In Rome, Lucretia had an opportunity to enjoy, if she were so disposed, the society of many brilliant men, for even during the sovereignty of the Borgias the Muses were banished neither from the Vatican nor from Rome. It can not be denied, however, that the daughters of princely houses were allowed to devote themselves to the cultivation of the intellect more freely at the secular courts of Italy than they were at the papal court. Not until Lucretia went to Ferrara to live was she able to endeavor to emulate the example of the princesses of Mantua and Urbino. While living in Rome she was too young and her environment too narrow for her to have had any influence upon the literary and æsthetic circles of that city, although, owing to her position, she must have been acquainted with them.
Her father was not incapable of intellectual pleasures; he had his court minstrels and poets. The famous Aurelio Brandolini, who died in 1497, was wont to improvise to the strains of the lute during banquets in the Vatican and in Lucretia's palace. Cæsar's favorite, Serafino of Aquila, the Petrarch of his age, who died in Rome in the year 1500, still a young man, aspired to the same honor.
Cæsar himself was interested in poetry and the arts, just as were all the cultivated men and tyrants of the Renaissance. His court poet was Francesco Sperulo, who served under his standard, and who sang his campaigns in Romagna and in the neighborhood of Camerino.[69] A number of Roman poets who subsequently became famous recited their verses in the presence of Lucretia, among them Emilio Voccabella and Evangelista Fausto Maddaleni. Even at that time the three brothers Mario, Girolamo, and Celso Mellini enjoyed great renown as poets and orators, while the brothers of the house of Porcaro—Camillo, Valerio, and Antonio—were equally famous. We have already noted that Antonio was one of the witnesses at the marriage of Girolama Borgia in the year 1482, and that he subsequently was Lucretia's proxy when she was betrothed to Centelles in 1491. These facts show how closely and how long the Porcaro were allied to the Borgias.
This Roman family had been made famous in the history of the city by the fate of Stefano, Cola di Rienzi's successor. The Porcaro claimed descent from the Catos, and for this reason many of them adopted the name Porcius. Enjoying friendly relations with the Borgias, they claimed them as kinsmen, stating that Isabella, the mother of Alexander VI, was descended from the Roman Porcaro, who somehow had passed to Spain. The similarity of sound in the Latin names Borgius and Porcius gave some appearance of truth to this pretension.
Next to Antonio, Hieronymus Porcius was one of the most brilliant retainers of the house of Borgia. Alexander, upon his election to the papal throne, made him auditor of the Ruota (the Papal Court of Appeals). He was the author of a work printed in Rome in September, 1493, under the title Commentarius Porcius, which was dedicated to the King and Queen of Spain. In it he describes the election and coronation of Alexander VI, and quotes portions of the declarations of loyalty which the Italian envoys addressed to the Pope. Court flattery could not be carried further than it was in this case by Hieronymus, an affected pedant, an empty-headed braggart, a fanatical papist. Alexander made him Bishop of Andria and Governor of the Romagna. In 1497 Hieronymus, then in Cesena, composed a dialogue on Savonarola and his "heresy concerning the power of the Pope." The kernel of the whole thing was the fundamental doctrine of the infallibilists; namely, that only those who blindly obey the Pope are good Christians.[70]
Porcius also essayed poetry, celebrating the magnificence of the Pope and Cardinal Cæsar, whom, in his verses on the Borgia Steer, he described as his greatest benefactor. Apparently he was also the author of the elegy on the death of the Duke of Gandia, which is still preserved.
Phædra Inghirami, the famous student of Cicero, whom Erasmus admired and whom Raphael rendered immortal by his portrait, doubtless made the acquaintance of the Borgias and of Lucretia through the Porcaro. Even as early as this he was attracting the attention of Rome. Inghirami delivered an oration at the mass which the Spanish ambassador had said for the Infante Don Juan, January 16, 1498, in S. Jacopo in Navona, which was greatly admired. He also made a reputation as an actor in Cardinal Rafael Riario's theater.
The drama was then putting forth its first fruits, not only at the courts of the Este and Gonzaga families, but also in Rome. Alexander himself, owing to his sensuous nature, was especially fond of it, and had comedies and ballets performed at all the family festivities in the Vatican. The actors were young students from the Academy of Pomponius Laetus, and we have every reason to believe that Inghirami, the Mellini, and the Porcaro took part in these performances whenever the opportunity was offered. Carlo Canale, Vannozza's consort, must also have lent valuable assistance, for he had been familiar with the stage in Mantua; and no less important was the aid of Pandolfo Collenuccio, who had repeatedly been Ferrara's ambassador in Rome, where he enjoyed daily intercourse with the Borgias.
The celebrated Pomponius, to whom Rome was indebted for the revival of the theater, spent his last years, during the reign of Alexander, in the enjoyment of the highest popular esteem. Alexander himself may have been one of his pupils, as Cardinal Farnese certainly was. Pomponius died June 6, 1498, and the same pope who had sent Savonarola to the stake had his court attend the obsequies of the great representative of classic paganism, which were held in the Church of Aracoeli, a fact which lends additional support to the belief that he was personally known to the Borgias. Moreover, one of his most devoted pupils, Michele Ferno, had for a long time been a firm adherent of Alexander. Although the Pope in 1501 issued the first edict of censorship, he was not an enemy of the sciences. He fostered the University of Rome, several of whose chairs were at that time held by men of note; for example, Petrus Sabinus and John Argyropulos. One of the greatest geniuses—one whose light has blessed all mankind—was for a year an ornament of this university and of the reign of Alexander; Copernicus came to Rome from far away Prussia in the jubilee year 1500, and lectured on mathematics and astronomy.
Among Alexander's courtiers there were many brilliant men whose society Lucretia must have had an opportunity to enjoy. Burchard, the master of ceremonies, laid down the rules for all the functions in which the Pope's daughter took part. He must have called upon her frequently, but she could scarcely have foreseen that, centuries later, this Alsatian's notes would constitute the mirror in which posterity would see the reflections of the Borgias. His diary, however, gives no details concerning Lucretia's private life—this did not come within his duties.