Lucretia Borgia | Page 6

yourself in a wholly worldly manner.
Shame forbids mention of all that took place, for not only the things
themselves but their very names are unworthy of your rank. In order
that your lust might be all the more unrestrained, the husbands, fathers,
brothers, and kinsmen of the young women and girls were not invited
to be present. You and a few servants were the leaders and inspirers of
this orgy. It is said that nothing is now talked of in Siena but your
vanity, which is the subject of universal ridicule. Certain it is that here
at the baths, where Churchmen and the laity are very numerous, your
name is on every one's tongue. Our displeasure is beyond words, for
your conduct has brought the holy state and office into disgrace; the
people will say that they make us rich and great, not that we may live a
blameless life, but that we may have means to gratify our passions.

This is the reason the princes and the powers despise us and the laity
mock us; this is why our own mode of living is thrown in our face
when we reprove others. Contempt is the lot of Christ's vicar because
he seems to tolerate these actions. You, dear son, have charge of the
bishopric of Valencia, the most important in Spain; you are a
chancellor of the Church, and what renders your conduct all the more
reprehensible is the fact that you have a seat among the cardinals, with
the Pope, as advisors of the Holy See. We leave it to you whether it is
becoming to your dignity to court young women, and to send those
whom you love fruits and wine, and during the whole day to give no
thought to anything but sensual pleasures. People blame us on your
account, and the memory of your blessed uncle, Calixtus, likewise
suffers, and many say he did wrong in heaping honors upon you. If you
try to excuse yourself on the ground of your youth, I say to you: you
are no longer so young as not to see what duties your offices impose
upon you. A cardinal should be above reproach and an example of right
living before the eyes of all men, and then we should have just grounds
for anger when temporal princes bestow uncomplimentary epithets
upon us; when they dispute with us the possession of our property and
force us to submit ourselves to their will. Of a truth we inflict these
wounds upon ourselves, and we ourselves are the cause of these
troubles, since we by our conduct are daily diminishing the authority of
the Church. Our punishment for it in this world is dishonor, and in the
world to come well deserved torment. May, therefore, your good sense
place a restraint on these frivolities, and may you never lose sight of
your dignity; then people will not call you a vain gallant among men. If
this occurs again we shall be compelled to show that it was contrary to
our exhortation, and that it caused us great pain; and our censure will
not pass over you without causing you to blush. We have always loved
you and thought you worthy of our protection as a man of an earnest
and modest character. Therefore, conduct yourself henceforth so that
we may retain this our opinion of you, and may behold in you only the
example of a well ordered life. Your years, which are not such as to
preclude improvement, permit us to admonish you paternally.
PETRIOLO, June 11, 1460.[3]

A few years later, when Paul II occupied the papal throne, the historian
Gasparino of Verona described Cardinal Borgia as follows: "He is
handsome; of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with
honeyed and choice eloquence. The beautiful women on whom his eyes
are cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more
powerfully than the magnet influences iron."
There are such organizations as Gasparino describes; they are men of
the physical and moral nature of Casanova and the Regent of Orleans.
Rodrigo's beauty was noted by many of his contemporaries even when
he was pope. In 1493 Hieronymus Portius described him as follows:
"Alexander is tall and neither light nor dark; his eyes are black and his
lips somewhat full. His health is robust, and he is able to bear any pain
or fatigue; he is wonderfully eloquent and a thorough man of the
world."[4]
The force of this happy organization lay, apparently, in the perfect
balance of all its powers. From it radiated the serene brightness of his
being, for nothing is more incorrect than the picture usually drawn of
this Borgia, showing him as a sinister monster. The celebrated Jason
Mainus, of Milan, calls