The Fall of the House of Borgia by Chamberlin E.R

Author:Chamberlin, E.R.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2022-02-13T00:00:00+00:00

8: AT THE COURT OF FRANCE

Juan’s death totally altered Alexander’s plans for his family. There was now no other person but Cesare upon whom the dynasty could be built. Lucrezia was a woman, destined eventually to be absorbed into another family; Joffre was far too weak and young. Only through Cesare could Alexander’s ambitions be fulfilled; even if the young man had enthusiastically embraced his religious career it would have been necessary to separate him from it now. And fortunately Cesare, for the past five years, had displayed nothing but irritation at his gorgeous but meaningless Church role; only the desire to create himself a prince in the outside world.

There had been one obstacle to such a renunciation: the bulk of Cesare’s revenues came from the Church. In renouncing the hat he would make himself a poor man, as the Borgia counted poverty. Alexander could perhaps have openly robbed the Church to maintain his son in a secular status, but consistent throughout his career was his passion for legality; every ducat that passed into the Borgia coffers was paid out, in theory, on behalf of the papacy for services rendered. He could, perhaps, have tried to secure for Cesare the Dukedom of Benevento that had been intended for Juan. Cesare was already receiving most of its revenue, and it would have been little more than turning a de facto into a de jure situation. But that would consume time as would the search for another barony in the states of the Church itself, for the current occupant would have to be dispossessed. Then suddenly, Alexander found himself talking to the French ambassador, hearing of Louis’s urgent needs and assessing the price that he could be made to pay for them. Louis could only promise to use his influence on Carlotta, but he could contract outright to grant Cesare an appropriate honor as repayment for the much-needed dispensation to remarry. The bargaining was swiftly concluded. In August 1498, just four months after Louis had become king, he agreed to invest Cesare with the duchy of Valentinois complete with revenues befitting a royal duke of France. The Italians, with their love of nicknames, already had dubbed Cesare “Valentino,” from his bishopric of Valencia in Spain; the outlandish “Valentinois” received an identical change in the Italian tongue and it was as Duke Valentino that Cesare at last emerged upon the secular stage.

On August 17 Cesare attended a full consistory, dressed for the last time in the crimson of a prince of the Church, to make his formal plea to be allowed to renounce his priestly role. The argument he put forward — presumably that was placed in his mouth by the canon lawyers with Alexander’s approval — explicitly branded his father a liar and himself a bastard. The opening of his speech was unexceptional enough. It was well known, he said, that he had never been blessed with a sense of vocation and that his preferred path of life was at variance with that considered appropriate for an ecclesiastic.

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