The Cardinal's Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince
308
The Cardinal's Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince
308eBook
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Overview
The second son of Alfonso d’Este and Lucretia Borgia, the Duke and Duchess of Ferrara, Ippolito d’Este was made the archbishop of Milan at the age of nine. But from the time of his father’s death in 1534, he set his ambitions on acquiring the powerful and coveted cardinal’s hat. But one did not become a sixteenth century prince of the church through piety and good works. Ippolito had a taste for gambling and women. He enjoyed hunting in the Loir valley and pursued his ambition with money, schmoozing, and the dark arts of politics.
Working with Ippolito’s letters and ledgers, recently uncovered in an archive in Modena, Italy, Mary Hollingsworth has pieced together a fascinating and undeniably titillating tale of this Renaissance cardinal and his road to power and wealth in sixteenth century Europe. The ledgers document every aspect of Ippolito’s comings, goings, purchases, and debts. Out of these finely detailed records, Hollingsworth brings to life not only Ippolito, but his world.
“In this brilliant piece of historical detective work and narrative reconstruction . . . the most unlikely bits and pieces—a scrap of velvet, a stray barrel of wine—can be made to tell stories that resonate far beyond the neat columns of a well-kept account book.” —The Guardian
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781468303858 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | ABRAMS, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 308 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
A Family Man
Lucretia Borgia made her official entry into Ferrara late one clear, cold afternoon in February 1502 through streets lined with crowds of citizens eager to see the woman who had married Alfonso d'Este, the heir to the duchy. Her reputation was electrifyingly scandalous: she was widely believed to be guilty of adultery, murder and incest. Much to the surprise of those who caught a glimpse of her, she was pretty, slender and blonde, with neat white teeth and unblemished white skin. She was also magnificently dressed in cloth-of-gold striped with dark purple satin, her gold cloak thrown back over one shoulder to display its ermine lining and her diamond and ruby necklace, a present from Duke Ercole I, her new father-in-law. There was more than a hint of affection in the crowds who witnessed her laughter after she fell off her horse, which had reared in fright at the roar of the cannon celebrating her arrival. They were also impressed with the size of the dowry that Duke Ercole had extracted from Lucretia's father, Pope Alexander VI. Seventy-two mules, covered in the Borgia colours of black and yellow, followed her train laden with 100,000 ducats in cash and 75,000 ducats' worth of jewels, silver plate and other valuables.
The choice of Lucretia as a wife for Alfonso had been forced on Duke Ercole by political necessity. Faced with the alternative of losing his state to the armies of Cesare Borgia, Lucretia's eldest brother, Ercole had capitulated to the Pope's offer of an alliance. Lucretia was far from ideal. The Este belonged to Italy's old nobility. The Borgias were Spanish and foreign, and although they boasted of royal descent from the ancient Kings of Aragon, most Italians laughed contemptuously at this claim. Moreover, Lucretia, who was only 21, had already been married twice. She had divorced her first husband, the Lord of Pesaro, on the unlikely grounds that the marriage had never been consummated. There were, conveniently, no children, but Alexander VI had forced his unfortunate son-in-law to sign a statement declaring that he was impotent, even though, as he would tell anyone who would listen, the marriage had been consummated a thousand times. Her second husband, a Neapolitan noble, thankfully did not insist on a gynaecological examination to ensure she was still a virgin, something he had a right to do, but he was not to enjoy his new wife for long. Two years after the marriage, he was strangled by one of Cesare's minders while lying in bed in the Vatican recovering from a failed assassination attempt that had taken place very publicly on the steps of St Peter's.
Lucretia's reputation had been further tarnished by rumours of several lovers and of incest, not only with her four brothers but also with her father, the Pope. These accusations had all been circulated by her first husband who was infuriated by the suggestion that he had been unable to do his duty in the marriage bed. The rumours spread. The King of France gave Alfonso a shield decorated with the figure of Mary Magdalen as a wedding present, to show, as the French ambassador explained, that his wife was a woman of virtue; but, as everyone would also have known, Mary Magdalen's past was far from virtuous. There was, however, one significant point in Lucretia's favour, and one Duke Ercole must have acknowledged: she had proved herself capable of bearing sons, one by her second husband and another by one of her lovers.
The Este rulers of Ferrara were a colourful and eccentric family. Duke Ercole's father Niccolò III had been married three times and had had countless extra-marital liaisons that had produced sixteen children (twelve of them illegitimate) and earned him the nickname 'Cock of Ferrara'. He had been succeeded by two of these illegitimate sons, Leonello and Borso. They were named after Sir Lionel and Sir Bors, knights of Arthurian legend, but there the similarities ended. Leonello was austere and ascetic, his tastes intellectual rather than military, and he made Ferrara a major centre of fifteenth-century humanism. Plump little Borso was probably gay and certainly a bon viveur, and he spent much of his time hunting, dressed in cloth-of-gold and accompanied by his pet leopards. When Borso died in 1471 he was succeeded by Ercole, Niccolò's eldest legitimate son, who was named after the classical hero Hercules. Ercole exploited this connection by using the Deeds of Hercules to decorate his tapestries and door hangings, and even as subjects for the sugar sculptures that ornamented his banqueting tables. Although he lacked the swashbuckling audacity of his namesake, he was a soldier and had been badly wounded in battle. Earnest, serious and cautious, both in war and as Duke, he limped around Ferrara dressed for preference in sober black. He was also an outstanding patron of the arts, favouring poetry and the theatre, and he loved his cats, for whom he installed flaps in the heavy wooden doors of the ducal castle.
Lucretia's husband, Alfonso, was Ercole's eldest son, and he inherited the family's tendency towards the eccentric. With a swarthy skin and long, aquiline nose, he was not particularly good-looking. He was also notoriously uncouth – he used to stroll around Ferrara on hot summer afternoons stark naked. But he did have taste. He was a skilled musician and a connoisseur of the arts. Inspired by literary descriptions of the works of art of antiquity, he commissioned Titian to paint a series of Bacchanalian pictures (including Bacchus & Ariadne, now in the National Gallery in London) to decorate his private study. He was also obsessed with artillery. Louis XII of France sent him a recipe for gunpowder as a wedding present along with the shield of Mary Magdalen, and Alfonso even learned how to cast his own cannon: he famously had Michelangelo's statue of Pope Julius II melted down so that he could use the bronze to make a cannon which he wittily named La Giulia (he acquired the statue after it had been torn down during anti-papal riots in Bologna). His relationship with Julius II's successor, Leo X, was not much better. He celebrated that Pope's death with a medal inscribed de manu Leonis (out of the Lion's paw).
The Este family were members of the old imperial nobility and had risen to power during the eleventh century, gradually extending their authority across the eastern part of the fertile Po valley. By the sixteenth century their territory included three major cities: the imperial fiefs of Modena and Reggio, and the papal fief of Ferrara, capital of the duchy. They were the powerful rulers of a prosperous state that stretched 160 kilometres from the mineral-rich uplands of the Apennines, where they mined precious metals, through the lush farmlands of the Padana and down to the Adriatic coast and the marshes of the Po delta. Their neighbours to the north were the huge state of Milan, the modest duchy of Mantua and the fiercely independent republic of Venice; to the south lay the Papal States and, beyond the Apennines, Florence.
Ferrara was a prosperous city, built on the banks of the Po, 90 kilometres south of Venice. With a population of 40,000 (about the same size as the modern cities of Durham or Winchester), it was large by sixteenth-century standards, though smaller than the great metropolises of the day, Venice (150,000) and Paris (200,000). To the visitor approaching the city across the Po plain, Ferrara had a distinctively defensive air. The imposing towers of the ducal castle and the massive circuit of brick walls built by Duke Ercole dominated the surrounding fields. Inside the atmosphere was quite different. The new walls had doubled the size of Ferrara, enclosing not only the cramped medieval quarters of the old town but also an enormous new extension, laid out by Duke Ercole with spacious streets, orchards, villas and, a particularly impressive feature, a hunting park with its own purpose-built racecourse. The streets were paved and the city was bright with colour. All who could afford the expense painted the brick façdes of their palaces, as well as their chimneys and their garden walls, with geometric patterns or stripes of contrasting colours ornamented with coats-of-arms and swags of fruit. The Este colours of red, white and green were particularly visible.
Duke Ercole's efforts to tempt traders into his new town had not been entirely successful. Most shopkeepers and artisans preferred to remain crowded in the old centre, in the narrow streets between the ducal palace and the wharves along the Po. The streets were busy and noisy, and thronged with people: porters jostling and shouting as they delivered their parcels, itinerant knife-grinders and fishmongers hawking their wares, and carters delivering wood, grain, building materials and crates, which they had picked up from the bargemen docking at the wharves on the Po.
Ferrara was cosmopolitan and prosperous. Many of her inhabitants had come from towns across northern Italy, and there was a sizeable Jewish community, most of whom had emigrated from Venice. Those merchants who could afford the rents ran their businesses under the arcades of the grand square in front of the palace, much as they do today, and many catered for the tastes of an affluent bourgeoisie: dealers in silks and velvets, haberdashers and tailors, book-sellers and printers, swordmakers and armourers, silversmiths and saddlers. Apothecaries' shops, lined with blue and white albarello jars, sold nutmeg, cinnamon, saffron and other spices imported from the East as well as pigments for painters and medicines to treat the sick. Grocers stocked everything from sausages to soap and string. Many traders specialized in a particular product or skill. Artisans working in the building industry earned their livings as bricklayers, plumbers, glaziers, carpenters or painters, and even as specialists in clearing blocked drains. There were dealers in cheap woollen cloth and second-hand clothes-sellers, butchers whose shops were hung with the carcases of cows, sheep and goats, and poulterers with their cages of squawking chickens, capons and geese. The habit of specialization had its disadvantages for the customer: you bought copper pots and pans for the kitchen from the coppersmith, but you had to get their iron handles made by the blacksmith.
The citizens of Ferrara ate well. The weather was damp and cold in winter, but hot summers and the fertile soil of the Po plain made for ideal agricultural conditions. Much space within the city walls was given over to vegetable gardens. The sixteenth-century diet, at all levels of society, included a lot of bread. The rich could afford white loaves made from wheat flour but the poorer sections of society had to bulk out the expensive cereals with cheaper crops such as millet: the worst bread, dark brown in colour, was made with bran. Pork was the staple meat of the area. The wealthy rented smallholdings in the countryside where they grew fresh food and fattened their pigs, but even ordinary artisans kept a pig in their backyards in the city. The profits made by the city's butchers were high enough to attract tax, and the duchy charged a levy on all live animals entering the city. Cattle and sheep provided expensive veal and lamb for the rich, tougher beef and mutton for the less well-to-do. They also produced milk for cheeses, from the hard nutty salted cheeses similar to parmesan (which came from Parma) to the soft bland sheep's milk cheeses such as ricotta, which was either eaten fresh or wrapped in reeds to mature. An Italian writing in the 1540s praised Ferrara for her wonderful salamis, candied herbs and fruits, her sturgeon and her eels. There were two fish markets selling freshwater varieties such as pike, tench, carp and crayfish from the lakes, ponds and rivers near Ferrara, and sea fish from the Adriatic, only 50 kilometres away. The Este duchy included Comacchio, a town in the marshes of the Po delta which was famous for its eels, sold fresh, marinated or smoked.
The preoccupations of this provincial population surface clearly in their diaries. There is endless talk of the price of food (and of wheat in particular), of the weather and of the marriages and deaths of fellow citizens. More sensational news included outbreaks of the plague, dysentery and syphilis, or the occasional public hangings of thieves and murderers which made compelling viewing. A particularly dramatic execution took place in 1506 after Alfonso had uncovered a plot for his own assassination, led by two of his brothers. The other conspirators were beheaded in the piazza in front of the cathedral, but Alfonso spared the lives of his brothers, sentencing them instead to life imprisonment in the castle dungeons. Renaissance society was violent, but in fact Ferrara seems to have been much quieter than other places, notably the notoriously ungovernable city of Rome. Above all, the Ferrarese diarists were obsessed with the comings and goings of members of the Este family: Alfonso and several of his brothers catching syphilis, their titled guests arriving by river in elegant boats, or the Duke fishing for sturgeon in the lagoons at the mouth of the Po.
Life in Ferrara was dominated by the court. At Epiphany (6 January) the Duke and his courtiers rode into the great piazza in front of the castle to give presents to his people, in imitation of the Three Kings. The gifts were mostly provisions he could spare from his own larder, and the list of them gives an idea of the food available in Ferrara: the meat included salted ox tongues, rabbits, ducks, hares, turtle doves, pheasant and partridge, quails, peacocks and even a crane; there were also boxes of oysters, salted pike, barrels of olives, oranges and lemons, dried figs, sugar, marzipan, boxes of sugared fruits and wine. Easter too was celebrated by prominent almsgiving ceremonies at all the major churches. On Maundy Thursday the Duke and his family gave a dinner at the palace for 150 poor men, serving their food and washing their feet just as Christ had done for his Apostles. There was also a performance of the Passion play staged in the cathedral on Good Friday. During her first Easter in Ferrara, Lucretia watched a five-hour spectacular in which angels descended from the roof to hover over Christ as he prayed in the garden of Gethsemene, followed by his Crucifixion, staged on a hill specially built in front of the high altar, and his descent into Hell through an enormous serpent's head.
Religion played an immensely important role in the lives of the people of sixteenth-century Europe. Like all European cities of the period, Ferrara was full of convents and monasteries housing the wide variety of religious orders that existed before the Counter-Reformation. There were over fifty churches, many built by earlier Este rulers: the old Duke Ercole had built fourteen as part of his modernization of the city, and he had contributed funds to the rebuilding or repair of another twelve. One of the family's thirteenth-century ancestors, Beatrice d'Este, had been beatified, and her ornate tomb in San Antonio in Polesine wept tears every year on the anniversary of her death.
Over 2,000 men and women, say 10 per cent of the adult population of Ferrara, worked inside the castle, either for the ducal administration or for one of the smaller households belonging to the Duchess and other members of the Este family. Here there were opportunities for all but the lowest social classes. The ducal courtiers and the gentlemen who ran the household departments all belonged to the Ferrarese nobility and many had started their careers as pages, entering ducal service as young boys to learn the rules of courtly behaviour. Men from more modest backgrounds worked as assistants to these courtiers or were in charge of departmental sections, such as the larder, the wine cellars and the kitchens. The educated middle class took posts as lawyers, accountants and bookkeepers in the bureaucracy that administered the ducal estates and industries, which included the manufacture of soap, bricks, textiles and gunpowder, the production of salt in the Po delta and the mining of gold, silver, iron ore and copper in the Apennines. There were also hundreds of jobs for cleaners, maids, laundresses and other menial servants. The castle employed fifty soldiers as guards and there were four gaolers in charge of the prisons who were assisted by a cook and three servants; they were also responsible for Alfonso's brothers who were locked up in windowless dungeons in the tower. In the stables there were blacksmiths and saddlers as well as coachmen and over a hundred stable boys who looked after the horses – mounts for riding, hunting, jousting and battle, as well as draught animals – while more men and boys cared for the dogs and falcons.
The Este court aspired to grandeur, in the way that provincial centres often do, and tried hard to emulate the magnificence of the royal courts of Burgundy and France. They hunted, jousted, banqueted and danced as splendidly as they could. Imported leopards, cheetahs and panthers added an exotic air to the hunting in Duke Ercole's park. The Este racehorses were famous and the city celebrated St George's Day (23 April), the feast of Ferrara's patron saint, with a race meeting. The winning owner, usually a member of the family, received the customary prize of a bolt of gold brocade, a sow and a cock. The ducal palace might have been small but it was sumptuously decorated and provided a fitting setting for theatrical performances and other courtly entertainments. Alfonso employed over thirty musicians, many of them French, and there were dwarves and buffoons to amuse as well as masters to teach dancing, fencing and real tennis.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Cardinal's Hat"
by .
Copyright © 2004 Mary Hollingsworth.
Excerpted by permission of Abrams Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Copyright,
Maps,
A Note on Money,
Introduction: The Archives in Modena,
Chapter 1 A Family Man,
Chapter 2 The Palazzo San Francesco,
Chapter 3 On the Road,
Chapter 4 A Court at War,
Chapter 5 Domestic Affairs,
Chapter 6 The Business of Pomp,
Chapter 7 A Court at Peace,
Chapter 8 The New Cardinal,
Epilogue,
Acknowledgements,
Sources and Bibliography,
Illustrations,
Index,
