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"Neque enim lex æquior ulla Quam necis artifices arte perire sua." Ovid. Ar. Amat. i. 655. |
[*8] There is no authentic basis for this story. Rome was in a pestilential condition in August, and the Pope, Cesare, and the Cardinal Hadrian were all stricken with fever, which a supper in the open air was surely not unlikely to produce. Alexander was so detested that the strangeness of his death suggested poison at once to his enemies. Cf. Creighton, op. cit., vol. V., p. 49. An excellent essay on The Poisonings attributed to the Borgia will be found in Creighton, op. cit., vol. V., p. 301 et seq.
[9] This passage appears conclusive as to the fact of poison having been taken by the Pontiff; and it will be observed that Sanuto's story of the confection-boxes in no way accounts for the illness of Valentino, which is equally passed over in another totally different statement of this affair, given in the Appendix to Ranke's History of the Popes, section i. No. 4,—omissions to be kept in view in testing the probability of these conflicting accounts. Roscoe seems to have subsequently abandoned the doubts thrown upon the poisoning in his first edition, although ever prone to extenuate vices of the Borgia: witness his elaborate defence of Lucrezia, or his views as to the Duke of Gandia's murder and the massacre of Sinigaglia. Voltaire treats the question like a habitual doubter, with the ingenuity of a critic rather than the matured judgment of a historian. He is answered, with perhaps unnecessary detail, by Masse, to whom Sanuto was unknown.
[*10] This is probably an exaggeration. Alexander VI. was without reticence in his sins, and so has not escaped whipping. I append a brief list of authorities for the Borgia:—
- Cerri, Borgia ossia Alessandro VI. (1858).
- Antonetti, Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara (1867).
- Schubert-Soldern, Die Borgias und ihre Zeit (Dresden, 1902).
- Citadella, Saggio di Albero Genealogico della Famiglia Borgia (1872).
- Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia (1874).
- —— Geschichte der Stadt Rom., tom. VII. (1880).
- Alvisi, Cesare Borgia (Imola, 1878).
- Nemec, Papst Alexander VI. eine Rechtfertigung (1879).
- Leonetti, Papa Alessandro VI. (1880).
- d'Epinois, in Revue des Questions Historiques (April, 1881).
- Vehon, Les Borgia (1882).
- Maricourt, Le Procès des Borgia (1883).
- Yriarte, César Borgia (1887).
- —— Autour des Borgias (1891).
[*11] I am not quite clear what this means. The Inquisition was introduced into Italy in 1542, and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was established. But the congregation of the Index was not established till the Council of Trent. Magical books were prohibited as early as the Council of Nice, 325.
[*12] During the Duke's absence an interesting correspondence passed between Isabella d'Este and Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in Rome concerning a Venus and a Cupid of the Duke's. The Venus was a torso and antique, but the Cupid was the work of Michelangelo. Cf. Gaye, Carteggio d'Artisti, vol. II., p. 53; Alvisi, Cesare Borgia, p. 537; Luzio, in Arch. St. Lombardo (1886), and Julia Cartwright, Isabella d'Este (Murray, 1903), vol. I., p. 230 et seq.
[*13] Cf. Madiai, Diario delle Cose di Urbino, in Arch. St. per le Marche e per l'Umbria, vol. III., p. 444.
[14] In the communal archives of Perugia, there is a brief addressed to the authorities of that town by Pius III., dated 17th of October, 1503, "before his coronation," but in fact the day preceding his death, which must have been obtained by the influence of Cesare, and which speaks a language very different from what his Holiness would probably have adopted had his life been spared. Its object was to prohibit certain "conventicles" which Gianpaolo Baglioni was reported to be holding in Perugia, for the purpose of plotting against the person of the Duke of Valenza and Romagna, and to desire that he be charged to avoid all courses tending to the prejudice of Borgia.