Borgia, Cesare

BORGIA, CESARE. - Condottiere, b. in Rome in the summer of 1475, d. at Viana, near Pamplona, on 12 March 1507. Son of Cardinal Roderic Borgia and of Vannozza Cattanei, destined by his father for an ecclesiastical career, he was appointed, on 27 March 1482, apostolic protonotary. He studied at the Collegio della Sapienza in Perugia and then perfected himself in canon law at the University of Pisa, where he still was on Sept. 12, 1491, when he was elected bishop of Pamplona by Innocent VIII. On Aug. 31, 1492, he received from his father, who had become Pope under the name Alexander VI, the archbishopric of Valencia, and on Sept. 21, 1493, he was created cardinal. But Cesare aspired to far more: and when his brother Giovanni, second duke of Gandia and captain general of the papal troops, was murdered on the night of June 14, 1497, and he himself was later held to be guilty of it, he obtained on Aug. 17, 1498, in consistory, permission to renounce the cardinalate, and was released by his father from the duties of the diaconate he had received, thus becoming completely secularized.

Already deeply involved in all the political affairs of the time, he succeeded in turning Alexander VI away from the alliance with Naples toward a rapprochement with France, from which he hoped for greater advantages, and had the Pope entrust him with a legation to Louis XII. He offered the king of France the support of the Holy See against Milan and in exchange was invested with the duchy of Valentinois; he was able to marry Charlotte d'Albret, sister of the king of Navarre (1499), and to obtain consent for the conquest of the Romagna. Back in Italy he immediately occupied Imola and Forlì, defended in vain by Caterina Sforza, and was named gonfalonier of the Church by the Pope (1500). After assembling an army of about 10,000 men led by excellent captains from noble Italian houses, such as the Orsini and Savelli of Rome, Vitellozzo Vitelli of Città di Castello, Gian Paolo Baglioni of Perugia, he successively took possession of Cesena, Pesaro, where his brother-in-law Giovanni Sforza was lord, Rimini, and, in Apr. 1501, Faenza, which resisted him for a long time and whose lord, Astorre Manfredi, he later had barbarously killed in Castel Sant'Angelo. Having also occupied Piombino and been elected duke of the Romagna by the Pope, he offered his help to Louis XII and took part in the expedition against Naples. In June 1502 he occupied Urbino, driving out Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, whose title he took, and Camerino, and he planned the occupation of Tuscany, entrusting for this purpose the fortification of Piombino to Leonardo da Vinci. But his ambitious aims and the discontent of several of his captains provoked against him the League of the Magione, headed by Paolo and Francesco Orsini, Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, Ermete Bentivoglio of Bologna and Baglioni of Perugia. It was at this moment that Niccolò Machiavelli, sent by Florence to Cesare to fathom his intentions, was able to appreciate the shrewd resolve, certainly unscrupulous, of Cesare and to think of him as a possible great Italian prince. Having succeeded in thwarting the plot and having taken revenge with refined cruelty on all his enemies, he politically prepared his future conquests by consolidating the alliance with France, making the Romagna secure and tranquil, and securing the help of Ferrara through the marriage of his sister Lucrezia to Alfonso d'Este, after the killing, perpetrated by himself, of her second husband, Alfonso duke of Bisceglie. But the sudden death of Alexander VI on Aug. 18, 1503, upset his plans. Finding himself at that moment ill and therefore unable to react promptly, he had to adapt to the agreement imposed on him on Sept. 1 of that same year, promising to leave Rome so as not to influence with his presence and that of his army the College of Cardinals, while in exchange he was guaranteed free passage to the States of the Church. However, since Piombino, Rimini and Pesaro had meanwhile risen in revolt, he was forced to return to Rome and submit to the will of the Orsini, the Colonna and the Savelli. He was finally shut up in Castel Sant'Angelo by Julius II, elected on Nov. 1 of that same year after the death of Pius III Piccolomini, Alexander VI's successor for a little more than a month, and he was freed only on Jan. 29, 1504, after declaring that he renounced all the cities still under his dominion. Since, after the unfortunate French campaign against Naples, he had tried to draw closer to Spain, he went to Naples, but there he was imprisoned by Gonzalo de Córdoba and sent to Spain. He managed to escape from the prison of Medina del Campo on Oct. 25, 1506, and to take refuge with his brother-in-law John d'Albret, king of Navarre. He died in combat, during the siege of Viana, on March 12, 1507, at about 32 years of age.

Exalted by politicians and deplored by moralists, he is among the most typically grim and dissolute figures of the Renaissance; he was seen by the most extreme theorists of reason of state as a model of power politics, carried out with ruthless and cruel rationality; in reality, beyond the polemics, C. B.'s attempt also fits into the painful genesis of absolute states.

Emma Santovito.