Lucretia Borgia | Page 8

near which was Cardinal Borgia's palace.

Even as early as this, Vannozza was the mother of several children
acknowledged by the cardinal: Giovanni, Cæsar, and Lucretia. There is
no doubt whatever about these, although the descent of the eldest of the
children, Pedro Luis, from the same mother, is only highly probable.
Thus far the date of the birth of this Borgia bastard has not been
established, and authorities differ. In absolutely authentic records I
discovered the dates of birth of Cæsar and Lucretia, which clear up
forever many errors regarding the genealogy and even the history of the
house. Cæsar was born in the month of April, 1476--the day is not
given--and Lucretia on the eighteenth of April, 1480. Their father,
when he was pope, gave their ages in accordance with these dates. In
October, 1501, he mentioned the subject to the ambassador of Ferrara,
and the latter, writing to the Duke Ercole, said, "The Pope gave me to
understand that the Duchess (Lucretia) was in her twenty-second year,
which she will complete next April, in which month also the most
illustrious Duke of Romagna (Cæsar) will be twenty-six."
If the correctness of the father's statement of the age of his own
children is questioned, it may be confirmed by other reports and
records. In despatches which a Ferrarese ambassador sent to the same
duke from Rome much earlier, namely, in February and March, 1483,
the age of Cæsar at that time is given as sixteen to seventeen years,
which agrees with the subsequent statement of his father.[5] The son of
Alexander VI was, therefore, a few years younger than has hitherto
been supposed, and this fact has an important bearing upon his short
and terrible life. Mariana, therefore, and other authors who follow him,
err in stating that Cæsar, Rodrigo's second son, was older than his
brother Giovanni. In reality, Giovanni must have been two years older
than Cæsar. Venetian letters from Rome, written in October, 1496,
describe him as a young man of twenty-two; he accordingly must have
been born in 1474.[6]
Lucretia herself came into the world April 18, 1480. This exact date is
given in a Valencian document. Her father was then forty-nine and her
mother thirty-eight years of age. The Roman or Spanish astrologers
cast the horoscope of the child according to the constellation which was
in the ascendancy, and congratulated Cardinal Rodrigo on the brilliant

career foretold for his daughter by the stars.
Easter had just passed; magnificent festivities had been held in honor of
the Elector Ernst of Saxony, who, together with the Duke of Brunswick
and Wilhelm von Henneberg had arrived in Rome March 22d. These
gentlemen were accompanied by a retinue of two hundred knights, and
a house in the Parione quarter had been placed at their disposal. Pope
Sixtus IV loaded them with honors, and great astonishment was caused
by a magnificent hunt which Girolamo Riario, the all-powerful nepot,
gave for them, at Magliana on the Tiber. These princes departed from
Rome on the fourteenth of April.
The papacy was at that time changing to a political despotism, and
nepotism was assuming the character which later was to give Cæsar
Borgia all his ferocity. Sixtus IV, a mighty being and a character of a
much more powerful cast than even Alexander VI, was at war with
Florence, where he had countenanced the Pazzi conspiracy for the
murder of the Medici. He had made Girolamo Riario a great prince in
Romagna, and later Alexander VI planned a similar career for his son
Cæsar.
Lucretia was indeed born at a terrible period in the world's history; the
papacy was stripped of all holiness, religion was altogether material,
and immorality was boundless. The bitterest family feuds raged in the
city, in the Ponte, Parione, and Regola quarters, where kinsmen incited
by murder daily met in deadly combat. In this very year, 1480, there
was a new uprising of the old factions of Guelph and Ghibbeline in
Rome; there the Savelli and Colonna were against the Pope, and here
the Orsini for him; while the Valle, Margana, and Santa Croce families,
inflamed by a desire for revenge for blood which had been shed, allied
themselves with one or the other faction.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Gianandrea Boccaccio to the duke, Rome, February 25 and March
11, 1493. State archives of Modena.
[6] Sanuto, Diar. v. i, 258.

CHAPTER III
LUCRETIA'S FIRST HOME
Lucretia passed the first years of her childhood in her mother's house,
which was on the Piazza Pizzo di Merlo, only a few steps from the
cardinal's palace. The Ponte quarter, to which it belonged, was one of
the most populous of Rome, since it led to the Bridge of S. Angelo and
the Vatican. In it were to be found many merchants and the bankers