The Pope's Daughter by Dario Fo

Author:Dario Fo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2015-06-23T16:00:00+00:00

Matchmaker of herself

As Lucrezia carried on her important work, she also found herself involved in the dispute with the representatives of the duke of Ferrara over certain clauses of her nuptial contract. In truth, this too was another brilliant maneuver on the part of the master of the house of Borgia, that is, the father of the bride. The fact that she herself was authorized to conduct the negotiations only elevates the weight and value of the complete independence this young lady could rightly boast. As we have seen, Duke Ercole intended to extract the greatest possible profit from that wedding, exactly as the likely bride had suggested he do. While the pope himself was strongly motivated to ensure a positive outcome to the negotiations, the duke of Ferrara’s demands were nonetheless exorbitant, to say the least. Lucrezia’s prospective father-in-law was demanding no less than 200,000 ducats as a dowry, plus various territories with accompanying castles, special privileges for the duke’s younger sons, as well as the complete elimination of the annual tribute that the House of Este was required to pay to the pope in exchange for their right to rule the city, of course, which was one of the Vatican’s feudal holdings. In these negotiations, Lucrezia’s position was not that of someone haggling for her own advantage, but rather—and shamelessly—for the absolute benefit of her future father-in-law and Alfonso d’Este, the groom-to-be.

And so the pontiff, who only weighed in toward the end of the debate, found himself obliged to comply, against his own wishes and best interests, with the demands of the duke of Ferrara. But we, always prepared to see the worst in people, are entirely certain that here too there was a masterfully conducted charade set in motion by Pope Alexander VI, who played in all this the role of the reluctant profiteer forced to give in to the wishes of his daughter and her immense influence. A role that in the end got him exactly what he wanted.

Then, on September 1, 1501, at Palazzo Belfiore in Ferrara, the marriage ceremony was celebrated ad verba, that is, in the bride’s absence; the bride was in Rome awaiting preparations for the journey that would take her to her new home in Ferrara, a city that was finally free of meddling from both her father and her unspeakable brother.

In the negotiations it was verbally accorded that the bride could not take with her Rodrigo, her baby son, just two years old, the child of her second husband Alfonso. There is no need to elaborate on how profound the mother’s grief must have been.

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