Story of Civilization ~ Will & Ariel Durant

[mabel1015j]

"I want to know what were the steps by which
man passed from barbarism to civilization (Voltaire)"

What are our origins? Where are we now? Where are we headed? Share your thoughts with us!

   Volume Five (The Renaissance)

       
"Four elements constitute Civilization -- economic provision, political organization, moral traditions, and the pursuit of knowledge and the arts. "
 
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning. "
       
"These volumes may help some of our children to understand and enjoy the infinite riches of their inheritance."
       
"Civilization begins where chaos and insecurity ends."

In this volume the  term "Renaissance" refers only to Italy. Will Durant studies the growth of industry, the rise of banking families like the Medici, the conflicts of labor and capital and considers the reasons why Italy was the first nation, and Florence the first city in Italy, to feel the awakening of the modern mind. He follows the cultural flowering from Florence to Milan, Mantua, Ferrata, Verona and Venice, Padua and Parma, Bologna, Rimini, Urbino, Perugia, Siena, and Naples. 

In each city of Italy we witness a colorful pageant of princes, queeens, dukes, or doges -- of poets, historians, scientists, and philosophers -- of painters, sculptors, engravers, illuminators, potters, and architects -- of industry, education, manners, morals, crime, and dress -- of women and love and marriage -- of epidemics, famines, earthquakes, and death.

Dr. Durant draws vivid vignettes -- of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Cosimo de' Medici, Fra Angelico, Donatello, Beatrice and Isabella d'Este, Leonardo da Vinci, Piero della Francesca, Signorelli, Perugino, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Aldus Manutius, Correggio, Alexander VI, Caesar and Lucrezia Borgia, Julius II, Leo X, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

The Renaissance, by recalling classic culture, ended the thousand year rule of the Oriental mind in Europe.

This volume, then, is about YOU. Join our group daily and listen to what Durant and the rest of us are saying. Better yet, share with us your opinions.

SeniorLearn Contact: JoanK & Discussion Facilitator: Trevor
 

Ask the eastern states Native American tribes that question, Deb. Most of the tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy were matrilineal, the line of the family was thru the women, the husband came to live w/the wife's family, the line of the chief went thru the woman's family, or the women elders picked the chief,  etc. The men didn't seem to be insecure or unhappy about this social behavior - well, maybe we can't discern if they were unhappy, but it worked for centuries.......Europeans had a different perspective of course. So you may be right, boys who grew up in european society may have wanted only an heir from marriage, but since virginity was so highly prized, thay may have married for sex also.

Jean

[bookad]

you jogged my memory Jean, about some of the North American pre-white man era cultures--

also another thought, about their religion which was very respectful of the earth ...I don't remember reading situations where i.e. a person took advantage of his religious position to gain wealth and prestige thru his position of secular power, like continually seen in the present Durant's book era--of course there must have been people with miserable dispositions, people who liked to trod over others rights, throw their weight around & take from others what wasn't theirs to take...
perhaps their society was small enough that their tribal councils were able to contain much of any abuse of their society's systems
....and then maybe I'm off track

I remember thru the years 1975-1980 working in a rehab hospital and on midnight shifts catching Jim Baaker with Tammy building their temple and all the people mesmerized with his preaching ...we were watching because my co-worker was a very religious person herself...I was just intrigued ( not being religious myself) that this man could have so many people within his grasp, enamoured with him, hanging off his every word, till he was jailed....and how many are doing the same just haven't been caught yet, if ever caught!

there seems to be so much opportunity for religious leaders to take advantage of their flock and therefore leave them hanging,their parishoners wanting to believe in rightousness but being led by deceptive human beings pleading 'goodness'

  ....hypocrisy surrounds everywhere!!....

boy I don't know what got into me don't I sound dismal and depressing, sorry....

Deb

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durant's  SoC
The Renaissance  Vol V.
The Borgias   Pages 426-428


Many rumours charged the Borgias with poisoning rich cardinals to accelerate the reversion of their estates to the Church. Some such casualties seemed so well attested – rather by repetition than by evidence – that Protestant  historians generally accepted them as late  as the judicious Jacob Burckhardt ( 1818-97 ); and the Catholic historian Pastor believed it “ extremely probable that Caesar poisoned Cardinal Michiel in order to obtain the money he wanted. This conclusion was founded on the fact that under Julius II ( extremely hostile to Alexander ) a sub deacon, Aquino da Colloredo, being put to the torture, confessed that he had poisoned Cardinal Michiel at the behest of Alexander and Caesar. A twentieth-century historian may be excused for being skeptical of confessions elicited by torture.
An enterprising statistician has shown that the death rate among cardinals was no higher in Alexander’s pontificate before or afterward; but there is no doubt that Rome, in the last three years of that reign, thought it dangerous to be a cardinal and rich. Isabella’Este wrote to her husband to be careful what he said about Caesar, for “ he does not scruple to conspire against those of his own blood; apparently she accepted the tale that he had killed the Duke of Gandia. Roman gossip talked about a slow poison, cantarella, whose base was arsenic, and which,  dropped as a powder upon food or into drink – even into the sacramental wine of the mass—would produce a leisurely death difficult to trace to its human cause. Historians now generally reject the slow poisons of the Renaissance as legendary, but believe that in one or two cases the Borgias poisoned rich cardinals. Further research may reduce these cases to zero.
Worse stories are told of Caesar. To amuse Alexander and Lucrezia, we are assured, he released into a courtyard several prisoners who had been sentenced to death, and from a safe point, showed his bowman ship by shooting fatal arrows into one after another of the convicts as they sought some refuge from his shafts. Our sole authority for this tale is the Venetian envoy Capello; it is rather less probable that Caesar did this than that a diplomat should lie. Much history of the Renaissance popes has been written on the authority of war propaganda and diplomatic  lies.
The most incredible of the Borgia horrors appears in the usually reliable diary of Alexander’s  master of ceremonies, Burchard. Under October 30 1501, his Diarium describes a dinner in the apartment of Caesar Borgia in the Vatican, at which nude courtesans chased chestnuts scattered over the floor while Alexander and Lucrezia looked on. The story appears also in the Perugian historian  Matarazzo, who took it, not from Burchard ( for the dairium was still secret ) but from gossip that ranged out of Rome through Italy; “ the thing was known far and wide,” he says.If so, it is strange that the Ferrarese ambassador, who was in Rome at the time, and was later commissioned to investigate the morals of Lucrezia and her fitness to marry Alfonso, son of Duke Ercole, made no mention of the story in his report, but (as we shall see ) gave a most favourable account of her; either he was bribed by Alexander, or he ignored unverified gossip. But how did the story get into Burchard’s diary ? He does not profess to have been present, and could hardly be, for he was a man of sturdy morals. Normally he included in his notes only such events as he had witnessed, or such as had been reported to him on good authority. Was the story interpolated into the manuscript ? Of the original manuscript only twenty-six  pages survive All concerning the period following Alexander’s final illness. Of the remainder of the Diarium only copies exist.
All these copies carry the story. It may have been interpolated by a hostile scribe who thought to liven a dry chronicle with a juicy tale; or Burchard may for once have allowed gossip to creep into his notes, or the original may have marked it as gossip. Probably the story was based on an actual banquet, and the lurid fringe was added by fancy or spite. The Florentine ambassador Francesco Pepi, always hostile to the Borgias since Florence was almost always at odds with them, reported on the morrow of the affair that the Pope had stayed up till a late hour in the apartments of Caesar the night before, and there had been “dancing and laughter” ;  there is no mention of the courtesans. It is incredible that a pope who was at this time making every effort to marry his daughter to the heir of the duchy of Ferrara should have risked the marriage and a vital diplomatic alliance by allowing Lucrezia to witness such a spectacle.

[mabel1015j]

"...skeptical of confessions elicited by torture"......huuuummmmm, guess we haven't all learned that lesson, yet.

I believe there has been a recent book about the Borgias, i may have to take a look to see if they have clarified what may or may not be true abt the popes And the Borgias lives.

Jean

[mabel1015j]

The Borgias and There Enemies by Christopher Hibbert, 2008

Reviews on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Borgias-Their-Enemies-1431-1519/dp/0547247818

[3kings(Trevor)]

It has always troubled me that we are quick to condemn those who transgress in their sexual activity, ( and I think rightly so ) but admire those who by military action cause the deaths of countless innocent people. The greater the slaughter, the more heroic the action tends to become. And in this slaughter, I am assured by religious folk, that God's wishes are being met....... ? ++ Trevor 

[mabel1015j]

DITTO! Trevor, DITTO!........jean

[Emily]

It has always troubled me that we are quick to condemn those who transgress in their sexual activity, ( and I think rightly so ) but admire those who by military action cause the deaths of countless innocent people. The greater the slaughter, the more heroic the action tends to become. And in this slaughter, I am assured by religious folk, that God's wishes are being met....... ? ++ Trevor 

Trevor I do agree with you that war by its nature is a horror to be condemed and those who start them twice condemed.

If it were not for the holier than thou condemnation that the church put on 'sexual affairs', they could get a pass from me. Since they don't give a pass, they won't get a pass.

Does a leopard change its spots......no it does not.

Therefore Caesar and Rodrigo Borgia were the same sexual predators that Durant had already told us about. Durant had little trouble with Caesar carrying prostitutes along for all his campaigns. Too many private witnesses in the form of soldiers to put that under the rug. He did have trouble admitting that they carried it into the Vatican, even though more than one person wrote about the incidents. Since Durant was raised Catholic and even considered entering the priesthood, I can read his reluctance to 'dancing' on St. Peter.

These two sexual predators wanted to be entertained. Durant wrote of it earlier in their reign. The Pope put on comedies, light plays, and even bullfights. He had an untold number of Mistresses as did his son. He took some of his children to the Vatican with him when he became pope.

We cannot know even a fraction of all the things they did, because to oppose them was a death sentence. Even the few diaries that were written were kept secret until after their death.

I think of the horrors of the lives of the prostitutes in those times. They were expendable fodder, and if history is any guide they were destitute teenage girls.

Speaking of prostitutes I see that the Premier of Italy Silvio Berlusconi has himself in a pickle over prostitutes. He had so many that his latest wife is divorcing him and now the prosecutor is after him.

Even old leopards cannot change their spots. Semper eadem.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/01/17/world/europe/AP-EU-Italy-Berlusconi.html?_r=1&ref=aponline

Emily

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC
Lucrezia Borgia: 1480-1519
Vol V The Renaissance.
Pages 428-430


Alexander admired, perhaps feared his son, but he loved his daughter with all the emotional intensity of his nature. he seems to have taken profounder pleasure in her moderate beauty, in her long golden hair ( so heavy it gave her headaches ), in the rhythm of her  light form dancing, and in the filial devotion she gave him through all contumely and bereavements, than he had ever derived from the charms of Vanozza or Giulia. She was not particularly fair, but she was described in her youth as 'dolce ciera', sweet face; and amid all the coarseness and looseness of her times and her environment, through all the disillusionments of divorce and the horror of seeing her husband murdered almost before her eyes, she kept this  'sweet face' to her pious end, for it was a frequent theme in Ferrarese poetry, Pinturicchio's portrait of her in the Borgia apartment of the Vatican, agrees well with this description of her in her youth.

Like all Italian girls who could afford it, she went to a convent for her education. At an unknown age she passed from the house of her mother Vanozza to that of Donna Adriana Mila, a cousin of Alexander. There she formed a lifelong friendship with Adrianna's daughter-in-law Giulia Farnese, alleged mistress of her father. Favored with every good fortune except legitimacy, Lucrezia grew up in a gay and joyous girlhood, and Alexander was happy in her happiness.

This carefree youth was ended by marriage. Probably she was not offended when her father chose a husband for her; that was then normal procedure for all good girls, and produced no more unhappiness than our own reliance on the selective wisdom of romantic love. Alexander, like any ruler, thought that the marriages of his children should advance the interests of the state; this too, doubtless, seemed reasonable to Lucrezzia. Naples was then hostile to the papacy, and Milan was hostile to Naples; so her first marriage bound her, at the age of thirteen, to Giovanni Sforza, aged twenty-six, lord of Pesaro and nephew to Lodovico, regent of Milan ( 1493 ) Alexander amused himself paternally by arranging a handsome home for the couple in Cardinal Zeno's palace, close to the Vatican.

But Sforza had to live in Pesaro part of the time, and took his young bride with him. She languished on those distant shores, far from her doting father and the excitement and splendor of Rome; and after a few months she returned to the Capital. Later Giovanni joined her there; but after Easter of 1497 he stayed in Pesaro and she on Rome. On June the 14th Alexander asked him to consent to an annulment on the ground of the husband's impotence-- the only ground recognized by canon law for annulling a valid marriage. Lucrezia,whether in grief or shame, or to circumvent scandal-mongers, retired to a convent. A few days later, her brother the duke of Gandia was slain, and the delicate wits of Rome suggested that he had been murdered by agents of Sforza for attempting to seduce Lucrezia. Her husband denied his impotence and hinted that Alexander was guilty of incest with his daughter. The Pope appointed a committee, headed by by two cardinals, to inquire into whether the marriage had ever been consummated; Lucreza took oath it had not, and they assured Alexander that she was still a virgin. Lodovico proposed to Giovanni that he should demonstrate his potency before a committee including the papal legate at Milan; Giovanni forgivably refused. However, he signed a formal admission that the marriage had not been consummated, he returned to Lucrezia her dowry of 31000 ducats; and on December 20, 1497, the marriage was annulled. Lucrezia, who had borne no offspring to Giovanni, bore children to both her later husbands; but Sforza's third wife, in 1505, gave birth to a son presumably his own.

It was formerly assumed that Alexander had broken the marriage in order to make a politically more profitable marriage; there is no evidence for this assumption; it is more likely that Lucrezia told the pitiful truth of the matter. But Alexander could not let her remain husbandless. Seeking a rapprochement with the papacy's bitter enemy, Naples, he proposed to King Federigo the union of Lucrezia with Don Alfonso, Duke of Bisceglie, the bastard son of Federigo's heir Alfonso II. The King agreed, and a formal betrothal was signed ( June 1498 ). Federigo's proxy on this occasion was Cardinal Sforza, uncle to the divorced Giovanni. Lodovico of Milan also had encouraged Federico to accept the plan. Apparently Giovanni's uncles felt no resentment at the annulment of his marriage. In August the wedding was celebrated in the Vatican.

[Emily]

As for Pinturicchio's portrait of Lucrezia Borgia, the only image found was as (perhaps) her depiction of Saint Catherine in a fresco done by the artist.

Here is a link to the work of Pinturicchio in the Vatican apartments of Rodrigo Borgia aka Pope Alexander. After the death of Pope Alexander the apartments were sealed off for 300 years. They were finally opened back up by a much later pope at the end of the nineteenth century.

These photographs do not include the one said to depict Lucrezia as Saint Catherine, but I will get the link later.

If they had to be sealed off for 300 years, the scene must have been worse than baaaaaaad. The rooms have been scrubbed of the Borgias and only Pinturicchio's work remains.

http://thiswritelife.wordpress.com/2010/07/

Emily

[Emily]

Here is a link to the Borgia apartment frescos. Scroll down to the 'Saint Catherine Disputation' to see Saint Catherine standing before Emperor Maxentius. The model for Catherine was said to be Lucrezia Borgia.

Click on the photo to make it larger.

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/p/pinturic/vatican/

Emily

[Emily]

Below a link to Raphael's 'School of Athens' a fresco done for the Borgia pope successor, Pope Julius. The apartments of Julius were above the Borgia apartments and were said to have better light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Escola_de_atenas_-_vaticano.jpg

Emily

[Frybabe]

They are beautiful, and to think they were for the private apartments where most folks couldn't see them. I don't think I was aware that "The School of Athens" is a painted wall in the Vatican. I don't suppose I ever really thought about it.

[Emily]

Frybabe, here is what wikipedia says about 'School of Athens'

The School of Athens, or Scuola di Atene in Italian, is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance."

Emily

[mabel1015j]

WOW! They are amazing! ..........jean

[JoanK]

Yes they are. If L. is the ?woman? in a blue sleeve and gold wrap, indeed she is not very feminine.

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC
Vol. V. The Renaissance
Lucrezia Borgia
Pages 430-432



Lucrezia facilitated matters by falling in love with her husband. It helped that she could mother him, for she was eighteen now, and he was a child of seventeen. But it was their misfortune to be important; poltics entered even their marriage bed. Caesar Borgia, rejected in Naples, went to France for a bride ( October 1498); Alexander entered into an alliance  with LouisXii, the declared enemy of Naples; the young Duke of  Bisceglie was increasingly ill at ease in a Rome filling up with French agents; suddenly he fled to Naples . Lucrezia was brokenhearted. To appease her and heal the breach, Alexander appointed her regent of Spoleto ( August, 1499); Alfonso joined her there; Alexander visited them at Nepi, reassured the youth, and brought them back to Rome. There Lucrezia was delivered of a son, who was named Rodrigo after her father.
But again their happiness was brief. Whether because Alfonso was uncontrollably high strung, or because Caesar Borgia symbolized the French alliance, Alfonso took a passionate dislike to him, which Borgia disdainfully returned, On the night of July 15, 1500, some bravos attacked Alfonso as he was leaving St. Peter’s. He received several wounds, but managed to reach the house of the Cardinal of Santa Maria in Portico. Lucrezia, summoned to him, fainted on seeing his condition; she soon recovered, and, with his sister Sancia, tended him anxiously. Alexander sent a guard of sixteen men to protect him from further injury. Alfonso slowly convalesced. One day he saw Caesar walking in a nearby garden. Convinced this was the man who had hired his assassins, Alfonso seized bow and arrow, aimed at Caesar, and shot to kill. The weapon narrowly missed its mark. Ceasar was not a man to give an enemy a second chance; he called his guards and sent them up to Alfonso’s room, apparently with orders to slay him; they pressed a pillow upom his face until he died, perhaps under the eyes of his sister and his wife. Alexander accepted Caesar’s account of the matter, gave Alfonso a quiet burial, and did what he could to console the inconsolable Lucrezia.
She retired to Nepi, and there signed her letters ‘la infelicissima princopessa’, “ the most miserable princess,” and ordered Masses for the repose of Alfonso’s soul. Strange to relate, Caesar visited her at Nepi ( October 1 1499 ) only two and a half months after Alfonso’s death, and stayed overnight as her guest. Lucrezia was malleable and patient; she seems to have looked upon the killing of her husband as the natural reaction of her brother to an attempt upon his life. She does not appear to have believed that Caeser had hired the unsuccessful assassins of Alfonso, though this seems to most probable explaination of another Renaissance mystery. During the remainder of her life she gave many proofs that her love for her brother had survived all trials. Perhaps because he too, like her father, loved her with Spanish intensity, the wits of Rome, or rather of hostile Naples, continued to accuse her of incest; one synoptic  scribe called her “ The Pope’s daughter, wife, and daughter-in-law.” This, too, she bore with quiet resignation. All students of the epoch are now agreed that these charges were cruel calumnies, but such libels formed her fame for centuries.
 That Caesar killed Alfonso with a view to remating her to better political result is improbable. After a period of mourning she was offered to an Orsini, then to Colonna—matches hardly as advantageous as that with the son of the heir to the Neopolitan throne. Not till November, 1500, do we hear of Alexander proposing her to Duke Ercole of Ferrara for Ercole’s son Alfonso; and not till September, 1501, was she betrothed to him. Presumably Alexander  hoped that a Ferrara ruled by a son-in-law, and a Mantua long since bound to Ferrara by marriage, would in effect be papal states; and Caesar seconded the plan as offering greater security for his conquests, and an elegant background for an attack upon Bologna. Ercole and Alfonso hesitated, for reasons already retailed. Alfonso had been offered the hand of the countess of Angoulême, but Alexander topped his offer with the pledge of an immense dowry, and practical remission of the annual tribute that Ferrara had been paying the papacy. Even so, it is hardly credible that one of the oldest and most prosperous ruling families in Europe would have received Lucrezia as wife to the future duke had it believed the lurid stories bandied about by the intellectual underworld of Rome. As neither Ercole nor Alfonso had yet seen Lucrezia, they followed customary procedure in such diplomatic matings, and asked the Farrarese ambassador in Rome to send them a report on her person, her morals, and her accompishments. He replied as follows:

Illustrious Master: Today after supper Don Gerardo Saraceni and I betook ourselves to the illustrious Madonna Lucrezia to pay our respects in the name of Your Excellency and His Majesty Don Alfonso. We had a long conversation regarding various matters. She is a most intelligent and lovely, and also an exceedingly gracious, lady. Your Excellency and the Illustrious Don Alfonso -- so we were led to conclude—will be highly pleased with her. Besides being extremely graceful in every way, she is modest, lovable, and decorous. Moreover, she is a devout  and God-fearing Christian. Tomorrow she is going to confession, and during Christmas week she will receive communion. She is very beautiful, but her charm of manner is still more striking. In short, her character is such that it is impossible to suspect  anything “ sinister “ of her;  but on the contrary we look for only the best… Rome, December 23, 1501 …..  Your Excellency’s servant,
                 Joannes  Lucas.

[JoanK]

The mystery continues --- was she sinister? (only her hairdresser knows for sure).

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC
The Renaissance
Volume V Pages 432-433


The Excellent and Illustrious Estensi were convinced, and sent a magnificent body of knights to escort the bride from Rome to Ferrara. Caesar Borgia equipped two hundred cavaliers to accompany her, and supplied musicians and buffoons to amuse the arduous travel hours. Alexander, proud and happy, provided her with a retinue of 180 persons, including five bishops. Vehicles, especially built for the trip, and 150 mules, carried her trousseau; and this included a dress valued at 15,000 ducats, a hat worth 10,000, and 200 bodices costing a hundred ducats each. On January 6, 1502, having privately taken leave of her mother Vanozza, Lucrezzia began her bridal tour across Italy to join her fiancé. Alexander, after bidding her good-bye, went from point to point on the line of procession to catch another glimpse of her as she rode on her little Spanish horse all caparisoned in harness of leather and gold; he watched until she and her retinue of a thousand men and women were out of sight. He suspected that he would never see her again.

Rome had probably never witnessed such an exit before, nor Ferrara such an entry. After 27 days of travel, Lucrezia was met outside the city by Duke Ercole and Don Alfonso with a superb cavalcade of nobles, professors, seventy-five mounted archers, eighty trumpeters and fifers, and fourteen floats carrying highborn ladies sumptuously dressed. When the procession reached the cathedral two ropewalkers descended from its towers and addressed compliments to Lucrezia.

As the ducal palace was reached all prisoners were given their liberty The people rejoiced in the beauty and smiles of their future duchess; and Alfonso was happy to have so splendid and charming a bride.


                                         The collapse of the Borgia power.

The final years of Alexander were apparently happy and prosperous. His daughter was married into a ducal family; and was respected by all  Ferrara; his son had brilliantly accomplished his assignments as general and administrator, and the Papal States were flourishing under excellent government. The Venetian ambassador describes the Pope, in those last years, as cheerful and active, apparently quite easy of conscience; “ nothing worries him. “ He was seventy years old on January 1, 1501, but, reported the ambassador, “he seems to grow younger every day.”

On the afternoon of August 5, 1503, Alexander, Caesar, and some others dined in the open air at the villa of Cardinal Adriano da Corneto not far from the Vatican. All remained in the gardens until midnight, for the heat in doors was exhausting. On the eleventh the Cardinal was attacked by a severe fever which lasted three days and then  subsided. On the twelfth both the Pope and his son were bedded with fever and vomiting. Rome, as usual , talked of poison; Caesar, said the gossip, had ordered the poisoning of the Cardinal to secure his fortune; by mistake the poisoned food had been eaten by nearly all  the guests. Historians now agree with the physicians who treated the Pope, that the cause was malarial infection, invited by prolonged exposure to the night air of summer Rome. In the same month malarial fever laid low half the household of the Pope, and many of these cases proved fatal; in Rome there were hundreds of deaths from the same cause in the season.

Alexander lingered for thirteen days between life and death, occasionally recovering to the extent of resuming conferences of diplomacy; on August 13 he played cards. The doctors bled him repeatedly, probably once too much, depleting his natural strength. He died on August 18. Soon afterward the body became black and fetid, lending colour to hasty rumors of poison. Carpenters and porters, “joking and blaspheming,” says  Burchard, had trouble forcing the swollen corpse into the coffin designed for it. Gossip added a little devil had been seen, at the moment of death, carrying Alexander’s soul to hell.

[mabel1015j]

200 bodices!?! Extravagance is not a new thing.....the more things change.........

I am always amazed at how much travel folks did before the mid-twentieth century, when it was sooo difficult. 28 days in a coach! Oh my! Even in my young yrs, that seems like a travail.

What interesting characters these are. I must find the new book on the Borgias, hope it's written in an interesting way......jean

[Emily]

Another view of Lucrezia Borgia from the historians in Rome. There was the case of the 'Roman enfante', a child born and claimed by both Caesar and Pope Alexander according to two Papal bulls. Lucrezia was said to have given birth to this child while waiting for her divorce from her first husband. The child was named Giovanni, the same name as her husband, but was raised as a Borgia. Lucrezia denied the enfant was hers, and since there was no DNA at the time, anthing could be denied.

An excerpt from Wikipedia...........

In June 1497 she retired to the convent of San Sisto to await the outcome of the divorce which was finalised in the December of that year. In February 1498 the bodies of a servant, Pedro Calderon, and a maid, Pantasilea, were found in the Tiber. In March 1498 the Ferrarese ambassador reported that the Lucrezia had given birth. Although this was denied, a child was born in that year before Lucrezia's marriage to Alfonso of Aragon. He was named Giovanni but known to historians as the Roman Infante.

Some believe the child was her brother Cesare's, but that Perotto, due to his fondness for Lucrezia, claimed that it was his. During her pregnancy, she stayed away from Rome at a convent, so no one would know, and Perotto would bring her messages from her father in Rome. According to this theory, Lucrezia was worried that if news of her pregnancy reached the citizens of Rome, they would surely know it was Cesare's child. Cesare, at the time, was a Cardinal of the Church; if he had been sharing an illicit sexual relationship with his sister during her marriage to Giovanni, it would have to be concealed from everyone.

In 1501, two papal bulls were issued concerning the child, Giovanni Borgia. In the first, he was recognized as Cesare's child from an affair before his marriage. The second, contradictory, bull recognized him as the son of Pope Alexander VI. Lucrezia's name is not mentioned in either, and rumours that she was his mother have never been proven. The second bull was kept secret for many years, and Giovanni was assumed to be Cesare's son. This is supported by the fact that in 1502, he became Duke of Camerino, one of Cesare's recent conquests, hence the natural inheritance of the Duke of Romagna's oldest son. However, some time after Alexander's death, Giovanni went to stay with Lucrezia in Ferrara, where he was accepted as her half-brother.

Emily

[Emily]

Rodrigo Borgia (aka Pope Alexander) and his bastard son Caesar had an unnatural fascination with his bastard daughter Lucrezia when she was still a child.

The machinazations of these two sexual predators are as sleazy as any pornographic story. They trained Lucrezia well and she was as unfaithful to her husbands as they were to every woman they met. After her last marriage one of her affairs was with the poet Bembo.

A quote from Lord Byron........

On 15 October 1816, the Romantic poet Lord Byron visited the Ambrosian Library of Milan. He was delighted by the letters between (Lucrezia) Borgia and Bembo, "The prettiest love letters in the world"

Lucrezia died after giving birth to her seventh or eighth child. With the cover of a husband, she didn't deny these babies, and perhaps the servants were relieved not to be drowned in the river, but as to who their fathers were, only dna could say.

What a bag of sleezeballs these criminal Borgias were, all the while pimped out in the Vatican Palace.

Emily

[JoanK]

" Cesare, at the time, was a Cardinal of the Church; if he had been sharing an illicit sexual relationship with his sister during her marriage to Giovanni, it would have to be concealed from everyone."

So there WAS a limit to what people would accept from their spiritual leaders!

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC
Vol. V The Renaissance.
Pages 433-435


The Romans rejoiced at the passing of the Spanish Pope. Riots broke out, the “catalans” were chased from the city or were killed in their tracks; their houses were plundered by the mob; one hundred dwellings were burned. The armed troops of the Colonna and the Orsini entered the city on August 22 and  23, over the protests of the college of cardinals. Said Guicciardini, the patriotic Florentine:

“The whole city of Rome ran together with incredible alacrity, and crowded about the corpse in St. Peter’s Church, and were not able to satisfy their eyes with the sight of a dead serpent, who, with his immoderate ambition and detestable treachery, with manifold instances of horrid cruelty and monstrous lust, and exposed to sale all things without distinction, both sacred and profane, had intoxicated the whole world.”

 Machiavelli agreed with Guicciardini:

“Alexander did nothing but deceive, and thought of nothing else during the whole of his life;  nor did any man vow with stronger oaths to observe promises which he afterwards broke. Nevertheless he succeeded in everything, for he was well acquainted with this part of the world.”

These condemnations were based on two assumptions: that the tales told of Alexander in Rome were true, and that Alexander was unjustified in the methods that he used to reclaim the Papal States. Catholic historians while defending Alexander’s right to restore the temporal power of the papacy, generally join in condemning Alexander’s methods and morals. Says the honest Pastor:

“He was universally described as a monster, and every sort of foul crime was attributed to him. Modern critical research has in many points judged him more fairly and rejected some of the worst accusations made against him. But even though we must beware of accepting without examination all the tales told of Alexander by his contemporaries. . . and though the bitter wit of the Romans found its favourite exercises in tearing to pieces without mercy, and attributing to him in popular pasquinades and scholarly epigrams a life of incredible foulness, still so much against him has been clearly proved that we are forced to reject the modern attempts at whitewashing him as an unworthy tampering with truth . . . From the Catholic point of view it is impossible to blame Alexander too severely. “

Protestant historians have sometimes shown a generous lenience to Alexander . William Roscoe, in his classic Life and Pontificate of Leo X ( 1827), was among the first to say a good word for the Borgia Pope:
“Whatever were his crimes, there can be no doubt that they have been highly overcharged. That he was devoted to the aggrandizement of his family, and that he employed the authority of his elevated station to establish a permanent dominion in Italy in the person of his son, cannot be doubted; but when almost all the sovereigns of Europe were attempting to gratify their ambition by means equally criminal, it seems unjust to brand Alexander with any  peculiar and extraordinary share of infamy in this respect. While Louis of France and Ferdinand of Spain conspired together to seize upon and divide the Kingdom of Naples, by an example of treachery that can never be sufficiently execrated, Alexander might surely think himself justified in suppressing the turbulent barons, who had for ages rent the dominions of the Church with intestine wars, and in subjecting the petty sovereigns of the Romangna, over whom he had an acknowledged supremacy, and who had in general acquired their dominions by means as unjustifiable  as those which he adopted against them. With respect to the accusation so generally believed, of a criminal intercourse between him and his  own daughter . . .  it might not be difficult  to show its improbability. In the second place  the vices of Alexander were accompanied, though not compensated, by many great qualities, which in the consideration of his character ought not to be passed over in silence. . . Even by his severest adversaries he is allowed to have been a man of elevated genius, of a wonderful memory, eloquent, vigilant, and dexterous in the management of all his concerns.”

[Brian]

pasquinades

I don't remember coming across this word before.
It has a most interesting derivation - - - I looked it up in Wikipedia.

There is little doubt that Alexander was a prime rogue.

Brian

[JoanK]

And by being an "elevated genious" was able to accomplish more with his roguery.

[Emily]

Thank you Brian for calling attention to the word 'pasquinades'. I sometimes speed read right past such gems.

Here is a description from wikipedia on its origins. The lampooning tradition was ancient among Romans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasquino

Emily

[mabel1015j]

Thanks for the vocabulary lesson. That's one my little favorite things abt the internet, that i can find those little gems immediately.......jean

[Emily]

The best part of Brian's mention of 'pasquinades' was going to the link to read of its origins. While reading I clicked on a link inside the first one and found the following.

The link was to Domus Aurea (Golden House). Nero built it after Rome burned. I had heard of the Golden House but not the details of its building or the details of its being submerged for centuries under other projects. The story of its erection is not long and well worth the time.

Here is the connection to the 'Renaissance' from the link below.

Renaissance

When a young Roman inadvertently fell through a cleft in the Aventine hillside at the end of the 15th century, he found himself in a strange cave or grotta filled with painted figures. Soon the young artists of Rome were having themselves let down on boards knotted to ropes to see for themselves. The fourth style frescoes that were uncovered then have faded to pale gray stains on the plaster now, but the effect of these freshly-rediscovered grottesche decorations was electrifying in the early Renaissance, which was just arriving in Rome. When Pinturicchio, Raphael and Michelangelo crawled underground and were let down shafts to study them, carving their names on the walls to let the world know they had been there, the paintings were a revelation of the true world of antiquity.

Beside the graffiti signatures of later tourists, like Casanova and the Marquis de Sade scratched into a fresco inches apart (British Archaeology June 1999), are the autographs of Domenico Ghirlandaio, Martin van Heemskerck, and Filippino Lippi.

It was even claimed that various classical artworks found at this time - such as the Laocoön and his Sons and Venus Kallipygos - were found within or near the Domus's remains, though this is now accepted as unlikely (high quality artworks would have been removed - to the Temple of Peace, for example - before the Domus was covered over with earth).

The frescoes' effect on Renaissance artists was instant and profound (it can be seen most obviously in Raphael's decoration for the loggias in the Vatican), and the white walls, delicate swags, and bands of frieze — framed reserves containing figures or landscapes — have returned at intervals ever since, notably in late 18th century Neoclassicism, making Famulus one of the most influential painters in the history of art.

I remember from reading Pliny's Natural History and the artists known as Famulus and Amulius. We called them 'Fabulus' and 'Amorulius' but that is what teenagers do when studying Roman history. It has been over sixty years and I never knew the connection to Pinturicchio, Raphael, and Michelangelo cenutries later.

The Domus Aurea is being excavated and part of it can be viewed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_Aurea

Emily

[mabel1015j]

Love the graffitti statement.....the more things change......... Jean

[JoanK]

The story of "pasquinades" is wonderful! People will find away to make themselves heard, even in the most oppressive regime.

Look what is happening in Egypt now. I hope the protesters have acheived what they think they have, and not just gotten a new military dictator.

[JoanK]

And the "Domus" remains. What a pity they have faded, even if the highest quality statues were preserved, I guess they couldn't preserve the frescos.

What a treasure trove this discussion is!

[Emily]

Durant writes..........

Protestant historians have sometimes shown a generous lenience to Alexander . William Roscoe, in his classic Life and Pontificate of Leo X ( 1827), was among the first to say a good word for the Borgia Pope:


“Whatever were his crimes, there can be no doubt that they have been highly overcharged. That he was devoted to the aggrandizement of his family, and that he employed the authority of his elevated station to establish a permanent dominion in Italy in the person of his son, cannot be doubted; but when almost all the sovereigns of Europe were attempting to gratify their ambition by means equally criminal, it seems unjust to brand Alexander with any  peculiar and extraordinary share of infamy in this respect.

I will make this short Roscoe. You have no ethics, morals, or judgement.

To say that because your neighbor went out on a killing spree, that should entitle you to do the same without condemnation shows you to be as immoral and ethnically challenged as Pope Borgia.

There would be no civilization if the likes of Roscoe and Borgia and their ideas became the law of the land.

A pox on both their houses.

Emily

[3kings(Trevor)]

Durants' SoC.
Vol. V   The Renaissance.
Pages 435-437

Bishop Creighton summarized Alexander’s character and achievements in general agreement with Roscoe’s judgment, and far more mercifully than Pastor. A later judgment is more favorable still-- by Protestant scholar Richard Garnett in The Cambridge Modern History :


“Alexander’s character has undoubtedly gained by the scrutiny of modern historians. It was but natural that one accused by so many critics, and unquestionably the cause of many scandals, should alternately appear as a tyrant and a voluptuary. Neither description suits him. The groundwork of his character was extreme exuberance of nature. The Venetian ambassador calls him a carnal man, not implying anything morally derogatory, but meaning a man of sanguine temperament, unable to control his passions and emotions. This perplexed the cool unimpassioned Italians of the diplomatic type then prevalent among rulers and statesmen, and their apprehensions have unduly prejudiced Alexander, who in truth was not less but more human than most princes of his time. This excessive “carnality” wrought for good and ill. Unrestrained by moral scruples, or in any spiritual conception of religion, he was betrayed by it into gross sensuality of one kind, though in other respects he was temperate and abstemious. In the more respectable guise of family affection it led him to outrage every principal of justice, though even here he only performed a necessary work which could not, as one of his agents said, have been accomplished by  “holy” water. On the other hand, his geniality and joyousness preserved him from tyranny in the ordinary sense of the term. . . .  As a ruler, careful of the material weal of his people, he ranks among the best of his age; as a practical statesman he was the equal of any contemporary. But his insight was impaired by his lack of political morality;  he had nothing of the higher wisdom which comprehends the characteristics and foresees the drift of an epoch, and he did not know what a principle was.”


Those of us who share Alexander's sensitivity to the charms and graces of woman, cannot find it in their hearts to throw stones at him for his amours. His prepapal deviations were no more scandalous than those of Aeneas Sylvius, who fares so well with the historians, or of Julius II, whom time has graciously forgiven. It is not recorded that  these two Popes took such care of their mistresses and their children as Alexander did of his. Indeed there  was something familial and domestic about Alexander that would have made him a relatively respectable man if the laws of the Church, as well as the customs of Renaissance Italy and protestant Germany and England, had allowed the marriage of clergy; his sin was not against nature but against the rule of celibacy soon to be rejected by half of Christendom. We cannot say that his relation with Guilia Farnese was carnal; so far as we know, neither Vanozza, nor Lucrezia, nor Guilia’s husband expressed any objection to it; perhaps it was the simple delight of a normal man in the lure and vivacity of a beautiful woman.

Our judgment of Alexander’s politics must distinguish between his ends and his means. his purposes were entirely legitimate-- to recover the “Patrimony of Peter” ( essentially the ancient Latium) from disorderly feudal barons, and to regain from usurping despots the traditional States of the Church. The methods used by Alexander and Caesar in realizing these aims were those used by all other states then and now-- war, diplomacy, deceit, treachery, violation of treaties, and desertion of allies. Alexander’s abandonment of the Holy League, his purchase of French soldiers and support at the price of surrendering Milan to France, were major crimes against Italy. And those secular means that states use, and consider indispensable, in the lawless jungle of international strife, offend us when employed by a pope pledged to the principles of Christ. Whatever danger the Church ran of becoming subject to some domineering government-- as  to France at Avignon--- if she lost her own territories, it would have been better for her to sacrifice all temporal power, and be as poor again as the Galilean fishermen, than to adopt the ways of the world to achieve her political ends. By adopting them, and financing them, she gained a state and lost a third of Christendom.

[Brian]

Time for a thanks here - - - thank you Trevor for your constancy in posting
the pages of our chosen book.  May you live long enough to finish the task !

And while I am waxing poetic,   may I be granted the plaudits given to Alexander
when my time arrives to exit this world - - -

The groundwork of his character was extreme exuberance of nature.

his sin was not against nature but against the rule of celibacy

it was the simple delight of a normal man in the lure and vivacity of a beautiful woman.

Brian

[3kings(Trevor)]

I am surprised that historians, as opposed to mere commentators, should spend so much time on the sexual activities between seemingly consenting adults. Such behavior has little to do with  "Urbi et Orbi", which in my opinion is the real subject of history.

In any study of the Borgias' activities, sex seems so often to be the overriding concern. I would rather hear about......" Alexander's insight was impaired by his lack of political morality; he had nothing of the higher wisdom which comprehends the characteristics and foresees the drift of an epoch, and he did not know what a principle was ."

That above all else identifies the essence of the man, and also his contemporaries.
 

[3kings(Trevor)]

Thank you Brian, and others who have made similar remarks. It is pleasing to hear that my efforts are appreciated.......  Trevor

[mabel1015j]

Ditto to Trevor's good work for us!!!

And ditto about the sexual exploits of popes. Do the Durant's have much more of this for us? It's beginning to bore me. ......... Jean

[JoanK]

TREVOR: let us know you are all right. Do you live anywhere near christchurch, where the earthquake was?

[3kings(Trevor)]

Thanks for asking. All the old seniornet group who used to post in those and these  pages, live in the North Island, far from Christchurch, which is a South Island city. So we are all OK.

The first quake, last September happened at 4am, and though it caused massive damage, miraculously no one was killed. This last quake happened at 1pm, when the city was crowded, and the loss of life is going to be in the hundreds.

Many countries, including the US, are sending special rescue teams and so far many trapped under the rubble have been rescued alive. But time is running short, and aftershocks are interrupting rescue efforts.   +++ Trevor