Part 2 (1/2)
Rodrigo, moreover, had a third daughter, named Isabella, who could not have been a child of Vannozza. April 1, 1483, he married her to a Roman n.o.bleman, Piergiovanni Mattuzi of the Parione quarter.[7]
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Abstract of the marriage contract in the archives of the Capitol.
Cred. xiv, T. 72. From an instrument of the notary Agostino Martini.
CHAPTER IV
LUCRETIA'S EDUCATION
The cardinal's relations with Vannozza continued until about 1482, for after the birth of Lucretia she presented him with another son, Giuffre, who was born in 1481 or 1482.
After that, Borgia's pa.s.sion for this woman, who was now about forty, died out, but he continued to honor her as the mother of his children and as the confidant of many of his secrets.
Vannozza had borne her husband, a certain Giorgio di Croce, a son, who was named Octavian--at least this child pa.s.sed as his. With the cardinal's help she increased her revenues; in old official records she appears as the lessee of several taverns in Rome, and she also bought a vineyard and a country house near S. Lucia in Selci in the Subura, apparently from the Cesarini. Even to-day the picturesque building with the arched pa.s.sageway over the stairs which lead up from the Subura to S. Pietro in Vincoli is pointed out to travelers as the palace of Vannozza or of Lucretia Borgia. Giorgio di Croce had become rich, and he built a chapel for himself and his family in S. Maria del Popolo. Both he and his son Octavian died in the year 1486.[8]
His death caused a change in Vannozza's circ.u.mstances, the cardinal hastening to marry the mother of his children a second time, so that she might have a protector and a respectable household. The new husband was Carlo Ca.n.a.le, of Mantua.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CHURCH OF S. MARIA DEL POPOLO, ROME.]
Before he came to Rome he had by his attainments acquired some reputation among the humanists of Mantua. There is still extant a letter to Ca.n.a.le, written by the young poet Angelo Poliziano regarding his _Orfeo_; the ma.n.u.script of this, the first attempt in the field of the drama which marked the renaissance of the Italian theater, was in the hands of Ca.n.a.le, who, appreciating the work of the faint-hearted poet, was endeavoring to encourage him.[9] At the suggestion of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, a great patron of letters, Poliziano had written the poem in the short s.p.a.ce of two days. Carlo Ca.n.a.le was the cardinal's chamberlain. The _Orfeo_ saw the light in 1472. When Gonzaga died, in 1483, Ca.n.a.le went to Rome, where he entered the service of Cardinal Sclafetano, of Parma. As a confidant and dependent of the Gonzaga he retained his connection with this princely house.[10] In his new position he a.s.sisted Ludovico Gonzaga, a brother of Francesco when he came to Rome in 1484 to receive the purple on his election as Bishop of Mantua.
Borgia was acquainted with Ca.n.a.le while he was in the service of the Gonzaga, and later he met him in the house of Sclafetano. He selected him to be the husband of his widowed mistress, doubtless because Ca.n.a.le's talents and connections would be useful to him.
Ca.n.a.le, on the other hand, could have acquiesced in the suggestion to marry Vannozza only from avarice, and his willingness proves that he had not grown rich in his former places at the courts of cardinals.
The new marriage contract was drawn up June 8, 1486, by the notary of the Borgia house, Camillo Beneimbene, and was witnessed by Francesco Maffei, apostolic secretary and canon of S. Peter's; Lorenzo Barberini de Catellinis; a citizen, Giuliano Gallo, a considerable merchant of Rome; Burcardo Barberini de Carnariis, and other gentlemen. As dowry Vannozza brought her husband, among other things, one thousand gold florins and an appointment as _sollicitator bullarum_. The contract clearly referred to this as Vannozza's second marriage. Would it not have been set down as the third, or in more general terms as new, if the alleged first marriage with Domenico d'Arignano had really been acknowledged?
In this instrument Vannozza's house on the Piazza de Branchis, in the Regola quarter, where the marriage took place, is described as her domicile. The piazza still bears this name, which is derived from the extinct Branca family. After the death of her former husband she must, therefore, have moved from the house on the Piazza Pizzo di Merlo and taken up her abode in the one on the Piazza Branca. This house may have belonged to her, for her second husband seems to have been a man without means, who hoped to make his fortune by his marriage and with the protection of the powerful cardinal.
From a letter of Ludovico Gonzaga, dated February 19, 1488, we learn that this new marriage of Vannozza's was not childless. In this epistle, the Bishop of Mantua asks his agent in Rome to act as G.o.dfather in his stead, Carlo Ca.n.a.le having chosen him for this honor. The letter gives no further particulars, but it can mean nothing else.[11]
We do not know at just what time Lucretia, in accordance with the cardinal's provision, left her mother's house and pa.s.sed under the protection of a woman who exercised great influence upon him and upon the entire Borgia family.
This woman was Adriana, of the house of Mila, a daughter of Don Pedro, who was a nephew of Calixtus III, and first cousin of Rodrigo. What position he held in Rome we do not know.
He married his daughter Adriana to Ludovico, a member of the n.o.ble house of Orsini, and lord of Ba.s.sanello, near Civita Castellana. As the offspring of this union, Orsino Orsini, married in 1489, it is evident that his mother must have entered into wedlock at least sixteen years before. Ludovico Orsini died in 1489 or earlier. As his wife, and later as his widow, Adriana occupied one of the Orsini palaces in Rome, probably the one on Monte Giordano, near the Bridge of S. Angelo, this palace having subsequently been described as part of the estate which her son Orsino inherited.
Cardinal Rodrigo maintained the closest relations with Adriana. She was more than his kinswoman; she was the confidant of his sins, of his intrigues and plans, and such she remained until the day of his death.
To her he entrusted the education of his daughter Lucretia during her childhood, as we learn from a letter written by the Ferrarese amba.s.sador to Rome, Gianandrea Boccaccio, Bishop of Modena, to the Duke Ercole in 1493, in which he remarks of Madonna Adriana Ursina, ”that she had educated Lucretia in her own house.”[12] This doubtless was the Orsini palace on Monte Giordano, which was close to Cardinal Borgia's residence.
According to the Italian custom, which has survived to the present day, the education of the daughters was entrusted to women in convents, where the young girls were required to pa.s.s a few years, afterwards to come forth into the world to be married. If, however, Infessura's picture of the convents of Rome is a faithful one, the cardinal was wise in hesitating to entrust his daughter to these saints. Nevertheless there certainly were convents which were free from immorality, such, for example, as S. Silvestre in Capite, where many of the daughters of the Colonna were educated, and S. Maria Nuova and S. Sisto on the Appian Way. On one occasion during the papacy of Alexander, Lucretia chose the last named convent as an asylum, perhaps because she had there received her early spiritual education.
Religious instruction was always the basis of the education of the women of Italy. It, however, consisted not in the cultivation of heart and soul, but in a strict observance of the forms of religion. Sin made no woman repulsive, and the condition of even the most degraded female did not prevent her from performing all her church duties, and appearing to be a well-trained Christian. There were no women skeptics or freethinkers; they would have been impossible in the society of that day. The G.o.dless tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini built a magnificent church, and in it a chapel in honor of his beloved Isotta, who was a regular attendant at church. Vannozza built and embellished a chapel in S. Maria del Popolo. She had a reputation for piety, even during the life of Alexander VI. Her greatest maternal solicitude, like that of Adriana, was to inculcate a Christian deportment in her daughter, and this Lucretia possessed in such perfection that subsequently a Ferrarese amba.s.sador lauded her for her 'saintly demeanor.'
It is wrong to regard this bearing simply as a mask; for that would presuppose an independent consideration of religious questions or a moral process which was altogether foreign to the women of that age, and is still unknown among the women of Italy. There religion was, and still is, a part of education; it consisted in a high respect for form and was of small ethical worth.
The daughters of the well-to-do families did not receive instruction in the humanities in the convents, but probably from the same teachers to whom the education of the sons was entrusted. It is no exaggeration to say that the women of the better cla.s.ses during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were as well educated as are the women of to-day.