The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert Read Free Book Online

. because the alum mines of Lipari have been worked out. Today I have found seven mountains so rich in alum that they could furnish seven worlds. You will be able to supply enough alum to dye the cloth of the whole of Europe and thus snatch away the profits of the infidel.
     
    Since this letter was written, the alum mines north of Rome had contributed handsomely to the income enjoyed by the papacy. While not as large as that of several other European states, it was now sufficient for the balancing of the papal budget, which had been much in debt in the time of Alexander VI’s predecessors. The mines also helped to maintain a small army for the protection of the Papal States and contributed to the gifts that the treasurer of the Apostolic Chamber, the pope’s cousin Francisco Borgia, was authorized to pass on to His Holiness’s indulged children, as well as to the expenses of the elaborate entertainments provided at the papal court.
    Powerful and possessed of the sums needed to exercise his authority, Alexander VI was a fortunate man, indeed. He was now sixty-one years old; he had grown rather fat in recent years, and his large and fleshy nose seemed more pronounced than ever. Yet he remained an attractive man capable of exercising great charm, lively in conversation, attentive, and responsive, with an ingratiating manner and ready smile, a sensual nature, a commanding presence, and a sonorous voice. ‘He is handsome, of a most glad countenance,’ his tutor had written of him, and ‘he is also gifted with honeyed eloquence.’ Jacopo Gherardi da Volterra observed of him that he was blessed with a ‘powerful intellect and great imagination,’ adding, ‘He is brilliantly skilled in the conduct of affairs of state.’
    The historian Francesco Guicciardini judged him to be a man who
    possessed singular cunning and shrewdness, excellent perspicacity, amazing powers of persuasion, and an incredible agility and concentration when dealing with affairs of state; but these qualities were far outweighed by his vices: the most obscene manners, hypocrisy, immodesty, mendacity, infidelity, profanity, insatiable greed, unrestrained ambition, a predilection for viciousness that was worse than barbaric, and a fervent hunger to exalt his many children, among whom there were several no less repellent than the father.
     
    Men soon learned that it was dangerous to cross Alexander VI and never to be less than wary in his presence. This was an ambitious pope, powerful, rich, politically astute, and determined to establish his own family in the ranks of Europe’s ruling elite.

— C HAPTER 5 —
     

Marriages and Alliances
    H E WOULD ‘ SHOW THEM WHO WAS P OPE AND . . . WOULD MAKE MORE CARDINALS , WHETHER THEY LIKED IT OR NOT ’
     
    L IVING IN THE LUXURIOUS surroundings of Palazzo Montegiordano, the Orsini residence in Rome, under the care of Adriana da Mila, Rodrigo’s children had grown up protected from the violence and squalor of the city beyond its walls. It seems that Lucrezia received her early education from the ladies of the household, from Spanish tutors, from a priest who presided over the children’s schoolroom, and from the nuns of a nearby convent to which she was regularly conducted. While she spoke Spanish with her brothers and her father, she was also fluent in Italian and French, as well as Latin, and knew some Greek; her syllabus had included rhetoric and humanist literature; she enjoyed reading poetry and wrote her own verses. She was also an accomplished dancer and, indeed, regularly took part in the exhibitions of Valencian dancing arranged byRodrigo for the entertainment of himself and his guests. She was a happy, cheerful, and pretty child, adored by all her family.
    Like other girls of noble birth, Lucrezia was expected to marry young, to a man of her father’s choice whose connections would be beneficial to the family. In 1490, when she was just ten years old, she was betrothed to a young Spanish nobleman,