Two Families of the Renaissance

Rodrigo Borgia (1431-1503), became Pope Alexander VI in 1492, an office he held until his death in 1503. Alexander's chief goal seems to have been to carve out of the Papal States, territories in central Italy traditionally governed by the pope, a kingdom for his son Cesare (c. 1475-1507). Alexander fathered at least nine illegitimate children by several mistresses. But he was especially fond of his two most famous children, Cesare and Lucrezia. To finance his military expeditions and other ventures he had undertaken, Alexander sold divorces to the kings and princes of Europe and seized control of the estates of deceased bishops. Alexander's plans nearly succeeded. In command of his father's papal army, Cesare gained a reputation for ruthlessness that won him many enemies, who both hated and feared him. Father and son used every means to achieve victory, including not only war but murder, most commonly through the use of poison. Even members of their own family were not safe. In 1500, Cesare ordered the murder of the Duke of Biscegile, his sister Lucrezia's second husband. At the height of their power the Borgias were so feared that those invited to dine with them often took the precaution of making out their wills before attending. Although Alexander supposedly died from malaria in 1503 at the age of seventy-two, rumors circulate even now that he met his end after mistakenly eating a piece of poisoned fruit intended for one of his guests. By the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, both the Medici and the Borgia families were in trouble. When Lorenzo the Magnificent died in 1492, the Medici were toppled from power in Florence. Two years later, in 1494, the family was exiled and their property taken over by the city of Venice. Cesare Borgia outlived his father by four years, but steadily lost influence. Beset on all sides by his enemies, foremost among them the new pope Julius II, Cesare fled Rome only to be captured in Naples and imprisoned in Spain. He escaped but was killed in battle in 1507, ending the Borgia's dream of establishing a family dynasty on Italian soil. The Renaissance world of Lorenzo de' Medici and Cesare Borgia may have been beautiful and elegant but it proved also to be dangerous and impossible for any one man or family to master. By the sixteenth century that world was already poised on

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