Borgia, Lucrezia

BORGIA, LUCREZIA. - Daughter of Cardinal Roderigo and of Vannozza, born 18 April 1480. At the age of 11 she was promised in marriage to Cherubino Giovanni Centelles of Valencia and subsequently to Gaspare di Procida, Count of Aversa; then, through the efforts of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, she contracted a true marriage on 13 June 1493 with Giovanni Sforza, lord of Pesaro, who was in the Pope's service as a condottiere. Political aims induced Alexander to annul this marriage as ratum et non consummatum on 20 December 1497 in order to conclude that with Alfonso of Bisceglie, natural son of Alfonso II, King of Naples, a marriage celebrated without excessive pomp on 15 July 1498; by him Lucrezia had a son, named Roderigo. But the shifting of political relations provoked a ferocious hatred in Cesare Borgia against Alfonso, so much so that he had him treacherously attacked in St. Peter's Square on 15 July 1500 and then killed on 18 August. Cesare did not deny having had a part in this crime. Finally, with the intervention of Louis XII, King of France, the marriage of Lucrezia to Alfonso, son of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara, was concluded on 10 September 1501; on 30 December the nuptials by proxy were celebrated with great splendor in the presence of Cardinal Ippolito, Alfonso's brother, and on 6 January Lucrezia left Rome with a great retinue. Her life at the papal court had been among the most brilliant; the Pope had entrusted her with the custody of the papal palace during his absences, had even taken her with him on his journeys, had entrusted her with the government of Foligno, Spoleto, Nepi; finally he had assigned her a princely dowry in estates, jewels, and trousseau. It cannot be said that she remained insensitive through the vicissitudes of her first twenty years, but she knew how to console herself quickly for the tragedies in which she had taken part. She did not escape the calumnies hurled against her family; but in those years she was neither a virago complicit in or contriver of crimes, nor a poor victim of others' abuses; she was probably nothing more than a vain and disorderly young woman in a sumptuous and unscrupulous court. At Ferrara she knew how to conduct herself with dignity and to sustain with decorum the prestige of duchess, which began for her in 1505, courted always by the greatest personages who frequented the Este court in those years. By him she had as children Ercole II, Ippolito, the second cardinal of this name who took so great a part in Franco-Este politics, Alessandro, Francesco, Eleonora. From 1512, perhaps by virtue of the tragic events of those years, she devoted herself to a more retired life given over to religious practices, until she died at the age of 39, following a miscarriage, on 24 June 1519 at Belriguardo, and was buried in the Ferrarese monastery of the Corpus Domini.

Pio Paschini