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Lucrezia Borgia
The stories about the Lucrezia Borgia's life - ruthless manipulator, possessor of a poison ring, sexual predator - often overshadow the more nuanced and fascinating story of her life.
She was born on April 18, 1480, the illegitimate daughter of future Pope Alexander VI, then Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his long-time mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei. She inherited her mother's stunning looks - she was known for her slender figure, gray-blue eyes, and blonde hair.
When her father became pope, he sought to consolidate his power and arranged a marriage between fourteen-year-old Lucrezia and the first of her three husbands, twenty-eight-year-old Giovanni Sforza. Shortly after the marriage, Alexander, concluded he no longer needed an alliance with the Sforza family. He ordered Giovanni's assassination, but when the young bridegroom escaped, ended Lucrezia's marriage by ordering an annulment.
Following the lengthy annulment process - during which Lucrezia was accused of having an affair and a child with Alexander's chamberlain Pedro Calderon, whose body was later found floating in Rome's Tiber River, “where he fell against his will” - Lucrezia was married to Alfonso of Aragon in 1498. Alexander appointed a pregnant Lucrezia governor of the Umbrian town of Spoleto in 1499. Alfonso, wary of shifting political alliances, fled Rome for a brief time, but returned in 1500, where he was murdered. Alfonso left Lucrezia with a son, Rodrigo.
After Alfonso's conveniently timed murder, Alexander arranged a third marriage for Lucrezia, to Alfonso I d'Este, a powerful duke. The two had several children, and Lucrezia came into her own as a Renaissance woman, overcoming her scandalous reputation - despite several affairs - and maintaining her position and power as the Borgia family's influence and fortunes fell following Alexander's death.
Lucrezia Borgia was a woman of and ahead of her time. Here is her little-told story.
She was born on April 18, 1480, the illegitimate daughter of future Pope Alexander VI, then Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his long-time mistress Vannozza dei Cattanei. She inherited her mother's stunning looks - she was known for her slender figure, gray-blue eyes, and blonde hair.
When her father became pope, he sought to consolidate his power and arranged a marriage between fourteen-year-old Lucrezia and the first of her three husbands, twenty-eight-year-old Giovanni Sforza. Shortly after the marriage, Alexander, concluded he no longer needed an alliance with the Sforza family. He ordered Giovanni's assassination, but when the young bridegroom escaped, ended Lucrezia's marriage by ordering an annulment.
Following the lengthy annulment process - during which Lucrezia was accused of having an affair and a child with Alexander's chamberlain Pedro Calderon, whose body was later found floating in Rome's Tiber River, “where he fell against his will” - Lucrezia was married to Alfonso of Aragon in 1498. Alexander appointed a pregnant Lucrezia governor of the Umbrian town of Spoleto in 1499. Alfonso, wary of shifting political alliances, fled Rome for a brief time, but returned in 1500, where he was murdered. Alfonso left Lucrezia with a son, Rodrigo.
After Alfonso's conveniently timed murder, Alexander arranged a third marriage for Lucrezia, to Alfonso I d'Este, a powerful duke. The two had several children, and Lucrezia came into her own as a Renaissance woman, overcoming her scandalous reputation - despite several affairs - and maintaining her position and power as the Borgia family's influence and fortunes fell following Alexander's death.
Lucrezia Borgia was a woman of and ahead of her time. Here is her little-told story.
346 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 17, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
December 11, 2014
Lucrezia Borgia
This book really should be called everyone but Lucrezia. Lucas goes into extensive detail on the birth and life of her father but mentions almost nothing about Lucrezia's early life. It takes almost 3/4 of the book before Lucas actually spends any length discussing her subject. I understand that the life of Lucrezia is very much tied to her father and brothers and I may even be able to accept such a detailed study of her famous family if the text hadn't been so dry. I am at a complete loss as to how one makes the Borgias boring but Lucas managed to do so. While yes, I do enjoy popular history, I also greatly enjoy what I like to call hardcore history, which is much more scholastic in nature. So the problem is not with the scholarly treatment of the subject. It took me a very long time to get through this work because it just did not hold my attention. However, I did add a star because of the tremendous amount of detail given to the period, politics and people of Italy during the life of the Borgias. Lucas clearly knows a great deal about this period in Italian history I just wish she had made it more palatable.
This book really should be called everyone but Lucrezia. Lucas goes into extensive detail on the birth and life of her father but mentions almost nothing about Lucrezia's early life. It takes almost 3/4 of the book before Lucas actually spends any length discussing her subject. I understand that the life of Lucrezia is very much tied to her father and brothers and I may even be able to accept such a detailed study of her famous family if the text hadn't been so dry. I am at a complete loss as to how one makes the Borgias boring but Lucas managed to do so. While yes, I do enjoy popular history, I also greatly enjoy what I like to call hardcore history, which is much more scholastic in nature. So the problem is not with the scholarly treatment of the subject. It took me a very long time to get through this work because it just did not hold my attention. However, I did add a star because of the tremendous amount of detail given to the period, politics and people of Italy during the life of the Borgias. Lucas clearly knows a great deal about this period in Italian history I just wish she had made it more palatable.
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August 27, 2015Some books give you all the scandal on the grounds that there's no smoke without fire, this one takes the opposite assumption that no smoke ever indicates any fire at all. Good solid biography, well written, but set in a universe where unless there's a baby then any relationship is assumed chaste. Very very sympathetic to Rodrigo Borgia too.
February 16, 2015
This could be the most pedantic book I have ever read. Simple declarative sentences of who wore what and did what....for hundreds of pages. I forced myself to finish it because I hoped I would learn more about Lucrezia but she was most often placed in the minor role behind the men who were fighting battles. Sorry Emma Lucas but I won't read anything more by you.
August 15, 2022
Book: Lucrezia Borgia
Author: Emma Lucas
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.; 1st edition (17 October 2014)
Language: English
File size: 2385 KB
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
Print length: 346 pages
Price: 449/-
Just consider the background……..
Three points are conspicuous, in actuality
1) At the time of her birth in 1480, Italy was notoriously a geographical idiom rather than a country, a peninsula divided into self-determining states bound by the weakest sense of familiar nationality.
2) Neapolitans, Milanese and Venetians were Neapolitans, Milanese and Venetians predominantly: the impression of Italy as a political whole did not exist beyond a blurred chauvinism in which non-Italians were supposed as barbarians.
3) Italians saw themselves as richer, more cultivated and urbane than the rest of Europe. At a time when Europe was unified by the Catholic religion with the Pope, wielding both spiritual and temporal powers, at its head, Rome, as the seat of the papacy, was the centre of the Western world, or Christendom as contemporaries would have known it.
Lucrezia Borgia…….Her name has been an embodiment for malevolence for 500 years, her life distorted by generations of historians and seen through the prism of the crimes of her family, themselves exaggerated by intimidating chroniclers of the time.
Lucrezia herself has been charged with murder by poisoning and incest with her father, Pope Alexander VI, and her brother, Cesare Borgia.
As an exemplary villainess she has featured in works by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, an opera by Donizetti and a film by Abel Gance – to name but a few.
Lord Byron was so enthralled by her standing that, after viewing her love letters in Milan, he stole a strand from the lock of her blonde hair which accompanied them.
A careful analysis of her reputation began in the 19th century. However, the universal conclusion was that, if she were not a murderer and a whore, she was no more than an empty-headed blonde, powerless casualty of the males in her family.
The truth is that in a world where the dice were greatly loaded in favour of men, Lucrezia operated within the situations of her time to forge her own providence.
Born the illegitimate daughter of one of the most notorious of Renaissance popes, Alexander VI, she was married at the age of thirteen to a man she had never met, then divorced from him at the behest of her father and brother and remarried to a second husband who was murdered on the orders of her brother when she was just twenty.
It was then that she took her fate into her own hands and was vigorously involved in the promotion of her third marriage, to Alfonso d’Este, the future Duke of Ferrara, whom she knew to be aggressively opposed to the idea of her as his wife.
As Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia came into her own, showing an influential intelligence and skill in managing her life.
Winning over her hostile in-laws – with the notable exception of the formidable Isabella whose husband she took as a lover – she ruled over a magnificent court with herself as the focus of a circle of poets and intellectuals. In times of war and plague, she administered justice and oversaw the defence of Ferrara.
As she had survived the violence of the papal court of the Borgias she survived the inbred violence of the Este family; only childbirth, the curse of the age for women, eventually overpowered her…….
This book tells her story – history in a nutshell.
Read it if you choose.
Author: Emma Lucas
Publisher: New Word City, Inc.; 1st edition (17 October 2014)
Language: English
File size: 2385 KB
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
Print length: 346 pages
Price: 449/-
Just consider the background……..
Three points are conspicuous, in actuality
1) At the time of her birth in 1480, Italy was notoriously a geographical idiom rather than a country, a peninsula divided into self-determining states bound by the weakest sense of familiar nationality.
2) Neapolitans, Milanese and Venetians were Neapolitans, Milanese and Venetians predominantly: the impression of Italy as a political whole did not exist beyond a blurred chauvinism in which non-Italians were supposed as barbarians.
3) Italians saw themselves as richer, more cultivated and urbane than the rest of Europe. At a time when Europe was unified by the Catholic religion with the Pope, wielding both spiritual and temporal powers, at its head, Rome, as the seat of the papacy, was the centre of the Western world, or Christendom as contemporaries would have known it.
Lucrezia Borgia…….Her name has been an embodiment for malevolence for 500 years, her life distorted by generations of historians and seen through the prism of the crimes of her family, themselves exaggerated by intimidating chroniclers of the time.
Lucrezia herself has been charged with murder by poisoning and incest with her father, Pope Alexander VI, and her brother, Cesare Borgia.
As an exemplary villainess she has featured in works by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, an opera by Donizetti and a film by Abel Gance – to name but a few.
Lord Byron was so enthralled by her standing that, after viewing her love letters in Milan, he stole a strand from the lock of her blonde hair which accompanied them.
A careful analysis of her reputation began in the 19th century. However, the universal conclusion was that, if she were not a murderer and a whore, she was no more than an empty-headed blonde, powerless casualty of the males in her family.
The truth is that in a world where the dice were greatly loaded in favour of men, Lucrezia operated within the situations of her time to forge her own providence.
Born the illegitimate daughter of one of the most notorious of Renaissance popes, Alexander VI, she was married at the age of thirteen to a man she had never met, then divorced from him at the behest of her father and brother and remarried to a second husband who was murdered on the orders of her brother when she was just twenty.
It was then that she took her fate into her own hands and was vigorously involved in the promotion of her third marriage, to Alfonso d’Este, the future Duke of Ferrara, whom she knew to be aggressively opposed to the idea of her as his wife.
As Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia came into her own, showing an influential intelligence and skill in managing her life.
Winning over her hostile in-laws – with the notable exception of the formidable Isabella whose husband she took as a lover – she ruled over a magnificent court with herself as the focus of a circle of poets and intellectuals. In times of war and plague, she administered justice and oversaw the defence of Ferrara.
As she had survived the violence of the papal court of the Borgias she survived the inbred violence of the Este family; only childbirth, the curse of the age for women, eventually overpowered her…….
This book tells her story – history in a nutshell.
Read it if you choose.
June 29, 2018
This was a 99 cent special on Book Bub. It read more like a textbook than a biography. Or maybe a Russian novel - so many names, so much illegitimacy and so much war within one small peninsula! But I did read it all! An, I learned the church history that was not taught in my Roman Catholic schools. Lucrezia was the acknowledged daughter of a Pope! He made his son a cardinal. No wonder we needed a reformation!
April 29, 2020
Really a litany of the terrible times
Thought this book was to be about Lucrezia Borgia but instead this is a timeline story of an awful, violent, and corrupt time when religion was used by the rich and powerful. Women were treated badly but often superficially pampered. They were political pawns. Useful only for territorial gains, dowrys, and reproduction.
Skip this book.
ted. Fear and viokencevorevaiked.
Thought this book was to be about Lucrezia Borgia but instead this is a timeline story of an awful, violent, and corrupt time when religion was used by the rich and powerful. Women were treated badly but often superficially pampered. They were political pawns. Useful only for territorial gains, dowrys, and reproduction.
Skip this book.
ted. Fear and viokencevorevaiked.
February 2, 2023
The title is misleading
More appropriate ”The Wars During the Life of Lucretia Borgia”. The book was far more about the power struggle and wars of all the men in her life than there was about Lucretia. But, then maybe she just happens to have an intriguing name and relationship with a very powerful pope and that’s it. This is the second book I’ve read about Lucretia that really wasn’t about her.
More appropriate ”The Wars During the Life of Lucretia Borgia”. The book was far more about the power struggle and wars of all the men in her life than there was about Lucretia. But, then maybe she just happens to have an intriguing name and relationship with a very powerful pope and that’s it. This is the second book I’ve read about Lucretia that really wasn’t about her.
April 24, 2020
Disappointing is the one word I would use to describe this book. There are 12 chapters in the book and it wasn't until Chapter 6 or 7 that Lucrezia's life was mentioned in more detail. The first half the book was taken up with mention of other family members such as her father and brothers which was relevant to the story but there were also many others who I felt were not relevant.
April 29, 2020
Lucrezia Borgia
This book is approximately 40% about Pope Alexander VI rather than his daughter Lucrezia. With that being said I enjoyed immensely! Have already recommended this book
This book is approximately 40% about Pope Alexander VI rather than his daughter Lucrezia. With that being said I enjoyed immensely! Have already recommended this book
April 9, 2019
I got so bored I didn't want to finish this.
March 14, 2022
Lucrezia??
I gave up half way through this book. I wanted the story of Lucre ska Borgia, not her father Alexander.
I gave up half way through this book. I wanted the story of Lucre ska Borgia, not her father Alexander.
December 23, 2014
Title of book is Lucrezia Borgia, but also a detailed account of her father's (Pope Alexander VI ,Rodrigo Borgia) , her brother,her three husbands and her in laws experiences,characters accomplishments and failures.
Author is very impressed by the Borgias and while she does mention some of their failings and rumors about their lives she minimizes them citing their virtues and accomplishments .
Many great anecdotes about the characters .
A little repetitive in parts . Author has immense respect for the Borgia family which came across to me excessive admiration .
Author is very impressed by the Borgias and while she does mention some of their failings and rumors about their lives she minimizes them citing their virtues and accomplishments .
Many great anecdotes about the characters .
A little repetitive in parts . Author has immense respect for the Borgia family which came across to me excessive admiration .
March 8, 2016
Without any knowledge o f the history of the region and times I cannot challenge the
Author. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I now know why there was also much negativity surrounding the name Lucrezia Borgia.
Author. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I now know why there was also much negativity surrounding the name Lucrezia Borgia.
December 16, 2014
I love biographies as well as historical fiction concerning medieval and Renaissance characters. This was an interesting read.
abandoned-dnf
September 8, 2017I didn't think it was possible to write a dull book about the Borgia. Apparently, I was wrong.
DNF.
DNF.
August 7, 2015
Very slow reading
You must really enjoy history to make your way through this very slow read the details seem accurate but one wishes the author had interjected some excitement
You must really enjoy history to make your way through this very slow read the details seem accurate but one wishes the author had interjected some excitement
April 13, 2016
Interesting book about an interesting subject. I enjoyed the links included in the text that let you see images and read more about the people mentioned.
April 28, 2017
I learned a lot from this book. It was not solely about Lucrezia, but included a history of the whole Borgia family and the state of Italy at this time period. Some things seemed to be inferred rather than concrete facts; I am not sure what Lucas's sources are. Overall though, it was an enjoyable book.
May 12, 2018
There must be a better biography of Lucrezia Borgia than this one. The author was in dire need of an editor to focus on the subject at hand. She takes tangents describing characters and events barely related to Borgia. When the author stays focused, her narrative of the subject is interesting. There was simply far too much tedious information that distracted from the biography. I cannot recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews