[259] Diary MS. i. 448.
[260] The assertion of most historians, that the pretext was Giovanni's impotency, is contradicted by very curious documents in the suit of divorce. A commission having been issued by the Pontiff, empowering two cardinals to examine into the facts, Lucrezia stated to them that in her twelfth year she had been contracted in marriage, by the words "Will you? I will," to Gaspare, son of Giovanni Francesco da Procida, Count of Aversa, but that subsequently she had been induced [quadam facilitate] to marry Sforza, and live with him above three years; but she offered to prove by her own oath, and by the report of obstetrices, that this marriage had never been consummated. Giovanni averred himself ready to affirm on oath that no copula had ever followed, and he adhibited his consent to the divorce. These steps took place towards the close of the year, and on the 18th of December a bull issued dissolving this ill-fated union. Archiv. Dipl. Urb. at Florence.
[261] Sanuto's MS. Diary, Bib. Marc., vol. II., 466-71, 489, 495, 587-98. Compare with Burchard, Eccard., II., 2060; Tommasi, I., 223-43. Burchard has no trace of that partiality for Cesare at this period, usually imputed to the Pontiff, but establishes an excessive fondness for his elder brother up to his death. Roscoe rejects the charge against the Cardinal; his German translator credits it.
[*262] They always did; it was a mediæval practice in the case of any trouble or riot: it might seem the merest common sense. But the truth is, that when a crime had been committed the government closed the shops till the culprit was forthcoming.
[263] Sanuto. Yet there are scoffers who sneered at this worthy successor of St. Peter the fisher, netting the river for his bastard son! Burchard apud Raynaldum.
[264] The papal legitimation of this Giovanni di Borgia, then in his third year, dated the kalends of September, 1501, proceeds upon this preamble: "Legittime genitos, ex quorum verisimilibus infantilis ætatis indiciis, spes concipi potest quod, succedentibus annis, se in viros debeant producere virtuosos, quousque progenitorum suorum præclara merita, et ortûs generosa propago decorant, naturæ vitium minime decolorat, quia decus virtutum genituræ maculam abstergit in filiis, et pudicitia morum pudor originis aboletur." He is called a son of Cesare, but in another, and probably secret, brief of the same date, the Pope recognises him, nevertheless, as his own offspring by an unmarried woman, this description being also a legal fiction.
[265] Sanuto, Diario MS. i. 539.
[*266] For this expedition, see Matarazzo, Chronicle of Perugia (Dent), p. 243 et seq.
[*267] For the peace, July 6, 1498, see V. Ansidei, La Pace fra Guidobaldo Duca d'Urbino e il Comune di Perugia, in Boll. per l'Umbria, vol. V., p. 741 et seq.
[268] Bembo says 170 pounds of gold. Hist. Venet., IV. Navigero puts the mounted cross-bow-men at 200. Muratori, R.I.S., xxiii. 1214.