The murder of the Duke of Gandia—Caesar departs to crown the King of Naples—He returns to Rome—The Pope’s projected matrimonial alliances for his children.

The most circumstantial account we have of the murder of the Duke of Gandia is contained in Burchard’s diary,16 and is as follows: “June fourteenth the cardinal of Valencia and the Illustrious Don Giovanni Borgia of Aragon, Duke of Gandia, Prince of the Holy Roman Church, Captain-General of the pontifical forces, and most beloved son of his Holiness dined at the home of their mother, Donna Vannozza, near the church of San Pietro ad Vincola with their mother and several other persons. The repast finished and night having come, Caesar and Gandia, accompanied by a few of their people, mounted their horses and mules to return to the Apostolic Palace. They rode together to a place not far from the palace of Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the Vice-Chancellor. There the Duke, saying he intended to go and enjoy himself for a while before returning to the palace, took leave of his brother, the cardinal, and having dismissed all but one of the servants he had with him, he rode back. He also kept with him a certain person who was masked and who had come to him while at supper, and who for the past month had been coming to see him almost every day at the Apostolic Palace. The Duke took this person up on the crupper of his mule and rode off to the Piazza degli Ebrei, where he left the servant he had kept, telling him to wait for him there until the twenty-third hour, and if he did not return then to go back to the palace. Having given these instructions, the Duke with the mysterious person on the crupper, rode away from the servant to some place—I know not where—and was killed and thrown into the river.”

The servant left in the Piazza degli Ebrei was found there mortally wounded and unable to give any information.

The morning of the fifteenth day, the Duke having failed to return to the Apostolic Palace, the Pope became uneasy, but, assuming that his son had gone to see some mistress and that he did not wish to be observed coming away in the daytime, the father concluded he would return that night; but Gandia failing to put in an appearance, the Holy Father became alarmed and caused a thorough investigation to be made.

Among those examined was a certain Giorgio Sclavus, who made a business of gathering driftwood along the banks of the river and who stated that on the night the Duke disappeared he was guarding his wood when, about the fifth hour, he saw two men on foot come from the Hospital Sclavorum, along the public highway close to the river. After looking about in every direction and seeing no one, they returned the way they had come. Soon after two others appeared from precisely the same place and did as the former couple had done, and, discovering no one, they made a signal to their comrades. Immediately a man rode forth on a white charger with a dead body behind him.

The corpse was taken from the horse and cast into the stream, whereupon the rider asked, “Did it sink?” To which the others replied, “Signor, si.” Then all disappeared whence they had come.

When the man was asked why he had not reported the crime to the Governor of the city, he replied that in his time he had seen a hundred bodies cast into the Tiber at this very place and no questions had been asked.

Men were secured in the city to drag the river; a large reward was offered for the recovery of the body, and about nightfall it was found, fully clothed; even his purse, containing thirty ducats, was untouched. On the corpse were nine wounds, one in the throat and eight in the head, body, and legs, thus proving that the Duke had bravely defended himself. The body was taken to the Castle of St. Angelo, and subsequently to the Church of Santa Maria.

When Alexander learned of his son’s murder his grief exceeded all bounds. For several days he would neither eat nor drink, and the efforts of his familiars to console him were unavailing.

The Pope directed the Governor of the city to apprehend the murderers, but in vain. Rome was filled with rumours. The Orsini were suspected, so was Bartolomeo d’Alviano; even Lucretia Borgia’s husband, Giovanni Sforza, was mentioned in connection with the crime. By those close to the Pope Cardinal Ascanio Sforza was said to have been, if not the perpetrator at least the instigator of the murder—he had recently complained to the Pope of an insult he had received from Gandia. Ascanio, when summoned by his Holiness, refused to obey until his safety had been guaranteed by the ambassadors of Spain and Naples. When he did appear, however, the Pope received him kindly and allowed him to depart at his pleasure. Ascanio, nevertheless, believed it prudent to leave Rome for a while.

It was also said that Antonio Maria Pico della Mirandola, inspired by Ascanio, had committed the murder, and even Giuffre was suspected, because—at least, so it was stated—Gandia had been unduly intimate with his wife. In the effort to fasten the guilt on Caesar it was said that both he and Gandia were rivals for Sancia’s favours, and that, owing to jealousy, he had killed his brother. Burchard’s account contains all that is known of the murder of the Duke. Suspicion finally crystallised around Caesar, although the reasons for ascribing the crime to him are so slight that it is amazing that historians have for four hundred years laid the guilt at his door; we are not offered even circumstantial evidence; the most that is adduced against him is a possible motive, and there were undoubtedly equally strong motives for him against the crime, especially if he had the astuteness we are led to believe he possessed.

Even admitting he was potentially the criminal into which he later developed, is it possible that he would have begun his career of iniquity with a crime so monstrous as the deliberately planned murder of his own brother? Caesar was then twenty-one and Gandia twenty-three years of age. The latter may have received great honours at the hands of their father, but so had the former. Caesar, a Prince of the Church, of vast wealth, could look forward to a far more brilliant career than could any mere princeling of Benevento. He must have known that even the Papacy was within his prospects, and in that age what potentate in Italy could compare with Christ’s Vicar? Although Caesar disliked the Church the sacerdotal character of the cardinal was no impediment to great temporal enterprises; like a cloak, it could be laid aside and assumed again at pleasure; it was a distinct advantage, as Caesar must have known.

There are men who are jealous of the success of all others, but they are invariably weak characters, and no one can accuse Caesar Borgia of weakness; even admitting he was jealous of Gandia, it is unlikely that his jealousy was sufficiently bitter to induce him to plan the murder of his brilliant and accomplished brother, whose talents and advancement would surely contribute to the progress of all the family. In that age, although there were determined family feuds and rivalries, there was frequently a strong sense of family solidarity, and this the Borgias possessed in an eminent degree.

Who was the unknown man in the mask who had been coming to see Gandia at the Papal Palace almost daily for a month past, and who had even called on him during the supper in Vannozza’s garden? Perhaps some pander or low associate who had accompanied him during his debauches; or if not this, a decoy sent by some enemy of the Duke or of his family—and Italy was teeming with them.

If the murder was the work of some enemy, what would be more natural than for the assassin to endeavour to turn suspicion from himself and at the same time heap infamy upon the Borgias by launching the rumour that the Cardinal of Valencia was the author of the crime?

It is clear that Gandia voluntarily went into the quarter of the city dominated by the most determined enemies of the Borgia—the Orsini. His personal attendant was found in the morning murdered, in the Piazza degli Ebrei, where the Duke had left him. Evidently the man in the mask had led Gandia into a trap, and then, after he had been dispatched, had provided for the taking off of this henchman. When Gandia left the servant he evidently thought he might not return that evening.

But how could the man in the mask have visited Gandia every day for a month for the purpose of entrapping him, without the Duke discovering it was a plot? Clearly Gandia had no suspicions whatever.

The whole affair is so mysterious that we are inclined to ask whether Burchard’s statement of the circumstances is correct.

It is against all reason to suppose that Gandia would have ventured at night unattended into the quarter of the Orsini with a strange man behind him on his mule, unless he was going to keep an assignation, and his remark to Caesar shows that such was his purpose.

If this assignation was only a plot to get him away from his own people, who contrived it? Did Caesar? For Caesar to have arranged it right in the stronghold of their bitterest enemies, a mass of details, a planning, and a coincidence of events wellnigh impossible would have been necessary. It is much more logical to suppose that those enemies themselves planned it—especially as Gandia had been brought from Spain expressly to crush the Orsini.

Again—we may ask—was the Duke playing false with his own people? He had seen little of them, he scarcely knew them. Did he perhaps fancy that he might rise more rapidly by casting his fortunes with the enemies of the Pope than by supporting him? Was the mysterious man in the mask the agent of some family or faction trying to win over the Duke? Gandia accompanied this man apparently without even a suggestion of fear into the enemy’s quarter. If he was concerned in some conspiracy against his family and the Vatican, some obstacle in the negotiations may have made his death and that of the bully left in the square necessary to prevent exposure, even if it had not at first been intended to murder the Duke.

If he was plotting against the Vatican, who were his fellow-conspirators in the Orsini quarter? The affair seems to contain more than a mere assignation, for if not why was it necessary to dispatch the servant?

It was not long before accusations came from without, started perhaps by persons who at a distance felt secure from the wrath of the Borgia.

February 22, 1498, Pigna, the Ferrarese ambassador in Venice, reported that he had heard that Caesar had caused the Duke of Gandia’s death. This was more than eight months after the crime; it was the first time the charge had definitely been made; several of the Orsini were then in Venice, and they would undoubtedly have spread the rumour, as the Pope had endeavoured to cast suspicion on them. If they, however, had brought about the Duke’s destruction, they would probably have gloried in the deed.

The accusation once made against Caesar, it was repeated by Paolo Capello in a relation of September 25, 1500, and also in the famous letter to Silvio Savelli of November 15, 1501. This same Capello, Venetian ambassador, wrote: “Every night the bodies of four or five murdered men, bishops, prelates, and so forth, are found in Rome.” Under Alexander VI. crime held high carnival in the Eternal City, as it had under his predecessors.

The Pope did not receive Caesar—at least, publicly—for five weeks, and the cardinal busied himself with preparations for his journey to Naples to crown the King.

His Holiness seemed to have changed; he was constantly at work with the six cardinals he had appointed to draw up plans for the reform of the Church, and he declared in consistory that henceforth family considerations and projects would have no weight with him.

At last he gave up trying to discover the murderer, and the conviction became general that he, better than all others, knew who the guilty one was. Alessandro Braccio, the Florentine orator in Rome, said in one of his dispatches: “Whoever managed the affair had a good head, and courage—and every one admits that he was a ‘master.’” This peculiar attitude toward crime, which is merely a form of the unreasoned and immoral admiration for success regardless of means still everywhere prevalent, was especially noticeable in Italy during the Renaissance. Machiavelli well illustrates it in his remarks on Giovanpagolo Baglioni in connection with the expedition of Pope Julius II. to Perugia in 1505, for the express purpose of driving the Baglioni from their domain. Although the Pope had a considerable army he entered the city with only a small guard, in spite of the fact that Giovanpagolo had a large force—and the “prudent men who were with the Pope commented on his rashness and on the cowardice of Giovanpagolo, who might have won eternal glory and at the same time have destroyed his enemy and secured vast spoils, for the Pope was accompanied by all the cardinals with their rich belongings. His restraint was not due to any goodness or conscience, for he was a man who, in order to reign, had murdered many of his kinsmen; and it was concluded that there are men who do not know how to be great criminals or perfectly good—for a crime may possess greatness and be to some extent glorious [generosa]. Therefore Giovanpagolo did not know how—or better, did not dare—when he had the opportunity, to perform a deed for which every one would have admired his courage and which would have secured him eternal fame. And he would have been the first to show the prelates how little respect is due to those who live and reign as they do; and he would have performed a deed whose greatness would have wiped out all infamy.”17

The Vice-Chancellor’s palace near which Caesar and Gandia parted on the night of June 14, 1497, was on the Banchi Vecchi in the Ponte Quarter, where the Orsini had four strongholds—Monte Giordano, Torre di Nona, Tor Millina, and Tor Sanguigna. Besides the Orsini and their retainers a large number of Jews dwelt in this part of the city.

June 16th Cardinal Ascanio Sforza sent his brother, the Moor, an account of the tragedy, which agrees closely with that of Burchard. He adds that Gandia’s mule was found near the house of Carlo da Parma. Burchard’s narrative agrees with all those of the day. Many of the Romans made no effort to conceal their joy at being rid of one Borgia, and the satirists did not overlook the murder.

More than three years afterwards, September 28, 1500, the Venetian Ambassador, Paolo Capello, definitely stated that Caesar was the murderer; Capello, however, was not in Rome at the time of the assassination.

It may never be known who was the murderer of the Duke of Gandia, but there is absolutely no proof that Caesar either instigated or planned the assassination. Gandia was about to form an alliance which the Pope believed—and Caesar must have been of the same opinion—would materially strengthen the house of Borgia, and the power of the family had not yet become so firmly established that Caesar would have been likely to commit a terrible crime for the purpose of securing the sole dominion for himself. He still had need of Gandia, whatever the future might bring him. There certainly were numerous enemies of the Borgia who would profit much more by the destruction of a member of the family than Caesar could.

The kingdom of Naples was torn by discord; one faction supported France, another Aragon; and in his brief appointing the Cardinal of Valencia legate to crown the King, the Pope enjoined him to put an end to the strife. Caesar’s mission was an important one.

Accompanied by a numerous retinue, the expenses of which were to be borne by King Frederic, the Cardinal of Valencia left Rome for Naples, and August 1st reached Capua, where he was received by the royal Court with the highest honours. There he fell ill, and Giuffre and his wife, Sancia, left Rome almost immediately to go to him. However, his illness could not have been serious, for he crowned Frederic, the last of the Aragonese rulers of Naples, August 10, 1497.

Caesar acquitted himself well, displaying a dignity beyond his years. He was invested with special privileges for the occasion; the symbols of the spiritual as well as of the temporal power—the flabel, the sedia gestatoria, the globe, and the sword—were borne before the Pope’s representative, who exerted himself to secure the goodwill of the new sovereign, who invested him, as the representative of the son of the unfortunate Duke of Gandia, with Benevento, the barony of Fiumara, and the county of Montefoscolo.

August 22nd, to the great relief of Frederic, whose exchequer was suffering severely on account of the entertainment, Caesar set out to return to Rome; as he did not reach the city until the 5th of the following month, he may have spent some time inspecting the estates granted Gandia’s son by the newly-crowned King.

The morning of the 6th—says Burchard—all the cardinals who were in the city went to meet Caesar at Santa Maria Nuova, and later all were received by his Holiness, and the Master of Ceremonies adds, “neither father nor son uttered a word, but the Pope, having blessed him, descended from the throne.” In this circumstance some writers discover evidence of Caesar’s guilt.

The Pope, accompanied by the Cardinals of Valencia and of Agrigentum, with an escort of a thousand men, went to Ostia, October 17th, to spend a few days. The large guard was made necessary by the proximity of the Orsini. The Pope and his family were in grave danger, and now that Gandia was dead who was to defend them? Giuffre was scarcely twenty, and he had cast his fortunes with the House of Aragon; moreover, he showed none of Caesar’s resoluteness.

At the coronation of the King of Naples the legate had used a sword upon which was engraved the motto Cum Numine Caesaris Amen and Caesar Borgia Cardinalis Valentianus, and which is now in the possession of the Gaetani family of Rome. All the engravings on the blade represent scenes of war, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that the cardinal’s dreams turned more to military glory than to ecclesiastical honours, and Gregorovius says, “the allusions to the Caesar of the Roman Empire show what ideas were already seething in the cardinal’s brain.”

In November, 1497, the Spanish physician Gaspare Torrella dedicated to the youthful cardinal a work on a loathsome disease which had been spread in Italy by the soldiers of Charles VIII., and which was in consequence called the “French sickness.” Caesar himself evidently had suffered from it, for the author states that the world owed the cardinal a debt of gratitude for subjecting himself to his treatment.18 A work by Sebastiano Aquilano of Padua on the same subject was dedicated to Ludovico Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua.

February 14, 1498, the body of Pedro Calderon, one of the Pope’s familiars, was found in the Tiber, into which he had fallen, non libenter, as Burchard says, a few days before. In this connection the Venetian ambassador, Capello, writes: “and another time he [Caesar] murdered with his own hand messer Pierotto, under the very mantle of the Pope, so that the blood spurted up into the face of his Holiness, of whom Pierotto was a favourite.” This account agrees with that in the letter to Silvio Savelli. Sanudo’s report of the affair is the same as Burchard’s, but he adds that Pierotto was “found drowned in the Tiber with a young woman called Madona Panthasilea, one of Madonna Lucretia’s young women and a creature of this pontiff’s—and the cause is not known.” Early in the year 1498 it was rumoured in Rome that Caesar intended to leave the Church. A letter written by Alexander in August, 1497—less than two months after the murder of the Duke of Gandia—shows that the Pope was already considering a plan which implied this step on his son’s part. Caesar now seldom appeared in the garb of a cleric; he went everywhere dressed in the “French style” and armed. His tastes were altogether martial.

It appears that his Holiness was scheming for Caesar to marry either the widow of King Ferdinand of Naples or DoÑa Sancia, his sister-in-law, who was to be separated from Giuffre for this purpose; later the Prince of Squillace was to be made a cardinal to replace his brother, in order that the number of Spanish members of the Sacred College be kept the same.

In this connection Sanudo says in his diary: “Giuffre, younger than his wife, has not yet consummated the marriage (he is not sixteen), he is not a man, and according to what I have heard DoÑa Sancia has for some months been the mistress of the Cardinal of Valencia.” Fifteenth-century chroniclers went into minute particulars.

Lucretia Borgia’s marriage with Giovanni Sforza had been dissolved in spite of the husband’s protests. For her the Pope was planning a more brilliant future than the insignificant Lord of Pesaro could offer and his Holiness readily found a pretext for getting rid of him; in his project he was assisted by both Ascanio Sforza and the Duke of Milan. Although every one was against him, Giovanni did not submit tamely, and he it was who launched the charge of incest against the Pope and Caesar and his own wife—a charge which, whether true or false, has done more than anything else to blacken their memory.

Lucretia’s formal divorce took place December 2, 1497. It had been brought about by the Pope and Caesar purely for political reasons, and it was now rumoured in Rome that she was to marry Alfonso of Bisceglia, Sancia’s brother.

The Pope had asked King Frederic for the hand of his daughter Carlotta for Caesar, but both he and the princess absolutely refused. In his anxiety, however, to escape the Pope’s wrath he made one sacrifice and consented to the marriage of Lucretia and Don Alfonso, Sancia’s younger brother. This youth of seventeen came to Rome unattended by any pomp and the betrothal took place in the Vatican June 20, 1498, and the marriage the 21st of the following month. Lucretia was about a year older than her husband.