More than three years afterwards, September 28, 1500, the Venetian Ambassador, Paolo Capello, definitely stated that Caesar was the murderer; Capello, however, was not in Rome at the time of the assassination.
It may never be known who was the murderer of the Duke of Gandia, but there is absolutely no proof that Caesar either instigated or planned the assassination. Gandia was about to form an alliance which the Pope believed—and Caesar must have been of the same opinion—would materially strengthen the house of Borgia, and the power of the family had not yet become so firmly established that Caesar would have been likely to commit a terrible crime for the purpose of securing the sole dominion for himself. He still had need of Gandia, whatever the future might bring him. There certainly were numerous enemies of the Borgia who would profit much more by the destruction of a member of the family than Caesar could.
The kingdom of Naples was torn by discord; one faction supported France, another Aragon; and in his brief appointing the Cardinal of Valencia legate to crown the King, the Pope enjoined him to put an end to the strife. Caesar’s mission was an important one.
Accompanied by a numerous retinue, the expenses of which were to be borne by King Frederic, the Cardinal of Valencia left Rome for Naples, and August 1st reached Capua, where he was received by the royal Court with the highest honours. There he fell ill, and Giuffre and his wife, Sancia, left Rome almost immediately to go to him. However, his illness could not have been serious, for he crowned Frederic, the last of the Aragonese rulers of Naples, August 10, 1497.
Caesar acquitted himself well, displaying a dignity beyond his years. He was invested with special privileges for the occasion; the symbols of the spiritual as well as of the temporal power—the flabel, the sedia gestatoria, the globe, and the sword—were borne before the Pope’s representative, who exerted himself to secure the goodwill of the new sovereign, who invested him, as the representative of the son of the unfortunate Duke of Gandia, with Benevento, the barony of Fiumara, and the county of Montefoscolo.
August 22nd, to the great relief of Frederic, whose exchequer was suffering severely on account of the entertainment, Caesar set out to return to Rome; as he did not reach the city until the 5th of the following month, he may have spent some time inspecting the estates granted Gandia’s son by the newly-crowned King.
The morning of the 6th—says Burchard—all the cardinals who were in the city went to meet Caesar at Santa Maria Nuova, and later all were received by his Holiness, and the Master of Ceremonies adds, “neither father nor son uttered a word, but the Pope, having blessed him, descended from the throne.” In this circumstance some writers discover evidence of Caesar’s guilt.
The Pope, accompanied by the Cardinals of Valencia and of Agrigentum, with an escort of a thousand men, went to Ostia, October 17th, to spend a few days. The large guard was made necessary by the proximity of the Orsini. The Pope and his family were in grave danger, and now that Gandia was dead who was to defend them? Giuffre was scarcely twenty, and he had cast his fortunes with the House of Aragon; moreover, he showed none of Caesar’s resoluteness.
At the coronation of the King of Naples the legate had used a sword upon which was engraved the motto Cum Numine Caesaris Amen and Caesar Borgia Cardinalis Valentianus, and which is now in the possession of the Gaetani family of Rome. All the engravings on the blade represent scenes of war, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that the cardinal’s dreams turned more to military glory than to ecclesiastical honours, and Gregorovius says, “the allusions to the Caesar of the Roman Empire show what ideas were already seething in the cardinal’s brain.”
In November, 1497, the Spanish physician Gaspare Torrella dedicated to the youthful cardinal a work on a loathsome disease which had been spread in Italy by the soldiers of Charles VIII., and which was in consequence called the “French sickness.” Caesar himself evidently had suffered from it, for the author states that the world owed the cardinal a debt of gratitude for subjecting himself to his treatment.[18] A work by Sebastiano Aquilano of Padua on the same subject was dedicated to Ludovico Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua.