Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy (45 page)

Isabella’s wish was soon to be granted. On the night of 20-21 February 1513 Julius II died in the Vatican, just in time to save Ferrara. He had made an agreement with the Emperor Maximilian that the latter would not aid Alfonso d’Este, and, at the end of January, Louis XII, Alfonso’s principal protector, sent an envoy to Rome to sue for peace. On 31 January, the Pope was reported to be ‘thinking of nothing else but the enterprise of Ferrara’ despite his illness. He was not too weak, however, to indulge in one of his paroxysms of rage on hearing that certain cardinals were giving a carnival banquet which he interpreted as an anticipatory celebration of his death. Federico Gonzaga’s tutor, Stazio Gadio, reported him as being ‘more terrible than ever’ fulminating against ‘that fleet of poltroons’ and threatening that if they took pleasure from his death ‘he was not dead yet and he would kill them all’, particularly that ‘beast’, the Cardinal Agenensis, promoter of the feast. It was to be his last rage: feeling himself better he decided to indulge his passion for wine, tasting – or rather drinking – no less than eight different varieties, with the result that that night he was overtaken by a fever from which he did not recover.

Patron of Michelangelo, Raphael and Bramante, Julius II had been a great pope in the temporal sense, the archetypal Renaissance pontiff along the lines of his hated predecessor, Alexander VI. The former Giuliano della Rovere had not been cut out for the spiritual life. As Guicciardini wrote, he would be considered a great pope by those who judge that it is more the office of the popes to increase with arms and the blood of Christians, the dominions of the Apostolic See than to labour, with the good example of their own lives and by correcting and caring for those fallen by the wayside, for the salvation of those souls, for which they boast that Christ appointed them his vicars on earth’, adding that Julius would have been ‘certainly worthy of great glory, if he had been a secular prince’.
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Sanudo, writing from the Venetian point of view, did not see Julius as the patriot he is often made out to be. ‘This pope,’ he wrote, ‘was the cause of Italy’s ruin. Would to God he had died five years ago, for the good of Christianity, and of this republic and of poor Italy.’ For all his xenophobic war cry ‘Out with the barbarians! [i.e. foreigners]’, he had done more than most to embroil the foreign powers in Italy in the ceaseless wars which were to bring about the ruin of Rome.

In Ferrara Lucrezia made no secret of her joy at the death of this ‘Holofernes’, as di Prosperi described him, the oldest and most virulent of her family’s enemies who had destroyed Cesare and come near to destroying her too. While Alfonso discreetly celebrated at a dinner with his household, Lucrezia openly went about the town visiting a great number of churches to give thanks for their deliverance. For herself, her family and Ferrara it had been, as the Duke of Wellington said after the battle of Waterloo, ‘a close-run thing’.

Julius II’s successor was the cultivated, pleasure-loving, thirtyeight-year-old second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cardinal Giovanni de’Medici, who took the name of Leo X. ‘God has given us the papacy,’ he told a friend. ‘Let us enjoy it.’ Alfonso and Lucrezia had high hopes of this new pope. But Leo, for all his pleasantness, was as avid for power and as ambitious for the advancement of his family as his father had been. He had never forgotten Lorenzo’s instructions to him when he went to Rome for the first time as an extremely young cardinal, to make sure he preserved ‘both the goat and the cabbages’, i.e. to look after the interests of his family as well as those of the Church.

On 30 March, Lucrezia informed Francesco that Alfonso had left that morning with twelve companions for Rome in optimistic mood about his affairs, ‘called by the Pope and encouraged by many Cardinals and other friends’. The next day Prospero Colonna arrived in Ferrara. He spent a long time with Lucrezia who had greeted him with the most beautiful of her gentlewomen, dining informally with Lucrezia and Angela, old acquaintances from the Roman days of Alexander’s papacy, who persuaded him not to leave immediately as he had planned. Instead he went hunting with leopards and hawking in the Barco, and in the evening Antonio Costabili gave him a magnificent banquet – all the more remarkable, said di Prosperi, for it being a Friday – a meatless day under the Catholic calendar – and at such short notice.

Lucrezia sat at the head of the high table of a mixed company of select guests which included, of course, Angela Borgia. Di Prosperi considered the occasion so worthy of note that he had the menu and its ingredients copied out with the list of principal guests. Beginning with an amphora of rose water for the washing of hands, the table was set with milk bread, oat fritters and biscuits, marzipan and cakes made of pine-nut flour. The wines were Muscatel, Trebbiano, sweet new wine and other table wine. There were salads of chopped endive, lettuce, anchovies, capers and caper flowers and young cabbage. There were dishes of large prawns, sturgeon milk (? roe) mixed with sugar, cinnamon and rose water, presented as a first course. The boiled dishes were large pike, sturgeon, large ray, tuna and salted ray accompanied by juniper-flavoured soup and herb sauce. These were followed by fried pike, large tench, sturgeon, large trout and carp, accompanied by little freshwater fish, olives, oranges and lemons. Another course comprised small squid sliced, a spicy sauce, ravioli and zest of lemon. As if all this were not enough there was large pike in aspic, sturgeon and red mullet, and on the buffet three large ray,
tortelli alla lombarda
, and large eels in soup. Then came large eels roasted on the spit, huge herb omelets made with one hundred eggs each, pies, red caviar, an arrowroot tart and razorfish. There were oysters, scallops, sea truffles and winkles. For fruit there were pink apples, pears, cheese from Piacenza (
formato piacentino),
peeled almonds, sultanas, grapes and small plums, crisp, thin cakes and a punch made of brandy, sugar and cloves. Then after more rose water for washing their hands the guests were offered the confections of Maestro Vincenzo, sugared almonds in many colours, angelica sweets, pears and peaches preserved in
grappa, cedri,
preserved pine nuts and aniseed. At the beginning of dinner at the request of Lucrezia, the singers sang psalms in ‘
voce basse
’ in place of reading, then lutes, viols and cornets were played while woodwind players greeted the entrance and departure of the guests.
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Isabella d’Este, now back in Mantua on the specific orders of her husband, was annoyed and jealous that Prospero Colonna had visited Ferrara without coming to visit her. She had sent to Lucrezia asking her to issue an invitation to him on her behalf but, Lucrezia wrote ‘regretfully’, ‘had he still been here when your message arrived I would willingly have acted as your ambassador and used every diligence to obtain your object, but His Lordship had already departed for Correggio . . .’ On 11 March, Gonzaga had written his wife a very angry letter, reminding her of her duty in insulting terms – ‘she was of an age and discretion that she should not need reminding of it’ and for public and private reasons ‘she should return without further delay’. ‘We are about to go to Gonzaga to greet Federico who should be already near here, for love of whom Your Ladyship will [no doubt] hasten, and beyond any other reason to put an end to all the gossip among the people here which we will not repeat, leaving it to Benedetto Codelupo [Capilupo] who is most well informed of this . . . thus for whatever love you bear us we urge you to return immediately . . .’
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The rumours to which Francesco was referring concerned a lampoon by Tebaldeo with scurrilous suggestions about Isabella and her old friend, Mario Equicola, author of the pro-women treatise
De mulieribus
, copies of which were pinned up on various walls in Mantua. Among other insults proffered by Francesco to Isabella in official letters written by his secretary and therefore public knowledge, had been the expression of his anger and bitterness at having ‘a wife of the kind who always wants to have her own way and her own opinions’, something which contemporaries would have considered the worst accusation a man could level at his wife. It is not surprising, therefore, to read that, according to Luzio, ‘the cordiality of their old relations was never restored’.
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Lucrezia, however, remained on polite terms with Isabella, taking care to pass on to her – but not to Francesco – news of Alfonso in Rome, and forwarding to her Ippolito’s more detailed accounts. Leo X had suspended the interdict on Alfonso for three months while his case was considered by five cardinals, and issued a brief addressing him ‘as beloved son the noble Alfonso of Este, Duke of Ferrara’ in order that he should attend the papal coronation on 12 April. Alfonso did so, very splendid in cloth of goldcurled brocade. Ominously, not a word had been said about possessions in the Romagna. Cento and La Pieve were to be discussed in the future and there was mention of the concession for salt at Comacchio and the restitution of Reggio. Lucrezia, however, remained groundlessly optimistic—‘we hope things will turn out excellently’, she told Isabella. Where she had known very well what kind of man Julius II was, she, like most people, underestimated and misread Leo X. News came from Alfonso that the Pope had extended the suspension of the interdict for a further four months, promising to maintain him in his Duchy of Ferrara and to defend him against the hostile moves of any power against him. Alfonso dined with the Pope before leaving, ‘most satisfied’ with the soothing words he heard from Leo, delivered in the presence of his friend and protector, the Cardinal d’Aragona. It was agreed that further negotiations were to be carried on by Ippolito. Alfonso arrived home in Ferrara on 29 April ‘well satisfied with His Holiness’, Lucrezia reported to Isabella.

Indeed, briefly that spring things appeared to be going more smoothly for war-weary Ferrara and the beleaguered Este. Alfonso had retaken Cento and La Pieve on Julius’s death, and with Venetian blessing recovered some of his former possessions in the Polesine. Alfonso and Lucrezia seem to have been very much partners in the affairs of Ferrara; in August, Sanudo reported that Giovanni Alberto della Pigna was in Venice to negotiate certain matters with the Council of Ten ‘in the name of the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara’. But new hostile alignments were being drawn up with France and Venice on one side, the Pope, the Emperor, Spain and Henry VIII of England on the other. In May 1513 war broke out again; it was to last almost uninterrupted for the remainder of Lucrezia’s life. The first sign of Leo’s true intentions towards Ferrara came with his acquisition of Modena from the Emperor for 40,000 ducats; it was to be the base for a new state for his brother Giuliano de’Medici comprising Modena and Reggio, Parma and Piacenza, but principally Ferrara. As Guicciardini put it, ‘Having purchased Modena, he bent his mind exclusively to acquire Ferrara, more with intrigues and threats than open force of arms; because this had become too difficult, Alfonso having seen the perils in which he stood, had attended to making the city impregnable . . . And his enemies were perhaps greater, although operating more secretly, than those of the time of Julius . . .’ While Leo and his allies schemed against Ferrara, Alfonso aimed at the recovery of Modena and Reggio, showing himself as adept diplomatically as he was militarily.

In the dangers and difficulties of her life, Lucrezia had had increasing resort to religion for comfort. Convents had always been places of refuge for her from the strains of court life, first with the Borgias and then with the Este. At Ferrara she favoured the aristocratic convent of Corpus Domini of the order of the Poor Clares but her religious feeling ran deeper than merely finding a peaceful retreat among sympathetic women. Perhaps as a result of her experiences at her father’s court and the tragedies which had befallen her – particularly Cesare’s death – she was increasingly attracted by the radical reformist wing of the Church. She kept the letters of the ascetic Dominican nun St Catherine of Siena in her library but in practice she was a follower of the Franciscan preacher San Bernardino of Siena, who had renewed the ideals of St Francis of Assisi with his calls for charity and social justice. She became a lay sister of the third Franciscan order, and she had been among the founders of the Monte di Pietà in Ferrara, designed specifically as a charitable foundation for the poor. In 1510 she had founded her own convent of San Bernardino in which she placed Cesare’s illegitimate daughter, Camilla Lucrezia. In 1516 she petitioned Leo X to institute a stricter adherence to the rules of poverty; she received in return a brief of permission written entirely in the fine hand of her former lover, Pietro Bembo, now secretary to the Pope.
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It was she who chose the preachers for the Lenten sermons, among them an Augustinian friar, Antonio Meli da Crema, with whom she was particularly impressed. In April 1513 Fra Meli dedicated to her the text of a book on the ascetic life entitiled
Libro di vita Contemplativa
, which at Lucrezia’s express wish was written in Italian so as to be more easily understood by lay people. In his dedication Meli explicitly referred to Lucrezia as a woman who ‘withdrawn from the vanity and show of the world, and fired by the chaste divine love . . . engages herself in the instruction of her damsels, not only those who have decided on [the path of] ] virginity and religion but also those who propose to enter the state of matrimony’.

The dedication was dated 10 April: three days before, di Prosperi had reported that three of Lucrezia’s damsels, including the daughter of Madonna Julia della Mirandola, had been accepted as nuns of St Catherine of Siena. (In a letter of the same date to Francesco, asking him to place Julia della Mirandola’s son in the service of Federico, Lucrezia refers to this girl as ‘one of our dearest damsels’.) Their formal reception into the convent of St Catherine was a solemn public occasion attended by Lucrezia and a crowd of gentlemen, ladies and citizens, so that the church was overflowing. Dressed in white as brides of Christ, the three showed every sign of happiness and great contentment. ‘May God make their hearts equally joyful,’ di Prosperi commented glumly. Poor Madonna Julia, although not unhappy at her daughter’s entering the convent, was reputed to be extremely worried that her son, who was presently in the service of the cardinal, might become a monk. It may be because of this that Lucrezia wrote the letter to Francesco at Madonna Julia’s request, asking him to place her son Ercole with his son Federico.
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While daughters were regarded as no loss and their dowries as nuns were very much smaller than they would have been as brides, sons were important for the support of the family and the continuance of the line, and becoming a monk would have been considered both eccentric and wasteful by aristocratic families.