Cesare Borgia

The future Pope Alexander VI was born Roderic Llançol on January 1, 1431, in the town of Xativa near Valencia, Spain, one of the component realms of the Crown of Aragon, in what is now Spain.

His parents were Jofré Llançol i Escrivà, who died before March 24, 1437, and his Aragonese wife and distant cousin Isabel de Borja y Cavanilles, who died October 19, 146).

His family name is written Llançol in Catalan and Lanzol in Castillian Spanish.

Rodrigo adopted his mother's family name of Borja in 1455 following the elevation to the papacy of maternal uncle Alonso de Borja (Italianized to Alfonso Borgia), bishop of Valencia, as Calixtus III.

Rodrigo Borgia studied law at Bologna where he graduated, not simply as Doctor of Law, but as "the most eminent and judicious jurisprudent."

After the election of his uncle as Pope, he had been ordained deacon and created Cardinal-Deacon of San Nicola in Carcere at the age of twenty-five in 1456.

The following year, he was appointed vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Church.

Both nepotistic appointments are characteristic of the age.

Each pope during this period inevitably finds himself surrounded by the servants and retainers of his predecessors who often owe their loyalty to the family of the pontiff who had appointed them.

In 1468, he had been ordained to the priesthood and, in 1471, had been consecrated bishop and appointed Cardinal-Bishop of Albano.

Serving in the Roman Curia under five popes—Calixtus III, Pius II, Paul II, Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII—Rodrigo Borgia has acquired considerable administrative experience, influence and wealth.

Contemporary accounts suggest that Rodrigo was "handsome, with a very cheerful countenance and genial bearing.

He was gifted with the quality of being a smooth talker and of choice eloquence.

Beautiful women were attracted to him and excited by him in quite a remarkable way, more strongly than how "iron is drawn to a magnet."

Rodrigo Borgia is also an intelligent man with an appreciation for the arts and sciences and an immense amount of respect for the Church.

He is capable and cautious, considered a "political priest" by some.

He is a gifted speaker and a great conversationalist.

Of Rodrigo Borgia’s many mistresses, the one for whom passion had lasted longest was Vannozza (Giovanna) dei Cattanei, born in 1442, and wife of three successive husbands.

The connection began in 1470, and she has had four children whom he openly acknowledges as his own: Cesare (born 1475), Giovanni, afterwards duke of Gandia (born 1476), Lucrezia (born 1480), and Goffredo or Giuffre (born 1481 or 1482).

Five other children, Girolama, Isabella, Pedro-Luiz, and Bernardo, are of uncertain maternal parentage.

A daughter, Laura, was born to his mistress, Giulia Farnese; paternity was officially attributed to Orsino Orsini, Farnese's husband.

There had been a change in the constitution of the College of Cardinals during the course of the fifteenth century-especially under Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII.

Of the twenty-seven cardinals alive in the closing months of the reign of Innocent VIII no fewer than ten are cardinal-nephews, eight are crown nominees, four are Roman nobles and one other had been given the cardinalate in recompense for his family's service to the Holy See; only four are able career churchmen.

On the death of Pope Innocent VIII on July 25, 1492, the three likely candidates for the Papacy were the sixty-one-year-old Borgia, seen as an independent candidate, Ascanio Sforza for the Milanese, and Giuliano della Rovere, seen as a pro-French candidate.

Johann Burchard, the conclave's master of ceremonies and a leading figure of the papal household under several popes, records in his diary that the 1492 conclave was a particularly expensive campaign.

Della Rovere was bankrolled to the cost of two hundred thousand gold ducats by King Charles VIII of France, with another one hundred thousand supplied by the Republic of Genoa.

Borgia is elected on August 11, 1492, assuming the name of Alexander VI (due to confusion about the status of Pope Alexander V elected by the Council of Pisa).

When his uncle was elected Pope, Rodrigo had "inherited" the former’s post of bishop of Valencia.

Sixteen days before the death of Pope Innocent VIII, he had proposed Valencia as a metropolitan see and he became the first archbishop of Valencia.

When Rodrigo de Borja is elected pope, it is the turn of his son Cesare to "inherit" the post as second archbishop of Valencia.

The third and the fourth archbishops of Valencia will be Juan de Borja and Pedro Luis de Borja, grandnephews of Alexander VI.

The center of art patronage has shifted from Florence to Rome following the death in 1492 of Medici dynast Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Cesare Borgia, an illegitimate son of Rodrigo de Borgia, the recently elected Pope Alexander VI, is in 1493 created a cardinal at eighteen by his father.

The same year, twenty-five-year-old Alessandro Farnese, a worldly member of the influential Farnese family who has received a thorough education in Rome and Florence, is created a cardinal-deacon.

The new pope, upon receiving the news of Columbus’s landing in the New World, is asked by the Spanish monarchy to confirm their ownership of these newly found lands.

The bulls issued by Pope Alexander VI: Eximiae devotionis (May 3, 1493), Inter Caetera (May 4, 1493) and Dudum Siquidem (September 23, 1493), grant rights to Spain with respect to the newly discovered lands in the Americas similar to those Pope Nicholas V had previously conferred with the bulls Romanus Pontifex and Dum Diversas.

While the enterprising explorers of Spain and Portugal are quick to enslave the indigenous peoples they meet in Africa and the New World, some popes spoke out against the practice.

Pope Eugene IV in 1435 had issued an attack on slavery in his papal bull Sicut Dudum, which included the excommunication of all those who engaged in the slave trade.

A form of indentured servitude is allowed, being similar to a peasant's duty to his liege lord in Europe.

Alfonso of Aragon, an illegitimate son of Alfonso II of Naples, had received a thorough education in the humanities.

His first tutor was Giuniano Maio who was then followed by the Florentine poet Raffaele Brandolini (also known as "Lippus Brandolinus" because of his blindness).

From an early age Alfonso was involved in the crisis that hit the Aragonese dynasty of Naples.

In 1495, during the French occupation, his father had fled and later died in Sicily.

Alfonso, aged fourteen, had fought for the return to the throne of his half-brother Ferdinand, who became king of Naples in 1495 but died one year later.

In 1497, with the restoration of the Aragonese control under his uncle Frederick IV of Naples, Alfonso had been assigned to the first position of responsibility and became the Lieutenant general of Abruzzo.

In order to strengthen ties with Naples, Pope Alexander VI has arranged marriages between the House of Borgia and the royal family of Aragon.

Alfonso's sister Sancha of Aragon had already been given to the Pope's youngest son Gioffre Borgia in 1494.

Alexander VI's idea had been for his son Cesare Borgia to marry Carlotta of Naples, the legitimate daughter of the newly crowned Frederick IV of Naples, but Carlotta would not agree to marry him.

To appease the Pope, King Frederick had eventually consented to a match between the Pope's daughter Lucrezia Borgia, aged eighteen, and the seventeen-year-old Alfonso of Aragon.

On July 15, 1498, Alfonso enters Rome in disguise.

Alfonso and Lucrezia are married in the Vatican on July 21 with the celebrations being held behind closed doors.

With Alfonso comes the princely cities of Salerno, Quadrata and Bisceglie.

Lucrezia brings with her a dowry of forty thousand ducats.

It is part of the agreement that they will remain in Rome for at least one year and not be forced to live permanently at the Kingdom of Naples until her father's death.

According to Gregorovius, "the youthful Alfonso was fair and amiable", "the most handsome young man ever seen in the Imperial city."

By all evidence, Lucrezia is genuinely fond of him.

Cardinal Cesare Borgia, now twenty-three, renounces his ecclesiastical career in 1498 and is sent by his father, Pope Alexander VI, to pacify the Romagna in the Papal States.

Like nearly all aspects of Cesare Borgia's life, the date of his birth is a subject of dispute.

He was born in Rome—in either 1475 or 1476—the illegitimate son of Cardinal Roderic Llançol i de Borja, (usually known as Rodrigo Borgia), later Pope Alexander VI, and his mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei, about whom information is sparse.

The Borgia family originally came from the Kingdom of Valencia, and rose to prominence during the mid-fifteenth century; Cesare's grand-uncle Alphonso Borgia (1378–1458), bishop of Valencia, had been elected Pope Callixtus III in 1455.

Cesare's father, Pope Alexander VI, is the first pope to openly recognize his children born out of wedlock.

Stefano Infessura writes that Cardinal Borgia falsely claimed Cesare to be the legitimate son of another man—Domenico d'Arignano, the nominal husband of Vannozza dei Cattanei.

More likely, Pope Sixtus IV had granted Cesare a release from the necessity of proving his birth in a papal bull of October 1, 1480.

Initially groomed for a career in the Church, Cesare had been made Bishop of Pamplona at the age of fifteen.

Following school in Perugia and Pisa, he had studied law at the Studium Urbis (nowadays Sapienza University of Rome), and along with his father's elevation to Pope, had been made Cardinal at the age of eighteen.

Alexander VI had staked the hopes of the Borgia family in Cesare's brother Giovanni, who had been made captain general of the military forces of the papacy.

Giovanni was assassinated in 1497 in mysterious circumstances.

Several contemporaries suggested that Cesare might have been his killer, as Giovanni's disappearance could finally open to him a long-awaited military career and also solve the jealousy over Sancha of Aragon, wife of Cesare's younger brother, Gioffre, and mistress of both Cesare and Giovanni.

Cesare's role in the act has never been clear.

However, he has no definitive motive, as he was likely to be given a powerful secular position, whether or not his brother lived.

It is more likely, in fact, that Giovanni had been killed as a result of a sexual liaison.

On Auguts 17, 1498, Cesare becomes the first person in history to resign the cardinalate.

On the same day, Louis XII of France named Cesare Duke of Valentinois, and this title, along with his former position as Cardinal of Valencia, explains the nickname "Valentino".

Feo's death had not diminished the power of Ottaviano's mother, who continued to take decisions on his behalf.

Ottaviano has been employed twice by the Florentines as a condottiero to defend Florentine interests.

He had been offered fifteen thousand florins in 1497 and ten thousand in 1499.

Niccolò Machiavelli undertakes negotiations on the second occasion.

Ottaviano is still only the nominal leader, as the actual negotiations are conducted with Caterina.

However, Ottaviano personally commands small forces in these local wars.

In 1498 he had taken part in the siege of Pisa with one hundred men-at-arms and one hundred light horse.

In 1499 he aids Ludovico Sforza, who is at war with the French and Venetians.

At this point the Borgias decide to intervene.

In the meantime, Louis XII, after succeeded to the French throne., has claimed the rights both to the Duchy of Milan as a grandson of Valentina Visconti, and to the Kingdom of Naples as heir to the House of Anjou.

Before starting his campaign in Italy, Louis XII had secured an alliance with Savoy, the Republic of Venice and Pope Alexander VI, who has allied himself with Louis XII in return for the King's support in establishing Alexander's son Cesare Borgia, the Duke of Valentinois, as ruler in Romagna.

Alexander issues a Papal Bull on March 9, 1499 to invalidate the investiture of the feudal lords, including Caterina.

Duke Ludovico Sforza, a facilitator of the 1494 French invasion of Italy, has fallen out with his French allies.

Louis XII, immediately after inheriting the French throne, concludes an alliance with the Republic of Venice and obtains some Swiss mercenaries, then invades the Duchy of Milan under the condition that the Lombardian territories be split between Venice and France.

Papal support is given for the campaign in exchange for Louis XII's military support for Cesare Borgia's Romagna campaigns.

Sforza, having also hired an army of Swiss mercenaries, returns to Milan find it occupied by Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, who has joined the French and taken several fortified towns.

Ludovico manages to escape the French armies and travels north to seek help from Emperor Maximilian I.

Louis XII had come to Italy with a formidable army in the summer of 1499; without having to fight a single battle, he has occupied Piedmont, as well as Genoa and Cremona.

On October 6, he settles in Milan, which had been abandoned the previous month by Duke Ludovico, who has fled to the Tyrol under the protection of his nephew-by-marriage Emperor Maximilian I.

Caterina seeks relief from Florence against the approaching French army, but Florence is threatened by the Pope, so she is left alone to defend herself.

She immediately begins to recruit and train many soldiers and begins to store weapons, ammunition and food.

She reinforces the defenses, especially that of Ravaldino, where she resides and which us already considered impenetrable.

She also sends her children to Florence.

Lucrezia had reportedly lost her first baby with Alfonso in February 1499, but was soon pregnant again.

As the political situation changes, Pope Alexander VI looks to align with France, enemy of Alfonso's family.

To this end he arranges a marriage between Cesare Borgia and Charlotte of Albret, sister of King John III of Navarre.

Alfonso had sensed betrayal when France planned to invade Naples and on August 2, 1499 had left Rome without his wife, who was six months pregnant.

His flight had incensed the Pope, who had sent troops after him but failed to find him.

Meanwhile, Lucrezia has been awarded the governorship of Spoleto and Foligno, meaning that Alfonso is a consort without formal responsibilities.

Eventually Alfonso is discovered through the letters he has been sending to his wife in an attempt to persuade her to join him in Genazzano.

With this discovery, her family had ordered her to lure Alfonso to Rome.

Lucrezia had met her husband in Nepi.

They then returned to the Vatican in September 1499.

On the night of 31 October/1 November, Lucrezia gives birth to their son, who is christened Rodrigo after her father.

Cesare Borgia arrives in Imola on November 24.

The city gates are opened by the inhabitants, and he is able to take possession, after having conquered the fortress where the castellan Dionigi Naldi of Brisighella had resisted for several days.