A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 2 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

LUCREZIA BORGIA.

Well convinced of the reality of the impossibility alleged, that any human being should pass suddenly from such a moral state as that indicated to our judgments by the facts of Lucrezia's early career, to such an ethical condition as that presumed to accompany her later life, while he in no wise seeks to invalidate the historical evidence of the case, he will yet deny such change to have been accomplished. Knowing how large a portion of the spiritual deterioration arising from any outward acts, is dependent on the degree to which the conscience of the agent is enlightened, he will deny that Lucrezia's moral state during the first part of her life was such as we are apt to conceive that it needs must have been. Aware how very much of the difficulty of turning from evil to good, consists in the arduousness of the struggle to rise from infamy to good repute, he will assert, that Lucrezia could not have been sunk in that depth of infamy to which we suppose that the admitted facts of her conduct must necessarily have consigned her.

For the moralist there will be nothing new or striking in all this. The interesting significance of the phenomenon is for the historian. That restoration and rehabilitation, it would appear, which would be impossible in the nineteenth, was possible in the fifteenth century. The gulf which would now be wholly impassable, did not then yawn so wide as to make crossing it impossible. Here is to be found the explanation, and herein consists the historical interest of the facts of the case. The finely organised moral sense of the nineteenth century would have been wholly killed by similar wounds, and the spiritual destruction of the individual would have been irretrievable. But the lower, coarser, more rudimentary moral sense of the "ages of faith" was not wholly killed by such injuries. And the extraordinary social phenomenon of the marriage is only explicable in the same manner. The moral reprobation, which among us would doom such an offender to the isolation of a leper, did not exist in that age and country. When the aged Pontiff Paul III. characterised the even more horrible atrocities of his son Piero Luigi Farnese as juvenile indiscretions, though the respectable world of the sixteenth century was revolted, the discrepancy between the moral judgment of Heaven's vicegerent and that of his faithful people, was very far from being as monstrous as that between his and our nineteenth century English feeling. The career of Lucrezia was also doubtless deemed highly reprehensible by her contemporaries. Indeed we find it made the subject of invective and epigram. But it is clear, that none of the horror and the loathing attached to it with which we now regard it. It is evident that she was not deemed hopelessly and irrecoverably soiled and destroyed by it.

And such proofs of the enormous amount of the advance in the moral sense of mankind, which has been accomplished in the world, that according to theologians, has been staggering onwards amid tottering creeds and ever–multiplying heresies towards a religious cataclysm, are among the most important fruits of historical study.

LUCREZIA'S MARRIAGE.

When the marriage was first proposed to the court of Ferrara by Alexander VI., both Alphonso and his father Hercules were extremely averse to it[28]. The Pope induced Louis XII. to use his influence with the Ferrarese princes; and the king deputed a posse of churchmen, the Cardinal of Rohan, the Archdeacon of Chalon, and the Archbishop of Narbonne, to persuade Hercules and his son of the desirableness of such an union. Their arguments seem to have consisted entirely in setting forth the dangers that would arise to Ferrara from refusal. The father was thus first brought over. Alphonso still expressed the greatest reluctance. But when his father declared, that under the pressure of the circumstances, he would himself, were it not for his advanced age, accept the hand of Lucrezia, the son consented.

The bribes administered by the Pope in the shape of dower, were very considerable. The investiture of his Duchy, which had hitherto been conferred by the Apostolic see for three generations only, was made perpetual. The tribute payable on account of it was reduced from four thousand ducats to one hundred florins. An hundred thousand ducats was also paid down in gold; and the bride carried with her to Ferrara the value of an hundred and seventeen thousand ducats in precious stones and jewelry; besides a proportionate amount of property in dresses and furniture. And it was especially provided in the marriage contract, that, in case of Lucrezia's death, Alphonso should not be called on to restore any portion of this property.[29]

The marriage was celebrated at Rome on the 29th December, 1501, Alphonso's brother Don Ferrante standing proxy for the bridegroom.

On the 1st of February the bride reached Ferrara, where the preparations for receiving her may be said to have been nearly the sole occupation of the entire city, during the interval between the marriage and her arrival in her new home. And although Donna Lucrezia and her extraordinary marriage have already too much lengthened these notices of the court of Ferrara, the only scope of which is to give the reader some idea of the scene on which the subject of these pages is to appear, yet some of the details of these preparations, as recorded by the contemporary diarist above cited, afford so curious a peep at the manners and customs of the period, that the somewhat undue extension of a merely prefatory chapter will probably be pardoned for the sake of the interest attaching to them.

On the 22nd of December, the diarist notes, that fourteen bushels of comfits were already prepared, counting up to that night, and that the ducal confectioners would continue to increase the store with all diligence. It has been seen already how large a part preparations of sugar played on all such occasions.