Vilest things Become themselves in her, that holy priests Bless her when she is riggish.' Antony and Cleopatra.

AN attempt has recently been made by a German writer, Herr Ferdinand Gregorovius, to repaint the character of Lucrezia Borgia. Analysis will enable us to judge whether his essay should be classified as rehabilitation or as whitewashing. Certain it is that his work possesses enough of merit, and enough of interest, to claim careful consideration. The popular estimate of Lucrezia Borgia is forcibly embodied in the drama of Victor Hugo and in the opera of Donizetti. Gregorovius, indeed, says that Hugo has been solely intent, in his drama of Lucrezia Borgia, "ein moralisches Ungeheuer für den Bühneneffect zu Stande zu bringen;" nor is the charge without foundation. In both opera and drama the popular conception of the character and deeds of the Duchess of Ferrara has been adapted to loosely imagined plots calculated only to produce effect upon the stage. In both productions Lucrezia appears, with eyes of baleful meaning gleaming through the mystery of a mask, with hands which grasp the dagger and the bowl, and with an indomitably wicked will which treads ruthlessly upon human lives in a dark progress from crime to crime.

No monograph about Lucrezia Borgia is possible. Lucrezia cannot be drawn without reference to her dreadful father and to her terrible brother. As well might you attempt to depict Othello without reference to Iago. The three form a demoniac triumvirate of materialism, of superstition, of crime; and the dark sinister figures stand out with terrible distinctness from the surroundings of the Vatican and the background of the Roman Catholic Church.

The psychological interest of the Borgia triumvirate is deepened by their close connection with the Roman Church. They form historical problems, and are indissolubly connected with the morbid pathology of romance. They illustrate the period to which they

so intensely belonged. They are, indeed, the most pregnant embodiments of the early Renaissance in Italy; and no attempt, like that of Gregorovius, to set aside the contemporary verdict which time has long indorsed, especially if such attempt profess to be based upon Urkunden und Correspondenzen—that is, upon the discovery of original documents and letters-should be allowed to pass without critical examination.

It may, at starting, be said, without unfairness to Herr Gregorovius, that he is rather an advocate than a judge. He seeks, at times, to snatch a verdict for his client, by ignoring some, and even confusing other evidence. Gregorovius relies too much upon his newly discovered documents, although they do not always bear out his conclusions; and he ignores too persistently contemporary historians-as, for instance, the wellknown Istoria d'Italia di Messer Francesco Guicciardini. Guicciardini, born 1482 (within two years of the birth of Lucrezia), was, in the strictest sense, a contemporary historian, and was well acquainted with all contemporary sources of information. He was informed of all the mass of oral testimony of the day; and knew thoroughly that great floating body, form, and pressure of belief and knowledge which filled the very air of the land and time; which, in the absence of newspapers, and of all written and published journalistic history, is so invaluable to the student of problematical characters whose high places in the world throw a hush of silence round their path of unbridled passion and unchecked crime.

The Borgias, as a race, were gifted with rare physical strength and beauty: were distinguished by intellectual force, by strong and ruthless wills, and by an absence of conscience. The Papacy is not, of course, an hereditary office; and it is noteworthy that, in very many instances, when a man became pope, he made the greatest exertions, during his lifetime, to found a dynasty in the Church, and to amass wealth and to accumulate power in his own family.

Calixtus the Third died 1458; and was succeeded by Pius the Second, Paul the Second, Sixtus the Fourth, Innocent the Eighth. During the reign of Pius the Second, we get a very characteristic glimpse of Cardinal Rodrigo, then twenty-nine years old. He was in Sienna, and the Pope wrote him a strong Mahnbrief, a letter of reproof and warning (1460) touching his life and conversation, and adverting particularly to one orgy, concerning which the Holy Father remarks "that shame will not allow him to 'recount all that was there done." Rodrigo was then already distinguished for that boundless sensuality which characterized his whole life. Gaspar of Verona, writing a few years later, describes Rodrigo as very handsome, of pleasant and cheerful bearing, gifted with sweet and elegant eloquence. Whenever he meets with charming women, he excites love in them in an almost magical way, and he attracts them to himself more strongly than the magnet does the iron" Cardinal Rodrigo's physique must have been splendid. All the powers of the body were balanced in perfect harmony. His health was so fine that he was always cheerful and gay. It is recorded of him in his later days that "Nothing causes him trouble. He grows younger every day." Crime even could not, trouble him through conscience. Judging from their lives, it is natural to imagine the members of the Borgia triumvirate dark, gloomy, and sinister. No conception can be more false. The men were splendidly handsome; the women singularly lovely. All were gay and charming. They were happy as handsome.

The sensuous vitalism of Cardinal Borgia gave a fresh proof of its magnetism when, in 1466 or 1467, he met Vanozza Catanei in Rome. Vanozza is, it may be remarked, the "caressing" version of the name of Giovanna. Of the family or descent of Vanozza nothing is certainly known; but it is known that she was born in 1442 in Rome, and that she fell a victim (probably a willing victim) to the seductive arts of the cardinal. A sensual nature framed in voluptuous beauty, strong will, and cunning sense-though unaccompanied by culture-enabled her to obtain great ascendency over her cardinal lover.

were: Cæsar, born 1476; Juan, born 1474; Giuffré, born 1481; and Lucrezia, born, when her father was forty-nine and her mother thirty-eight, on the 18th of April, 1480. After the birth of Lucrezia, Rodrigo married Vanozza to Giorgio de Croce, and Vanozza's future children were ascribed to her husband.

He

Upon the death of her first husband, the lady married, in 1486, Carlo Canale. Rodrigo Borgia was one of the richest princes of the Church. His cardinal's income was added to by high offices in the Church, by many abbacies in Italy and Spain, by the three bishoprics of Portus, Carthago, and Valencia, and by his Vice-Chancellorship. was one of the most successful of churchmen. In the year 1482, we find Rodrigo admitting the paternity of Girolama, Hieronyma, Petro, Ludovico, and Giovanni di Borgia; also another daughter, Isabella. The mother, or mothers, of these bastards have not been identified. Some of the abovenamed children were older than the Catanei family. Rodrigo provided splendidly for all his offspring. Guicciardini records, as a distinctive trait of Rodrigo, that whereas other popes and cardinals had always decently termed their illegitimate children nepoti, he openly, in legal documents, declarations, and correspondence, called his figliuoli and figliuole.

The time, says Gregorovius, in which Lucrezia was born, must, in truth, be termed terrible. The Papacy had thrown off all pretence to priestly holiness, and was, politically, the most tyrannical and immoral of despotisms. Religion had become altogether materialized; and unbridled immorality was the law of manners.

Lucrezia's first years were undoubtedly passed in the house of her mother; but while still in her girlhood she was transferred by her father to the care of Madonna Adriana, daughter of Don Pedro, a nephew of Calixtus the Third, and cousin of Rodrigo Borgia. He married this lady to Lodovico, Lord of Bassanello, a member of the great house of Orsini, who died before 1489. Adriana, as a widow, inhabited one of the Orsini palaces in Rome. She had one son, Ursinus Orsini, by her husband

Devotion to the Church was the basis of the training of Italian women of the Renaissance. The aim was, not to awaken the heart or elevate the soul, but to produce mechanical religious obedience and observance. Shelley says, in the admirable piece of definition prefaced to the tragedy of the Cenci, that religion, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, "is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one virtue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and, without any shock to established faith, confess himself to be so. Religion is, according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check." This passage will help us to understand the problem of the Borgias. Lucrezia was carefully brought up in religion of this sort; but her youth could scarcely have been exposed to worse moral influences. Her father, the voluptuous cardinal, engaged in 1489, in the most notorious of his many amours. Giulia Farnese, a young girl of a beauty so distinctive that she was called La Bella, married, 21st of May, 1489, Ursinus Orsini, the son of Madonna Adriana. The marriage fêtes took place in the palace of Cardinal Borgia. She was then fifteen, and he was fifty-eight years old. Giulia, like Lucrezia, had golden hair, and must have been of a surpassing oveliness. She inflamed the passions of the magnetic cardinal, and within two years after her marriage became 'the acknowledged mistress of Rodrigo Borgia. Her husband was suitably provided for away from Rome, and Giulia and Lucrezia lived with Adriana, who, in consequence of her compliant assistance, became the most influential person in the house of Borgia. She favored Rodrigo's adulterous connection with the wife of her own son, and was surely worthy of her hire. The fortunes of the Farnese family were founded by the fair, if erring, Giulia.

In 1491, her father first thought of arranging a marriage for Lucrezia, then eleven years old; and the husband selected for her was Don Cherubin Juan de Centelles, of Valencia, the brother of the Count Oliva. The marriage con

tract was drawn up, but Rodrigo, from causes not mentioned by historians, suddenly broke off the projected marriage.

In 1492, Rodrigo Borgia attained the great object of his-ambition, and became Pope. Innocent the Eighth died the 25th of July, 1492; and the choice of his successor lay between four candidates, Rafael Riario, Julian Rovere, Ascanio Sforza, and Rodrigo Borgia.

The Papal chair was ultimately sold to the highest bidder; and that was Rodrigo Borgia, who reigned and is known in the annals of the Papacy as Alexander the Sixth.

Giacomo Trotti, the Ferrarese ambassador, wrote, 28th of August, 1492, to Duke Ercole : "Cum simonia et mille ribalderie et inhonestate si è venduto il Pontificato, che è cosa ignominiosa et detestabile!" France and Spain weakly, Venice strongly, opposed the election ; but all the states of Italy accepted the new Pope; and Rodrigo Borgia, once in the saddle, was not a man to be easily dislodged.

Vanozza and Giulia must have triumphed in the triumph of their lover. The Pope soon sought out another husband for his favorite daughter. She was contracted to Don Gasparo, the son of Don Juan Francisco di Procida, Count of Aversa. But this project was thrown aside in favor of a union with Giovanni Sforza, Count of Cotognola and sovereign lord of Pesaro. Sforza was a widower. His first wife was Maddalena, the sister of Elisabetta Gonzaga. Maddalena died the 8th of August, 1490, in childbirth. Sforza, who was twenty-six years old, was tall and good-looking. His face is noble, but gives no impression of weight of will or commanding intellect. He was an independent sovereign ruler, and had political value as a member of the great house of Sforza, with which the house of Borgia was then intimately allied.

On the day of his coronation the new Pope made his son Cæsar, sixteen years of age, Bishop of Valencia.

Alfonso, the heir of Ferrara, was, in 1492, in Rome, and made the acquaintance of Lucrezia. Neither could have thought, at that time, that he would become, nine years later, her third husband. Alfonso was then the husband of Anna Sforza, and Lucrezia was about

to marry Giovanni Sforza. The house of Este was one of the noblest in Italy. Alfonso's mother was Eleanora of Arragon, daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples. She died 1493. His sister Beatrice had married Lodovico the Moor, of Milan; and his other sister, Isabella, one of the loveliest and most learned women of the day-a true virago —had married, in 1490, Francesco Gonzaga, of Mantua.

Lucrezia married Giovanni Sforza in Rome on the 12th of June, 1493; and Madonna Giulia Farnese-" de qua est tantus sermo," says the Ferrarese ambassador-graced the nuptials with her

presence.

The Duke of Gandia had married, in Spain, Donna Maria Enriquez, of noble Valencian family. The exact date of this marriage is not known, but it is supposed to have taken place at the end of 1492. The Duke left Rome to return to Spain, on the 4th of August, 1493. On the 16th Giuffré, the youngest of the Catanei-Borgia children, was married, by procuration, to Donna Sancia, a natural daughter of the then Duke of Calabria. Cæsar Borgia was made cardinal on the 20th of September, 1493. On the same day, Ippolito of Este and Alessandro Farnese received the red hat. The latter was termed, with reference to his sister's position, the " aproncardinal." In 1492 Giulia Farnese had made his Holiness the happy father of a daughter, christened Laura. Her husband was living in Bassanello.

Don Giuffré, now Prince of Squillace, in Naples, married there, on the 7th of May, 1494, Donna Sancia; and her father, owing to the death of King Ferdinand, ascended the throne of Naples on the same day.

In consequence of a pestilence in Rome, Sforza carried his wife to Pesaro ; and, at the request of the Pope, they took with them Giulia and Adriana. This occurred probably in May or June, 1494. The union of Lucrezia with Sforza was childless; but I cannot find a word of clear evidence to prove whether it were loving or loveless. Freed from the gloom of Rome and the dark shadow of the Vatican, her residence in her husband's beautiful palace at Pesaro must have been for Lucrezia a time of calm and quiet. It was her first escape from

family domination, and from the school of vice in which her youth had been passed.

In September, 1494, Charles the Eighth marched into Italy, and this invasion had one romantic consequence. The Holy Father, writing to Lucrezia, recommended her to pray constantly to the Virgin, and expressed great displeasure at the long absence of Adriana and Giulia. They were therefore sent back to him, but on the way were seized by an advanced corps of the French army.

The Pope was beside himself with rage and anguish. The French captain, ignorant, perhaps, of the importance of his prisoners, demanded a ransom of 3000 ducats, and was laughed at by Lodovico the Moor, who said that his Holiness would willingly have paid 50,000 ducats, and that his ladies should have been detained as hostages to insure the political good conduct of the Pope. The 3000 ducats were paid at once; and when Giulia and Adriana returned to Rome, the old Pope rode out on horseback to meet what he termed his eyes and his heart," attired as a cavalier, wearing sword and dagger, Spanish boots, a black velvet doublet brocaded with gold, and a velvet barret cap. The infatuated old lover behaved like a young gallant. Always supremely indifferent to public opinion," he openly defied its censures by his public conduct at the Einholung of his female friends.

44

In 1496 the Holy Father had all his Catanei children around him in Rome the Duke of Gandia, the Cardinal Cæsar, and the Prince of Squillace, with his fair young wife, Donna Sancia, Lucrezia and her husband being also there. Sancia and Lucrezia held two separate, but splendid, Nepoti Courts in their respective palaces.

Donna Sancia caused the loudest scandal. Married to an immature boy --a sort of Italian Darnley-the least gifted of all the race of Borgia, beautiful and licentious, feeling herself the daughter of a king, she lived in Rome a flagrantly voluptuous life. Lucrezia, though more circumspect, yet "lived like the others." She was, says Gregorovius, neither better nor worse than the rest. Fond of pleasure and of lux

Lucrezia's first marriage was dissolved by violence and fraud, and with infamy. The Pope required of Sforza that he should consent to have his marriage annulled, and upon his refusal he was threatened with death.

One evening Jacomino, the chamberlain of Sforza, overheard a conversation between Cæsar and Lucrezia. Cæsar spoke freely to his sister, and told her that he had determined upon the murder of her husband. Hearing of this conversation, Sforza at once mounted his Turkish horse, and rode, in four and twenty hours, with "loose rein and bloody spur" to Pesaro. Arrived there, the horse dropped dead.

This sudden flight saved the life of Lucrezia's husband, but was highly distasteful to the Pope and the Cardinal. If Sforza had remained in Rome, his marriage would have been effectually annulled by his murder; but in Pesaro he was safe, and the Pope was compelled to institute legal proceedings for a divorce on the alleged ground of nullity of marriage. Lucrezia seems to have lied freely, and to have submitted passively to the execution of the scheme of her father and her brother.

The alleged cause for the dissolution of the marriage is transparently false. Sforza was 'married before he married Lucrezia; he married again after his divorce from her; and he had issue by both these marriages. Meanwhile, the Pope, who did not hesitate to play with the sacraments of the Church, succeeded in obtaining (December 20th, 1497) the divorce which he desired. Of Lucrezia's feal feelings in the matter there is no evidence whatever. Certain it is that she did not oppose-nay, that she assisted the steps taken in Rome to annul her first marriage. A true woman of the Renaissance, she was full of beauty and of culture, of courage and intellect, of lust and cruelty; and it seems probable that her life never knew a real love or a true passion. Between her divorce and her next marriage she was, according to Sannazaro and Pontanus, measureless Hetaira ;" and, during this period, an ambassador reports, La Roma accertasi che la figliuola del Papa ha partorito." The reports spread and

a

Giovanni Sforza proclaimed aloud in all the courts of Italy the real causes of his flight, his intended murder, and his divorce.

Matarazzo relates that Sforza had discovered, after his return from Naples, the triple incest of his wife, and that this discovery led to the action of the Pope and the Cardinal.

About this time Hieronymus Porcius, the Infallibilist, wrote maintaining the doctrine of the Papal infallibility, and asserting that he only is a Christian who worships and blindly obeys the Pope. To a hypercritical intellect it would almost seem that the theory of Papal infallibility, when applied to Alexander the Sixth, is subjected to some slight strain.

Alexander intended to promote the welfare of his eldest son, Gandia, in the world, and that of his second son, Cæsar, in the Church; he gave temporal benefits to Gandia, ecclesiastical benefits to Cæsar. But this arrange

ment was wholly unsatisfactory to Cæsar, whose ambition desired the crown of Naples, or the establishment of a kingdom of Middle Italy. Hence jealousy and ill-will between the brothers, rivals alike in love as in ambition. Hence the murder of Gandia by his brother, Cæsar. The brothers supped together at the house of their mother; Cæsar reached home safely, but Gandia never returned, and his murdered corpse was found in the Tiber. Guicciardini says of this event, and of Cæsar Borgia, that "non potendo tollerare che questo luogo gli fosse occupato dal fratello; impaziente oltre a questo ch' egli avesse più parte di lui nell' amore di Madonna Lucrezia, sorella comune, incitato dalla libidine, e dall' ambizione, lo fece una notte,' etc. The Pope ignored the deed, and screened the offender. None but secret inquiry was made into the murder of Gandia; but all Rome knew the truth. The Ferrarese ambassador writes: "Di novo ho inteso come della morte del Duca di Gandia fu causa il Cardinale suo fratello." The Pope virtually made himself the accomplice of his son's Cain-like crime. Shortly after the murder of Gandia, Cæsar's relations