LUCRETIA BORGIA.*
[SECOND NOTICE.]
Jun' one month after the murder of Alfonso, the Venetian Envoy in Rome, Polo Capello, writing to the Signoria, reported that " Madonna Lucretia had previously been in high favour with the Pope, but that he no longer loved her." The estrange- ment was but transitory ; these Borgias easily discarded grief, and readily brought themselves to forget wrongs in exchange for a material benefit. Before three months elapsed the widow was back in Rome, and another Venetian agent could inform his Govern- ment of a scheme being afoot to wed her to a prince whose dominions were contiguous to the Republic, and whose alliance was at that period of special moment to the latter. The contem- plated bridegroom was Alfonso d'Este, the hereditary prince of Ferrara. This was just the time when Caesar Borgia was actively consummating his course of victory over the Romagnole Signori, and carving for himself a State which was planned to become the chief power of Central Italy, comprising within it the great cities of Florence and Bologna. The creation of such a State was, however, supremely distasteful to Venice, which, again, was the Italian power the force of which Borgia dreaded most. To obtain the alliance of Ferrara, which lay between the Romagna and Venice, would therefore be for him to ensure the interposition of a protecting outwork, and this advantage it was thought to secure through this bestowal of the hand of Lucretia. The matrimonial overtures of Alexander encountered, however, the undisguised aversion not merely of the reigning duke, Ercole, and his son Alfonso, the prospective bridegroom, but of every one connected with the House of Este. This house, next to that of Savoy, was indeed the most illustrious of Italy for pedigree. Ercole's daughter again was the celebrated Isabella, Marchioness of Man- tua, who, with her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, were the two most distinguished women of Italy in their day,—renowned for beauty, for character, and for accomplishments. Their fame shines forth in the brilliancy of twin stars, beaming through the impure atmosphere of a tainted age with the trans- cendent sparkle of a crystalline brightness. Letters are pre- served of these two representatives of the noblest lineage and ,the choicest culture —in the fullest sense of this last term —which show how they shrank with horror from the notion of being brought into family connection with Lucretia. Yet the stain of mere illegitimacy could hardly account for the almost convulsive aversion manifested by these ladies, since in that age not a princely house in Italy was free from such connection, and in that of Este, the immediate predecessor of Ercole had himself been of illegitimate birth. The cause for this supreme aversion must be sought in the belief that Lucretia was
• Lucretia Borgia, each Urkunden sold Correspondences ihrer Zeit. Von F. Gregorovius. Stuttgart Cotta. 1874. guilty of exceptional enormities. At the Court of Mantua resided as an exile Giovanni Sforza. It is now proved that this discarded husband and despoiled prince, in the fury of ex- asperation, did himself, in letters, accuse Lucretia of incest,—a charge which, however, cannot be reconciled with his own state- ments at the time of the divorce. There can be no doubt that to Sforza's imputations made after his expulsion from Pesaro are to be traced the grievous aspersions which have clung to Lucretia's memory, and which made the Estes recoil at first from her as from a contaminated object. But these Italian Princes ever rendered feelings subordinate to interests. If the alliance of Ferrara could be of value to the grasping CEPzor, so also was there that within the Pope's competency the acquisition of which, in the eyes of Ercole, might seem an equivalent for a misalliance, however grievous. Ferrara was strictly a vassal State to the Holy See, bound to considerable annual tribute, and otherwise in stringent dependence on Rome. Ercole, on finding himself severely pressed by Alexander, ex- pressed his willingness to entertain the offer of his daughter's hand for Alfonso, in consideration of the reduction of his tribute to a nominal sum, and the addition to his territories of slices out of the patrimony of St. Peter. Alexander himself, impatient to see Lucretia settled and to promote the plans of Caesar, was readily dis- posed to meet Ercole's wishes ; but even he felt that the surrender of an indisputable portion of what belonged to the States of the Church could not be done by his individual act, and to obtain the concurrence of the Sacred College—notably of Cardinal Della. Rovere, afterwards Julian 1I.—was no easy matter. In vain did the Pope try to induce Ercole to rest satisfied with general promises and indefinite assurances. With the imperturbable insistence of an obdurate bargainer, Duke Ercole would exact the full value of the alliance before committing himself to any overt step in the sense so eagerly desired by the Pope. He required that the Pontifical dispensation freeing him from annual pay- ment and securing the cession of Cento and Piene should be a completed deed before he would instruct his envoys- to sign the contract of betrothal, and bind his son by any agreement which could be held solemnly valid. The communications interchanged in these negotiations — which haggled on for a twelvemonth—can now be read in extenso, and a most curious illustration they afford of the unrelaxing craft and immovable canniness of Ercole, who, like a Shylock, would have the whole pound of flesh paid down beforehand ; and of the im- patient and feverish anxiety of Alexander, on tenter-hooks to get the bargain struck, so as to see his daughter positively wedded, and his son actually fortified by an effective auxiliary. For a year Lucretia was cognisant that her person was the subject-matter of this keenly-fought bargain, a bargain contested with all the cold- blooded determination with which a money-dealer exacts the payment of his usurious terms. Never was a courtship more thoroughly divested of all affectation of sentiment than this protracted negotiation to cement the fortunes of Borgia and Este through the union of Alfonso and Lucretia, and well may she have exclaimed—according to a report in a diplomatic rela- zione—that continued residence in her Roman palace was to her prolonged confinement M a dungeon. Finally, these business points were brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and Alexander was able to abandon himself to quite boyish transports of joy at the know- ledge that he had actually secured the alliance of the daughter he doted upon with the most illustrious blood of Italy. On the other hand, from the moment the bargain had been struck, Duke Ercole seemed bent on surrounding the wedding with extraordi- nary splendour. The sumptuousness of the embassy despatched to wed the bride by proxy and bring her to Ferrara was remark- able. At its head was the Cardinal of Este, accompanied .by several Princes of the house and noblemen, and a retinue of five hundred horsemen, who entered Rome in a pageant resplendent with all the brilliancy of trapping and the richness of artistic dis- play which were characteristic of the Renaissance period. The catalogue of costly gifts presented to the bride is matched only by that of the dowry and outfit which she brought with her.. Besides three hundred thousand ducats in money, we read of price- less sets of jewels, services of silver, and such princely raiments that one embroidered dress was valued at fifteen thousand ducats. Such was the unblushingly lavish expenditure ordered by this simoniacal Pontiff At of the receipts of the Church on his bastard child. At last the day arrived when all was solemnly confirmed by the rites of the Church, and Lucretia was to depart to join her third husband. Her egress from Rome was that of a Queen. A Cardinal Legate was de- puted to escort the progress of this daughter of the Church, who -rode through Italy surrounded by quite a host of followers. It was January 6th, 1502, when she left Rome, never to see it -again. In the Sala dei Papagalli Lucretia bade farewell to her father. All attendants were excluded from the parting scene, which has in it something touching. Alexander's one redeeming quality was his irresistible fondness for his family. It is related how, when the moment of final separation had come, the Pope hurried from window to window, so as to catch the last possible glimpse of his daughter as she rode away, attended with every mark of worldly honour and exaltation that it had been in his power to provide. Amidst so much to flatter and to please, there was yet one incident in the journey which may well have brought troubled thoughts to the mind of Lucretia. Her road took her through Pesaro, once her residence as the wife of the man who had been wronged so scandalously, but we have no record of how she bore herself amidst memories to which even the most callous could not be wholly proof. On the confines of Ferrara, Lucretia was agreeably surprised by the unexpected presence of her bridegroom, Alfonso, and from this moment -every step in her progress to the capital was marked with even an enhanced display of splendour. Duke Ercole had insisted on the presence, terribly against the grain, of his daughter, the Marchioness of Mantua, whose letters to her husband give a graphic description at once of her own feelings at this foroed re- ception—she speaks of her " beaming fury "—and of the elabo- rate festivities which during successive days were devised to do 'honour to the bride. The pageant of this entry into Ferrara is the most sumptuous scene on record in that age of gorgeous dis- plays. For seven days Ferrara was one continued carnival of dazzling splendour, each more magnificent than the other, the lavishness of which was minutely described by the Marchioness of Gonzaga to her husband, in letters in which her inward rage at the outward air of welcome she is constrained to affect towards the new sister-in-law continually displays itself. " This is in truth a very frigid wedding," are her words on one occasion ; "you need not envy my presence at it, for such is the stiffness, that I envy those who remained in Mantua."
Notwithstanding this instinctive aversion on the part of the high and illustrious dame, Isabella Gonzaga, the fact is certain that she ended by entertaining a warm affection for Lucretia, and that these two women became united in the closest ties to each other. Nor was this the only conquest made by Lucretia. She acquired the love of the husband who had originally shrunk from her proffered hand, and during the seventeen years of her residence in Ferrara she commanded universal respect. The testi- mony on this head is too distinct and too general to be questioned. The legend surrounding the earlier phases of Lucretia's life is wholly absent from the period of her Ferrara existence. The witnesses to the esteem in which she was held are by no means confined to sycophantic courtiers,— they comprise persons -wholly independent of local influences, who testify in earnest lan- guage to the exemplary manner in which she fulfilled the duties of a sovereign lady and a steadfast spouse during the severe trials to which Alfonso was exposed in the troublous times of Julius II. " J'ose bien dire que, de son temps, ni beaucoup avant, it ne s'est trouve de plus triomphante princesse, car cue etait belle, bonne, douce, et courtoise a toutes gens," are the words of the biographer of Bayard, who himself was at Ferrara, and who dwells especially on the capital service rendered by the Duchess to her husband by her unflinching devotion. It must be borne in mind that however directly motives of policy worked to make Lucretia's hand acceptable, these disappeared entirely on the sudden death of Alexander, and the no less sudden collapse of Caesar's political power. On Lucretia, who could not but he cognisant how she -bad been accepted as wife only from a view to gain through her means material advantages she was now no longer in a position to ensure, and who knew from experience how easily a marriage once become distasteful might be forcibly dissolved, the tidings of the family catastrophe must have fallen as a perfectly stunning blow. It must have appeared to her as if she were suddenly cut adrift and at the mercy of inscrutable forces. There is, however, no- shred of evidence that for an instant her position in Ferrara was menaced by this wholesale annihilation of every circumstance that could appeal to worldly interests. The outlandish woman taken so grudgingly to the bosom when she was bespangled with the seductive attractions of a resplendent influence, found herself cherished with genuine regard in the moment when all the gew- gaws of the world's prosperity suddenly dropped away. How, then, is this power of producing the impression of superior virtue to be accounted for in a woman who had been a party to the re- pulsive proceedings to which Lucretia bad undeniably lent her-
self ? It is difficult to explain so strange a phenomenon. In that age, there were in Italy women who were distinguished for eminent intellectual accomplishments. The language addressed by Bembo to Lucretia has induced some writers to credit her with superior attainments calculated to command admiration. Ferrara was then a city where the arts and the muses were in honour, and Lucretia manifestly entered with general sympathy into the tone of its society. But that she herself was a scholar or could .shine in letters, there is no evidence whatever. It would, therefore, appear that the fascination she did undoubtedly exercise was due mainly to personal charms and the grace and ease so largely characteristic of Italian natures. It is as if she had passed through the Moloch fires of her early life, accommodating her- self readily to the circumstances without any deep inward percep- tion of their nature, and yet retaining an unimpaired, plastic faculty for better forms of life when brought into contact with them. There is also evidence of her having, towards the end of her life, been conspicuous for very diligent observance of religious practices— perhaps the result of inward faith and of old compunction—but also very possibly only the exhibition of that ritualist conception of reli- gion so frequent in Italy. The conclusion that forces itself upon us is, that a somewhat superficial nature, coupled with singular beauty and truly Italian flexibility, were at the root of the strange phenomena of Lucretia's life. Had she been born in times of purity, and been surrounded by a moral atmosphere, she would have lived an existence free from reproach ; but being without any strongly-marked character of her own, she accommodated her- self with plastic case to all the worst, as readily as to the more noble influences of the period in which her lot happened to be cast.
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