Lucretia Borgia | Page 2

OF ERCOLE STROZZI--DEATH OF GIOVANNI
SFORZA AND OF LUCRETIA'S ELDEST SON 326
CHAPTER X
EFFECTS OF THE WAR--THE ROMAN INFANTE 338
CHAPTER XI
LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF VANNOZZA 345
CHAPTER XII
DEATH OF LUCRETIA BORGIA--CONCLUSION 355

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Lucretia Borgia, from a portrait attributed to Dosso Dossi Frontispiece

Trajan's Forum, Rome 16
Church of S. Maria del Popolo, Rome 20
Vittoria Colonna 30
The Farnese Palace, Rome 36
Alexander VI 44
Church of Ara Coeli, Rome 58
Tasso 82
Charles VIII 88
Savonarola 94
Macchiavelli 100
Cæsar Borgia 148
Guicciardini 176
Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara 206
Castle of S. Angelo, Rome 210
Ariosto 248
Castle Vecchio, Ferrara 270
Benvenuto Garofalo 278
Facsimile of a letter from Alexander VI to Lucretia 281
Cardinal Bembo 290
Julius II 298

Facsimile of a letter from Lucretia to Marquis Gonzaga 301
Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara 304
Aldo Manuzio 328
Leo X 338
Lucretia Borgia, after a painting in the Musée de Nîmes 360

INTRODUCTION
Lucretia Borgia is the most unfortunate woman in modern history. Is
this because she was guilty of the most hideous crimes, or is it simply
because she has been unjustly condemned by the world to bear its curse?
The question has never been answered. Mankind is ever ready to
discover the personification of human virtues and human vices in
certain typical characters found in history and fable.
The Borgias will never cease to fascinate the historian and the
psychologist. An intelligent friend of mine once asked me why it was
that everything about Alexander VI, Cæsar, and Lucretia Borgia, every
little fact regarding their lives, every newly discovered letter of any of
them, aroused our interest much more than did anything similar
concerning other and vastly more important historic characters. I know
of no better explanation than the following: the Borgias had for
background the Christian Church; they made their first appearance
issuing from it; they used it for their advancement; and the sharp
contrast of their conduct with the holy state makes them appear
altogether fiendish. The Borgias are a satire on a great form or phase of
religion, debasing and destroying it. They stand on high pedestals, and
from their presence radiates the light of the Christian ideal. In this form
we behold and recognize them. We view their acts through a medium
which is permeated with religious ideas. Without this, and placed on a
purely secular stage, the Borgias would have fallen into a position
much less conspicuous than that of many other men, and would soon
have ceased to be anything more than representatives of a large species.

We possess the history of Alexander VI and Cæsar, but of Lucretia
Borgia we have little more than a legend, according to which she is a
fury, the poison in one hand, the poignard in the other; and yet this
baneful personality possessed all the charms and graces.
Victor Hugo painted her as a moral monster, in which form she still
treads the operatic stage, and this is the conception which mankind in
general have of her. The lover of real poetry regards this romanticist's
terrible drama of Lucretia Borgia as a grotesque manifestation of the art,
while the historian laughs at it; the poet, however, may excuse himself
on the ground of his ignorance, and of his belief in a myth which had
been current since the publication of Guicciardini's history.
Roscoe, doubting the truth of this legend, endeavored to disprove it,
and his apology for Lucretia was highly gratifying to the patriotic
Italians. To it is due the reaction which has recently set in against this
conception of her. The Lucretia legend may be analyzed most
satisfactorily and scientifically where documents and mementos of her
are most numerous; namely, in Rome, Ferrara, and Modena, where the
archives of the Este family are kept, and in Mantua, where those of the
Gonzaga are preserved. Occasional publications show that the
interesting question still lives and remains unanswered.
The history of the Borgias was taken up again by Domenico Cerri in
his work, Borgia ossia Alessandro VI, Papa e suoi contemporanei,
Turin, 1858. The following year Bernardo Gatti, of Milan, published
Lucretia's letters to Bembo. In 1866 Marquis G. Campori, of Modena,
printed an essay entitled Una vittima della storia Lucrezia Borgia, in
the Nuova Antologia of August 31st of that year. A year later
Monsignor Antonelli, of Ferrara, published Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara,
Sposa a Don Alfonso d'Este, Memorie storiche, Ferrara, 1867. Giovanni
Zucchetti, of Mantua, immediately followed with a similar opuscule:
Lucrezia Borgia Duchessa di Ferrara, Milano, 1869. All these writers
endeavored, with the aid of history, to clear up the Lucretia legend, and
to rehabilitate the honor of the unfortunate woman.
Other writers, not Italians, among them certain French and English
authors, also