The SoC
Volume V The Renaissance
The Borgias Pages 404-405.
The most interesting of the Renaissance popes was born at Xativa, Spain, on January 1, 1431. His parents were cousins, both of the Borjas, a family of some slight nobility. Rodrigo received his education at Xativa, Valencia, and Bologa. When his uncle became a cardinal, and then Pope Calixtus III, a straight path was opened for the young man’s advancement in an ecclesiastical career. Moving to Italy, he respelled his name Borgia, was made a cardinal at twenty-five, and at twenty-six received the fruitful office of vice-chancellor -- head of the entire Curia He performed his duties competently, earned some repute as an administrator, lived abstemiously, and made many friends in either sex. He was not yet-- would not be till his thirty-seventh year-- a priest.
He was so handsome in his youth, so attactive in the grace of his manners, his sensual ardor and cheerful temperament, his persuasive eloquence and gay wit, that women found it hard to resist him. Brought up in the easygoing morality of fifteenth-century Italy, and perceiving that many a cleric, many a priest, allowed himself the pleasure of women, this young Lothario in the purple decided to enjoy all the gifts that God had given him and them.
In 1460 Rodrigo’s first son, Pedro Luis, was born or begotten, and perhaps also his daughter Girolama, who was married in 1482; their mothers are not known. Pedro lived in Spain till 1488, came to Rome in that year, and died soon afterward. In 1464 Rodrigo accompanied Pius II to Ancona, and there contracted some minor sexual disease “because,” said his doctor, “he had not slept alone.”
About 1466 he formed a more permanent attachment with Vanozza de Catenei, then some twenty-four years old. Unfortunately, she was married to Domencio d’Arignano, but Domenico left her in 1476. To Rodrigo ( who had become a priest in 1468 ) Vanozza bore four children: Giovanni (1474), Cesare ( whome we shall call Caesar , in 1476,) Lucrezia (in 1480) and Giofre (in 1481 ). These four were ascribed to Vanozza on her tombstone, and were at one time or another acknowledged by Rodrigo as his own. Such persistent parentage suggests an almost monogamous union, and perhaps Cardinal Bogia, in comparison with other ecclesiastics, may be credited with a certain domestic fidelity and stability. He was a tender and benevolent father; it was a pity that his efforts to advance his children did not always bring glory to the Church.
When Rodrigo set his eye on the papacy he found a tolerant husband for Vanozza, and helped her to prosperity. She was twice widowed, married again, lived in modest retirement, rejoiced in the rise of her children to fame and wealth, mourned her separation from them, earned a reputation for piety, died at seventy-six (1518), and left all her substantial property to the Church.
We should betray a lack of historical sense were we to judge Rodrigo from the moral standpoint of our age--or rather our youth. His contemporaries looked upon his perpetual sexual sins as only cononically mortal, and, in the moral climate of his time, venial, and forgivable.
