Chapter XIV: Book II: , speaks for the fact that venom was feared, and therefore likely (3)

In Ferrara, the year 1506 was marked by one of those tragical expositions of naked human passion which afflict humanity in every age. Madonna Angela de Borja y Lançol, a cousin of the Duchess Lucrezia—being the daughter of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI’s sister, Doña Juana, by her marriage with Don Guillelmo de Lançol, and sister to Cardinal Juan de Borja y Lançol (detto Giovanni Seniore), Archbishop of Monreale, and Cardinal Pedro Luis de Borja y Lançol,—was a maid-of-honour attached to the suite of the Duchess of Ferrara. She was very beautiful, and is called in the chronicle “a most elegant damsel”—_damigella elegantissima_. Two younger brothers of Duke Alfonso, the athletic Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, and Don Giulio d’Este (bastard of the old Duke Ercole) fell in love with her. Madonna Angela favoured the Bastard Giulio whose lovely eyes she unreservedly admired—consequently, as the manner was, his rival the Cardinal hired four professionals to put out those eyes. Naif unpaltering straightforwardness of the Sixteenth Century! The operation failed of execution, for the Bastard Giulio, being forewarned, escaped with his eyes unharmed. But such conduct does not make for the peace of a state, brawling royalties affording disedification to the mob. The laws of Ferrara, paternal in character, ordained a scale of penances graduated to the rank of culprits: for example, a working man, who obscenely swore, would pay a fine; a swearing burgess paid a double fine and a swearing noble was mulcted of a triple fine. Therefore Duke Alfonso put the ban on his brother, the Lord Cardinal Ippolito, who retired to Rome to nurse his discontent and plan his next move against the Bastard Giulio. Madonna Angela, who was no more to be blamed than any other girl whose charms have inflamed a lusty pair of rivals to desperation, married the third, Don Alessandro Pio Estense di Savoja, Count of Sassuolo. The bandit[87] Cardinal Ippolito had not long to wait in exile. If he had been the Master of Fate, he could not have devised a neater or completer vengeance than that which came to him. It is one thing to attempt to blind a bastard brother who is a royal prince. It is another thing to compass the death of a brother who is a reigning sovereign. The robust young Cardinal was equal to the first: but above the second.

Duke Alfonso’s brothers, Don Ferdinando d’Este and the Bastard Giulio, engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate him. News of the plot reached Cardinal Ippolito in Rome. He promptly warned Duke Alfonso of his danger. Finding themselves discovered, the conspirators fled. Don Ferdinando was caught: but the Bastard Giulio, good at escapes, took refuge in sanctuary with his brother-in-law the Marquess of Mantua, who replied to Duke Alfonso’s demand for extradition that, if evidence of guilt were shewn, the criminal should be delivered up to justice. Evidence was shewn, in the shape of the full confession of Don Ferdinando; and the Bastard Giulio passed into his sovereign brother’s hands. Brought to the common block in the square of Ferrara, the two detected traitors were allowed to suffer all the pangs of the approach of death: but, at the last moment, Duke Alfonso in his mercy granted a reprieve, commuting their penance to life-imprisonment.

* * * * *

Early in 1507, died Duke Cesare de Valentinois (detto Borgia), by a mean inglorious death for one who had been in life so mighty a man. While commanding a small squadron on behalf of the King of Navarre, he was killed in a petty skirmish by the castle of Viana. His corpse was quietly interred in the cathedral of Pampeluna, which, by a curious coincidence, had been the first piece of ecclesiastical preferment conferred on him by the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. So ended a phenomenal personality in which superb and tawny beauty of physique, prodigious force of character, fierce all-conquering energy, swift unerring almost-feline agility of action, and transcendent splendour of achievement, were blasted and nullified and marred, humanly speaking, by one single delicacy of respectful conscientious self-sacrifice and supreme confidence in clerical honour. His beautiful elegy by Ercole Strozzi,

“Ille diu, qui dum caelestibus auris
Visitur, implet onus laudis, caelumque meretur”

is too well-known to be quoted at length. He left three children,

(α) Madame Eloise de Valentinois; who married, first, the Sieur Louis
de la Tremouille, second, the Sieur Philippe de Bourbon, Comte
de Busset, whose direct descendants flourish in France at the
present day:

(β) Don Girolamo de Valentinois; who, by marriage with Madonna
Isabella Carpi patrician of Ferrara, had issue Madonna Lucrezia
de Valentinois married, in 1562, to Don Bartolomeo Oroboni
patrician of Ferrara, who died in 1565.

(γ) a bastard Madonna Camilla Lucrezia; (evidently the offspring of an
intrigue carried on when Duke Cesare was in Ferrara in 1500–1
arranging the marriage of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia to the heir of
Duke Ercole d’Este;) born of Duke Cesare and a married woman in
Ferrara; according to the deed of legitimation,[88] dated 1509,
where Madonna Camilla Lucrezia is said to be “of the age of more
than seven years”: she became Abbess of San Bernardino in
Ferrara, in 1545; and died in 1573.

The Duchess Lucrezia Borgia d’Este was deeply grieved by the death of Duke Cesare her half-brother. There is a very touching letter written by her friend and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua, to Duke Alfonso who at that time was in Rome. It is dated the eighteenth of April 1507; and describes how that the Duchess of Ferrara, on receiving the sad news, immediately went to the church of the monastery of Corpus Domini and remained during two days and nights, praying for the repose of the soul of Duke Cesare de Valentinois. A simple act; and precisely what any good Christian woman would do in similar circumstances.

* * * * *

A year later, on the fourth of April 1508, at the Castle of Ferrara to the immense joy of all, _formosus puer est formoso natus Aprili_, says Benedetto Lampridii in his Carmina Inedita, the Duchess Lucrezia bore to Duke Alfonso a son and heir, who was baptized by the name Ercole.

During this year, a league of the Powers was formed under the Elect-Emperor Maximilian directed against Venice; and Duke Alfonso, whose dominions marched with those of that Republic, threw in his lot with its foes. While he was engaging the Venetians on the Romagna frontier, the Duchess Lucrezia ruled as Regent in Ferrara. She administered government of the state with the same sweet womanly thoroughness as she shewed in the administration of the government of her domestic affairs. History is rich in records relating to this lovely lady. She superintended the household matters of her palaces with a minute attention to detail which, to the modern middle-classes, would appear amazing in a Sovereign Duchess. To set a fashion of rare liberal-mindedness she appointed the Jewess Mazzolino to the care of her extensive wardrobe, and Messer Ludovico as her physician. Her régime was of the simple patriarchal type of the old Duke Ercole, who, on the occasion of an outbreak of plague in 1500, issued an Edict which said that “Duke Ercole d’Este, for good reasons to him known, _and because it always is well to be on good terms with God_,” ordained religious processions every day throughout Ferrara. A second quaint Edict of the same fatherly potentate, (which incidentally speaks for the meticulously cleanly personal habits of the Borgian Era, so strenuously maintained on a previous page of this book,) proclaims that “inasmuch as bakers are known to knead their dough with feet that, frequently, are unclean, such practices must not continue except on penalty of fine or imprisonment: but the dough must be worked with clean hands _and nails_.”

Evildoers, all the same, had a shocking time. Maria Equicola gives exact particulars of a certain Madonna Laura (name suppressed) who, being caught in adultery, was immured alive; that is to say, she was publicly confined in a cell a few feet square, with a little window, outside the episcopal palace, near the entrance on the right of the high altar of the cathedral of Ferrara. Perjurers went about after their conviction with their tongues securely nailed to little logs of wood. The accounts for the nails and logs exist. Duchess Lucrezia’s sumptuary laws were unsuccessful. The sex of the legislator prevented her from manufacturing laws to regulate fashion, which could be put into practical effect. That was perfectly natural; nor does the failure in any way reflect upon the excellence of the intentions of her ducal highness. She ordained that no woman should wear a gown whose value was higher than the sum of fifteen ducats (say £30), nor jewellery worth more than fifty ducats (say £100). She furnished a specification of the gems which might be worn, and of the fabrics of which gowns might be made. Also, she precisely specified the quantity of material that might be used, and the cut and fashion that was to be adopted. Further, in order to secure the observation of these laws, she ordained a box, having a slit in its lid like a modern letter-box, to be placed in the cathedral by the holy water-stoup; so that fathers, husbands, or lovers, who found themselves outraged by the length or the rotundity of the skirts, or the bulk of the sleeves, or the violence of the style of their women-folk,—and the cost of the same,—secretly might drop in denunciations while in the act of taking holy water; the said denunciations afterwards to be attended-to in a legal manner by the justiciary. Delightfully solemn and futile effort of a charming woman. Well, it failed; not on account of the female peacocks of Ferrara, but by reason of the very skewbald harlequins whose propriety and purses it had aimed to benefit. How many denunciations secretly were dropped into Duchess Lucrezia’s precious box, how many scandalized fathers, husbands, and lovers, sneaked about their daughters, wives, and lemans, is not known. Only one thing is known,—there was not a justiciar in all the duchy of Ferrara, married or unmarried, who dared even to allude to, much less to act upon, the said denunciations, and enforce the law.

On the twenty-fifth of August 1509, the Duchess Lucrezia gave birth to a second son, Don Ippolito d’Este, named after his uncle the heraklean Cardinal; and who, in after years, became Archbishop and Cardinal of Milan.

All through 1508 and 1509 the war went on. In December of the latter year, a powerful Venetian fleet advanced to the mouth of the Po, devastating the country on both banks, and invading the duchy of Ferrara with frightful atrocities. Duke Alfonso, hurrying to meet the foe, won a glorious victory at Policella: but the war dragged on till 1512, keeping him in camp, away from his capital, which almost exclusively was governed by the Duchess Lucrezia (she bore Don Alessandro d’Este in 1511), assisted by Cardinal Ippolito d’Este, now no longer a bandit, but completely in the confidence and favour of his sovereign brother.

* * * * *

On the fifth of February 1510 died the noble and strenuous knight Don Pietro Gregorio Borgia of the Junior Branch. He had been high in honour with Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna since he saved him from the clutches of the Christian King Charles VIII in 1495; and had served him as mounted scale-armoured arbalister, lieutenant, and standard-bearer. On the fall of the Duke, he returned to his allegiance to the Regno now ruled by the Catholic King Don Hernando. He was Viceroy of the province of the Abruzzi when he died, and was buried in the Church of San Clemente at Velletri, his native city.[89] His fine epitaph[90] runs:

“HIC REQUIESCIT NOB. ET STRENUUS EQUES DOM. PETRUS BORGIA,
CATAPHRACTOR. LOCUM-TENENS, AC SIGNIFER CESARIS BORGIAE ISPANI
VALENTINI DUCIS, QUI OBJIT AN. DNI. MDX. D. QV. MEN. FEB.”

* * * * *

The year 1511 is remarkable for a wildly frenetic insurrection on the part of the gentle old Cardinal Francisco de Borja, which cost that Most Worshipful Lord his rank and his life. There is a limit to human endurance. In some men it is wide; in others narrow: but human nature subjected to unnatural suppression and restraint, sooner or later desperately will struggle to burst its bonds. This principle has never been understood by the clergy. It is one of the disabilities under which they labour in dealing with men. History teems with examples of amiable, would-be obedient, and respectable characters, tried beyond their strength by inconsiderate ignorant oppressive injustice on the part of churchmen, and transformed into savagely bitter and appallingly destructive suicides. There is no better example than Cardinal Francisco de Borja.

He was of the age of seventy years. Though his illustrious House had been predominant in Christendom during more than fifty of those years, he had never sought to benefit by the fact that his father was the Lord Calixtus P.P. III, nor to intrude himself among the mighty who were his blood-relations. Not till he was on the verge of his sixtieth year did he become a personage; and then his august cousin, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, in admiration of his enchanting disposition, dignified him with the scarlet hat and the rank of Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Lucia _in Silice_, (_Atti Consistoriali_). Later, he proceeded to the Title of Santa Cecilia, (_Ciacconi_ and _Moroni_); thence again to the Title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (_Atti Consistoriali_); and last to the Title of San Clemente. He also was Treasurer of the Holy See, Bishop of Teano, and Archbishop of Cosenza.

Seeing the exacerbating measures which the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II was using against the House of Borgia, and especially the spoliation of the two little boys Duke Roderico and Duke Giovanni, this very sympathetic old cardinal had the indiscretion to put his frank opinion of the Pope’s Holiness into certain letters which he wrote to the Orator of Ferrara at the Court of Rome. This opinion could not fail to be unfavourable and the reverse of complimentary. No doubt the Orator was in direct communication with his sovereign, Duke Alfonso d’Este, whom he would keep advised of the trend of sentiments and of events in Rome. These letters came, by means which it would be improper to describe, into the anointed hands of God’s Vicegerent. His Holiness read them; and vehemently enraged himself against the Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara, and upon Cardinal Francisco de Borja, whom he incontinently flung into prison with every species of indignity. The Sacred College, tremorous for its own security if such treatment of a Purpled One should pass without remonstrance, exerted its influence on the Holiness of the Pope, and procured the ungracious liberation of Cardinal Francisco de Borja.

But the ill was done. The milk of human kindness effectually had been soured; the placid amiable old gentleman had been changed into a violent malcontent breathing threatenings and slaughter, and whose fiery Spanish blood at last was boiling over. Two other cardinals joined in his savage revolt, the Lord Bernardino Lopez de Caravajal Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, and the Lord Guillaume de Briçonnet Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina). These three decamped from Rome to Pisa, where, a fourth, the Lord Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, having joined them, they constituted themselves as a General Council; and dared to cite the Lord Julius P.P. II to shew cause before them why He should not be declared a Pseudopontiff, and deposed from Peter’s Throne, by reason of the irregularity of His election due to Simony and other crimes:—an excellent example of the sauce for the goose being served to the gander.

Melpomene is own sister to Thalia; and never has a ghastlier tragedy been more comically played. This self-styled Council of Pisa laboured under the disadvantage of being radically schismatic. Only the Roman Pontiff can summon, or confirm the decrees of, a General Council. The acts of the Schismatic Council of Pisa, therefore, were hopelessly and irretrievably invalid. The very impossibility of the whole affair is proof conclusive that these four well-intentioned, well-living pathetic old men had been tried beyond their strength, beyond all patience, goaded by insult and by gross injustice into frenzy. Their conduct was simply frenetic.

The Lord Julius P.P. II replied to Cardinal Francisco de Borja with short incisive action. By His supreme authority He issued a Bull of Deposition from the cardinalate; and denounced him to all Christendom as an heresiarch and schismatic with whom none might have to do. A Bull (Bulla Monitorii Apostolici) was issued on the twenty-eighth of July 1511 “_cõtra tres reverendissimos cardinales ... ut redeãt ad obediẽtâ S.d.n. ne Schisma in eccl. in sancta dei oriẽt_.” This was followed by a second “_Bulla intimatiõis Generalis Concilii apud Lateranum per S.d.n. Juliũ Papâ II edita_,” directed, with the scrupulous politeness of a cleric about to crush, against “_dilectũ filiũ nostrũ Franciscũ Tituli Sancti Clementis p̃byterum Cardinalem_”; who “_in seipsis armis assumptis et pro sacerdotalibus vestis Thorace[91] indutis et gladiis armati Papā se cõtulerãt_.” Printed contemporary copies of these two Bulls are in the British Museum; and, bound with them, but, strange to say, uncatalogued (A.D. 1900)—(strange, because of the unique perfection of everything at the British Museum)—is the momentous Brief announcing the issue of the Bull of Deposition. Its title is “_Breve Julii Secũdi Pont. Max. ad reges, duces, et principes christianos, etc._ “_Julius Papa II_” addresses Himself to

“Our well-beloved son in Christ Maximilian, Elect-Emperor, Always August; „ „ „ Louis (XII), of the French, the Most Christian King; „ „ „ Hernando, of Aragon and the Two Sicilies, the Catholic King; „ „ „ Emanuele, of Portugal, the Illustrious King; „ „ „ Henry (VII), of England, the Illustrious King;[92] „ „ „ James (V), of the Scots, the Illustrious King; „ „ „ Wladislaf, of Hungary and Bohemia, the Illustrious King; „ „ „ Jean and Katharine, King and Queen of Navarre; „ „ „ Sigismund, King of Poland; „ „ „ John, King of Denmark; „ „ „ Carlo, Duke of Savoja; „ „ „ Lionardo Lauredano, Doge of Venice;”

and proclaims that “this day, in Public Consistory, We have deprived” of all things ecclesiastical, and of the cardinalitial hat, (_galero cardinalatus_), Bernardino Cardinal-Bishop of Sabina, Guillaume Cardinal-Bishop of Praeneste (Palestrina), Francisco Cardinal-Presbyter of the title of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo (a clerical error for his Title, as given above in the Bull, was San Clemente), and Réné de Prie Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Sabina, that they no longer may be considered Cardinals, nor called Cardinals, by word or by writing. The Brief is _Dated at Rome at St. Peters, and given Under the Fisherman’s Ring, the twenty-fourth of October 1511 and the eighth year of Our Pontificate_. This summary is appended here as an example of form.

Death had hurled his dart before the Terrible Pontiff. Cardinal Francisco de Borja died of an apoplexy at Pisa, before the sentence of his disgrace and deposition reached him there.

The student of history, who seeks a field wherein few yet have walked, will be well advised to investigate the life of this gentle and quiet cardinal, who departed in the tragic blaze of madness and revolt.

* * * * *

In 1512 death relieved the Lord Julius P.P. II of two more of the Borgia whom He loathed: for there died in his Neapolitan exile the Most Worshipful Lord Pedro Luis de Lançol y Borja, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Via Lata_, Arch-presbyter of the Liberian Basilica (Santa Maria Maggiore), Abbot of San Simpliciano at Milan, and Archbishop of Valencia in Spain. Having heard a rumour of the death of the Supreme Pontiff, he was on the verge of returning to Rome for the Conclave; but he was killed by falling from his mule at Naples, where he is buried in the church of San Piercelestino without any memorial.

This year also died Don Roderico de Aragona e Borgia, at the age of thirteen years, the son of Madonna Lucrezia by her first legitimate marriage with Don Alonso de Aragona Prince of Bisceglia. He had been despoiled of his duchy of Sermoneta in favour of Caïetani by the Lord Julius P.P. II; and his existence as a step-son was embarrassing in Ferrara, except to his mother, who most sincerely mourned him.

The Duchess Lucrezia was to suffer much this year. The Lord Julius P.P. II put the ban of Greater Excommunication upon her beloved husband Duke Alfonso. As the consort of a Borgia—a Borgia universally adored, a sovereign Borgia, a Borgia of unblemished character,—the Duke of Ferrara naturally was intensely antipathetic to the Holiness of the Pope. If that were not enough, the facts remained that Duke Alfonso was the friend of France, (as the Supreme Pontiff’s predecessor also had been); and, he was cognizant of Cardinal Francisco’s disesteem for the Lord Julius P.P. II. Naturally the Pope’s Holiness found the Duke’s Excellency most annoying. The awful import of Excommunication barely can be realized at the present time. People idly wonder why the excommunicated take their case so seriously—why they do not turn to find amusement, or satisfaction, in another channel,—why they persist in lying prone in the mire where the fulmination struck them. And, indeed, in modern times the formal sentence rarely is promulgated, and only against personages of distinction, like the German Dr. Döllinger or the Sabaudo King Vittoremanuele II di Savoja, whose very circumstances provided them with the means to allay the temporal irritation of the blow. There are excommunications “_gerendae_ sententiae” and “_latae_ sententiae.” In the former, excommunication is threatened for some act: but the offender must have sentence passed upon him. In the latter, the offender is excommunicate the moment he performs the act forbidden, (“ipso facto”). This however operates only “in foro _interno_,” and in the Eyes of God. To make it effectual “in foro _externo_” it is necessary that the guilt be proved and be declared to be so by some “competent judge.” Excommunication _latae sententiae_ appears not to have been uncommon in the Victorian Era. A Leading Case occurred in December 1882, when it was enforced against a Scots clergyman on the strength of the following letter:—

“ROME, _6 December 1882_.

“MY DEAR LORD ARCHBISHOP (of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh),—I have just
received a message from the Cardinal-Prefect (of Propaganda, Cardãl
Simeoni,) to tell your Grace ‘che il noto sacerdote il quale voleva
citare i Vescovi incorrerebbe senza dubbio la censura al primo atto
efficace che ponesse, ossia all’ atto della citazione, come _cogens
Ecclesiasticum ad tribunal laicum_. Se fosse ancora in tempo sarebbe
bene che l’Arcivescovo ne avvertisse il Sacerdote per distoglierlo da
tale atto.’

“Yours very respectfully,
“F. A. CAMPBELL,
“(then Rector of the Scots College of Rome.)”

The censure was Excommunicatio latae sententiae speciali modo reservatae Romano Pontifici. Bulla _Apostolicae Sedis. VII_.[93] Seldom does a case of Excommunication terminate in a perridiculous collapse, as this one did, when the Cardinal-Prefect denied having sent the quoted message. Seldom, on the whole, is Excommunication _latae sententiae_ made effectual by proof of guilt and declaration of proof of guilt by a competent judge. The effect can be produced in another and far more exitial way. Simple secret instructions, or even hints, can be given by bishops to clergy, or adverse opinions can be expressed by one clerk to another, suggesting that it would be well (that it would tend ad majorem Dei gloriam, some say,) to obstruct the worldly welfare of such and such an one, to refuse him his rites and sacraments, or at least to offer the last upon such conditions as the “proper pride” in human nature will disdain to accept. This mode is purely devilish. It is capable of abuse by unworthy clerks for personal ends. It admits of no defence, of no appeal, of no redress, by the very reason of its intangibility. It constricts a man in phantom folds. It blanches him with venomous breath. The world, ever ready to pity some obscene dog who manifests his pain, here sees nothing save one bruised and broken; desperately digladiant, struggling with some invisible (and therefore incredible) foe. The civilized world goes in terror of the invisible; goes by “on the other side.” Excommunication of any kind is a fearsome thing for him to whom the Faith once delivered to the saints is the only prize worth having. To the man who, in defect of spiritual advice, is convinced of his own integrity, to whom the sacraments are as “odorifera panacea,”[94] to whom the sacraments are the only means which keep him from Despair, their deprivation, by the revenge of a personal enemy, of an offended vanity abasing spiritual powers to satiate secular ambition, signifies that, for the excommunicate, the light goes out of life, love is eradicated from the heart, confidence in man is killed, hope is banished from death. Sympathy he may have from aliens, if he can humiliate himself to expose his grievous wounds: but he may have it only at a price which in honour he cannot pay—the price of insincerity to his convictions—the price of apostasy. The dire Ban of excommunication, formal or informal, drives a man wild; turns his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him; he is savage; he is a Bandit, actually and literally. Sometimes he becomes criminal. Ostracism practised is a school for scoundrels. Far more merciful—divinely merciful, not humanly—it would be to slay outright the body; than to doom a soul to live a solivagous life of torture—the torture of Hopelessness. That is why Excommunication is so horrible in this present age of works. That is why it was so trenchant a weapon in the ages of faith. It was, and is, perfectly impossible to be resisted by one who is, and was, sincerely faithful. Often enough, an excommunicate sovereign would try resistance; for sovereigns are stronger than ordinary plebeians in the matter of resources. Then, when an interval for consideration had elapsed, the second blow of the Flail would fall—Interdict: his demesne would be made to suffer loss of the means of grace, the sacraments, which were denied to him. His subjects generally rose, resentful and revolting. There was no reason why they should be afflicted, when submission of their sovereign to God’s Vicegerent would suffice for their enfranchisement. But sometimes Interdict also failed. The third blow came. Subjects were absolved from their oath of allegiance to the excommunicate; his throne was declared vacant; kings and princes of Christendom were invited to invade his realm, to take his crown and sceptre, to expel him a homeless friendless connudate outcast in a world that shunned him like a pestilence, like the horrid leprous scab of creeping things which his blasted human body inevitably would become. Then, suppliant, submissive, he crawled to his Canossa; as the late Duke of Lauenberg crawled to the Lord Leo P.P. XIII the other day; as Caesar Fridericus Ahenobarbus Semper Augustus abjectly crawled to, and waited at, the gates of the huge Englishman, Nicholas Breakespeare, the Lord Hadrian P.P. IV, who ruled the world eight hundred years ago, “Not for thee, but for Peter,” that indignant Emperor muttered, perforce doing groom’s service for Peter’s Successor, holding the stirrup of the pontifical palfrey. “For Us, _and_ for Peter,” the superb English Pope retorted, as He bent Caesar to His unconquerable will. Arrogant? Arrogant——of any miserable mortal man who did not believe himself to be, who had not been officially crowned and saluted, and to whom every emperor and king and prince of Christendom, every Christian sovereign and subject of Europe, had not sworn allegiance as, “Ruler of the World, Father of Princes and of Kings, Earthly Vicar of Jesus Christ our Saviour.”

When the action of the human mind is inspired by the principle endeavoured here to be set down, the inexpugnable face of Excommunication, (magnified by the assent to its validity of the excommunicated one,) perhaps, may be realized. Duke Alfonso d’Este could not hope to stand where Caesar Semper Augustus fell. Naturally, he went in desperate and horrid fear. He knew that he had not deserved to be gibbeted as a Bandit before the world: but he knew also that, before the Holiness of the Pope, he, a sovereign-regnant, was crushable as a worm. He lost no time in omitting to seek release from the hideous ban.

Early in 1513, he chose the poet Messer Ludovico Ariosto, with his beautiful Greek profile and noble intellect, secretary and laureate of Cardinal Ippolito; and named him as his Orator to open negotiations with the Pope.

The Lord Julius P.P. II was perfectly implacable. He had not pardoned the indiscreet criticisms of Cardinal Francisco de Borja, who had passed beyond His power. It was the complete ruin of Borgia that alone would slake His passionate thirst for vengeance;—and a Borgia was Duchess of Ferrara. He did not intend kindness to the consort of that Duchess: and He resolved to begin, in a clerical manner, with intimidation. Accordingly, He admitted Messer Ludovico Ariosto to an audience; and immediately ordered him to quit the Vatican by the door before he should be thrown from the window. After this reception of a proffered olive-branch, the Pope’s Holiness coolly awaited Duke Alfonso’s next move.

Don Fabrizio Colonna flourished in the favour of the Lord Julius P.P. II; and he, also, was under many vital obligations to the Duke of Ferrara. He, in his turn, tried the role of peacemaker between pontiff and sovereign; and so far succeeded, that the Holy Father farcically permitted the Duke to come to Rome, assured of a favourable reception, to plead his cause and to arrange the terms of his submission.

He came. He saw the Ruler of the World. He was conquered. The Terrible Pontiff named the sole conditions on which He would consent to remit the ban of excommunication. Nothing could be more enormously radical and sweeping. They were, abdication of his sovereignty over the city and whole duchy of Ferrara, with absolute renunciation for himself and his heirs for ever of all rights therein, in favour of the Holy See; also, his retirement to voluntary life-long exile at the little city of Asti in the province of Lombardy. Death and obliteration of the Borgia, not by vulgar assassination but by constitutional withdrawal of the means to live, was the aim of the Terrible Pontiff; wherefore He would strip naked Duke Alfonso, as aforetime He had stripped naked Duke Cesare.

Duke Alfonso d’Este refused to purchase release from excommunication on these disgraceful terms. The Lord Julius P.P. II let him have hints which gave to understand that the said terms might be mitigated. By various subterfuges he was detained in Rome.

The army of the Terrible Pontiff stealthily was advancing on Ferrara.

There was only a woman there.

Duke Alfonso chanced to hear of the pontifical stratagem. On the instant, he made his plans for quitting Rome. But he found that he was in a prison. The Terrible Pontiff held him; and would not let him go. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI may not have been a Saint: but He never dirtied His honour like this.

This treachery of the Holiness of the Pope disgusted the Ghibellinism of Don Fabrizio Colonna. This was not what he had contemplated, when he persuaded Duke Alfonso to adventure his right hand in the jaws of the Wolf of Rome. Considering himself to be responsible, his own honour at stake, he played a counter-stratagem upon the Lord Julius P.P. II. By his aid, the Duke broke prison; and, under his protection, in his fortress of Marino fifteen miles from Rome, a safe asylum was provided. Duke Alfonso desired to hasten to defend his duchy now menaced by the Pope: and all Colonna acclaimed his resolution. Don Prospero Colonna undertook to bring him there where he would be. Travelling by night through hostile territory, environed by ever-present dangers, at length, disguised as Don Prospero’s cook, the royal and ducal Bandit reached Ferrara.

In the city there was joy. In the duchy there was confidence restored. In the heart of the Duchess Lucrezia there was gratitude for the safety of her much-loved lord. Ferrara was fresh from four years successful war: an excessively dangerous enemy to assault, now that her leader led her. The pontifical army executed a second strategic movement at the double—to the rear.

And, before the year 1513 was three months old, the Terrible Pontiff, the Lord Julius P.P. II, (Who, according to Monsignor Paris de Grassis, successor to Burchard as Papal Caerimonarius, suffered from the French Disease,) died at Rome, raving in His last delirium “Frenchmen, begone from Italy! Begone from Italy, Alfonso d’Este!”

Dreadful end of a furious revengeful disappointed plebeian who was Ruler of the World! The monstrous Moses of Michelangelo, in San Pietro _ad Vincula_, marks His ambitious unfinished tomb.

* * * * *

The Most Illustrious Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_, was the son of Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, born the eleventh of December 1475. His mother was Madonna Clarice Orsini, one of the sweetest and best of good mothers. Her husband said that his own mother chose her for him,

“Tolsi donna ... ovvero mi fu data.

When Don Giovanni was of the age of seven years (the age of reason, technically,) the Christian King named him Abbot of Fonte Dolce, on the nineteenth of May 1483, in which preferment the Lord Sixtus P.P IV. confirmed him twelve days later by Brief dated the thirty-first of May 1843. On the first of June he received the ecclesiastical tonsure, when episcopal hands wielded scissors to cut the child-clerk’s hair in five places—on the front, the back, the right, the left, and the crown, of the head—while bishop and boy recited the psalm verse:

“The Lord is the portion— “_Dominus pars_—
“Of mine inheritance— “_Haereditatis meae_—
“And of my cup— “_Et calicis mei_—
“Thou art He Who shall restore— “_Tu es Qui restitues_—
“Mine inheritance to me— “_Haereditatem meam mihi_—

and finally the bishop endued him with the fair white linen surplice, (super pellicem) the official vesture of his clerical estate. The symbolism of this mystery seems to be that the clerk enlists himself in the regular army of the Church Militant, sacrificing an actual piece of his person as a pledge of his fidelity, and receiving as handsel, so to speak, his uniform. From this date the child was called in his family Messer Giovanni, (Mr. John). On the first of March 1484, he was named Abbot of Passignano. He grew up a good and manly boy, fond of nice things, grave, quietly merry, and a perfect gentleman. On the third of March 1489, his father’s friend the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII created him Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_; but, as he was only of the age of thirteen years, the creation was reserved _in petto_, while he continued his studies under Canon Angelo Ambrogini (detto Poliziano); who, in 1492 wrote to the Pope about his pupil,

“This youth is so formed by nature and education that, being inferior
to none in genius, he yields not to his equals in industry, nor to his
teachers in learning, nor to old men in gravity of demeanour. He
naturally is honest and ingenuous, and he has been so strictly bred
that never from his mouth there comes a lewd, or even a light,
expression. Though he be so young, his judgement is so secure that
even the old respect him as a father. He sucked piety and religion
with his mother’s milk, preparing himself for his sacred office even
from his cradle. (Ep. v. Lib. VIII)”

In the Publick Consistory of the twenty-second of March 1492, he was admitted to the Sacred College, receiving the scarlet hat and the cardinalitial sapphire ring, (whose value was six hundred zecchini d’oro—say, £1200); and he was of the age of sixteen years, three months, eleven days.

During his cardinalate his most delightful trait was the loving kindness which he shewed to his young cousin Giulio, (Botticelli’s most precious model), the bastard of Don Giuliano de’ Medici, by Madonna Antonia Gorini of Florence, and who ended his life as the Lord Clement P.P. VII. Cardinal Giovanni got him ennobled as a Knight of St. John of Jerusalem of Malta, and Prior of Capua; and gave him an honourable position in his household as confidential counsellor: and, indeed, it was to Don Giulio, attending him as esquire in the Conclave of March 1513, that Cardinal Giovanni generously said, when the result of the squittino (scrutiny) was made known, “Come Giulio, let us enjoy the Papacy, since God hath given it to Us:” and he immediately raised His cousin to the purple, giving him His Own vacated rank of Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_.[95]

Cardinal Giovanni, like all the Medici, was congenitally myopic. In all presentments of him, there is the slight forward bend or set of the neck which marks the short-sighted man. Messer Paolo Giovio says that he surveyed the world through a concave crystal, and that this affected his skill as a sportsman. Messer Rafaele Sanzio’s portrait of him and his cousin shows him with this concave crystal spy-glass in his hand. No doubt his physical incompleteness wonderfully aided in developing his enchanting taste and temperament; for it is well-known that the best artist is the man who does not see all.[96]

The crowd, waiting outside the Conclave of 1513 for the annunciation of the new Pope, were confronted by a doorway builded of the fragments of other buildings. Some of the stones bore portions of mutilated inscriptions; and the crowd amused itself by piecing these together. But there was one large stone above the lintel, whose inscription baffled explanation. It bore the letters

M. C. C. C. C. X. L.

and presumably had come from some edifice dated 1440. Presently, the door was flung open; and the scarlet Cardinal-Archdeacon proclaimed, “I announce to you great joy. We have for a Pope the Lord Giovanni de’ Medici, Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria _in Domnica_, who wills to be called Leo the Tenth.” And in the doorway stood the white figure of the new Successor of St. Peter, of the age of thirty eight years, His head straining a little forward, peering through His half-closed bright eyes, lifting His hand in Apostolic Benediction. Instantly a wag in the kneeling crowd explained the cryptic inscription _Multi Caeci Cardinales Creaverunt Caecum X (decimum) Leonem_; “Many short-sighted cardinals created a short-sighted one Leo the Tenth.” That is a specimen of wit in the year 1513, bright, quick, direct, pungent, and finished.

* * * * *

The election of the Lord Leo P.P. X was an immense relief to the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara. It meant deliverance from unscrupulous persecution for the Pope’s Holiness now was patrician, and at least a gentleman, though no enemy to the House of Borgia. So Ferrara and Borgia went in peace. The duchy had been at war for nearly six years, almost without cessation; her resources were quite exhausted; her exchequer was empty. So keen was the distress, that, in order not to add to his people’s burden by pressing for his revenues, Duke Alfonso pawned his plate, and Duchess Lucrezia her jewels which were of enormous value. These were redeemed three years later: and it is to the inventory, made when they were pawned, that modern knowledge of their extraordinary rarity and worth is due.

* * * * *

On the thirteenth of September 1513 was born in Rome, of Don Tarquinio Poplicola di Santacroce and Madonna Ersilia his wife, the Noble Don Prospero Poplicola di Santacroce, afterwards Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Girolamo _degli Schiavoni_ and Nuncio, who introduced Tobacco into Italy and gave it the name _Erba Santacroce_, Holycross Herb.

* * * * *

The life of the Duchess Lucrezia, during the next few years, was a life of calm after storm, _post tot naufragias tuta_. She won fresh fame by her goodness to young girls, whom she provided with dowries, to tempt them to keep continency by marrying well. Delightfully practical age, which went directly to the point attempting no maudlin half-measures, “so sweetly mawkish and so smoothly dull”! The ideal of the professional philanthropist, then, was to make virtue easy, and vice difficult. The ideal of the professional philanthropist, now, is to make virtue horribly vulgar and vice an imperious necessity. The Duchess Lucrezia had observed that the lack of money is the root of all evil; and, at that root she struck.

Charming descriptions are extant of the evenings which this egregious lady spent in conversation with poets and scholars, listening to music, and working on the lovely embroidery for which she was so celebrated. On the third of July 1515, she presented her lord with a daughter. The same year she was grieved by the death of her friend, the great printer, Messer Aldo Manuzio. That cool-headed, shrewd, and very learned Venetian, the hereditary enemy of Ferrara, has left laudations of the Duchess Lucrezia which are sincere and unsurpassable. It is not singular that the great and good among her intimate contemporaries should be those who praise her; and that her defamers should be professional squibbers, notoriously base and venal. The following year, the eleventh of July, 1516, she suffered the loss of her little son who was of the age of five years. Is the touching letter, by which she conveyed the news to her confidante and sister-in-law, the Marchioness Isabella Gonzaga of Mantua, the letter of a wicked woman or of a good? She says,

“——the Most Illustrious Don Alessandro, my youngest son, after a long
and painful illness, in which remedies were of no avail, was seized by
a cruel dysentery. Yesterday, at the fourth hour of the night, (say,
midnight,) the poor little man (_poverino_) yielded his blessed soul
into the hands of our Lord God, leaving me much afflicted and full of
sorrow; as Your Excellency, being a woman and a tender mother
yourself, may easily believe.[97]”

On the Festival of All Saints, she bore another son to Duke Alfonso, who was baptized by the name Francesco.

* * * * *

On the twenty-sixth of November 1517, there died in Rome Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei, the mother of the Duchess Lucrezia; and was buried in Santa Maria _del Popolo_ by the Flaminian Gate. Nine of her letters to her daughter, and rather crabbed letters too, are preserved in the Archives of Modena. They are subscribed, “_La felice ed infelice madre_;” which seems precisely to describe her condition. She was a happy mother; happy in the gorgeous loveliness of her children, happy in their good fortune, happy in being the mother of two dukes, a prince duke, and a sovereign duchess: but unhappy, in that human law made their father not her husband. Another letter of hers, dated from Rome the fifteenth of December 1515, and signed “Perpetua Oratrice Vanozza,” has been the means of causing some uncertainty as to her real name. The following is suggested as an explanation.

“Vanozza”, of course, is a familiar abbreviation of “Giovanozza”, which is equivalent to “Big Jenny”. Italians are deliciously disrespectfully inoffensive in their use of universal and personal nicknames; which are taken conferred without the least aggrievance. “Perpetua Oratrice[98]” is not a name at all: but a quasi-official style.

In England at the present day, one frequently is startled by the receipt of a letter, from some fervent member of that devout female sex (for which Holy Church, knowing needs, diurnally prays), bearing as signature the names of the writer, with the addition “E de M”. If one has not yet seen the lions, (as the Fifteenth Century said of a novice,) one looks for the university degree, knightly order, municipal or parochial rank, of which those letters are the sign. But, when one knows them to stand for “Enfant de Marie,” one remembers that a pious sodality, of French origin and called “The Children of Mary,” is an excessively and universally fashionable one among females; and doubts are at an end.

It is probable that there was some such pious association for females of the Borgian Era. Madonna Giovanna always was a respectable well-living character: but we know that she found salvation, was converted, became _dévote_, in 1508, when she sat under Frat’ Egidio da Viterbo preaching a course of Lent sermons in Rome.

It is suggested, then, that at once she began “to make her soul,” to prepare to meet her God, for she was well on in years; and that she became a member of some Confraternity of Perpetual Prayer, resembling those of the present day whose members divide among themselves the duty of praying the clock round, so that an unending stream of supplication shall flow toward the Throne of Grace. It is suggested, that, being a human woman, cherishing no objection to a little perfectly legitimate advertisement of virtue (like the ladies of the “E de M” description), Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei formed the habit of signing her private letters “The Perpetual Suppliant, Big Jenny.”

Her epitaph has been given on p. 261.

* * * * *

There are two documents of this year 1517, which go to prove that, at this time, there existed no idea of concealing the parentage of Don Giovanni Borgia the sometime Duke of Nepi and Camerino. The boy appears to have made his home with his sister, the Duchess Lucrezia; for both documents are issued under her protection and authority. She was nineteen years older than her brother, who now was of the age of twenty-one years; and her notable good nature, as well as her royal estate, make it natural enough that she should be more mother than sister to her august Father’s youngest son.

The first brief (they both are quoted in Cittadella,) is dated “sub die Iº Nov. 1517”; and names the Bishop of Adria as Don Giovanni’s agent in some pecuniary transaction, he being less than twenty-five, and more than eighteen, years old. It begins, “Ferrariae in palatio habitationis Ill^{mi} ... Ill^{mus} Dominus Joannes Borgia, _frater_ Ill^{mae} Dominae Lucretiae Borgiae Ducissae Ferrariae, minor annis vigintiquinque, maior tamen decem octo,——.”

The second brief is addressed to Messer Filippo Strozzi; and claims, from the consuls of Pesaro, the baggage which the young noble had lost after his shipwreck in sight of that city! It is dated the second of December 1517; and begins, “Mandatum Ill^{mae} Dominae Ducissae Ferrariae in palatio Ducali ... Ill^{ma} Domina Lucretia Borgia Estensis ... suo nomine, et nomine ac Tanquam coniuncta persona Ill^{mi} Domini Joannis Borgiae _eius frater_——.”

Little or nothing further has been discovered regarding the life of this youth. His history, with that of his brother Prince Gioffredo Borgia of Squillace, waits to reward research in the archives of Naples, Nepi, Camerino and Ferrara. Reluctantly, they must be left here among the _Sparks That Die_.

* * * * *

The following announcement closes the second epoch of the House of Borgia. It is dated the twenty-first day of June 1519; and was sent by flying posts to his nephew, the Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua: “It hath pleased the Lord God to take unto Himself the soul of the Illustrious Duchess, my much-beloved Consort. (Signed) Alfonsus Dux Feraria.”

The “Illustrious Duchess” Lucrezia Borgia was buried in her favourite church at the monastery of Corpus Domini, by side of her husband’s mother the Duchess Leonor de Aragona, deeply and sincerely mourned by her children, and her husband Duke Alfonso d’Este, and, indeed, by all Ferrara duchy crowding round her bier. She was only in the forty-second year of her age.

May she rest in the fragrant peace of her good deeds.

=Book the Third=

The Brilliant Light[99]

“_A fire that is kindled, begins with smoke and hissing, while it lays
hold on the faggots; bursts into a roaring blaze, with raging
tongues of flame, devouring all in reach, spangled with sparks
that die; settles into the steady genial glare, the brilliant
light, that men call fire_;”

The Borgia, who have gone before, present no difficulty to the Twentieth Century. When once their formula has been learned, they are found to be men of like passions with ourselves. They were born—they struggled through life with an amazing amount of dignity and success—they died. For a reason which has yet to be explained, the human race has made them serve for hell-myths, for prodigies of turpitude, for symbols wherewith to express ultimate and abysmal crime.

“The slave of his own appetites, in bondage to conventional laws, his
spirit emasculated by the indulgences, or corroded by the cares of
life, hardly daring to act, to think, or to speak, for himself;
man,—gregarious man,—worships the world in which he lives, adopts its
maxims, and treads its beaten paths. To rouse him from his lethargy,
and to give a new current to his thoughts, heroes appear from time to
time on the verge of his horizon; and hero-worship, Pagan or
Christian, withdraws him for a while from still baser idolatry. To
contemplate the motives and the career of such men may teach much that
well deserves the knowing: but nothing more clearly than this—that no
one can have shrines erected to his memory in the hearts of men of
different generations, unless his own heart was an altar, on which the
daily sacrifices, of fervent devotion and magnanimous self denial,
were offered to the only true Object of human worship.”[100]

The wheel of time makes one unerring revolution; and lo, a saint,—a Borgia Saint.

To write of Saint Francisco de Borja, so that he may be known of men, is more than difficult. Each man knows another, not by his strength but by his weaknesses, not as surpassing but as lacking such and such of the Ideal; for weakness makes men kin. And Saint Francisco de Borja gave no sign of human weakness, little or no sign of human nature, after he had reached his manhood. He has been called “a magnified non-natural man”; and that is the only point of view from which he can be observed. He lived entirely on the supernatural plane: the world, to him, was nothing but an enemy with whom he would have neither art nor part: he was in it, but not of it: his ways were not men’s ways, nor his thoughts men’s thoughts: he rightly cannot be liked, or disliked, hated, or loved, admired, or even judged. He must be taken as he was, comparable to none, the exact antipodes of his strenuous august invincible magnificent ancestors for there are “diversities of gifts,” in opposition to all human ideals, a “magnified non-natural man.” His note is brilliantly personal. He was utterly and absolutely selfishly solicitous about his own salvation. He made that the unique object of his life; and, to that end, he deliberately chose renunciation, hardship, ignominy, utter and extreme. His singular devotion, to the task of living according to his light, is a phenomenon of an intensity beyond the natural, environing him with an aura as of one aloof, as of one alien among men, and, therefore, altogether antipathetic to men.

He was the great-grandson of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI, Whose bastard Don Juan Francisco de Borja, Duke of Gandia in Spain, Prince of Teano and Tricarico, Count of Chiaramonte, Lauria, and Cerignola, Constable of Naples, and General of the Pontifical Army, had married Doña Maria de Aragona, a princess of the royal House of Aragon. After the mysterious murder of her husband at Rome in 1497, the Duchess Doña Maria married Don Enriquez de Luna, uncle and Master of the Household to the Viceroy Don Hernando of Castile, and Grand Commander of Leon, who soon left her widowed the second time. She lived at Baeza in Granada, and devoted herself to her two children, Doña Isabella, and Don Juan II de Borja, who succeeded his murdered father as Duke of Gandia and the rest. When her son married, she retired to the monastery of Poor Clares (the Second Order of the Religion of San Francesco d’Assisi) at Gandia, where she took the vows of a nun, and became Suor Maria Gabriella till her death in 1537. Her daughter, Doña Isabella, who was betrothed to the Duke of Segorbe, obtained the necessary dispensations, broke before marriage from her affianced husband; and followed the Duchess of Gandia her beloved mother to the Poor Clares, where she also took the vows as Suor Francisca de Jesus.

Don Juan II married, first, Dona Francisca de Castro y Pinos; secondly, Doña Juana de Aragona, bastard of Archbishop Don Alonso de Aragona of Saragossa nephew of the Catholic King Don Hernando of Spain.[101] Fourteen children were the offspring of these marriages;

DON FRANCISCO, THE SAINT:

Don Alonso, Abbot of Valdigna:

Don Enrico, Cardinal-Deacon of San Nereo e Sant’ Achilleo:

Doña Luisa, married Don Martino de Aragona y Gurrea, Duke of
Villahermosa:

Don Rodrigo, Cardinal-Deacon of San Niccolo _in Carcere Tulliano_:
“while still a youth” (Ciacconi)

Don Pedro Luis, Viceroy of Cataluna:

Don Tommaso, Archbishop of Saragossa, (in succession to Archbishop Don
Juan de Aragona bastard of Archbishop Don Alonso,) and Viceroy of
Aragon:

Don Felipe, Knight of Montesa and Governor of Oran:

Don Diego, died young:

_Doña Juana, First Abbess of the Royal Monastery of Discalced
Carmelites at Madrid. She died in the Odour of Sanctity_:

Doña Leonor, married Don Juan de Gurrea:

Doña Magdalena, married Don Hernando de Proxita, Count of Almenara: