Lucretia Borgia

by Ferdinand Gregorovius

Overview

Lucretia Borgia according to original documents and correspondence of her day This book, "Lucretia Borgia", by Ferdinand Gregorovius, John Leslie Garner, is a replication of a book originally published before 1903. It has been restored by human beings, page by page, so that you may enjoy it in a form as close to the original as possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455415632
Publisher:	B&R Samizdat Express
Publication date:	09/03/2011
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	745 KB

About the Author

Ferdinand Gregorovius (January 19, 1821 - May 1, 1891) was a German historian who specialized in the medieval history of Rome. He is best known for Wanderjahre in Italien, his account of the walks he took through Italy in the 1850s, and the monumental Die Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (History of Rome in the Middle Ages), a classic for Medieval and early Renaissance history. He also wrote biographies of Pope Alexander VI and Lucrezia Borgia, as well as works on Byzantine history and medieval Athens, and translated Italian authors into German, among them Giovanni Melis. According to Jesuit Father John Hardon, S.J. Gregorovius was "a bitter enemy of the popes."

Gregorovius was born at Neidenburg (Nidzica), East Prussia, and studied theology and philosophy at the University of Königsberg. In 1838 he joined the Corps Masovia. After teaching for many years, Gregorovius took up residence in Italy in 1852, remaining in that country for over twenty years. In 1876 he was made honorary citizen of Rome, the first German to be awarded this honor. A street and a square is named after him. He eventually returned to Germany, where he died in Munich.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER V NEPOTISM G1ULIA FARNESE—LUCRETIA's BETROTHALS It is not difficult to imagine what emotions were aroused in Lucretia when she first became aware of the real condition of her family. Her mother's husband was not her father; she discovered that she and, her brothers were the children of a cardinal, and the awakening of her conscience was accompanied by a realization of circumstances which—frowned on by the Church—it was necessary to conceal from the world. She herself had always hitherto been treated as a niece of the cardinal, and she now beheld in her father one of the most prominent princes of the Church of Rome, whom she heard mentioned as a future pope. The knowledge of the great advantages to be derived from these circumstances certainly must have affected Lucretia's fancy much more actively than the conception of their immorality. The world in which she lived concerned itself but little with moral scruples, and rarely in the history of mankind has there been a time in which the theory that it is proper to obtain the greatest possible profit from existing conditions has been so generally accepted. She soon learned how common were these relations in Rome. She heard that most of the cardinals lived with their mistresses, and provided in a princely way for their children. They told her about those of Cardinal Giuliano della Ro- vere and those of Piccolomini; she saw with her own eyesthe sons and daughters of Estouteville, and heard of the baronies which their wealthy father had acquired for them in the Alban mountains. She saw the children of Pope Innocent raised to the highest honors; to her were pointed out his son Franceschetto Cibo and his illustriousspouse Maddalena Medici. She knew that the Vatican was the home of other children and grandchildren of the P...