Lucrezia Borgia by Emma Lucas

Author:Emma Lucas [Emma Lucas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographies/Women
ISBN: 9781612308159
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.
Published: 2014-10-14T04:00:00+00:00

“All things change. Ferrara which of old, girt round by lowly walls, on one side the green river bank, on the other the marshy lagoon, in poverty held but slender resources, narrow houses and narrow temples of the Gods . . . now stands out among the neighboring cities as much as Father Apennine among the vine-clad hills, or the Po among the rivers.”

- Ariosto, epithalamium for the marriage of Alfonso d’Este and Lucrezia Borgia

The journey to Ferrara was hard on everyone. So great was the pope’s concern for his daughter, the Ferrarese envoys told Ercole, that he demanded daily, even hourly, reports of her journey, and he required her “to write him with her own hand from every city regarding her health.” She must dress warmly and protect both her face and her person against the snow, Alexander told Lucrezia in a letter written the day after she left Rome. Now that she was gone from him forever, he began having second thoughts about this marriage he had promoted so enthusiastically. He never wanted to hear that Alfonso wasn’t according his wife the love and affection to which she was entitled, he told Cardinal Ippolito. In fact, nothing would displease him more than the news that Alfonso was neglecting to sleep with Lucrezia as he had neglected to sleep with his first wife, Anna Sforza.

His Holiness need have no concern on that score, Ippolito replied. If Alfonso had not slept with his first wife, it was because she had claimed more than was her due and had not behaved as a wife should toward her husband, whereas everyone knew that Lucrezia was too prudent to make the same mistake. In short, though the cardinal did not say so in so many words, Alfonso had a right to as many extramarital affairs as he pleased, and he expected his wife to overlook them as the unfortunate Anna apparently had not.

For perhaps the first time in Alexander’s life, he must have questioned the double standard by which he and every other man lived. But though he may have felt that his daughter deserved better of her husband, he knew that getting Alfonso to sleep with her on a regular basis was all that she could reasonably expect; and he did not protest. Lucrezia, of course, was unaware of his efforts on her behalf and would have felt humiliated had she learned of them.

Just as her father needed to be reassured constantly that all was well with her, so she needed constant reassurance that all was well with the son she had left behind in Rome. Even the cold and self-centered Ippolito was sufficiently moved by her concern to send a messenger to look in on the boy one morning after mass. The messenger had found Rodrigo resting quietly and peacefully; thanks to God as beautiful and healthy as anyone could wish, Ippolito told her in a letter written on the sixteenth of January. If such letters served to assuage her anxiety

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