigo Borgia was permitted to occupy the throne of St. Peter for a space of ten years affords remarkable proof of the strength of the later mediaeval Papacy”.

In everyday life Alexander VI is described of being genial and pleasant and fond of talking, so much so that he was almost incapable of keeping a secret. He was impetuous, but he rarely bore malice, and he had but little sympathy with the vindictive spirit constantly displayed by his son Cesare. Naturally unreserved and expansive, he never hid his joy at the success of his schemes. To inferiors he showed himself affable, and it is said that he “liked to do unpleasant things in a pleasant manner”. Although religious formalities meant nothing to him, he was much concerned in ceremonies when they served his purpose. But to the rules of Lenten abstinence he paid little regard and at the solemn mass sung on the arrival in Rome of King Charles VIII of France he confused all the ceremonies. Nevertheless he cherished a particular devotion for the Blessed Virgin and in her honor he revived the custom of ringing the bells during the recantation of the Angelus thrice a day. One of his greatest delights was to watch beautiful women dancing. When Lucretia and the ladies of her court were engaged in this art, he was careful to summon the ambassadors of Ferrara so that they might watch his daughter’s grace, for he was anxious to see her married to the son of the duke.

This plan he achieved in the year 1501 when Lucretia was married to Alphonso d’Este. After this marriage and until her death in 1519 Lucretia seems to have lived a comparatively quiet and happy life. During her earlier life she was much maligned and accused of many crimes; as a matter of fact, she was always the tool of her father and brother. In 1493, at the age of thirteen years, she had been married to Giovanni Sforza, and a gorgeous banquet was given to celebrate the event. After spending a happy and careless year at her husband’s beautiful estate of Pesaro, her marriage took a bad turn because the house of Sforza was fast losing its former prestige. Giovanni’s life was threatened if he did not give up the Pope’s daughter. In 1497 the final divorce was pronounced. Lucretia’s attitude in the whole affair became the subject of much satire and criticism. But in the following year she entered into a second marriage with Alphonso Bisceglia, a natural son of King Alphonso II of Naples. Her husband was considered “one of the most beautiful men of Italy”, and was seven years younger than she. Threatened by the open hatred of Cesare Borgia, Alphonso flew from Rome during the following year, but returned a few months later with Lucretia, who was passionately enamored of her handsome husband. In the summer of 1500 Alphonso was wounded mortally by assassins who probably acted under orders of the Orsini family. Alphonso considered Cesare as the real instigator of the assault, and shot at him as he left his house after calling on him and was cut to pieces by Cesare’s guards.

Lucretia was only a tool of the Borgias, father and son, but Cesare was the pride and center of the family. From 1497 on he was the real ruler of the Pontifical State, and Alexander frequently seems to have submitted to his will against his own better judgment. The crown of Italy was Cesare’s ambition. The plottings of the Pope with the Kings of France and Naples and other Italian rulers had their origin in this wish, which burned more violently in the breast of this gifted and demonic son of Alexander than in that of other Italian tyrants of the time. Working toward this end the Borgias decided upon the annihilation of the prominent Italian families. The Gaetani and the Orsini were thus exterminated; the Colonnas and others were driven from their possessions. In the midst of this slaughter and assassination stood Cesare, and Alexander put all the money and influence of the church at his disposal.

Pope Sixtus IV already had favored young Cesare. Scarcely seven years old he received from him the income of the Cathedral of Valencia, two years later he was made provost of Abar; at the age of fifteen Innocent VIII created him Bishop of Pamplona. After the coronation of his father he became Archbishop of Valencia and a few years later a cardinal.

From the bishopric of Valencia Cesare drew an annual income of 16,000 ducats. But even under the then existing conditions he found priesthood too great an obstacle for his political ambitions, and he resigned the cardinalate to devote himself to his military and political plans.

Before his excesses and the disease resulting from them disfigured him and forced him occasionally to wear a mask, he possessed great beauty and strength. He could cut off a bull’s head with one stroke, he bent an iron bar and broke a horseshoe with his hands, and he tore a new rope. His strong body was graceful, and he was admired as an accomplished dancer and horseman. He loved precious clothes and rare weapons which are described at length in the diplomatic reports of the time; his sword was known as the king of swords. He remained always a Spaniard, preferring the Spanish tongue and preserving the proud sensitiveness of a Spanish grandee even in respect to the written word touching his personality. The more jovial personality of Alexander permitted a remarkable freedom of expression, but Cesare persecuted all criticism directed against him with savage cruelty. When Alexander remarked that Rome was a free city where everyone could write and say what he pleased, Cesare replied that he would make repent those who did so. If he succeeded in seizing one who had written a Pasquinade against him he had his tongue sliced with a red-hot dagger and both his hands cut off. He frequently indulged in needless cruelty. One day he had six men brought in the street before St. Peter’s, and they were hunted like game with crossbows in the closed street. Many murders were ascribed to him by his contemporaries; a few of these have been proven to have been the deeds of others. Thus he was held responsible for the murder of his brother, Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, but it is more likely that this mysterious assassination was an act of revenge on the part of an offended husband.

On account of his magnificent physique Cesare attracted women, but they played a much smaller role in his life than many of the sensational biographies would have us believe. Only one real love adventure is reported, and that was during the winter of 1500 when he had his Spanish horsemen seize the wife of one of the captains of the Republic of Venice. The Republic sent a formal protest to Pope Alexander, who regretted the incident. But no word of protest was heard from Dorotea, the abducted wife, who a few years later wrote to the Republic of San Marco that she was willing to return to her husband in case good treatment would be assured her. There is also mentioned a strong and beautiful woman companion during one of his campaigns. Women may have been a certain distraction in his hours of leisure, but they meant little in his life. His marriage with Charlotte d’Albret, a sister of the King of Navarre, had lasted scarcely four months, when Cesare returned to Rome. He never saw his wife again nor did he ever see his daughter Louise born in 1500. His style of life was considered peculiar even in that time for he seldom rose before three o’clock in the afternoon and went to bed at the twilight of the morning.

After the death of Pope Alexander the star of Cesare declined. A few weeks after Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had become Pope Julius II, Cesare was arrested and taken to Rome. He was set at liberty soon afterward, however, without the knowledge of the Pope and escaped to Naples, where he was seized again and sent to Spain. There he was kept under strict confinement in various castles, and his only recreation was flying his falcons and watching them as they seized upon their prey and tore it to pieces. In 1506 he again escaped and fell in battle the same year as the commander of an army of his brother-in-law, the King of Navarre.

Thus ended the Borgias, father and son. Their graves are unknown. Their crimes have been exaggerated, but the works of artists they encouraged and patronized are still extant. Raphael, Michelangelo, and Pinturicchio worked for the Borgias, and Copernicus lectured in Rome during the year of the jubilee on his new theory of the motion of the heavenly bodies. If this Pope has been called the most characteristic incarnation of the secular spirit in the papacy of the fifteenth century, it should be remembered that the secularization of the papacy had begun with Sixtus IV and that it was as conspicuous under Innocent VIII as under Alexander VI.

The minute descriptions in Burchard’s Diary help us to understand the contradictory elements in the many-sided character of Alexander VI, and show it in its relations with politics, war, government, love, and religion. Of the description of Alexander’s court in this Diary, Gregorovius, one of the foremost authorities of the period, says: “Never did any chronicler describe the things about him so clearly and so concisely, so dryly, and with so little feeling — things that were worthy of the pen of Tacitus. That Burchard was not friendly to the Borgias is proved by the way his diary is written. It is, however, absolutely truthful. This man well knew how to conceal his feelings, if the dull routine of his office had left him any. He went through the daily ceremonies of the Vatican mechanically and kept his place there under five popes. Burchard must have appeared to the Borgias as a harmless pedant; for if not, would they have permitted him to behold and describe their doings and yet live? Even the little he did write in his Diary concerning events of the day would have cost him his head had it come to the knowledge of Alexander or Cesare. It appears, however, that the diaries of the masters of ceremonies were not subjected to official censorship.

Cesare would have spared him no more than he did his father’s favorite, Pedro Calderon Perotto, whom he stabbed, and Cervillon, whom he killed — both of whom frequently performed important parts in the ceremonies of the Vatican. Nor did Cesare spare the private secretary, Francesco Troche, whom Alexander VI had often employed in diplomatic affairs. There is no doubt that he was one of Lucretia’s most intimate acquaintances. In June, 1503, Cesare had this favorite of his father strangled. This fate would have awaited the author of the present Diary had its existence ever come to the knowledge of the Borgias.

Johannes Burchardus (or Burchard) was born near Strasburg, in Alsace, in the middle of the fifteen century. Destined for the Church, he was educated from his earliest childhood in an ecclesiastical environment. Instead of following a course of theology which then required ten years’ close study to obtain the Doctor’s degree, Burchard, practical man that he was, chose an easier way, that of the law, where the course of study was only four years, and the hope of honor and fortune equally sure. Four years after having received his Doctor’s cap he indeed succeeded with the help of friends in reaching Rome. Here advocates found a lucrative income in the numberless lawsuits that were incessantly before the ecclesiastical courts. The pursuit of benefices, characteristic of the time, gave rise to numerous acts of injustice, and owners turned out of their rightful possessions did not give them up without a protest.