COURT POETS—GIULIA BELLA AND JULIUS II—THE ESTE DYNASTY ENDANGERED
During the year, when Lucretia, filled with a sister's love, was grieving over the fate of her terrible brother, a great change occurred in her own circumstances, she having become Duchess of Ferrara, January 25, 1505. Her husband, Alfonso, in compliance with his father's wishes, had undertaken a journey to France, Flanders, and England for the purpose of becoming acquainted with the courts of those countries. He was to return to Italy by way of Spain, but while he was at the court of Henry VII of England he received despatches informing him that his father was sick. He hastened back to Ferrara, and Ercole died shortly after his return.
Alfonso ascended the ducal throne at a time when a strong hand and high intelligence were required to save his State from the dangers which threatened it. The Republic of Venice had already secured possession of a part of Romagna, and was planning to cut Ferrara off from the mouth of the Po; at the same time Julius II was scheming to take Bologna, and if he succeeded in this he would doubtless also attack Ferrara. In view of these circumstances it was a fortunate thing for the State that its chief was a practical, cool-headed man like Alfonso. He was neither extravagant nor fond of display, and he cared nothing for a brilliant court. He was indifferent to externals, even to his own clothing. His chief concern was to increase the efficiency of the army, build fortresses, and cast cannon. When the affairs of state left him any leisure he amused himself at a turning-lathe which he had set up, and also in painting majolica vases, in which art he was exceedingly skilful. He had no inclination for the higher culture—this he left to his wife.
The small collection of books which Lucretia brought with her from Rome shows that she possessed some education and an inclination to take part in the intellectual movement of Ferrara. We have a catalogue of these books, of the years 1502 and 1503, which shows what were Lucretia's tastes. According to this list she possessed a number of books, many of which were beautifully bound in purple velvet, with gold and silver mountings: a breviary; a book with the seven psalms and other prayers; a parchment with miniatures in gold, called De Coppelle ala Spagnola; the printed letters of Saint Catharine of Siena; the Epistles and Gospels in the vulgar tongue; a religious work in Castilian; a manuscript collection of Spanish canzone with the proverbs of Domenico Lopez; a printed work entitled Aquilla Volante; another, called Supplement of Chronicles, in the vulgar tongue; the Mirror of Faith, in Italian; a printed copy of Dante, with a commentary; a work in Italian, on philosophy; the Legend of the Saints in the vulgar tongue; an old work, De Ventura; a Donatus; a Life of Christ in Spanish; a manuscript of Petrarch on parchment, in duodecimo. From this catalogue it is evident that Lucretia's studies were not very profound. Her books were confined to religious works and belles-lettres.[198]
ALPHONSO D'ESTE, DUKE OF FERRARA.
Lucretia established her ducal court in accordance with the dictates of her own fancy. She was now the soul and center of the intellectual life of Ferrara. Her cultivated intellect, her beauty, and the irresistible joyousness of her being charmed all who came into her presence. The opposition which the members of the house of Este at first had shown her had disappeared, and, especially in the case of Isabella Gonzaga, had changed into affection, as is proved by the extensive correspondence which the two women maintained up to the time of Lucretia's death. In the archives of the house of Gonzaga there are several hundred of her letters to the Marchesa of Mantua.
Her relations with the house of Urbino were no less pleasant, and they continued so even after the death of Guidobaldo in April, 1508, for his successor was Francesco Maria della Rovere, son-in-law of Isabella Gonzaga. She was frequently visited by these princes, and she enjoyed the friendship of a number of remarkable men—Baldassar Castiglione, Ottaviano Fregoso, Aldus Manutius, and Bembo.
Bembo, who was in love with the beautiful duchess, constantly sang her praises, and, August 1, 1504, he dedicated to her his dialogue on love, the Asolani, in a letter in which he celebrated her virtues. His friend Aldo first spent some time in Ferrara at the court of Ercole, and subsequently went to the Pio at Carpi; finally he settled in Venice, where he printed the Asolani in the year 1505 and dedicated it to Lucretia. There is no doubt about Bembo's passion for the duchess, but it would be a fruitless undertaking to endeavor to prove, from the evidences of affection which the beautiful woman bestowed upon him, that it passed the bounds of propriety. The belief that it did is due to the letters which Bembo wrote her, and which are printed in his works, and still more to those which Lucretia addressed to him. From 1503 to 1506—in which year he removed to the court of Guidobaldo—the intellectual Venetian enjoyed the closest friendship with Lucretia. He corresponded with her while he was living with his friends the Strozzi in Villa Ostellato. These letters, especially those addressed to an "anonymous friend," by which designation he clearly meant Lucretia, are inspired by friendship, and display a tender confidence. Lucretia's letters to Bembo are preserved in the Ambrosiana in Milan, where they and the lock of blond hair near them are examined by every one who visits the famous library. The letters are written in her own hand, and there is no doubt of their authenticity; concerning the lock of hair there is some uncertainty; still it may be one of the pledges of affection which the happy Bembo carried away with him. Lucretia's letters to Bembo were first examined and described by Baldassare Oltrocchi, and subsequently by Lord Byron; in 1859 they were published in Milan by Bernardo Gatti.[199] There are nine in all—seven in Italian and two in Spanish. They are accompanied by a Castilian canzone.
It seems certain that she felt more than mere friendship for Bembo, for she was young, and he was an accomplished cavalier, fair, amiable, and witty, who cast the rough Alfonso completely in the shade. He excited the latter's jealousy, and the danger which threatened him may have been the cause of his removal to Urbino. Lucretia kept up her friendly relations with him until the year 1513.
Several other poets in Ferrara devoted their talents to her glorification. The verses which the two Strozzi addressed to her are even more ardent than those of Bembo—perhaps because their authors possessed greater poetical talent. Tito, the father, experienced the same feelings for the beautiful duchess as did his genial son Ercole, and he expressed them in the same poetical forms and imagery. This very similarity indicates that their devotion was merely æsthetic. Tito sang of a rose which Lucretia had sent him, but his son excelled him in an epigram on the Rose of Lucretia, which could hardly have been the same one his father had received.[200]
Tito, in his epigram, described himself as senescent, and consequently not likely to be wounded by Cupid's darts, but he, nevertheless, was ensnared by Lucretia's charms. "In her," so he says, "all the majesty of heaven and earth are personified, and her like is not to be found on earth." He addressed an epigram to Bembo, with whose passion for Lucretia he was acquainted, in which he derives the name Lucretia from "lux" and "retia," and makes merry over the net in which Bembo was caught.[201]
His son Ercole describes her as a Juno in good works, a Pallas in decorum, and a Venus in beauty. In verses in imitation of Catullus he sang of the marble Cupid which the duchess had set up in her salon, saying that the god of Love had been turned into stone by her glance. He compared Lucretia's beautiful eyes with the sun, that blinds whosoever ventures to look at it; like Medusa, whose glance turned the beholder to stone, yet in this case "the pains of love still continued immortalized in the stone."
Is it possible to believe that these poets would have written such verses if they had considered Lucretia Borgia guilty of the crimes which, even after her father's death, had been ascribed to her by Sannazzaro?
Antonio Tebaldeo, Calcagnini, and Giraldi sang of Lucretia's beauty and virtue. Marcelle Filosseno dedicated a number of charming sonnets to her, in which he compared her with Minerva and Venus. Jacopo Caviceo, who in the last years of his life (he died in 1511) was vicar of the bishopric of Ferrara, dedicated to her his wonderful romance "Peregrino," with an inscription in which he describes her as beautiful, learned, wise, and modest. The number of poets who threw themselves at her feet was certainly large, and she doubtless received their flattery with the same satisfied vanity with which a beautiful woman of to-day would accept such offerings. Some of these poets may really have been in love with her, while others burned their incense as court flatterers; all, doubtless, were glad to find in her an ideal to serve as a platonic inspiration for their rhymes and verses.
Ariosto excepted, these poets are to us nothing more than names in the history of literature. The great poet's relations with the princely house of Ferrara began about 1503, when he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito. Soon after this—in the year 1505—he began his great epic, and the beautiful duchess appears to have had very little influence on his work. He refers to her occasionally, especially in a stanza for which she owed the poet little thanks if she foresaw his immortality—the eighty-third stanza in the forty-second canto of the Orlando Furioso, in which he places Lucretia's portrait in the temple to woman. The inscription under her portrait says that her fatherland, Rome, on account of her beauty and modesty must regard her as excelling Lucretia of old.[202]
A recent Italian writer, speaking of Ariosto's adulation, says, "However much of it may be looked upon as court flattery, and as due to the poet's obligations to the house of Este, we know that the art of flattery had also its laws and bounds, and that one who ascribed such qualities to a prince who was known to be entirely lacking in them would be regarded as little acquainted with the world and with court manners, for he would cause the person to be publicly ridiculed. In this case the praise would degenerate into satire and the incautious flatterer would fare badly."[203] Flattery has always been the return which court poets make for their slavery. Ariosto and Tasso were no more free from it than were Horace and Virgil. When the poet of the Orlando Furioso discovered that Cardinal Ippolito was beginning to treat him coldly, he thought to strike out everything he had said in his praise. Although it was probably merely the name Lucretia which Ariosto and other poets used—comparing it with the classic ideal of feminine honor—it is, nevertheless, difficult wholly to reject the interpretation of Lucretia's modern advocates, for, even when this comparison was not made, other admirers—Ariosto especially—praised the beautiful duchess for her decorum. This much is certain: her life in Ferrara was regarded as a model of feminine virtue.
There was a young woman in her household who charmed all who came in contact with her until she became the cause of a tragedy at the court. This was the Angela Borgia whom Lucretia had brought with her from Rome, and who had been affianced to Francesco Maria Rovere. It is not known when the betrothal was set aside, although it may have been shortly after Alexander's death. The heir of Urbino married, as has been stated, Eleonora Gonzaga. Among Angela's admirers were two of Alfonso's brothers, who were equally depraved, Cardinal Ippolito and Giulio, a natural son of Ercole. One day when Ippolito was assuring Angela of his devotion, she began to praise the beauty of Giulio's eyes, which so enraged his utterly degenerate rival that he planned a horrible revenge. The cardinal hired assassins and commanded them to seize his brother when he was returning from the hunt, and to tear out the eyes which Donna Angela had found so beautiful. The attempt was made in the presence of the cardinal, but it did not succeed as completely as he had wished. The wounded man was carried to his palace, where the physicians succeeded in saving one of his eyes. This crime, which occurred November 3, 1505,[204] aroused the whole court. The unfortunate Giulio demanded that it be paid in kind, but the duke merely banished the cardinal. The injured man brooded on revenge, and the direst consequences followed.
Ariosto, the wicked cardinal's courtier, fell into difficulties from which he escaped in a way not altogether honorable, which lessens the worth of the praise he bestowed upon Lucretia. He wrote a poem in which he endeavored to clear the murderer by blackening Giulio's character and concealing the motive for the crime. In this same eclogue he poured forth the most ardent praise of Lucretia. He lauded not only her beauty, her good works, and her intellect, but above all her modesty, for which she was famous before coming to Ferrara.[205]
A year later, December 6, 1506, Lucretia married Donna Angela to Count Alessandro Pio of Sassuolo, and by a remarkable coincidence her son Giberto subsequently became the husband of Isabella, a natural daughter of Cardinal Ippolito.
In November, 1505, an event occurred in the Vatican which aroused great interest on the part of Lucretia, and likewise caused her most painful memories. Giulia Farnese, the companion of her unhappy youth, made her appearance there under circumstances which must have overcome her. We know nothing of the life of Alexander's mistress during the years immediately preceding and following his death. She and her husband, Orsini, were living in Castle Bassanello, to which her mother Adriana had also removed. At least Giulia was there in 1504, about which time one of the Orsini committed one of those crimes with which the history of the great families of Italy is filled. Her sister, Girolama Farnese, widow of Puccio Pucci, had entered into a second marriage—this time with Count Giuliano Orsini of Anguillara—and had been murdered by her stepson, Giambattista of Stabbia, because, as it was alleged, she had tried to poison him. Giulia buried her deceased sister in 1504, at Bassanello.
She must have gone to Rome the following year and taken up her abode in the Orsini palace. Her husband was not living, and Adriana may also have been dead, for she was not present at the ceremony in the Vatican in November, 1505, when Giulia, to the great astonishment of all Rome, married her only daughter, Laura, to the nephew of the Pope, Niccolò Rovere, brother of Cardinal Galeotto.
Laura passed among all those who were acquainted with her mother's secrets as the child of Alexander VI and natural sister of the Duchess of Ferrara. When she was only seven years old her mother had betrothed her to Federico, the twelve-year-old son of Raimondo Farnese; this was April 2, 1499. This alliance was subsequently dissolved to enable her to enter into a union as brilliant as her heart could possibly desire.
The consent of Julius II to the betrothal of his nephew with the bastard daughter of Alexander VI is one of the most astonishing facts in the life of this pope. It perhaps marks his reconciliation with the Borgia. He had hated the men of this family while he was hostile to them, but his hatred was not due to any moral feelings. Julius II felt no contempt for Alexander and Cæsar, but, on the other hand, it is more likely that he marveled at their strength as did Macchiavelli. We do not know that he had any personal relations with Lucretia Borgia after he ascended the papal throne, although this certainly would have been probable owing to the position of the house of Este. On one occasion he deeply offended Lucretia when, in reinstating Guglielmo Gaetani in possession of Sermoneta by a bull dated January 24, 1504, he applied the most uncomplimentary epithets to Alexander VI, describing him as a "swindler" who had enriched his own children by plundering others.[206] This especially concerned Lucretia, for she had been mistress of Sermoneta, which had subsequently been given to her son Rodrigo.
Later, after Alfonso ascended the ducal throne, the relations between the Pope and Lucretia must have become more friendly. She kept up a lively correspondence with Giulia Farnese, and doubtless received from her the news of the betrothal of her daughter to a member of the Pope's family.[207]
The betrothal took place in the Vatican, in the presence of Julius II, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, and the mother of the young bride. This was one of the greatest triumphs of Giulia's romantic life—she had overcome the opposition of another pope, and one who had been the enemy of Alexander VI, and the man who had ruined Cæsar. She, the adulteress, who had been branded by the satirists of Rome and of all Italy as mistress of Alexander VI, now appeared in the Vatican as one of the most respectable women of the Roman aristocracy, "the illustrious Donna Giulia de Farnesio," Orsini's widow, for the purpose of betrothing the daughter of Alexander and herself to the Pope's nephew, thereby receiving absolution for the sins of her youth. She was still a beautiful and fascinating woman, and at most not more than thirty years of age.
This good fortune and the rehabilitation of her character (if, in view of the morals of the time, we may so describe it) she owed to the intercession of her brother the cardinal. Political considerations likewise induced the Pope to consent to the alliance, for, in order to carry out his plan for extending the pontifical States, it was necessary for him to win over the great families of Rome. He secured the support of the Farnese and of the Orsini; in May, 1506, he married his own natural daughter Felice to Giangiordano Orsini of Bracciano, and in July of the same year he gave his niece, Lucretia Gara Rovere, sister of Niccolò, to Marcantonio Colonna as wife.
Again Giulia Farnese vanished from sight, and neither under Julius II nor Leo X does she reappear. March 14, 1524, she made a will which was to be in favor of her nieces Isabella and Costanza in case her daughter should die without issue. March 23d the Venetian ambassador in Rome, Marco Foscari, informed his Signory that Cardinal Farnese's sister, Madama Giulia, formerly mistress of Pope Alexander VI, was dead. From this we are led to assume that she died in Rome. No authentic likeness of Giulia Bella has come down to us, but tradition says that one of the two reclining marble figures which adorn the monument of Paul III—Farnese—in St. Peter's, Justice, represents his sister, Giulia Farnese, while the other, Wisdom, is the likeness of his mother, Giovanella Gaetani.
Giulia's daughter was mistress of Bassanello and Carbognano. She had one son, Giulio della Rovere, who subsequently became famous as a scholar.[208]
In the meantime the attempt against Giulio d'Este had been attended by such consequences that the princely house of Ferrara found itself confronted by a grave danger. Giulio complained to Alfonso of injustice, while the cardinal's numerous friends considered his banishment too severe a punishment. Ippolito had a great following in Ferrara. He was a lavish man of the world, while the duke, owing to his utilitarian ways and practical life, repelled the nobility. A party was formed which advocated a revolution. The house of Este had survived many of these attempts. One had occurred when Ercole ascended the throne.
Giulio succeeded in winning over to his cause certain disaffected nobles and conscienceless men who were in the service of the duke; among them Count Albertino Boschetti of San Cesario; his son-in-law, the captain of the palace guard; a chamberlain; one of the duke's minstrels, and a few others. Even Don Ferrante, Alfonso's own brother, who had been his proxy when he married Lucretia in Rome, entered into the conspiracy. The plan was, first to despatch the cardinal with poison; and, as this act would be punished if the duke were allowed to live, he was to be destroyed at a masked ball, and Don Ferrante was to be placed on the throne.
The cardinal, who was well served by his spies in Ferrara, received news of what was going on and immediately informed his brother Alfonso. This was in July, 1506. The conspirators sought safety in flight, but only Giulio and the minstrel Guasconi succeeded in escaping, the former to Mantua and the latter to Rome. Count Boschetti was captured in the vicinity of Ferrara. Don Ferrante apparently made no effort to escape. When he was brought before the duke he threw himself at his feet and begged for mercy; but Alfonso in his wrath lost control of himself, and not only cast him from him but struck out one of his eyes with a staff which he had in his hand. He had him confined in the tower of the castle, whither Don Giulio, whom the Marchese of Mantua had delivered after a short resistance, was soon brought. The trial for treason was quickly ended, and sentence of death passed upon the guilty. First Boschetti and two of his companions were beheaded in front of the Palazzo della Ragione. This scene is faithfully described in a contemporaneous Ferrarese manuscript on criminology now preserved in the library of the university.
The two princes were to be executed in the court of the castle, August 12th. The scaffold was erected, the tribunes were filled, the duke took his place, and the unfortunate wretches were led to the block. Alfonso made a signal—he was about to show mercy to his brothers. They lost consciousness and were carried back to prison. Their punishment had been commuted to life imprisonment. They spent years in captivity, surviving Alfonso himself. Apparently it caused him no contrition to know that his miserable brothers were confined in the castle where he dwelt and held his festivities. Such were the Este whom Ariosto in his poem lauded to the skies. Not until February 22, 1540, did death release Don Ferrante, then in the sixty-third year of his age. Don Giulio was granted his freedom in 1559, and died March 24, 1561, aged eighty-three.