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At the pinnacle of the so-called Renaissance papacy and symbolic of its corruption was the clan Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia, the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was either a victim of the family's venality or a major perp or maybe even both.

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At the pinnacle of the so-called Renaissance papacy and symbolic of its corruption was the clan Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia, the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was either a victim of the family's venality or a major perp or maybe even both.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Until late in the modern period, aristocratic marriages were alliances, not just for love or for the production of children, but designed to enhance the position of both families in the match. The Borgia marriages were particularly strategic. Lucrezia was the youngest surviving child of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his mistress Vannozza.

Though previously betrothed to a succession of Spanish nobles, her first marriage in 1493 facilitated an alliance between her father, the newly elected Pope Alexander VI, and the powerful Sforza family of Milan. Giovanni Sforza, who was 14 years her senior, quickly became a victim of the changing alliances in Italian politics. Alexander shifted his preference from Milan to Naples, and Giovanni, apprehensive that he might pay the ultimate price in the changing political landscape, also not popular around the Vatican because he was an angry young man, fled back to Milan. When he was safe, however, he began spreading the rumor that Lucrezia and the Pope were having an incestuous affair. Not to be outdone, Alexander annulled the marriage on the grounds of the husband's impotence. The incest rumor, however, stained Lucrezia's reputation, not to mention that of her father and, by extension, her brother. Matters were not helped by the fact that Lucrezia was six months pregnant at the time of the annulment. If not Giovanni, the child was probably the result of a quick affair with a young, handsome Spanish page whose body was soon found floating in the Tiber.

Her next dynastic match was to Alfonso, the Duke of Bisceglie, the 17-year-old illegitimate son of King Alfonso II of Naples. At some point, the boy must have incurred the wrath of Lucrezia's powerful brother Cesare. In high summer 1500 Alfonso was attacked on the steps of St. Peter's and terribly wounded. Despite the guards that Lucrezia posted by his bedside, within a month he had been strangled in his sleep probably at the orders of Lucrezia's brother.

Lucrezia was sent to Nepi to get out of the public eye, but at about that time there surfaced in her company an infant. In 1501 she was seen in public with a three-year-old boy named Giovanni. It did not enhance the family's reputation for moral rectitude when two papal bulls appeared claiming the child first as the son of Cesare, then of Alexander. The Pope was probably the father. Lucrezia's reputation was not helped by her reputed presence at an infamous night orgy within the precincts of the Vatican in that period.

After several years she returned to Rome and worked as a secretary to her father while the family worked on another match. Given the ill repute in which the family was held it was not going to be easy. At that time, Cesare was seeking to conquer the Romagna section of North Central Italy in and around the cities of Ferrara and Bologna. He needed the help of the Duke of Ferrara and negotiations soon began on a marriage between Lucrezia and Alfonso d'Este, son of the Duke. They were married in December 1501. It must have been some relief for Lucrezia to get a fresh start away from the intrigues of the Vatican. In early January she set out for Ferrara with an entourage of 1000 people and a baggage train of 150 mules.

At first the young Duke was hesitant to embrace her because of the character of the Borgia clan, but gradually Lucrezia won over her new family and the people of Ferrara. She enjoyed the role of refined wealthy cultured Duchess and it fit her. Despite the pleasure that she felt in her new surroundings, she took hard the news of the death of first her father, Pope Alexander VI in 1503 then and her brother in 1507. For weeks she retreated into seclusion, gained weight and was visibly depressed. She let herself go and may have, in her last years, sought comfort in religion.

The couple had seven children two of whom died in childbirth, and she endured several miscarriages. Shortly after giving birth to a stillborn daughter, at the age of 39, in 1519, Duchess Lucrezia Borgia d'Este, died genuinely mourned by her husband and people around her and throughout Italy.

Only in later centuries as historians began to examine the Borgia family story did a different picture of Lucrezia emerge, that of an elegant, cultured and yet exploited woman caught up in the dynastic politics and corrupt morals of a turbulent age.

At University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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