A world lit only by fire_ the medieval m - William Manchester [42]
ONLY CESARE BORGIA (1475–1507) could have been fit, or unfit, to be Lucrezia’s most notorious brother—Cesare, the handsome cardinal who became a multiple murderer while wearing the robes of a prince of the Church. His homicidal career began in his youth and continued to the day he himself was slain in a skirmish outside Viana. Yet—and here he was very much a figure of his time—Cesare was no brute. Dapper, eloquent, and even more erudite than his sister, he was a master of the cruel, perfidious politics of his time—was, in fact, the model for Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il principe. Machiavelli could not approve of Cesare, but he found him fascinating. And so he was, though the qualities that made him so were hardly endearing.
The circumstances surrounding the death of his elder brother, Juan, duke of Gandía, are the murkiest in the annals of his sinister family, and impossible to confirm. If what was believed then is true, they are also the most sordid. The crime began with Alexander himself. In 1497, the pope, manipulating his daughter in his remarkable fashion, decided to divorce her from Sforza. Knowing his father-in-law, Lucrezia’s first husand fled Rome, fearing for his life. In Milan, however, he seethed. The pope had publicly called him impotent. That being a grave insult in Italy, Sforza—who later fathered children—shouted out what all Rome suspected but none had dared whisper: that the Borgia pope’s real motive was incestuous, that he wanted his captivating daughter, not remarried, but active in his own bed.
Even for those times, this was scandalous. The rejected husband’s family was powerful enough to protect him, which made the pontiff’s position extremely awkward. If he kept Lucrezia near the Vatican and discouraged suitors, no one in Rome would doubt that he was spending his nights in her bed; that was consistent with both his reputation and hers. Intimations of lecherous desire on his part were accurate. His daughter had just turned seventeen and was at the height of her beauty. We now know that he was, in fact, her lover. Whether or not that was known in Milan is another question. In any event, he didn’t brave it out, which would have been in character; instead he hastily prepared to find a new, politically suitable husband for her.
Cesare Borgia (1475–1507)
Here, however, the tale darkens. Romans had scarcely absorbed the news that the father lusted for his daughter when they heard even more shocking gossip. Lucrezia was said to be unavailable to her father because she was already deeply involved in another incestuous relationship, or relationships—a triangular entanglement with both her handsome brothers. The difficulty, it was whispered, was that although she enjoyed coupling with both of them, each, jealous of the other, wanted his sister for himself.
On the morning of June 15, 1497, Juan’s corpse was found floating in the Tiber mutilated by nine savage dagger wounds. Cesare’s guilt was immediately assumed—he was a killer, and known to be jealous of his brother for other reasons—and the longer the mystery remained unsolved, the more certain his guilt seemed. History may take another view; Juan, like all Borgias, had other enemies. But myth has a significance all its own. At the time, the only Borgia to emerge unscathed was Lucrezia, whose reputation, by then, was beyond redemption.
It touched bottom with the birth of her illegitimate son Giovanni, the so-called