Lucrezia Borgia
Victim of tragedies associated with her father's political interests, she piously ended her life as Duchess of Ferrara.
Lucrezia Borgia was born on April 18, 1480 in Subiaco, a town about 70 kilometers from Rome. Her father, the then Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who had relations with Vannozza Cattanei, had already had two sons, Cesare and Giovanni. Her other brother, Goffredo, would be born a year later.
At an early age she was placed in the care of Adriana Milà, the cardinal's cousin. Installed in the Orsini palace, together with Giulia Farnese, Adriana's daughter-in-law, she was instructed as a good Renaissance lady, simultaneously practicing Spanish, Catalan and Italian. Valencian was, in fact, the colloquial language of the Borgias. Sweetness, grace, ingenuity and joy were already manifested in Lucrezia as a genetic sample of her family.
He would soon discover that their destinies would depend at all times on his father's political strategies. She was used as a bargaining chip, when she was twelve years old she had a first arranged marriage with Querubín de Centelles and Ayora, son of the counts of Oliva, which she did not crystallize.
The new interests of the already pontiff Alexander VI ended up formalizing the marriage between Lucrezia, who was barely 13 years old, and the Count of Pesaro, Giovanni Sforza, nephew of the powerful Duke of Milan and twenty years her senior. The ceremony is held in the Vatican on June 12, 1493.
Relations between Alexander VI and his son-in-law are clouded to the point of mediating a possible assassination order by the pontiff. Giovanni Sforza flees from Rome and the Vatican machinery is set in motion to base the marriage annulment on the basis of a supposed homosexuality of the husband.
The outraged husband strikes back and launches the accusation of incest, which is soon taken up and spread by the enemies of the Borgias. Pamphlets begin to appear against Alexander VI and against Lucretia, in which they speak of orgies, unrestrained sex, murders. “The biggest whore in Rome”, as Lucrezia is called, starts the seed of infamies that will haunt her for centuries.
The marriage annulled on December 20, 1497, the Pope negotiates a new marriage contract for his daughter. This time with Alfonso de Aragón, Duke of Biseglia, a wedding that takes place the following year. Cesare's relations with Alfonso are not good either and in July 1500, Lucrezia's husband is the victim of an attack in the middle of Saint Peter's Square from which he manages to survive, but during his convalescence, Cesare orders his death.
This fact deeply affects Lucrezia, who retires in strict mourning to Nepi's castle, away from all luxury and dedicated to a pious lifestyle.
Alexander VI does not miss the opportunity and negotiates a new marriage, this time with Alfonso de Este, heir to the Duke of Ferrara.
On January 6, 1502, Lucrezia said goodbye to her parents and her son Rodrigo, the fruit of her marriage to Alfonso de Aragón, whom she would never see again.
On February 2, she enters Ferrara and finds herself in a city that welcomes her with great luxury and spectacle. A population with a cultured court, with which she soon connected and that distances her from the intrigues that have led her life.
Lucrezia forges a new destiny here, which will turn her into a religious and prudent woman, with an intense Christian life, where she will spend the last stretch of her life watching her loved ones disappear from a distance. First to her father, in 1503, then to Cesare, in 1507, to his eldest son Rodrigo, in 1512, to her brother Goffredo, in 1517 and to her mother Vannozza, in 1518.
Lucrezia had six children and died at just 39 years old, on July 24, 1519.
Her body remains buried in the monastery of Corpus Domini in Ferrara, with the Franciscan tertiary habit with which she was buried, along with other members of her family.
