The Borgias and Their Enemies: 1431-1519
Christopher Hibbert
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0547247818
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, nepotism, and greed that were rife in Renaissance Italy. The powerful, voracious Rodrigo Borgia, better known to history as Pope Alexander VI, was the central figure of the dynasty. Two of his seven papal offspring also rose to power and fame—Lucrezia Borgia, his daughter, whose husband was famously murdered by her brother, and that brother, Cesare, who served as the model for Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince. Notorious for seizing power, wealth, land, and titles through bribery, marriage, and murder, the dynasty's dramatic rise from its Spanish roots to its occupation of the highest position in Renaissance society forms a gripping tale.
Erudite, witty, and always insightful, Hibbert removes the layers of myth around the Borgia family and creates a portrait alive with his superb sense of character and place.
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dining room and sat by the fire in his slippers, while a servant combed his hair and the wispy scattered strands of his reddish beard. Food was placed upon a table; a chamberlain tasted every dish before the king ate, and the remains were thrown into a silver ewer. Four physicians likewise tested the wine into which the chamberlain dangled a unicorn's horn on a golden chain before His Majesty raised the cup to his lips. Cardinal Cibò had prepared his best apartments "for housing the ambassadors
knelt down, bareheaded, and the Pope, removing his own cap, kissed him, but refused quite firmly to allow the King to smother his feet with kisses, which His Majesty seemed to want to do. The King then departed. Leaving with Charles VIII, to accompany the king to Naples in the guise of a papal legate, though in reality a hostage for Alexander VI's good behaviour, was Cesare. He kept the king waiting while he returned briefly to his apartments: "At last Cesare appeared, wearing his cardinal's
week later. The exiled Guidobaldo da Montefeltro did, however, retain his dignity, refusing the offer of a cardinal's hat and a pension in exchange for his rights to the dukedom of Urbino. To humiliate the duke still further, it was revealed at this time that he was impotent, a misfortune that had remained a secret outside the family for years. Still, his loyal wife, Elisabetta, declared that she would rather live with him as his sister than no longer as his wife. In an attempt to negotiate the
less robust cardinals whom he obliged to accompany him. It was Julius II who, unwilling to rely upon capricious and often irresolute mercenaries, decided to form a professional papal army; and this decision led in 1506 to the creation of the Swiss Guards, who remained a fighting force until 1825, when they became a smaller domestic bodyguard, though still retaining their old uniform of slashed doublets, striped hose, and rakish berets, as well as their pikes and halberds. When a sculptor asked
venerated Basilica of St. Peter's, clearing the site of the decaying medieval structure with such eagerness that he became known as "maestro Ruinante," master Ruiner. He also hired the Florentine artist Michelangelo to paint the memorable frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and to cast an enormous statue of the pope—fourteen feet high and weighing six tons—which was set up on the facade of the cathedral in Bologna and then torn down by the mob after the city rebelled against Julius II's
