XVIII. CÆSAR BORGIA’S MOTTO, “AUT CÆSAR, AUT NIHIL”
THE BORGIAS
The next day was one of the days for visiting the Borgia Apartment. Cæsar and Kennedy met in the Piazza di San Pietro, went into the Vatican museum, and walked by a series of stairs and passageways to the Gallery of Inscriptions.
Then they went down to a hall, at whose door there were guards dressed in slashed clothes, which were parti-coloured, red, yellow, and black. Some of them carried lances and others swords.
“Why are the guards here dressed differently?” asked Cæsar.
“Because this belongs to the Dominions of the Pope.”
“And what kind of guards are these?”
“These are pontifical Swiss guards.”
“They look comic-opera enough,” said Cæsar.
“My dear man, don’t say that. This costume was designed by no one less than Michelangelo.”
“All right. At that time they probably looked very well, but now they have a theatrical effect.”
“It is because you have no veneration. If you were reverential, they would look wonderful to you.”
“Very well, let us wait and see whether reverence will not spring up in me. Now, you go on and explain what there is here.”
“This first room, the Hall of Audience, or of the Popes, does not contain anything notable, as you see,” said Kennedy; “the five we are coming to later, have been restored, but are still the same as at the time when your countryman Alexander VI was Pope. All five were decorated by Pinturicchio and his pupils, and all with reference to the Borgias. The Borgias have their history, not well known in all its details, and their legend, which is more extensive and more picturesque. Really, it is not easy to distinguish one from the other.”
“Let’s have the history and the legend mixed.”
“I will give you a résumé in a few words. Alfonso Borja was a Valencian, born at Játiba; he was secretary to the King or Aragon; then Bishop of Valencia, later Cardinal, and lastly Pope, by the name of Calixtus III. While Calixtus lives, the Spaniards are all-powerful in Rome. Calixtus protects his nephews, sons of his sister Isabel and a Valencian named Lanzol or Lenzol. These nephews drop their original name and take their mother’s, Italianizing its spelling to Borgia. Their uncle, the Pope, appoints the elder, Don Pedro Luis, Captain of the Church; the second, Don Rodríguez....”
“Don Rodríguez?” said Cæsar. “In Spanish you can’t say Don Rodríguez.”
“Gregorovius calls him that.”
“Then Gregorovius, no doubt, knew no Spanish.”
“In Latin he is called Rodericus.”
“Then it should be Don Rodrigo.”
“All right, Rodrigo. Well, this Don Rodrigo, also from Játiba, his uncle makes a Cardinal, and at the death of Pedro Luis, he calls him to Rome. Rodrigo has had several children before becoming a Cardinal, and apparently he feels no great enthusiasm for ecclesiastical dignities; but when he finds himself in Rome, the ambition to be Pope assails him, and at the death of Innocent VIII, he buys the tiara? Is it legend or history that he bought the tiara? That is not clear. Now we will go in and see the portrait of Rodrigo Borgia, who in the series of Popes, bears the name Alexander VI.”
ALEXANDER VI AND HIS BROTHER
Kennedy and Cæsar entered the first room, the Hall of the Mysteries, and the Englishman stopped in front of a picture of the Resurrection. “Here you have Alexander VI, on his knees, adoring Christ who is leaving the tomb. He is the type of a Southerner; he has a hooked nose, a long head, tonsured, a narrow forehead, thick lips, a heavy beard, a strong neck, and small chubby hands. He wears a papal robe of gold, covered with jewels; the tiara is on the ground beside him. Of the soldiers, it is supposed that the one asleep by the sepulchre and the one who is waking and rising up, pulling himself to his knees by the aid of his lance, are two of the Pope’s sons, Cæsar and the Duke of Gandia. I rather believe that the little soldier with the lance is a woman, perhaps Lucrezia. How does your countryman strike you, my friend?”
“He is of Mediterranean race, a dolichocephalic Iberian; he has the small melon-shaped head, the sensual features. He is leptorrhine. He comes of an intriguing, commercial, lying, and charlatan race.”
“To which you have the honour to belong,” said Kennedy, laughing.
“Certainly.”
“They say this man was a great enthusiast about his countrymen and the customs of his country. These tiles, which are remains of the original floor, and the plates you see here, are Valencian. A Spanish painter told me that several letters of Alexander VI’s are preserved in the archives of the cathedral at Valencia, one among them asking to have tiles sent.”
Kennedy walked forward a little and planted himself before an Assumption of the Virgin, and said:
“It is supposed that this gloomy man dressed in red, with a little fringe of hair on his brow, is a brother of the Pope’s.”
“A bad type to encounter in the Tribunal of the Inquisition,” said Cæsar; “imagine what this red-robed fellow would have done with that Jew at the Excelsior, Señor Pereira, if he had happened to have him in his power.”
“In the soffits,” Kennedy went on, “as you see, are repetitions of the symbols of Iris, Osiris, and the bull Apis, doubtless because of their resemblance to the Christian symbols, and also because the bull Apis recalls the bull in the Borgia arms.” “Their arms were a bull?”
“Yes; it was a ‘scutcheon invented by some king-at-arms or other, a symbol of ferocity and strength.”
“Were they of a noble family, these Borgias?”
“No, probably not. Though I believe some people suppose that they were descended from the Aragonese family of Atares. Now that we know Alexander VI, let us take a glance at his court. It has often been said, and is no doubt taken from Vasari’s book, that in the Borgia Apartment Pinturicchio painted Pope Alexander VI adoring the Virgin represented under the likeness of his beloved, Julia Farnese. The critic must have been confused, because none of these madonnas recalls the face of Giulia la bella, whom people used to call the Bride of Christ. The picture that Vasari refers to must be one in the museum at Valencia.”
THE HALL OF THE SAINTS
They went into another room, the Hall of the Saints, and Kennedy took Cæsar in front of the fresco called, The Dispute of Saint Catherine with the Emperor Maximian.
“The place of this scene,” said Kennedy, “Pinturicchio has set in front of the Arch of Constantine. The artist has added the inscription Pacis Cultori, and below he has embossed the Borgia bull. The subject is the discussion between the Emperor and the saint. Maximian, seated on a throne under a canopy, is listening to Saint Catherine, who counts on her fingers the arguments she has been using in the dispute. Who was it served as model for the figure of Maximian? At first they imagined it was Cæsar Borgia; but as you may observe, the appearance of the Emperor is that of a man of twenty odd years, and when Pinturicchio painted this, Cæsar was about seventeen. So it is more logical to suppose that the model must have been the Pope’s eldest son, the Duke of Gandia. A chronicler of the period says that this Duke of Gandia was good among the great, as his brother Cæsar was great among the wicked. Also, legend or history, whichever it be, says that Cæsar procured his elder brother’s murder in a corner of the Ghetto, and that the Pope on learning of it, became as if crazy, and went into the full Consistory with his garments torn and ashes on his head.”
“What love for traditional symbolism!” said Cæsar.
“Everybody is not so anti-traditional as you. I will go on with my explanation,” added Kennedy. “Saint Catherine has Lucrezia’s features. She is small and slender. She wears her hair down, a little cap with a pearl cross which hangs on her forehead, and a collar also of pearls. She has large eyes, a candid expression. Cagnolo da Parma will say of her, when she goes to Ferrara, that she has ‘il naso profilato e bello, li capelli aurei, gli occhi bianchi, la bocea alquanto grande con li denti candiaissimi.’ Literature will portray this sweet-faced little blond girl as a Messalina, a poisoner, and incestuous with her brothers and her father. At this time Lucrezia had just married Giovanni Sforza, although as a matter of fact the two never lived together. Giovanni Sforza is the little young man who appears there in the back of the picture riding a spirited horse. Sforza wears his hair like a woman, and has a broad-brimmed hat and a red mantle. A little later Cæsar Borgia will try several times to assassinate him.”
“What for?” asked Cæsar.
“No doubt he found him in the way. The man who is in the foreground, next to the Emperor’s throne, is Andrew Paleologos,” Kennedy continued. “He is the one wearing a pale purple cloak and looking so melancholy. It used to be supposed that he was Giovanni Borgia. Now they say that it is Paleologos, whom the death of the Emperor Constantine XIII, about this time, had caused to lose the crown of Byzance.
“Here at the right, riding a Barbary horse, is Prince Djem, second son of Muhammad II, whom Alexander VI kept as a hostage. Djem, as you see, has an expressive face, a prominent nose, lively eyes, a long pointed beard, a shock of hair, and a big turban. He rides Moorish fashion, with his stirrups very short, and wears a curved cutlass in his belt. He is a great friend of Cæsar Borgia’s, which does not prevent Cæsar and his father, according to public rumour, from poisoning him at a farewell banquet in Capua. And here is Giovanni Sforza again, on foot. Are those two children the younger sons of Alexander VI? Or are they Lucrezia and Cæsar again? I don’t know. Behind Paleologos are the Pope’s domestic retainers, and among them Pinturicchio himself.”
THE LIFE OF CÆSAR BORGIA
After explaining the picture in detail, Kennedy went into the next room, followed by Cæsar. This is called the Hall of the Liberal Arts, and is adorned with a large marble mantel.
“Is there no portrait here of Cæsar Borgia?” asked Cæsar.
“No. Here I have a photograph of the one by Giorgione,” said Kennedy, showing a postal card.
“What sort of man was he? What did he do?”
Kennedy seated himself on a bench near the window and Cæsar sat beside him.
“Cæsar Borgia,” said Kennedy, “came to Rome from the university of Pisa, approximately at the time when they made his father Pope. He must then have been about twenty, and was strong and active. He broke in horses, was an expert fencer and shot, and killed bulls in the ring.”
“That too?”
“He was a good Spaniard. In a court that cannot be seen from here, on account of those thick panes, but on which these windows look, Cæsar Borgia fought bulls, and the Pope stood here to watch his son’s dexterity with the sword.”
“What ruffians!” exclaimed Cæsar, smiling.
The Englishman continued with the history of Borgia, his intrigues with the King of France, the death of Lucrezia’s husband, the assassinations attributed to the Pope’s son, the mysterious execution of Ramiro del Orco, which made Machiavelli say that Cæsar Borgia was the prince who best knew how to make and unmake men, according to their merits; finally the coup d’état at Sinigaglia with the condottieri.
By this time Cæsar Moncada was very anxious to know more. These Borgias interested him. His sympathies went out toward those great bandits who dominated Rome and tried to get all Italy into their power, leaf by leaf, like an artichoke. Their purpose struck him as a good one, almost a moral one. The device, Aut Cæsar, aut nihil, was worthy of a man of energy and courage.
Kennedy seeing Cæsar’s interest, then recounted the scene at Cardinal Adrian Corneto’s country-house; Alexander’s intention to give a supper there to various Cardinals and poison them all with a wine that had been put into three bottles, so as to inherit from them, the superstitiousness of the Pope, who sent Cardinal Caraffa to the Vatican for a golden box in which he kept his consecrated Host, from which he was never separated; and the mistake of the chamberlain, who served the poisoned wine to Cæsar and his father.
“Here, to this very room, they brought the dying Pope,” said Kennedy, and pointed to a door, on whose marble lintel one may read: Alexander Borgia Valentín P. P. “They say he passed eight days here between life and death, before he did die, and that when his corpse was exposed, it decomposed horribly.”
Then Kennedy related the story of Cæsar’s trying to cure himself by the strange method of being put inside of a mule just dead; his flight from Rome, sick on a litter, with his soldiers, as far as the Romagna; his imprisonment in the Castel Sant’ Angelo; his capture by the Great Captain; his efforts to escape from his prison at Medina del Campo; and his obscure death on the Mendavia road, near Viana in Navarre, through one of the Count of Lerin’s soldiers, named Garcés, a native of Agreda, who gave Borgia such a blow with a lance that it broke his armour and passed all the way through his body.
Cæsar was stirred up. Hearing the story of the people who had lived there, in those very rooms, gave him an impression of complete reality.
When they went out again by the Gallery of Inscriptions, they looked from a window.
“It must have been here that he fought bulls?” said Cæsar.
“Yes.”
The court was large, with a fountain of four streams in the middle. “Life then must have been more intense than now,” said Cæsar.
“Who knows? Perhaps it was the same as now,” replied Kennedy.
“And what does history, exact history, say of these Borgias?”
“Of Pope Alexander VI it says that he had his children in wedlock; that he was a good administrator; that the people were content with him; that the influence of Spain was justifiable, because he was Spanish; that the story of the poisonings does not seem certain; and that he himself could hardly have died of poison, but rather of a malarial fever.”
“And about Lucrezia?”
“Of Lucrezia it says that she was a woman like those of her period; that there are no proofs for belief in her incests and her poisonings; and that her first marriages, which were never really consummated, were nothing more than political moves of her father and her brother’s.”
“And about Cæsar?”
“Cæsar is the one member of the family who appears really terrible. His device, Aut Cæsar, aut nihil, was not a chance phrase, but the irrevocable decision to be a king or to be nothing.”
“That, at least, is not a mystification,” murmured Cæsar.
IN FRONT OF THE CASTEL SANT’ ANGELO
They left the Vatican, crossed the Piazza di San Pietro, and drew near the river.
As they passed in front of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, Kennedy said:
“Alexander VI shut himself up in this castle to weep for the Duke of Gandia. From one of those windows he watched the funeral procession of his son, whom they were carrying to Santa Maria del Popolo. According to old Italian custom they bore the corpse in an open casket. The funeral was at night, and two hundred men with torches lighted the way. When the cortège set foot on this bridge, the Pope’s retinue saw him draw back with horror, and cover his face, crying out sharply.”