The facts in Lucretia's life are comparatively few and rather easy to understand. Its first part is shrouded in the calumnies so common with regard to the Borgias. They were Spaniards making their way in Italy and nothing was too bad to say of them. Her later life was all in the limelight of publicity and should be the basis of any judgment of her. When she was about twenty-four after two sad matrimonial experiences she was married by political arrangement to Alfonso, the son of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara. Before that marriage careful investigation as to her character was made and a special envoy sent for that purpose wrote that "there was nothing at all out of the way with Lucretia herself. She was sensible, discreet, of good and loving nature and her manners full of modesty and decorum; a good Christian filled with the fear of God. ... In truth such are her good qualities that I rest assured there is nothing to fear from her or rather everything to hope from her." After her marriage Lucretia lived for nearly twenty years at Ferrara. When she died in early middle life her funeral was followed to the tomb by all the people of the city, who revered her as a saint and looked up to her as one who had done everything that she could to make life happier for her people. She was buried in the Convent of the Sisters of the Corpus Christi, in the same tomb as the Mother of Alfonso, the Duchess Leonora, of whose goodness we have spoken, and her praises were on every tongue.
Whatever there is defamatory that is said about Lucretia concerns the years before this marriage while she was living at Rome up to the age of twenty-three. A knowledge of that fact alone is quite sufficient to make the stories with regard to her unexampled viciousness very dubious. Gregorovius has recently re-examined all the documents and has completely vindicated her. She was merely the victim of the violent political hatreds of the time. To take the one item of poisoning with regard to which her name has been so infamous and her reputation so notorious, Garnett, in the "Cambridge Modern History," declares that there is only one case in which the Borgias are supposed to have used poison for which there is [{303}] any evidence, and that is very dubious. With that one Lucretia had nothing to do. In discussing her divorce from Sforza, he says: "The transaction also served to discredit in some measure the charges against the Borgias of secret poisoning, which would have been more easily and conveniently employed than the disagreeable and scandalous method of a legal process."
Some of the tributes to Lucretia Borgia from her contemporaries are highly laudatory. Among her friends were some of the best people of the time. Aldus Manutius praises her to the skies, lauds her benevolence to the poor, her care for the afflicted and her ability as a ruler. There is no doubt at all that she was one of these wonderful women of the Renaissance whose administrative ability must be admired more than any other quality. During the absence of her husband she ruled the State with wonderful prudence, and yet with a justice tempered always with mercy. It was through her that a law was passed, protecting the Jews of Ferrara, that became a model for other similar legislation in the cities of Italy.
It is interesting to trace the change of attitude of mind toward her on the part of those who either did not care for her or were actually bitterly opposed to her. Her sister-in-law, Isabella D'Este, became a real friend, as her letters attest, though at first she did not like at all the idea of the union of the house of D'Este with that of the Borgias, and it required all her father's force of will and all his political astuteness besides to secure her presence at the marriage. The letters of ten years later reveal a most intimate friendship between these two women. Within a year after her marriage she had completely won her husband, who was altogether indifferent at the beginning and who married her because of his father's insistence and entirely for political reasons. When her first baby died at birth her husband was most solicitous for her, anxious about her health and made a vow that he would go on a pilgrimage to Loretto for her recovery, a vow which he fulfilled just as soon as her convalescence was assured.
The biographer of Bayard, the famous French Chevalier of the time, sans peur et sans reproche, declared apropos of the visit of Bayard to Madonna Lucretia at Ferrara: "I venture [{304}] to say that neither in her time nor for many years before has there been such a glorious princess. For she is beautiful and good, gentle and amiable to everyone." Gregorovius declares in his "Lucretia Borgia, According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day": [Footnote 26] "Lucretia had won universal esteem and affection; she had become the mother of her people. She lent a ready ear to the suffering and helped all who were in need. She put aside, as Jovius, a contemporary, said, 'the pomps and vanities of the world to which she had been accustomed from childhood and gave herself up to pious works and founded and endowed convents and hospitals.'" She died at the early age of forty, so that the nearly twenty years of service for others represent not the aftermath of a long stormy life, when human passions had burnt themselves out, but the ripe years of maturity and highest vitality.
[Footnote 26: Translated by Garner, Appleton, 1913, New York.]
Caviceo even ventured when he wished to praise the famous Isabella Gonzaga to say that she approached the perfection of Lucretia. He adds, and Gregorovius has emphasized this opinion, "she redeemed the name of Borgia, which now was always mentioned with respect." Indeed there are few women who ever lived of whom such marvellous encomiums have been given by men who knew her well personally and who were themselves often among those in a period of great men and women whose memory the world will not willingly let die. Whatever of evil is said of her is said by writers of scandal and littleness in her own time, Italian enemies of the Spanish house of Borgia, which had come into Italy and had a great success. These vile traditions, the kitchen stories of the Renaissance, were gathered together and preserved because so many people are interested in what is evil rather than good. At a time when the greatness of the period in which she lived was ill appreciated and when religious motives tempted to credulity they came to be generally reported until Victor Hugo gathered them all together for his characterization of her and with Donizetti's opera popularized the idea that Lucretia was probably the worst woman who had ever lived. It has taken much writing of real history to modify this popular notion, which is not yet corrected, and nothing illustrates [{305}] better the fallibility of popular historical information than this Lucretia story.
PALMA VECCHIO, ST. BARBARA
When she came to die her husband said of her, writing to his nephew in whose regard there was not the slightest question of hypocrisy or pretence: "I cannot write this without tears, knowing myself to be deprived of such a dear and sweet companion. For such her exemplary conduct and the tender love which existed between us made her to me."