Cesare Borgia

Extracts from Rafael Sabatini

Introduction

Rafael Sabatini was born in Iesi in 1875 to an English mother and an Italian father, both of whom were opera singers. He lived in Britain when he was very young, before going to school in Portugal and Switzerland. He returned to the United Kingdom at the age of seventeen, having learned five languages, and quickly added another—English—in which he decided to write, for the reason that “all the best stories are written in English.” It took him a long time to become successful, and it was only in 1921 with the publication of his historical romance Scaramouche that he achieved widespread recognition.

Long before Scaramouche Sabatini tried his hand at history, producing an account of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition, and biography, with his Life of Cesare Borgia (1912). It is to be regretted that this last work is not more widely known. Sabatini employs all his novelistic skill in the biography, and vividly recreates Cinquecento Italy with all its intrigues, power-struggles, and extravagance. What’s more, he displays far more diligence in the handling of his sources than we might expect from a novelist-turned-historian, and sets about correcting the record of the man immortalised by Machiavelli with great aplomb. One could object that Sabatini is too generous in his treatment of Cesare, always trying to find the angle that puts his protagonist in the best light, but considering the fact that no figure from the Renaissance has a more villainous and sensational reputation than Cesare Borgia, the Duke of Valentinois, his approach is a breath of fresh air.

Although Sabatini does a fine job of placing Cesare Borgia’s exploits in their historical context, and traces the course of his career with great facility, I have chosen to follow Plutarch in the writing of this review. That is, I will select and comment only upon those passages in Sabatini’s book that bear directly on Cesare’s character. This will involve exploring a number of scandals and controversies, as well as examining what Sabatini has to say about Cesare’s appearance, bearing, interests etc. But before I get underway, it seems appropriate to explain, very briefly, who this man was, and why thinkers like Machiavelli and Nietzsche felt the need to write about him.

Cesare Borgia was the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI. His early life was spent in preparation for an ecclesiastic career, and thanks to the influence of his father his rise was meteoric; at the age of fifteen he was made a bishop, and by eighteen he was a cardinal. After the death of his brother (the circumstances of which we shall explore in due course,) he resigned the cardinalate, and undertook the reduction of the recalcitrant tyrants of the Romagna who owed their allegiance to his father. In a blisteringly successful campaign he brought many cities back under Papal control, and it seemed for a time that there would be no end to his triumphs. The words Aut Caesar, Aut Nihil (Caesar, or Nothing) were inscribed on his sword, and it was rumoured that he had in view a kingly crown.

It was not to be. Pope Alexander died in 1503, and after the brief reign of a sympathetic successor, Cardinal Giuliano Della Rovere was sat upon the Throne of St. Peter, a man implacably opposed to the Borgias. Years of struggle followed, and Cesare was betrayed by many erstwhile allies, most notably by Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, El Gran Capitán, who had him arrested and transferred to Spain despite promises of safe-conduct. In time he effected a daring escape and found refuge with the King of Navarre, who desired that Cesare should command his forces in the war against Castille. He recaptured Viana for Navarre, but in the course of besieging the town’s fortress gave chase to a group of knights who had managed to break out, an impetuous action that left him alone and surrounded; he was ambushed, dealt a mortal blow with a spear, stripped of all his valuables, and left lying naked, with nothing but a tile to guard his modesty. Such, very briefly, was the career of Cesare Borgia.

Machiavelli met the Duke on a diplomatic mission for the Florentine Chancellery, and spent three months at his court. Much later, in his most famous work, the Florentine used Cesare as an example of a ruler who came to power through the influence of another (in this case his father, Pope Alexander), but who made every effort to secure his position and gain independence. In Chapter VII of The Prince, Machiavelli describes Cesare’s attempts to endear himself to the newly conquered citizens of the Romagna. After ordering a captain in his service, Remirro de Orco, to commit various acts of violence and cruelty in his capacity as governor, Cesare had the man executed to show the people he was not responsible for his depredations, when in fact he was. To Machiavelli this was the act of a far-seeing, intelligent, and pragmatic prince; this was the act of an ideal ruler.

So too the famous betrayal at Sinigaglia, where Cesare, feigning a desire to make amends with a number of mercenaries that had turned on him, had them seized and strangled on New Year’s Eve. Machiavelli was so impressed by this bellissimo inganno or “beautiful deception,” as he called it, that he wrote a treatise, unsparingly entitled A Description of the methods adopted by the Duke Valentino when murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the Duke di Gravina Orsini, in which he gives a complete account of the whole affair; an account conspicuously lacking in any sort of moral or ethical consideration.

Nietzsche, who owed so much to Machiavelli, saw in Cesare the epitome of the amorality and revived paganism of the Renaissance, which was curtailed, to the great detriment of European man, by the Reformation and ensuing Counter-Reformation. Aphorism 197 of Beyond Good and Evil sums up his perspective:

“The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidity" in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate "hell" in them—as almost all moralists have done hitherto. Does it not seem that there is a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists? And that the "tropical man" must be discredited at all costs, whether as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and self-torture? And why? In favour of the "temperate zones"? In favour of temperate men? The "moral"? The mediocre?—This for the chapter: "Morals as Timidity.""

For Nietzsche, the historians, poets, and philosophers that calumniate Cesare Borgia do so out of envy and spite, out of the bitterness of the botched and the curtailed when faced with a being incomparably more splendid and self assured than themselves. It was Nietzsche’s dearest hope that such supermen could be brought into being once more, to scandalise and brutalise a decayed and insipid Europe. With this in mind, the importance of properly understanding and evaluating the character of this “man of prey,” and the value of Sabatini’s perspicacious biography, become readily apparent. We will begin this evaluation by taking a look at Cesare’s considerable physical and mental endowments, before moving on to a survey of the accusations that have blackened his reputation.

It was universally recognised that Cesare Borgia was the most handsome man of his age. Sabatini writes:

“From the pen-portraits left of him by Gasparino of Verona, and Girolamo Porzio, we know him for a tall, handsome man with black eyes and full lips, elegant, courtly, joyous, and choicely eloquent, of such health and vigour and endurance that he was insensible to any fatigue. Giasone Maino of Milan refers to his “elegant appearance, serene brow, royal glance, a countenance that at once expresses generosity and majesty, and the genial and heroic air with which is whole personality is invested.” To a similar description of him Gasparino adds that “all women upon whom he so much as casts his eyes he moves to love him; attracting them as the lodestone attracts iron;” which is, it must be admitted, a most undesirable reputation for a churchman.”

This reputation got him into trouble more than once. While Cesare was campaigning at Imola he was accused of orchestrating the abduction of a Venetian lady named Dorotea Caracciolo. In fact the kidnapping was the work of one of his captains, a Spaniard named Diego Ramirez, who became enamoured with the woman in Urbino and had carried her off without Borgia’s knowledge. Swearing an oath to that effect, Cesare begged the Venetian ambassador not to believe the rumours then current, and assured him “that he had not found the ladies of Romagna so difficult that he should be driven to such rude and violent measures.”

His athleticism was legendary; it was said that he could break a horseshoe in his hand, and on one occasion, at a bull-fight held in Rome, “he went down into the arena, and on horseback, armed only with a light lance, he killed five wild bulls. But the master-stroke he reserved for the end. Dismounting, and taking a doublehanded sword to the sixth bull that was loosed against him, he beheaded the great beast at one single stroke, “a feat which all Rome considered great.”” Machiavelli in his despatches confirms the Duke’s extraordinary physical attainments, and adds that Cesare could work for days and nights on end, apparently without any sleep at all.

To these qualities Cesare added a remarkable presence of mind, remaining unperturbed, absolutely cool and serene, where lesser men would lose their heads. In the wake of his father’s death and suffering from the same Roman fever that was responsible for his passing, Cesare, in-between intense bouts of medical treatment, somehow summoned up the strength to dictate orders to his men in Rome and his captains in the Romagna. In battle he was completely unflappable, and expected the same iron discipline from his troops. He rode out himself in the aftermath of the massacre at Sinigaglia, to quell their rioting and pillaging, and, to show that he was in earnest, cut down with his own hands whoever disobeyed him.

If Cesare were remembered only for these qualities, and not for the vicious cunning he so often displayed, he might’ve found his way into Castiglione’s Courtier. But the name Borgia doesn’t conjure up images of elegant dances and chivalrous escapades. On the contrary, it has become a byword for lust, murder, and depravity in the pursuit of power. And Cesare is the Borgia par excellence. It is no surprise, then, that in the annals penned by his contemporaries, and in the histories of later generations, we have to grapple with a wild mass of lurid stories. And herein lies the full value of Sabatini’s account. In contrast to Germanic heavyweights like Gregorovius and Burckhardt, both of whom were content, for the most part, to accept the portrait of Cesare and his family as it had been handed down to them, Sabatini goes to great lengths in his biography to examine the principal charges laid against Cesare (and, by extension, his father Pope Alexander.) So many are these charges, that to explore them all is beyond the scope of this review. I will content myself with three of the most important and enduring, as well as the justifications, exonerations, and contextualisations offered by Sabatini.

Charge I: The Assassination of the Duke of Gandia

Giovanni Borgia was the second son of Pope Alexander. While his elder brother had been groomed for an ecclesiastic career, Giovanni was to carry forward the more worldly ambitions of the clan. To that end, Alexander had married the boy to Maria Enriquez de Luna, which connection gave him the Spanish dukedom of Gandia. Not content with this, Alexander bestowed upon his second son the titles Duke of Sessa, Grand Constable of Naples, Governor of St. Peter’s, and, most importantly, Gonfalonier of the Church (that is, the leader of the armed forces of the Papal States.) All this while Cesare, the elder son, chafed in the robes of a cardinal.

In Rome, on the 14th of June 1497, Giovanni and Cesare attended a feast arranged by their mother Vannozza Cattanei, to celebrate their present departure on an important diplomatic mission to Naples. They caroused late into the night, and departed in the company of a few servants and an unknown, masked man, who for the past month or so had been visiting Giovanni in the Vatican. Together they rode as far as the palace of Ascanio Sforza in the Ponte Quarter, where Giovanni announced that he would not be returning to the Vatican with Cesare. Instead, he was “going somewhere else to amuse himself.” Gandia, accompanied only by the masked man and a single attendant, rode off in the direction of the Jewish Quarter.

Morning came, but Giovanni did not return. That afternoon, word was brought to the Pope that his son’s horse had been found wandering loose on the streets of Rome, and that the single servant who had accompanied him the night before was lying, mortally wounded, in the Piazza della Giudecca. Alarmed, the Pope ordered a search of the city, and implored anyone who had information as to the duke’s whereabouts to come forward. In time, a poor boatman named Giorgio was brought to the Vatican, where he told the following story:

“He related that at about the fifth hour of the night, just before daybreak, he had seen two men emerge from the narrow street alongside the Hospital of San Girolamo, and stand on the river’s brink at the spot where it was usual for the scavengers to discharge their refuse carts into the water. These men had looked carefully about, as if to make sure that they were not being observed. Seeing no one astir, they made a sign, whereupon a man well mounted on a handsome white horse, his heels armed with golden spurs, rode out of that same narrow street. Behind him, on the crupper of his horse, Giorgio beheld the body of a man, the head hanging in one direction and the legs in the other. This body was supported there by two other men on foot, who walked on either side of the horseman.

Arrived at the water’s edge, they turned the horse’s hind-quarters to the river; then, taking the body between them, two of them swung it well out into the stream. After the splash, Giorgio had heard the horseman inquire whether they had thrown well into the middle, and had heard him receive the affirmative answer—“Signor, Si.” The horseman then sat scanning the surface a while, and presently pointed out a dark object floating, which proved to be their victim’s cloak. The men threw stones at it, and so sank it, whereupon they turned, and all five departed as they had come.”

Alexander ordered the river dredged, and that very afternoon the body of Gandia was recovered, bound at the arms and covered with wounds. His throat had been cut. Immediately rumours began to swirl about Rome as to the culprit. The list of candidates was extensive, for the Borgias had many enemies. Some named Giovanni Sforza and Cardinal Ascanio, others the Orsini, others still one Antonio Maria della Mirandola. In time, however, the guilt was fastened on none other than Cesare. It was said that he, grown tired of his Church career, had murdered his brother so he could usurp the office of Gonfalonier, or else that he had cut him down out of jealousy, Giovanni and Cesare both being romantically involved, not only with their younger brother Goffredo’s wife, but with their own sister Lucrezia. In response to this heap of sensational rumour Sabatini makes a survey of the sources, and finds them wanting.

To give an example, Sabatini examines the work of the Neapolitan wit Jacopo Sannazaro, who made much of the scandal and did much to advance the rumours of incest. Sabatini points out that, to an epigrammatist like Sannazaro, the truth held little weight if it got in the way of a witty line. “For him a ben trovato was as good matter as a truth, or better. He measured its value by its piquancy, by its adaptability to epigrammatic rhymes.” We are asked to consider, whether a man that could write so vicious an epigram as the following, while the Pope was yet in mourning for his murdered child, can be considered a reliable and cool-headed source of information.

Piscatorem hominum ne te non, Sexte, putemus,
     Piscaris notum retibus ecce tuum.

Lest we should not fancy you, O Sextus, a fisher of men, 
You fish for your own son with nets.

Certainly the prospect is doubtful. Furthermore, although he lends credence to the idea of an incestuous love triangle, Sannazaro stops short of accusing Cesare of his brother’s murder. Space restricts us to one more example of Sabatini’s criticism. The Venetian ambassador, Paolo Capello, might be considered the “chief witness for the prosecution,” and his report to the Venetian Senate has been seized upon by later historians as cast-iron proof of Cesare’s guilt, despite the fact he wasn’t in Rome at the time of Gandia’s murder, only arrived in the city three years later, and had a penchant for the sensational, as demonstrated by his account of the death of Perrotto, the Papal chamberlain. From Sabatini:

“The precise value of his famous “relation” and the spirit that actuated him is revealed in another accusation of murder which he levels at Cesare, an accusation which, of course, has also been widely disseminated upon no better authority than his own. It is Capello who tells us that Cesare stabbed the chamberlain Perrotto in the Pope’s very arms; he adds the details that the man had fled thither for shelter from Cesare’s fury, and that the blood of him, when he was stabbed, spurted up into the very face of the Pope. Where he got the story is not readily surmised—unless it be assumed that he evolved it out of his feelings for the Borgias. The only contemporary accounts of the death of this Perrotto—or Pedro Caldes, as was his real name—state that he fell by accident into the Tiber and was drowned.”

So much for Capello. Although there are facts that rouse suspicion of Cesare (such as Alexander’s closing the investigation only a week after Giovanni’s death; a circumstance which some put down to the Pope’s discovery of his son’s guilt), the fact is we will never know for a certainty. In addition, Sabatini asks, are we to forget about the masked man that accompanied Giovanni, or the handsome man on a white horse who supervised the disposal of the body? Neither of these men could be Cesare, who had returned to the Vatican witnessed by many. Although we do not doubt the cruelty and egotism of Cesare Borgia, the “man of prey,” yet we have good reason to wonder whether it stretched so far as to encompass the murder of his own brother.

Charge II: The Murder of Alfonso of Aragon

In 1498 Lucrezia Borgia, the beautiful sister of Cesare, was married to Alfonso of Aragon, the nephew of King Federigo of Naples. He was a handsome boy of seventeen, one year younger than his new wife, and they were by all accounts very happy together. At the Pope’s insistence, Alfonso was named Duke of Biselli and Prince of Salerno, and in November of the following year Lucrezia bore him a son, Roderigo. Unfortunately, this domestic bliss was not to last for long.

On the 15th of July, 1500, Alfonso was attacked and seriously wounded on the steps of St. Peter’s. All Rome reeled at the news, and Cesare published an edict forbidding any man, under pain of death, from bearing arms between Sant’Angelo and the Vatican. News spread quickly, and Federigo sent his personal physician to Rome to attend his nephew. Despite the best efforts of the doctors the boy lay sick until the 17th of August, when he expired. His death spawned a thousand rumours, and, as with Gandia, the blame was fixed by many upon the Duke of Valentinois. Most notably by the Venetian Paolo Capello, whom we have encountered already. His report to the Senate reads as follows:

“He was wounded at the third hour of night near the palace of the Duke of Valentinois, his brother ­in-law, and the prince ran to the Pope, saying that he had been wounded and that he knew by whom; and his wife Lucrezia, the Pope’s daughter, who was in the room, fell into anguish. He was ill for thirty-three days, and his wife and sister, who is the wife of the Prince of Squillace, another son of the Pope’s, were with him and cooked for him in a saucepan for fear of his being poisoned, as the Duke of Valentinois so hated him. And the Pope had him guarded by sixteen men for fear that the duke should kill him. And when the Pope went to visit him Valentinois did not accompany him, save on one occasion, when he said that what had not been done at breakfast might be done at supper.... On August 17 he [Valentinois] entered the room where the prince was already risen from his bed, and, driving out the wife and sister, called in his man, named Michieli, and had the prince strangled; and that night he was buried.”

Sabatini, point by point, breaks down this report. Firstly he notes the location: Capello asserts that Alfonso was attacked by Cesare’s palace, when in fact, as everybody knew, the assault took place on the steps of St. Peter’s. Secondly, we are told by the Venetian that the boy, after the attack, somehow ran to the Pope and declared that he knew who was responsible; all this, after being so grievously wounded that his assailants thought him dead, and the Cardinal of Capua gave him absolution in articulo mortis, that is, at the point of death. He continues in this fashion, and convincingly demolishes Capello’s account.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, Sabatini draws our attention to Capello’s earlier letters, written while Alfonso was still alive. In these letters we learn the most important fact of all, a fact conspicuously absent from the official relation quoted above; namely, that Alfonso himself had been plotting the murder of Cesare, and that his servants had confessed as much!

“This conclusion, however, it is fair to draw: if, on Capello’s evidence, we are to accept it that Cesare Borgia is responsible for the death of Alfonso of Aragon, then, on the same evidence, we must accept the motive as well as the deed. We must accept as equally exact his thrice-repeated statement in letters to the Senate that the prince had planned Cesare’s death by posting crossbow-men to shoot him.

Either we must accept all, or we must reject all, that Capello tells us. If we reject all, then we are left utterly without information as to how Alfonso of Aragon died. If we accept all, then we find that it was as a measure of retaliation that Cesare compassed the death of his brother-in-law, which made it not a murder, but a private execution—justifiable under the circumstances of the provocation received and as the adjustment of these affairs was understood in the Cinquecento.”

Charge III: The Fate of Astorre Manfredi

As part of his conquest of the Romagna, Cesare set about the reduction of the city of Faenza. Although many of the towns he had taken surrendered without much of a fight, owing to the cruelty of their rulers and the desire of the people for a change in leadership, the dashing young lord of Faenza, Astorre Manfredi, commanded the respect and had the love of his subjects, who put up a stubborn resistance on his behalf. The wealthier citizens gave out bread and wine from their personal stores to feed the people, and lent money to Astorre wherewith to pay his troops. Even the women pitched in, carrying stones to the city walls and doing sentry duty when the men needed rest.

Unfortunately for the Faentini, their stores of food began to run out, and a breach in the walls signalled that the end was nigh. Deserters, men and women who could take no more, began to trickle into Cesare’s camp, and were well received with the exception of a dyer by the name of Grammante, who disclosed to Cesare the weakest point of the citadel’s defences. Cesare had the man hanged, showing thereby his hatred of traitors and his respect for the people of Faenza. Astorre, seeing the hopelessness of the situation, sent word that he was ready to negotiate. Although Cesare held all the cards and had no need of negotiation, he met the young lord’s ambassadors with great courtesy.

“The terms proposed were that the people of Faenza should have immunity for themselves and their property; that Astorre should have freedom to depart and to take with him his moveable possessions, his immoveables remaining at the mercy of the Pope. By all the laws of war Cesare was entitled to a heavy indemnity for the losses he had sustained through the resistance opposed to him. Considering those same laws and the application they were wont to receive in his day, no one could have censured him had he rejected all terms and given the city over to pillage. Yet not only does he grant the terms submitted to him, but in addition he actually lends an ear to the Council’s prayer that out of consideration for the great suffering of the city in the siege he should refrain from exacting any indemnity. This was to be forbearing indeed; but he was to carry his forbearance even further. In answer to the Council’s expressed fears of further harm at the hands of his troopers once these should be in Faenza, he actually consented to effect no entrance into the town.”

So far so good, but now to the appalling charge that history has lain against Cesare. As Sabatini points out, political expediency outweighed decency in those days, so much so that Machiavelli could pen a short while later this brutally pragmatic, and here particularly relevant, stricture:

“In order to preserve a newly acquired State particular attention should be given to two points. In the first place care should be taken entirely to extinguish the family of the ancient sovereign; in the second, laws should not be changed, nor taxes increased.”

Cesare could not let the boy live. To do so would guarantee a future conflagration in Faenza, which might imperil his project of state building in the Romagna. But it was the manner of the young Manfredi’s death and not the fact itself, which was only natural in fifteenth century Italy, that provided grist for the rumour mills.

On June 26th, 1501, Astorre and his bastard brother Gianevangelista were imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo. A year later, despite Cesare’s promise that they should go free, the Diarium of Burchard (the Papal Master of Ceremonies) records the discovery of their bodies in the Tiber. Heinous enough, but the stories that grew up in the years to come exaggerated the horror beyond measure. In particular that of Guicciardini, the Florentine historian, who wrote that the murder had been committed “saziata prima la libidine di qualcuno” (“only after satisfying the lust of someone.”) That is, Cesare (or, as some have suggested, his septuagenarian father,) raped Astorre before killing him. Sabatini is vigorous in his denial of this awful accusation.

“But, under one form or another, the lie has spread as only such foulness can spread. It has become woven into the warp of history; it has grown to be one of those “facts” which are unquestioningly accepted, but it stands upon no better foundation than the frequent repetition which a charge so monstrous could not escape. Its source is not a contemporary one. It is first mentioned by Guicciardini; and there is no logical conclusion to be formed other than that Guicciardini invented it. Another story which owes its existence mainly, and its particulars almost entirely, to Guicciardini’s libellous pen—the story of the death of Alexander VI, which in its place shall be examined—provoked the righteous anger of Voltaire. Atheist and violent anti-clerical though he was, the story’s obvious falseness so revolted him that he penned his formidable indictment in which he branded Guicciardini as a liar who had deceived posterity that he might vent his hatred of the Borgias. Better cause still was there in this matter of Astorre Manfredi for Voltaire’s indignation, as there is for the indignation of all conscientious seekers after truth.”

Sabatini’s arguments are impassioned, and he goes on battling like this throughout the entire book, sifting through histories, diaries and other documents, and exploring as much as he can every infamy that has been laid at the feet of the Borgias. Not, assuredly, with rose tinted glasses; in many cases he offers no more defence than pointing out the general cruelty and rampant brigandage of the age, and he stresses repeatedly the “egotism” of Cesare. But he admires the man, as Machiavelli admired him, and seeks, wherever possible, to defend the honour of his hero against the more unworthy atrocities that have been attributed to him. Whether he is successful or not, the reader can judge for himself; at the very least, he won’t lack for entertainment.