Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Table of Contents Expand. The Rise of the Borgias. Rodrigo: Journey to the Papacy. Juan Borgia. The Rise of Cesare Borgia.
The Wars of Cesare Borgia. The Fall of the Borgias. Lucrezia the Patron and the End of the Borgias. The Borgia Legend. Robert Wilde. History Expert. Robert Wilde is a historian who writes about European history. He is the author of the History in an Afternoon textbook series. Updated September 10, Featured Video.
Cite this Article Format. Wilde, Robert. The Rise and Fall of the Borgia Family. The Origin and Decline of the Papal States. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for ThoughtCo. It is speculated that her withdrawal was in response to the news that Rodrigo, her son by Alfonso of Aragon, had died.
On June 24, , ten days after giving birth to a stillborn girl, Borgia died at the age of Borgia has primarily been remembered as a member of the scandalous Borgia family — the daughter of the corrupt and scheming Pope Alexander VI and the sister of the immoral and most likely murderous Cesare Borgia.
Rumors of incest with Cesare have chased her through the centuries, and events such as the birth of her mysterious baby, the death of her second husband at the hands of assassins, and her attendance of the Banquet of Chestnuts an orgy hosted by Cesare Borgia involving 50 prostitutes and countless members of the clergy have only added to the persona. But history has recently been kinder to Borgia, and she is now increasingly viewed as more of a pawn in the wicked games of her family than as a real participant.
Borgia may have been as much a casualty of her family's machinations as anyone else who fell victim to them. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Alexander VI died on Aug. Alexander VI has been widely condemned for his conduct.
He disregarded priestly celibacy and preferred political machinations to spiritual leadership. He practiced simony selling Church offices and was notorious for his nepotism.
He used his position to enrich his children, supported a mob of Spanish relatives in Rome, and created 19 Spanish cardinals. He shocked his contemporaries by openly acknowledging his children. In Alexander's favor it must be said that his morals were no worse than those of his contemporaries and that he had the real virtue of sincere love for his family. He was devastated with grief when his son Giovanni was mysteriously murdered; and although he used his daughter Lucrezia as a political pawn in her three marriages, he could hardly bear to be separated from her.
Indeed, when the evidence is interrogated more carefully, it is apparent that the Borgias were entirely typical of the families who were continually vying for the papal throne during the Renaissance. They were, for example, undoubtedly guilty of both nepotism and simony.
Although the sums involved were unquestionably exaggerated by contemporary chroniclers, both Callixtus III and Alexander VI bribed their way to the papacy, and used their power to advance their family as fully as possible.
Alexander VI alone elevated not fewer than ten of his relatives to the College of Cardinals, and endowed others with a host of fiefdoms in the Papal States.
But precisely because the papacy could so easily be misused for familial aggrandisement and enrichment, these ecclesiastical abuses were all too familiar. Though formally classed as a sin, simony was common.
In , for example, Baldassare Cossa borrowed 10, fl. Nepotism, too, was widespread. In the early fifteenth century, Martin V had secured immense estates for his Colonna relatives in the kingdom of Naples, but within a century, nepotism had become so extreme that even Machiavelli felt obliged to attack Sixtus IV — who had elevated six of his relatives to the Sacred College — for this crime.
Similarly, there is no doubting that Alexander VI was a lusty and sexually adventurous pope. He openly acknowledged fathering a bevy of children by his mistress, Vannozza dei Cattanei, and later enjoyed the legendary affections of Giulia Farnese, renowned as one of the most beautiful women of her day.
But here again, Alexander was merely following the norms of the Renaissance papacy, and it is telling that Pius II had no shame about penning a wild, sexual comedy called Chrysis. Popes and cardinals were almost expected to have mistresses. Julius II, for example, was the father of numerous children, and never bothered to hide the fact, while Cardinal Jean de Jouffroy was notorious for being a devotee of brothels.
Homosexual affairs were no less common, and in that he seems to have limited himself to only one gender, Alexander VI almost seems straight-laced. Sixtus IV was, for instance, reputed to have given the cardinals special permission to commit sodomy during the summer, perhaps to allow him to do so without fear of criticism, while Paul II was rumoured to have died while being sodomised by a page-boy. He was, of course, a ferociously ambitious figure who indulged in some pretty low tactics.
In all this, murder seemed not an occasional necessity, but an integral part of everyday existence. Later, he even slaughtered three of his own senior commanders at a dinner in Senigallia after rightly suspecting them of plotting against him.
0コメント