Caesar Borgia: A Study of the Renaissance

by John Leslie Garner

It was also said that Antonio Maria Pico della Mirandola, inspired by Ascanio, had committed the murder, and even Giuffre was suspected, because—at least, so it was stated—Gandia had been unduly intimate with his wife. In the effort to fasten the guilt on Caesar it was said that both he and Gandia were rivals for Sancia’s favours, and that, owing to jealousy, he had killed his brother. Burchard’s account contains all that is known of the murder of the Duke. Suspicion finally crystallised around Caesar, although the reasons for ascribing the crime to him are so slight that it is amazing that historians have for four hundred years laid the guilt at his door; we are not offered even circumstantial evidence; the most that is adduced against him is a possible motive, and there were undoubtedly equally strong motives for him against the crime, especially if he had the astuteness we are led to believe he possessed.

Even admitting he was potentially the criminal into which he later developed, is it possible that he would have begun his career of iniquity with a crime so monstrous as the deliberately planned murder of his own brother? Caesar was then twenty-one and Gandia twenty-three years of age. The latter may have received great honours at the hands of their father, but so had the former. Caesar, a Prince of the Church, of vast wealth, could look forward to a far more brilliant career than could any mere princeling of Benevento. He must have known that even the Papacy was within his prospects, and in that age what potentate in Italy could compare with Christ’s Vicar? Although Caesar disliked the Church the sacerdotal character of the cardinal was no impediment to great temporal enterprises; like a cloak, it could be laid aside and assumed again at pleasure; it was a distinct advantage, as Caesar must have known.

There are men who are jealous of the success of all others, but they are invariably weak characters, and no one can accuse Caesar Borgia of weakness; even admitting he was jealous of Gandia, it is unlikely that his jealousy was sufficiently bitter to induce him to plan the murder of his brilliant and accomplished brother, whose talents and advancement would surely contribute to the progress of all the family. In that age, although there were determined family feuds and rivalries, there was frequently a strong sense of family solidarity, and this the Borgias possessed in an eminent degree.

Who was the unknown man in the mask who had been coming to see Gandia at the Papal Palace almost daily for a month past, and who had even called on him during the supper in Vannozza’s garden? Perhaps some pander or low associate who had accompanied him during his debauches; or if not this, a decoy sent by some enemy of the Duke or of his family—and Italy was teeming with them.

If the murder was the work of some enemy, what would be more natural than for the assassin to endeavour to turn suspicion from himself and at the same time heap infamy upon the Borgias by launching the rumour that the Cardinal of Valencia was the author of the crime?

It is clear that Gandia voluntarily went into the quarter of the city dominated by the most determined enemies of the Borgia—the Orsini. His personal attendant was found in the morning murdered, in the Piazza degli Ebrei, where the Duke had left him. Evidently the man in the mask had led Gandia into a trap, and then, after he had been dispatched, had provided for the taking off of this henchman. When Gandia left the servant he evidently thought he might not return that evening.

But how could the man in the mask have visited Gandia every day for a month for the purpose of entrapping him, without the Duke discovering it was a plot? Clearly Gandia had no suspicions whatever.

The whole affair is so mysterious that we are inclined to ask whether Burchard’s statement of the circumstances is correct.

It is against all reason to suppose that Gandia would have ventured at night unattended into the quarter of the Orsini with a strange man behind him on his mule, unless he was going to keep an assignation, and his remark to Caesar shows that such was his purpose.

If this assignation was only a plot to get him away from his own people, who contrived it? Did Caesar? For Caesar to have arranged it right in the stronghold of their bitterest enemies, a mass of details, a planning, and a coincidence of events wellnigh impossible would have been necessary. It is much more logical to suppose that those enemies themselves planned it—especially as Gandia had been brought from Spain expressly to crush the Orsini.