The Tigress of Forli (42 page)

As soon as he heard of Caterina's return, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, her brother-in-law, arrived, all welcoming smiles. He arranged for her transfer to the Medici house on the Via Larga, a majestic palace constructed by Michelozzo for Cosimo de' Medici, the founder of the dynasty. The palace was familiar to Caterina, for as a child she had stayed there as a guest of Lorenzo the Magnificent and had since returned on several occasions as the wife of Giovanni de' Medici. Now she would call it home.

The days spent with her children were marked by a constant flow of visitors. Some were old acquaintances, but many were merely curious to meet this notorious woman now living quietly in their midst. If they came for titillating gossip, they were disappointed. Caterina never regaled her visitors with tales of her Borgia capture, nor did she speak against her enemies. The Caterina who returned to Florence was a different woman from the vindictive widow she had been in Forlì.

By August 1501, only months after her arrival, Caterina had already moved out of the house on the Via Larga and into the Medici villa known as Castello. Despite the martial overtones, the villa took its name from the nearby ruins of a Roman aqueduct and the cisterns,
castella,
for water. Originally an austere farmhouse, it had been transformed it into a lovely country estate complete with loggias, courtyards, and stables. Among the jewels of the Medici art collection allocated to this villa was
The Birth of Venus,
Botticelli's stunning rendering of the goddess of love as an ethereal beauty with long, graceful limbs. Instead of gazing every morning at the dark squalor of a prison cell, Caterina now had the soft pastel hues of this remarkable painting to grace the walls. Slowly the eighteen months of torment faded in her memory. She settled in with little Ludovico and prepared to lead a quiet country life.

But political battles and domestic suits seemed to follow her. No sooner had Caterina settled into Castello than her economic situation degenerated from precarious to disastrous. She had no money, and no means of earning it. Yet her children pressed incessantly for financial assistance. Ottaviano and Cesare needed more clothes, more servants, more trips, and more parties. After they had wrung the meager resources out of their mother, and knowing she had jewels in pawn in Venice, they asked her to sell them for whatever ready cash they would bring. The market was bad; Milan was destitute, France would undervalue them, and Genoa would not buy them. Caterina pressed on, trying to raise what little she could. She had known straitened circumstances before, during the years with Girolamo after the death of Pope Sixtus IV. But she had always had land to raise revenue; she merely had to cut down on costs. Now, living in the Medici villa, she had barely enough to survive. Her one remaining resource was her Medici inheritance, the property and income due to her son Ludovico as the sole heir to Giovanni de' Medici's fortune. But Giovanni's brother Lorenzo had no intention of sharing. He had already spent a good deal of the family patrimony and squandered much of Ludovico's inheritance. In July 1502, Lorenzo demanded that Caterina leave the Medici villa. Claiming the grounds and house as his property, he attempted to oust her from her new home. It was as if he had lit a match under a long-forgotten powder keg. Caterina's pugnacious side reemerged for the first time in three years. The more Lorenzo pushed to expel her from the villa, the more Caterina found the spirit to remain. "She is resolved not to leave if not in pieces," wrote the worried Don Fortunati on July 8, 1502, to Ottaviano and Cesare.
¹
But if Caterina could withstand the cannons of Cesare Borgia, she could handle the subpoenas of a greedy Medici.

In Florence, however, documents and ducats were more persuasive than artillery. Lorenzo succeeded in convincing the Florentine courts to grant him custody of four-year-old Ludovico. Using Caterina's eighteen-month imprisonment as an excuse, he declared her an unfit mother and took the child away, along with control of his inheritance. The law was intended to protect a child from parents who had committed crimes; yet Caterina had been a prisoner of war and illegally jailed, as the French could not detain female prisoners.

Caterina threw herself into the courtroom with the same intensity she had displayed on the ramparts. Ordering inventories and witnesses, she began the slow and difficult process of reclaiming her son. Lorenzo was no more averse to devious tactics than Cesare Borgia. He employed his own caretaker of Castello, Alberto, to make her life as miserable as possible. Caterina was financially responsible for the care of her family and servants. Yet she had no sheets and no tablecloths, and she was forced to write to her children to plead for six forks. Don Fortunati, her sole loyal supporter, hounded her children for their lack of consideration. Even her brief joy at the arrival of her stepson, Scipione Riario, who had fought valiantly by her side during the siege of Ravaldino, was clouded by the difficulties of feeding and housing his companions, which brought her household number up to "twenty-four mouths, five horses, and three mules."
²

The battlefield of courts and tribunals was new to her, but Caterina found a new Ravaldino to provide her with a refuge where she could gather strength. No bulwarks or gun lofts graced these high walls, which offered an austere and tranquil respite from the upheavals of the outside world. The convent of the Muratte, meaning the "walled-in ones," was founded in 1424 by Apollonia, a pious lady from Siena. Together with thirteen other women, she had made a home in a small house on a bridge over the Rubicon River. By 1433 the women had formed an order and taken the Benedictine rule, but the local bishop worried that their location on a busy bridge would present too many tempting distractions from the life of prayer and work. Giovanni Benci, the second-richest man in Florence after Cosimo de' Medici, donated to the new order a building on the Via Ghibellina, resting against the city walls. The religious sisters were henceforth known as the Muratte, alluding to their enclosure within the Florentine walls.

Benci beautified the convent over the years. The compound contained a church, choir, common sitting room, and refectory for the community life of the sisters, as well as a scriptorium for copying texts and work rooms for making the embroideries and woven clothes that supported them. The sisters followed the Benedictine rule of
ora et labora,
prayer and work, singing the Divine Office and reciting penitential psalms while doing their handicrafts. The number of women grew and by the end of the fourteenth century the Muratte numbered 170. Five dormitories housed the nuns, and a number of small buildings were added to the complex to allow laywomen to live among the sisters and find peace in their holy way of life.

Caterina had assisted numerous religious communities through her years as countess of Forlì, but she found her spiritual home among the Muratte. The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who had offered Caterina counsel after her darkest hours, had introduced her to the community. He had preached his first sermon in Florence at their convent and throughout his life maintained an active interest in the well-being of the sisters. As of 1502, Caterina would periodically stay in the convent. Eventually, she would have her own simple cell in the enclosure off the main courtyard. She never took vows but would reside among the Muratte for stretches of time, joining the sisters in prayer and meditation, perhaps even helping them make perfumes and other essences, her own beloved hobby. Caterina, like most noblewomen of her age, frequented spas and thermal baths for her physical health while attending to her spiritual well-being through retreats among these devout women.

The stark convent atmosphere was relieved by several artistic masterpieces. In 1443, Giovanni Benci hired Florence's most sought- after painter, Filippo Lippi, to paint an Annunciation for the high altar of the church. Every time Caterina knelt in the chapel, the luminous pastels and bright flashes of gold leaf brought to life the story of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary. The walled garden in the background resembled the view from the window of her own cell, except that through the magic of Lippi's art, the colors were more limpid and the scenery even more lush. Mary, painted with the ethereal beauty that Filippo conferred on women, bows with eyes cast down in submission to divine will.

Outside the walls of the convent, however, the winds of fortune swirled, waiting to buffet Caterina. On August 18, 1503, Pope Alexander VI died. Not one word of satisfaction has been recorded from Caterina. In what must have seemed like perfect divine retribution, at the exact moment Alexander died, Cesare Borgia also lay deathly ill. A few malicious voices would circulate the rumor that both father and son had accidentally eaten from a dish they had laced with poison, intended for somebody else, but whatever the cause, Cesare could not influence the next election from his sickbed. Pius III Piccolomini was elected a month later, but afflicted with terrible gout, he was ill from the time of his drastically abbreviated coronation ceremony. Less than a month after he was elected, Pius III died. The cardinals returned to the Sistine Chapel, and in one day they unanimously chose his successor, Giuliano della Rovere, who took the name Julius II.

Excitement raced through the Riario family. The nephew of Sixtus IV, Giuliano was cousin to Girolamo Riario. Riario partisans saw the election as an opportunity to return Forlì and Imola to the Riario family, and as a result letters began to fly to and from Caterina's household regarding her eventual return to Forlì. The city was up for grabs. Antonio Maria Ordelaffi had profited from the confusion of two conclaves by claiming the city in a lightning strike. Letters, undoubtedly written by his partisans, sped along the peninsula, claiming that Ordelaffi had been joyfully welcomed by the Forlivesi as their long-awaited rightful ruler. Illness and lack of artillery had prevented him from conquering Ravaldino, stronger than ever after the repairs of Cesare Borgia, but the Ordelaffi supporters lost no time, appearing in Rome within days of the papal coronation with a petition to return Forlì to Antonio Maria. Caterina was apprised immediately that her newly adopted Republic of Florence had abetted Antonio Maria's return to the government. Indignant on her behalf, Caterina's Romagnol supporters urged her to storm the Palazzo Vecchio and to "cry for vengeance until the people were amazed by such ingratitude."
³
Despite Caterina's alliances with Florence and her marriage to a Medici, the people of the city by the Arno thought that the Ordelaffis would make more tranquil neighbors. Julius II, on the other hand, remained unconvinced. He appeared reluctant to accept a return of the Ordelaffis and withheld confirmation of Antonio's rule.

During this stalemate between Pope Julius and Antonio Maria, the fortress of Ravaldino remained in the hands of a castellan who was not only viscerally hostile to Pope Julius II, whom he considered a "traitor," but was also head over heels in love with Caterina, going so far as to call her his wife. The Florentines, always ready to press an advantage, had apparently made advances to the deluded soldier, promising him Caterina in marriage if he would turn the castle over to a guardian of their choosing. This strange hearsay, culled from a dinner conversation with a cousin of the castellan, was picked up by the Venetian diarist Sanuto, who loved nothing more than a tale of intrigue involving Caterina.
⁴

The veracity of the story is highly doubtful, but it gives an idea of the effect that Caterina still had upon the popular imagination. Giambattista Tonelli, a long-standing Riario partisan, had already written to Caterina that after the death of Alexander VI, "all the other princes had already returned to their lands" and that he and others were preparing the way for her return to Imola and Forlì. Tonelli's devotion was not spurred by political motives alone. He too had long loved the countess of Forlì. In February 1502 he had expressed his passion, writing, "If I sleep, it seems that I am with you; if I eat, I leave my food and talk to you ... You are engraved in my heart."
⁵

But the very idea of Caterina had the opposite effect among other Romagnoli; Giovanni Maria Ridolfi, a Florentine captain in Romagna, claimed that "if the countess were dead, part of the countryside and the people of Forlì would not be displeased to have Ottaviano, whom they consider a good man."
⁶
Machiavelli asserted that Caterina had made herself too hated to ever regain her state.

A multitude of extant letters suggests that many in Imola and Forlì were amenable to her return and that she had several sympathizers in Rome who also tried to pave the way for her restoration. Cardinal Raffaello Riario and Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, after a long absence during the reign of Alexander VI, returned to Rome to press for the restitution of the Riario scions. It seemed certain that either mother or son would soon be back in Romagna.

Pope Julius continued to demur. Even when Antonio Maria Ordelaffi, the sometime suitor, frequent troublemaker, and eternal pretender to the throne, died of illness in February 1504, Julius II still did not pronounce in favor of the Riario family. Cesare and Galeazzo were quick to blame their mother, viewing her as a political liability. In a letter to Ottaviano, the two brothers parroted Captain Ridolfi's position (written only three days earlier) that the Romagnoli would "never allow the restoration of the countess if not at her death."
⁷
The simple truth was that Pope Julius didn't want to give away Forlì, especially to the Riario heirs. Skilled at reading people and a formidable man himself, he took Ottaviano's measure instantly. "
Nel suo gippone c'e poco bambaza,
"
⁸
said the pope, in his colorful, forthright way, describing the twenty-five-year-old prelate as having little stuffing under his shirt. Julius was looking for strong allies and wanted to bring the entire area of Romagna under direct papal control. Concerned by the open corridor of entry into Italy for the king of France, Julius would end up spending most of his pontificate trying to seal Italy off from another French invasion, ultimately wresting Bologna from the Bentivoglio family and invading Ferrara. The pope intended to sever Rome's relationship with France.