The Worst Kept Secrets in Papal History
- Rhiannon Evans
- May 29, 2020
- 10 min read
The world is devolving further and further into one big pub quiz at the moment, so much so that I’ve started naming the days of the week by which group I am quizzing with that evening (Wednesday has become CULCC, and, less importantly obviously, Saturday has become family…). This has led to the discovery of many interesting factoids that are worthy of discussion on my sporadic and eclectic blog of sorts, but today I would like to present you with the interesting tale of Rodrigo de Borja, the 214th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, and his heterogeneous family.
“Now, Rhiannon,” I hear you say, “Do you really want to write an article about religion in the 15th century? That’s not really your idiom, is it?” And first of all, I promise that this piece will have as little religious commentary as possible (and anyway criticism of the church in this era is far more entertaining than one might assume anyway). Secondly, my blog, my rules, thank you very much. Rodrigo de Borja (aka Pope Alexander VI) was one of the most crooked men in history, and his tale includes nepotism, incest and all kinds of other skulduggery, so if you were thinking this wasn’t going to be a wild ride, think again. Admittedly, if you can’t be bothered to read this monster of a post, you can just listen to the Horrible Histories The Addams Family Parody; The Borgia Family. Jim Howick makes a great Rodrigo and it’s far more entertaining and infinitely catchier than this, so I truly wouldn’t blame you.
It is often said that Rodrigo sold his daughter to be wed three times. Now there’s a lot to unpack with that sentence, especially considering the fact that popes are not supposed to have children at all. Rodrigo was famous for freely admitting that he had many children by many mistresses, so much so that the name Borgia (linguistically complicated, but trust me this was based on our man Rodrigo) came to be a synonym for libertinism (an interesting Wikipedia read) and nepotism. Back to the point here, when he became the Pope, Rodrigo was keen to get in with the other big and powerful families, so he scrapped his daughter’s previous engagements (of which there were multiple) and suddenly 13-year-old Lucrezia was married to Giovanni Sforza of the House of Sforza, a powerful ruling family of Renaissance Italy. This was all well and good until old Rodrigo found Giovanni Sforza to be superfluous in the papal court and annulled his daughter’s marriage four years later on grounds of impotence. Giovanni later had a son with his second wife, so take from that what you will…
It was around this time that Giovanni Borgia was born. This child was known as ‘Infans Romanus’ because no one has any clue who his parents were beyond the fact that he was a Borgia. Rodrigo issued two separate decrees on the same day, the first saying that Giovanni Borgia was the son of Rodrigo’s son, Cesare (remember him, he’s important) with an unnamed woman as the mother, both unmarried. The second decreed Giovanni Borgia to be the son of the Pope himself, but the pope had apparently chosen not to disclose this earlier for inheritance reasons... It’s equally likely that Giovanni Borgia was the son of Lucrezia and her alleged lover Perotto Calderon. Anyway, Giovanni Borgia was officially declared as Lucrezia’s half-brother, but this did not stop rumours flying, and Giovanni Sforza accused Giovanni Borgia of being the son of Lucrezia and Rodrigo. This caused him to be excommunicated in 1500 and subsequently attacked by Cesare in a successful attempt to gain his land.
Less than a year after her first marriage was annulled, Rodrigo was marrying Lucrezia off to Alfonso of Aragon, who was the half-brother of Lucrezia’s brother’s (Gioffre this time) wife – confusing, I know, but the takeaway here is that Rodrigo really wanted strong connections with this family. Brief side note; Lucrezia was still only 18 when she married 17-year-old Alfonso, which given the time and context isn’t that young, but as a nineteen-year-old myself, being on my second husband by now just seems insane. Anyway, hope you didn’t get too emotionally attached to Alfonso because in 1500 he was murdered, probably by Cesare Borgia. He had attempted to flee Rome when the political tides had turned, and Rodrigo was looking to align himself with France – the sworn enemy of Alfonso’s family. Lucrezia was six months pregnant at the time and when he was discovered to have run away, the Borgia’s got Lucrezia to lure Alfonso back to Rome. He was attacked on the steps by the entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica, but his guards fought off the attackers and he survived, only to be strangled in his bed while he was still recovering a month later. Cesare was accused of the murder but claimed that it had been in self-defence; he proposed that Alfonso had attempted to kill him with a crossbow in his own gardens, but no one believed him, mainly because there were clear reasons why Cesare Borgia was the inspiration for Machiavelli’s The Prince, but I’ll get into that later.
Lucrezia’s third marriage was no less interesting, although it definitely did last a lot longer, 17 years to be precise. That being said, Lucrezia spent more time with her brother-in-law (who definitely had syphilis at least two years before he started seeing Lucrezia), but she did have seven children before she died due to complications in childbirth in 1519. Lucrezia was almost a cult figure throughout the 19th century, the Romantic poet Lord Byron was obsessed enough with her to steal a lock of her hair that was on display in the Ambrosian Library of Milan and Victor Hugo (of Les Mis and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame fame) even wrote a play based on her that was later transformed into an opera.
As fascinating as Lucrezia’s love life was, she was pretty much just a pawn in her father’s plots for power (even if some historians believe she was possibly an impressive femme fatale), whereas Cesare Borgia was mad in his own rights. By all accounts, Cesare was incredibly good-looking, had incredible taste in fashion and was very successful with women (if by successful you mean slept with a lot of them). He, like Lucrezia and Gioffre, was the child of Rodrigo’s most famous mistress, Vannozza Catanei, and was made a cardinal upon his father’s ascension, despite showing less than no interest in observing his ecclesiastical duties. Cesare was incredibly jealous of his younger brother, Juan, who was far more dedicated to the church and thus received better jobs and titles. Then Juan was mysteriously murdered in 1497, no prizes for guessing who the biggest culprit was, but at the time there was no evidence that Cesare had murdered anyone, let alone his own brother.
In 1498, Cesare gave up his cardinalate and married Charlotte d’Albret, sister of the king of Navarre (after attempting the marry Carlotta, the daughter of the King of Naples, whom Rodrigo was very much trying to get on the good side of…). Frequently, Cesare was portrayed as a monster of lust and cruelty who was essentially controlling his father, but it is far more likely that the two worked closely together, with Rodrigo as the ideas man and Cesare as more of a man of action. Cesare desperately wanted to establish himself as important before his father died as nothing to do with the papacy was hereditary, and thus if he wasn’t careful, he would lose everything along with his father. Cesare was accused of a number of political assassinations, but he most definitely killed Alfonso, seemingly as an act of vengeance rather than any political motivation, but it was the main reason that people feared and detested Cesare so much. Unfortunately for Cesare, in 1503 his father died and was replaced as pope by a bitter enemy of the Borgias; Pope Julius II. In addition to this, Cesare was pretty ill himself, so it wasn’t looking too great for him. He was arrested and then fled to Naples only to be arrested again. Then he was taken to Spain and imprisoned again, but by 1506 he had escaped, again. So, he joined the army of his brother-in-law (one of the ones that he didn’t murder) and was then killed in a small skirmish in 1507.
The philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli wrote that Cesare alternated between bursts of demonic activity and unaccountable sloth. He took offence easily and seemed to dislike most of the important people around him, preferring to take part in local sporting events. The Prince is based on the actions of Cesare Borgia (it’s a short but interesting read – would recommend) and essentially describes the aim of ‘princes’ or those rising to power, and how these princes can justify the use of immoral means to achieve glory and survival. Cesare’s aggressiveness, speed and ruthlessness made him the perfect case study of Machiavelli’s Prince.
One final little anecdote on Cesare Borgia; he was famous for throwing the infamous Banquet of Chestnuts. Unless you ask Peter de Roo, a researcher whose sole aim was to rehabilitate the Borgia’s image, the Banquet of Chestnuts (also known as the Ballet of Chestnuts) was an intense supper that epitomised the self-indulgence of the Borgias. It was far more than a banquet; it was essentially an orgy including both nobility and senior officials of the Catholic Church. I won’t go into massive details myself (google it if you’re a particularly interested creep), but safe to say there were fifty of Rome’s finest prostitutes, nude entertainment and a whole host of all-night sex games. This banquet was attended by Cesare, Rodrigo and Lucrezia (as well as other family members) and if that fact isn’t weird enough for you, you should read about the chestnuts themselves and the prizes that were given out throughout the evening. (https://theravenreport.com/2017/02/27/was-the-banquet-of-chestnuts-a-pinnacle-of-religious-hypocrisy-or-just-one-hell-of-a-partya/ if you really want to put yourself through that)
Back to the main man himself, if you can drag yourself away from that nightmare. The Veronese humanist, Gaspare da Verona said that “beautiful women were attracted to him [Rodrigo] and excited by him in quite a remarkable way, more strongly than how ‘iron is drawn to a magnet’.” Which is one hell of a compliment. To his credit he was a massive advocate for the arts and sciences, and yes, he probably bribed his way into the papacy, and yes, his uncle had been pope before him so there was definitely some nepotism involved, but he also stole land from previous archbishops and cardinals to give to his relatives… yeah, in all honesty, he was just pretty amoral. When his son Juan disappeared overnight, Rodrigo was unperturbed, presuming that Juan was merely liaising with some girl. After the corpse was found in the Tiber, Rodrigo essentially declared a manhunt for his son’s assassin, but that was shut down as quickly as it started with no conclusions being reached. Of course, everyone suspected Cesare, but there was no evidence either way so it is unclear why Rodrigo would have shut down the enquiry so quickly.
Rodrigo was also secretly exchanging divorces for international political power. The French King Louis XII wanted to divorce Joan of France and so Rodrigo got Louis to give Cesare the duchy of Valentinois and the princess bride Charlotte of Albret, as well as military assistance to help crush the princelings of Romagna. Then came the slavery. Previous popes had advocated against slavery, for obvious reasons, and Pope Eugene IV had even issued a papal bull that excommunicated anyone engaged in slavery in the Canary Islands. Our man, Rodrigo, took a different tactic. When Columbus had landed in the New World, the Spanish monarchy asked Rodrigo to confirm that the land was theirs, which he did and he granted Spain the right to enslave the natives, although some historians argue that really he only gave them permission to convert these natives to Christianity, not to necessarily enslave them, however, subsequent popes vehemently condemned slavery. It is certain that conversion was not as peaceful as it could’ve been, as natives (who could not understand the colonisers’ language) were asked to submit to the Pope and the Spanish crown or face being attacked and violently subjugated.
In his later life, Rodrigo faced the previously deposed despots who managed to defeat the papal troops pretty easily. This prompted Cesare to (treacherously) kill two of the condottieri (basically mercenaries who were, in this case, fighting against the Pope). Then Rodrigo lured Cardinal Orsini to the Vatican and imprisoned him in a dungeon where he died. This meant that the great house of Orsini, Rodrigo’s biggest threat, had been vanquished, brutally. Plus, the war between the French and the Spanish for Naples was still going on, and the Pope kept flitting between the two, siding with whoever offered him the best deal; he offered to help France in exchange for Sicily being given to Cesare and then offered to help Spain in exchange for Siena, Pisa and Bologna at pretty much the same time.
Of course, all powerful men must meet an end at some point, and Pope Alexander VI’s was as suspicious as any other. Rodrigo and Cesare had dined with Cardinal Adriano Castellesi on 6th August 1503, and just a few days later both of them were extremely ill. Cesare recovered (after parts of his skin peeled off as a consequence of certain archaic attempts to heal him) but Rodrigo was not so lucky. When presented to the people and clergy of Rome, Rodrigo’s body had to be covered by a tapestry because it had decomposed much faster than a normal corpse would. The descriptions that I read about this are pretty gross too but trust me – it wasn’t pretty. Some say this rapid decomposition was due to the summer heat, others suggest it’s likely that the pope was poisoned, either by Cardinal Adriano or accidentally by Cesare, who was possibly trying to poison the Cardinal.
Or possibly malaria. It’s hard to tell given how dodgy Rodrigo had been and how primitive the study of medicine and the knowledge of diseases was at the time, and really, I’m no historian. I do like to think that in the end he got his comeuppance, but who am I to suggest either way?
People like Pope Alexander VI and his children have existed throughout history, and it always intrigues me how people in power could flaunt their debauchery and blatantly break rules with little to no consequences. For example, popes aren’t meant to have children, but everyone knew of Rodrigo’s many children, and most of them found themselves in high positions of power (or murdered of course).
Anyway, this turned out to be longer than any essay I have had to write for university so far, so power to you if you made it through the whole thing. In these trying times, it’s important to find things to do and to be interested in, and if random popes from history is my thing, then so be it. Stay healthy, safe and happy x
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