HISTORY REDUX: The Infamy of the Borgias

I have finally reached that time in life when I mention a name, a person out of history or even the current events and common knowledge of my own generation, and am greeted with a blank stare, or an almost prideful declaration: Never heard of em!  As if it is some kind of proof of youthful superiority to be ignorant of the Older Generation's icons.

When I was a kid, everyone knew the name and deliciously dreadful reputation of Lucretia Borgia! I mean, she was only one of the most notorious wives out of Renaissance history, a poisoner of numerous husbands and lovers! Right up there, she is, in the annals of Uppity Women, with Elizabeth Bathory, Marie Antionette, and Medea. Oh, yeah, and Livia Augusta, the wife of Augustus, and mother of Tiberias, who was the next Caesar mainly because Mommy poisoned off all the other candidates.  (Since Tiberias was only a stepson of Augustus, and he had a number of better blood kin in mind, this took some doing.)

Isn't popular history titillating?  What does it matter, if it isn't quite true?

Yet, Lucretia (properly Lucrezia, pronounced Loo-cretzia) was not the woman in those stories.  Her own, actual story is  far more engaging, a story of great poignancy, of tragedy and eventually, once freed of the encumbrances of family, personal vindication.

Her father was Rodrigo Borgia, also known to history as Pope Alexander the Sixth.  He was not a good man, he was one of the most corrupt of the Popes, but this can be said for him: He loved his children! Besides Lucrezia, his golden girl, there were Gian and Cesare (pronounced as John, and Chez-ar-ay) who come into the tales of the family, though there were a throng of natural children which Rodrigo happily acknowledged.

The Borgias' reputation has come down through the centuries, popular history painting them as among the most vicious power-gamers in our troubled world. In actual history, Rodrigo and Cesare were the real players, Gian being taken out early (popular history blames Cesare, but historical logic and what evidence there is, suggests someone else murdered Gian.) In 1500 AD, people were not nice, in fact, they were just as not-nice as they are now. Possibly, we judge them harshly by our modern standards, but it may be that the Borgias pushed the limits, even then.

Niccolo Macchiavelli wrote his famous treatise on getting your own way, THE PRINCE, either about or for Cesare, and   in admiration or some form of mockery: opinions vary.

Lucrezia's great flaw was, it has been said by biographers, "a fatal acquiescence." 

But is even that slight redemption fair? 

She was a woman in a society that regarded women as childlike pawns and was herself a huge pawn because of her family's place in that society. As a member of this family, her life was privileged and indulgent: the Borgias made their own rules.  Rumors of incest and illegitmate offspring rose like weeds around a few actual facts. The evidence, though, remains circumstantial.

Possible, even probable, though, is not quite the same as true.  Truth is, we don't know if she gave birth to the son of her father, or if the child's paternity, even maternity lay elsewhere. It would be interesting, if the various Borgia remains could be tested for DNA proofs.  

She was married off at 13, that marriage later annulled by her father's decree, so she could be married more usefully elsewhere, for the family. There are, as always, various versions, but there is the opinion that she loved her husbands while she had them. 

One of them, when she was called upon to give him up, and warned that he was doomed, Lucrezia carried out a plan of her own to warn him away from his planned murder. He fled, but eventually, the Borgia men succeeded, and she was heartbroken when he died. 

Her third husband, the Duke of Ferrara, had to be bribed and threatened, before he consented to the union.  He'd heard things. Lucrezia was 21 then, in1501.  Her father was over 70, and perhaps was looking to his mortality, and her future. Not that it was his plan to die any time soon...

In August of 1503, according to some historians, Rodrigo and Cesare attended a dinner to which they had invited themselves, Cesare providing a gift of wine to the host,  Cardinal Adriano Castellesi. 

This Cardinal was a political problem, and they had ways of clearing such problems: The Cup of the Borgia was a euphemism for death in those days, and there are references to a poison they are said to have invented, called cantarella. It's making involved arsenic and a dead pig.  

Did they attempt to poison their host, with a great disregard for all the other guests, as well?  Or did they all just get sick from a bug that was going around? That's also a theory many historians cleave to.  The known item is that everyone got sick, and some went home and died.  The host survived the illness, living another 16 years.

Within a few days' time, Rodrigo was a fascinatingly disgusting corpse, and Cesare, bed-ridden for some time, was too weak to protect his own interests, so lost his position of political and social power, eventually spiraling down to a sordid end.

Lucrezia, by all accounts much loved by both her husband and the people of Ferrara, lived until 1519. She died at 39, of a difficult childbirth, and was mourned as The Good Duchess.