The Borgias (18 page)

You preside, my dear son, over the Church of Valencia, one of the most important in Spain; likewise you rule over the pontifical Chancellory; and what renders your act more reprehensible is that you are stationed close to the Sovereign Pontiff as Counselor of the Holy See. We leave it to your own judgment to say if it befits your high degree to pay compliments to women, to be sending them fruit, to drink a mouthful of wine and then have the glass carried to the woman who pleases you most, to spend a whole day as a delighted spectator of all kinds of games; and finally, for the sake of your liberty, to exclude from the gathering the husbands and relations of the women who are invited
.

Your faults reflect upon us, and upon Calixtus, your uncle of happy memory, who is accused of a great fault of judgment for having laden you with undeserved honors. Your youth is not to be alleged in your defense, for it is not so tender and you are capable of realizing the responsibilities that your dignity places upon your shoulders. It behooves a cardinal to be irreproachable, to be a salutary example to all in the morality of his life, and the model of an existence which not only is edifying and profitable to the soul but is so exteriorly as well. We are indignant when secular princes approach us for dishonorable reasons, when they do us wrong by coveting our properties and our benefices, and when we must bend to their demands. It is ourselves who inflict upon us the wounds from which we suffer when we so act that the authority of the Church is less respected from day to day. We bear the shame of our conduct in this world, and we shall suffer the punishment we have deserved in the world to come
.

Let your Eminence then decide to put an end to these frivolities; you must remember your dignity and cease to appear among your youthful contemporaries in the likeness of a man of pleasure. If such acts were repeated we should be obliged to show that they happen totally in spite of us and against our will; and our reproaches would be cast in such terms as would put you to the blush. We have always loved you and regarded you as worthy of our protection, because we have taken you for a model of gravity and modesty. Let us long keep this opinion and this conviction, and to this end you must without delay enter upon a much more serious way of life. Your youth, the pledge of amendment, causes us to warn you paternally. If you had allowed yourself such things at the age of your companion, we should no longer be able to do you this charitable service
.

The explosive word here, the one that seizes attention by crystallizing things otherwise left implicit, is of course
orgies
. Is it possible to read it without imagining two clerics, naked perhaps except for their red hats, flitting from one giggling lady to another among Signore de Bichis’s shrubs while the husbands, fathers, and brothers of those same ladies loiter disconsolately on the other side of the garden wall? Could we hope for better proof of the libertine that Cardinal Rodrigo was in his prime—of his inability to keep his appetites in check even when the failure to do so put his future at risk and betrayed the pope who had become almost a father to him?

We could, actually. To understand why, it is necessary to distinguish between what Pius himself knew when, in a burst of understandable anger, he wrote his letter, and what he was supposing to be true. And between what we as readers actually learn from his letter, and what his
words merely lead us to surmise. The first thing to note is that, though Pius’s pain at what he has been told about the conduct of his “beloved son” has so destroyed not only his composure but the usual polish of his Latin prose that the letter has sometimes been dismissed as a forgery, he acknowledges even as he unburdens himself that he is dealing with hearsay—with what “I have been told.”

Note also what Pius, who cares passionately about maintaining high standards and has been living and working in close association with Rodrigo for perhaps five years, reveals in his letter about what experience has taught him to expect of his young protégé. Far from saying that enough is enough and habitual mischievous antics have crossed a line and become intolerable, he declares that one reason for his shock is the fact the reported outrages have been committed by a man who has always seemed to him “a model of gravity and modesty.”

Consider finally the inherent credibility of the tale that Pius in his anger has leaped to believe. We know from other sources that the party had been arranged because a child was being baptized—one whose parents were of sufficient status to have their invitations accepted by two of the cardinals who had accompanied the pope to Tuscany. Because of the rank of the people involved, the party took place in the gardens of an esteemed friend of the pope’s, a “well-beloved son.” But we are asked to believe that, upon arriving for the festivities, the male guests (individuals of considerable social standing) were turned away while their ladies (including unmarried girls) were allowed to enter. And that for the next five hours these ladies disported themselves with the cardinals—one of whom at least has long been known to the pontiff to be a man of good character—in ways that Pius would “blush to set down in detail.” These were the womenfolk of the Sienese elite, mind you, at a time when gentlemen carried swords and were prepared to kill over questions of honor. Yet this horrific episode somehow became merely Tuscany’s joke of the hour, with no harm done except to the already sullied reputation of the clergy.

The best that can be said of such a story is that it pushes credulity to the breaking point. It sounds ludicrous to twenty-first-century ears and would have been even more implausible in Renaissance Italy. And it is, for that matter, pretty thoroughly undermined by what happened after Pius’s explosion. A few days later he sent a second message, this time in
response to something Rodrigo had written after receiving the first. It shows the pope to be in a considerably altered frame of mind. He has, he says,

received your Eminence’s letter and taken note of the explanation you give. Your action, my dear child, cannot be free from fault, though it may perhaps be less grave than I was first told. We exhort you to refrain henceforth from such indiscretions and to take the greatest care of your reputation. We grant you the pardon you ask; if we did not love you as a son of predilection we should not have uttered our affectionate reproaches for it is written: “Whom I love, him I rebuke and punish.” So long as you do good and live in modesty, you will have in me a father and a protector whose blessing will be showered likewise upon those who are dear to you
.

We still don’t know what happened at that party—the ladies’ displays of their dancing skills touched the bounds of propriety, perhaps?—but Pius is satisfied that it was not what he had first been told. Orgies have been demoted to indiscretions, and instead of hurt and anger the pope is directing “affectionate reproaches” at Rodrigo. Any suspicion that something truly scandalous has transpired, or that Pius has decided after reflection that boys will be boys and not too much should be expected of his young favorite, now looks distinctly implausible. It cannot be without significance that, in the weeks following the notorious garden party, Pius II saw no need to depart Siena or send Rodrigo away. They did not go until the end of September, after the summer heat had loosened its grip on Rome, and departed then only because called away by developments too serious to be ignored.

It is likewise impossible to believe that, if anything seriously offensive had occurred, Pius in the years following would have taken Rodrigo with him when returning to Siena. But he did, and without hesitation. And it is curious that, when the pope’s two letters came to light many years later, Rodrigo’s answer or answers were not found with them. It would have been customary for the letters from both correspondents to remain together in the archives. When one considers the extent to which various records came to be tampered with in order to blacken the Borgia legend—see About the Character of Alexander
VI,
this page
—it is not far-fetched to wonder if whatever Rodrigo wrote in his own defense may have been intentionally destroyed.

This episode merits such close examination because of the light the pope’s comments throw on the reputation of the clergy at this time and his high regard for Cardinal Rodrigo, and also because, as the only Borgia scandal of which there will be even a hint until many years later, it serves as a kind of prototype for the rough ways in which the reputations of Rodrigo and his kin will be handled through the centuries. For now, one further example must suffice.
There has probably never been a detailed account of Rodrigo’s life that did not—quite understandably—include this description of him by a man who had once been his teacher, one Gaspar of Verona: “He is handsome, of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice eloquence. The beautiful women on whom his eyes are cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet influences iron.” Such a dazzling word-picture, rich not only in detail but in innuendo, merits repetition. But in the truncated form in which it usually appears it encourages rather lurid speculation. This renders inexcusable the omission, by one writer after another, of Gaspar’s concluding sentence: “But it is admitted, to be sure, that he sends them off untouched.”

Gaspar’s description is typical of those left to us by people who knew Rodrigo. Without exception they emphasize the magnetism, the extraordinary vitality and appeal, of his person. Witnesses comment repeatedly on how multidimensional he was, and how fascinating to know. Physically he was imposing, tall and athletically built in his prime, and he carried himself with a dignity that must have been intimidating. But this simply added to the surprise of what he revealed in interacting with others: he turned out to be affable, accessible, kindly, and unfailingly charming. No one ever accused him of being less than a dutiful and hardworking vice-chancellor and cardinal. It has often been noted that he was never absent from consistories except when out of Rome or ill—which, thanks to his hardy constitution, he almost never was. But even when immersed in work he remained good-humored, even jovial.
He was rather stolidly conservative in his religious beliefs—entirely comfortable with established dogma and no friend of theological or philosophical innovation—but he showed
marked tolerance in dealing with those whose views were not as orthodox as his own, on one occasion making the lame joke that “the Lord requires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he may pay and live.” Late in his career, when the Jews were being expelled from Spain, Rodrigo would annoy Ferdinand and Isabella by making the refugees welcome in Rome.

Throughout his life he seemed incapable of taking offense at even the most outrageous slanders, even when their source was a figure as incendiary as Friar Savonarola, whom we shall encounter later.
His reputation has suffered permanently from his indifference to an anonymous pamphlet that appeared a few years before his death and declared him to be a “monster” and “an abyss of vice” under whose influence “the bestiality and savagery of Nero and Caligula are surpassed.” The ease with which he laughed such things off, brushing aside the complaints of relatives who urged him to forbid their circulation and punish the parties responsible, shows one of the most attractive sides of his personality. It has also, however, freed other writers to come to the unwarranted assumption that Rodrigo failed to defend himself because he knew his conduct to be indefensible.
This encouraged further and more specific slanders—for example, the preposterous assertion of the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini (who was still twenty-three years from being born when the Siena garden party took place) that Rodrigo was “mightily lustful of both sexes, publicly keeping boys and girls, but mostly girls.”

All his life Rodrigo had an almost childish love of pomp, ceremony, and public splendor, and he agreed with the popes he served that it was part of a cardinal’s duty both to maintain the dignity of the college by maintaining a splendid front and to help make Rome the most magnificent city in the world. He could be reckless in his spending for such purposes. On Palm Sunday 1461, when all Rome turned out for the arrival of what was supposedly the long-lost head of the apostle Andrew, St. Peter’s brother, Rodrigo became the talk of the town by turning not only his own palace but its surroundings into a display of magnificent extravagance.
Pius II in his
Memoirs
, after describing the contributions to the celebration by other cardinals and dignitaries, notes delightedly that “all were far outstripped in expense and effort and ingenuity by Rodrigo, the vice-chancellor. His huge towering house which he had
built on the site of the ancient mint was covered with rich and wonderful tapestries, and besides this he had raised a lofty canopy from which were suspended many and various marvels. He had decorated not only his own house but those nearby, so that the square all about them seemed a kind of park full of sweet songs and sounds, or a great palace gleaming with gold such as they say Nero’s palace was.”

If all this was wasteful, it had the ecstatic approval of the man to whom Rodrigo owed his position and his income. If it was foolish, it was also expected—practically required. If it was self-serving in the sense of enhancing Rodrigo’s prestige in an era when it was considered shameful for holders of high office not to indulge in ostentatious display, it also carries a note of generosity. Certainly it was not the mark of a greedy, still less a miserly, man. And behind these bursts of ostentation, Rodrigo lived simply, even abstemiously. It comes as a surprise to learn that associates regarded it as a misfortune to be a guest at his table.
The fare was so plain, Ferrara’s ambassador reported, that “it is disagreeable to have to dine with him.” So much for bacchanalian feasts.