The Borgias by Christopher Hibbert Read Free Book Online Page B

enjoined to be witnesses to Sforza’s oath, and the bride was then asked if she was prepared to become his ‘lawful spouse.’ She also replied, ‘I will.’ The bishop of Concordia then stepped forward and placed a ring on the ring finger of the bride’s left hand and another on the second finger while Niccolò Orsini, Count of Pitigliano and captain general of the papal armies, held a drawn sword over the heads of the couple. There followed a sermon by the bishop about the sacrament of marriage.
    The bride was then escorted by Juan Borgia into the Sala Reale, specially hung for the occasion with lavish silks, velvets, and tapestries, where Alexander VI and his mistress, Giulia Farnese, played host to the bridegroom and the bride’s ladies. ‘An assortment of all kinds of sweets, marzipans, crystallized fruits and wines were served,’ noted Burchard, and ‘over 200 dishes were carried in by the stewards and squires, each with a napkin over his shoulder, offering them first to the Pope and his cardinals, then to the bridalcouple and lastly the guests. Finally they flung what was left out of the window to the crowds of people below in such abundance that I believe more than 100 pounds of sweetmeats were crushed and trampled underfoot.’
    The party was a lively and lecherous affair. The diarist Stefano Infessura noted that in their excitement, some of the male guests ‘threw the sweetmeats into the cleavages of many ladies, especially the good-looking ones,’ and those cardinals who remained behind to dine with the pope and his mistress were each seated between two pretty girls. The guests were regaled with what Burchard described as ‘a series of entertainments,’ including a comedy performed with ‘such elegance that everyone loudly applauded’ the actors; Infessura reported that ‘lascivious comedies and tragedies were performed which provoked much laughter in the audience.’
    Once dinner was over, Alexander VI himself accompanied his daughter and her husband to the palace of Santa Maria in Porticu by the grand steps leading up to the Basilica of St Peter’s. ‘There the groom took marital possession of his bride,’ reported Infessura, adding, rather enigmatically, that ‘I could tell you many other things but I will not recount them because some are not true and those that are, are anyway unbelievable.’
    This marriage had been arranged in the shadow of a bitter quarrel between King Ferrante of Naples and Ludovico Sforza, ruler of Milan. Ludovico was a ‘wise man,’ in the opinion of the French chronicler Philippe de Commynes, ‘but very timorous and humble when he was in awe, and false when it was to his advantage to be so; and this opinion I do not hold by hearsay but as one that knew him well, having had much business to do with him.’ Handsome in his way, despite the ugly, massive nose to be seen in the portraitattributed to Leonardo da Vinci, he was known as Il Moro on account of his cunning and his resourceful nature, which were generally supposed to be characteristics of the Moors of North Africa. He was also greedy for power. When his brother Duke Galeazzo Maria was assassinated in 1476, leaving his seven-year-old nephew, Gian Galeazzo, as heir, Ludovico had seized control of Milan to rule in the young duke’s name. Together with his beautiful and clever wife, Beatrice d’Este, Ludovico presided over an impressively splendid court to which Leonardo was welcomed as painter and musician, as well as military engineer.
    The sickly and insipid Gian Galeazzo was not too troubled by this deprivation, which allowed him the time and opportunity to hunt in the pleasant countryside around the castle of Pavia, where he was confined. His ambitious wife, Isabella of Aragon, granddaughter of King Ferrante, however, was far from satisfied with this arrangement and jealously resented the position that Beatrice occupied as wife of ‘the Moor,’ a position to which she herself felt entitled as the wife of