‘May God put his hand in these things and discords’
– Bernardino di Prosperi to Isabella during the unravelling of the Este Conspiracy, 24 May 1506
After the supposed peacemaking between Giulio and Ippolito, Lucrezia and Alfonso celebrated carnival with dancing at the Castello. It was noted that Alfonso was particularly gaily dressed, although the official year’s mourning for Ercole was not yet over. He wore a long robe in the Turkish style down to mid-calf, lined with sable and wolf, a Spanish cape and an elaborately tailored tunic ornamented with silken strips, ‘showing himself very gallantly and with more joy in his heart than usual’, according to di Prosperi. It may have been that he was relieved that his difficult first year as Duke was over and the rift in his family apparently healed.
Di Prosperi, however, noted ominously on 6 January 1506 that since the reconciliation neither Alfonso nor Ippolito had spoken of or seen Giulio, ‘nor had any more provision, considering his condition, been made for him than he had before’. Giulio, he said, resented this. Ippolito deigned to send his secretary to visit Giulio but did not go in person and Giulio, probably mortified by his disfigurement, kept to his rooms. Yet, di Prosperi reported, at court there were masques every day, ‘as if they were in the greatest state of happiness in the world’. An eclogue was performed, composed by Niccolò da Correggio, with moresche. Lucrezia ordered comedies ‘of three kinds of lovers’, one of them based on Boccaccio’s Cento Novelle and in di Prosperi’s opinion ‘very improper’, and there was dancing till dawn in the castle. There was a Battle of the Eggs on 13 February and in the piazza men with long staves and blindfolded competed with each other, to the sound of trumpets, to kill a tethered pig. ‘The Gypsy’, ‘il Cingano’, a favoured member of Alfonso’s household, walked blindfolded with irons on his feet on a tightrope across the piazza. Lucrezia frequently rode round the streets masked, accompanied by il Barone or Niccolò da Correggio.
Lucrezia also had in her household a number of young Ferrarese girls of good family – donzelle – whom she trained and for whom she found husbands. New recruits must not have passed the age of twelve: ‘And they will be brought up otherwise than the usual,’ di Prosperi wrote, ‘in work [embroidery] and in learning virtue.’ The prospective husbands of these donzelle often proved recalcitrant and had to be dragooned by Lucrezia into keeping their promises. ‘Today the marriage of La Dalara to the son of Hieronymo Ariminaldo should have been made public,’ di Prosperi told Isabella, ‘but the husband could not be found, perhaps as a young man he has repented of the word he had given the Lady Duchess. However, Her Excellency will not permit herself to be disobeyed. She has had the consent of both him and his parents and I understand this evening a Commandment will be sent to the house, by which he must appear to be married to the girl under pain of a fine of a thousand ducats.’ Carnival, preceding Lent, was the time of year for Lucrezia to oversee marriages for her damsels, including the daughter of Federico Maffei and La Violante. ‘And thus My Lady attends to find homes for her ladies,’ di Prosperi wrote. ‘Every day My Lady makes a marriage for one of her ladies,’ he reported on 8 February, ‘but she has not yet found anyone for La Napoletana.’ Hector Berlinguer was dispatched to Francesco Gonzaga to negotiate the marriage of Ercole Bentivoglio’s daughter by Barbara Torelli to Ercole Strozzi’s brother, Count Lorenzo.
On 2 February 1506, Lucrezia busied herself with the marriage of the errant Angela Borgia to Alessandro Pio da Sassuolo, a minor local lord and faithful adherent of the Este family. There was the question of the dowry: after the death of Alexander the Borgia family fortunes were no longer what they had been. Lucrezia wrote to Angela’s brother, Cardinal Ludovico Borgia, with meagre results; the Este had to top up Angela’s dowry and Lucrezia to provide her with clothes, as she had generously done hitherto. It was an intimate, comical occasion: Lucrezia summoned the happy pair and had them shut up together to consummate the relationship (‘fare la copula’) after which they emerged two hours later laughing. The marriage had to be kept secret, as the fate of Angela’s unfortunate child had been. Alessandro Pio’s domineering mother, a daughter of Giovanni Bentivoglio, would have opposed it and only learned of the affair when a formal ‘marriage’ took place in December. Angela meanwhile (and later) remained in Ferrara, where she was joined at the Palazzo del Corte by Alessandro Pio in May, taking part in Lucrezia’s court life as she was accustomed to.
On 21 February another Pio of a different branch of the family, Alberto Pio da Carpi, came to Ferrara for carnival, bringing with him Cesare’s son, Girolamo, who had been entrusted to him by Lucrezia. Lucrezia’s choice of Alberto Pio da Carpi as guardian for Cesare’s son was understandable. Alberto Pio was eminently suited to the guardianship of Girolamo Borgia. Apart from his intellectual and social standing, he was a member of Lucrezia and Francesco Gonzaga’s circle and his mother was a Gonzaga. Lucrezia’s friendship with Alberto Pio demonstrated the independence with which she chose her friends, for Alberto Pio was very far from being a friend of Alfonso’s and later that year at times actively opposed him and intrigued against him. Indeed, for some years there had been a running feud between Alberto Pio and Lodovico Pico della Mirandola, who was related to the Este and protected by Alfonso. Alberto Pio tried to stir up trouble between Francesco Gonzaga and Alfonso, urging Gonzaga to write to Alfonso pointing out that his (Pio’s) affairs were his business not Alfonso’s: ‘And show him that you do not want him to think that he can make himself cock of Italy, Your Excellency being older than him, a prince as he is and in military virtues and achievement worthy of comparison with him . . . and that the duke is not the ‘maestro di scuola’ [master of the school] in these times, nor is Messer Niccolò da Correggio, his mouthpiece.’ Alberto Pio’s objective was to declare independence from Ferrara for Carpi, and for that he would need Gonzaga’s support. Gonzaga, however, was too wily to be drawn in; much as he despised Alfonso, he did not intend to go to war with him on Alberto Pio’s behalf. In March 1506 trouble between Alberto Pio and Mirandola escalated into open war. Alfonso sent a number of light horse from the company commanded by Masino del Forno to the aid of Mirandola while Gonzaga sent troops to Alberto Pio, but in the end the differences between Pio and Mirandola were settled through Gonzaga’s mediation.1 Rancour, however, remained; later that summer Francesco Gonzaga’s harbouring of Giulio and prevarication about handing him over showed that he had seen him as a weapon to use against Alfonso, as well as indicating his contempt for his ducal brother-in-law. In these complicated enmities and concealed hatreds, Lucrezia had chosen, however secretly, to favour two men, Alberto Pio and Francesco Gonzaga, who were no friends to her husband. During his carnival visit to Ferrara, Alberto Pio forged a closer link between Giulio and Francesco Gonzaga, reporting on 23 February that he had visited Giulio to assure him of Francesco’s friendship and that Giulio had sworn that he was more a servant of Gonzaga ‘than of the duke my lord and brother’. ‘The most reverend cardinal,’ he added, ‘has not yet visited him [Giulio] being day and night occupied in pleasures and masking.’2
The Este carnival celebrations, taking place within earshot, but in which he, with his ravaged looks and damaged sight, could not take part, fuelled the wretched Giulio’s resentment. He had not forgiven Alfonso for his failure to punish Ippolito or for his continuing favour towards him, any more than, despite the sham reconciliation, he had forgiven Ippolito. Even as Alfonso and Lucrezia enjoyed the carnival of 1506, Giulio became involved in a fratricidal conspiracy, the Congiura, with Ferrante, who was motivated by ambition to succeed his brother. They were joined against Alfonso and, to a lesser extent, Ippolito, by some minor lords, Gherardo de’Roberti and Albertino and Roberto Boschetti, who feared losing their states. According to the subsequent interrogation of the conspirators, at the time of Alfonso’s absence abroad in 1504 Gherardo de’Roberti had suggested to Ferrante, whose head had already been turned by ambition to succeed his father, that he should provide a band of assassins to waylay and kill Alfonso. A year later, Gherardo de‘Roberti and Albertino Boschetti had proposed to Ferrante that they should assassinate Alfonso during the carnival of 1506. Also involved in the conspiracy was Alfonso’s favourite singer, Gian de Artigianova (Gian Cantore): the singer’s motives seem inexplicable unless he hoped for even greater favours from the passionately musical Giulio. Ferrante and de’Roberti visited Giulio in his apartments in the Corte: the idea was to kill Alfonso and replace him with Ferrante. Ippolito would also have to be disposed of. One suggestion was that Alfonso should be murdered while off guard in some whorehouse.
The plotters could not, however, agree among themselves and appeared singularly incompetent in executing their intentions. Ferrante wanted Alfonso killed first; Giulio preferred Ippolito. Gherardo and Sigismondo, son of Albertino, acting on information from the treacherous Gian Cantore, waited for the Duke with poisoned daggers by night in the streets of Ferrara. Twice they missed him and twice they lacked the courage to carry out their mission. Alfonso was a big man and skilled in the practice of arms; moreover, he wore chain mail beneath his doublet. The conspirators quarrelled among themselves, renewed the poison on their daggers, and prevaricated.
In April Alfonso left for Venice, apparently with the intention of informing the Signory of his plan to go on a pilgrimage to Compostela, and in the meantime to obtain their protection for his state. It was to be a short visit: he intended to leave later for Spain. Lucrezia was to be left in charge as Governor of the city, giving audiences and issuing orders, not merely attending to the examination of petitions. It was an indication not only of her administrative talents but a demonstration of trust. Otherwise, of all his relations, Alfonso confided only in Ippolito, who remained in Ferrara, and Niccolò da Correggio, who accompanied him to Venice. Moreover, said di Prosperi, Alfonso had told Lucrezia that he did not wish her to consult him about anything while he was away ‘except for something of such importance that it bore on the maintenance and conservation of the State’. For greater security in Alfonso’s absence, Lucrezia was to move into Alfonso’s rooms in the Palazzo del Corte, while hired lanzknechts and men-at-arms were moved in to guard the Castello. On the day scheduled for Alfonso’s departure, Lucrezia went to stay in Corpus Domini, as was her wont in Holy Week, and there she fell ill with a fever and chills. According to di Prosperi her illness developed into ‘el terzo termine de terzana’—the third stage of tertian fever – and Alfonso deferred his departure, as usual keeping everyone in the dark as to the day he actually planned to leave. He eventually left on 19 April, characteristically at dawn so as to avoid the attentions of the populace who would wish to kiss his hand. He returned at the end of the month to be greeted by Lucrezia and Ippolito who dined with him in his garden. He was off again in mid May to Venice and the Adriatic.
Giulio remained in his palace in the Via degli Angeli, observing experiments with poison on cats, dogs and doves. At the end of April, Lucrezia, who had been fond of Giulio, might have had some inkling of what was going on and, for this reason and perhaps for fear of what Ippolito might do to him, attempted, without success, to make Giulio leave Ferrara. Alfonso, perhaps at her prompting, also sent Gian Luca Pozzi to order him to leave but he again refused and was still there when Alfonso left in May. Di Prosperi, who had reported optimistically to Isabella that Alfonso was able to leave untroubled, ‘because My Lady and your brothers are all disposed for the good’, then curiously remarked of Giulio that he could come and go as he pleased but as yet had not ventured out by day, spending all his time in his palazzo, in his garden or with his horses.
Ippolito and his spies had indeed picked up some information as to what was going on. On 24 May, di Prosperi reported the arrest, on the cardinal’s orders, of one of Giulio’s servants, one Hieronymo, ‘a flycatcher – pigliamosche— of a sad sort’. He did not know the reason and was not going to try and find out, assuming that it was yet another episode in the enmity between the brothers—‘May God put his hand in these things and discords.’ On 13 June it was reported that a servant of Don Ferrante, Andrea della Matta, had been arrested in the Romagna on Ippolito’s commission and brought to Ferrara, while Giulio’s servant Hieronymo had been sent to the Castello. ‘May God, once and for all, place his hand on us with peace and love’ was di Prosperi’s despairing reaction. As well as Giulio’s servant and Ferrante’s Andrea, another man involved in the mechanics of the conspiracy, one Tuttobono, was arrested; both Andrea and Tuttobono were shortly afterwards released. The arrest of the latter, for some reason, had terrified Ferrante who wrote to Isabella pleading with her to get Giulio out of Ferrara to safety in Mantua. The historian of the Congiura suspected Tuttobono of being an agent provocateur, presumably of Ippolito, his function having been to spy on the conspirators. His release and that of Andrea were intended to lull Giulio into an illusion of security. On the 19th di Prosperi reported that crossbowmen had been sent to arrest Gian Cantore – ‘the cause, I understand, being that he refused to go on the ship with the Duke, excusing himself on the grounds that the sea made him ill. And that he had fled without telling anyone, which disturbed the Duke. Others,’ he added, ‘judge that his flight proceeds from those troubles and discords between the cardinal and Don Giulio, which have reached such terms that I doubt that there can ever be love or peace between them.’ It seems that Gian Cantore’s original mission in accompanying Alfonso on his voyage had been to poison him: his nerve had, however, failed him and he disappeared for fear that the conspirators might try to silence him.
Meanwhile, Alfonso, having paid his respects to Venice, continued his journey on 15 May by boat down the canals, accompanied by Niccolò da Correggio, the doctor Francesco Castello, and a large company, with the intention of attending the annual fair at Lanciano, a rough event which included mock battles and appealed to his fondness for low life. At Lanciano he encountered two Venetian war galley captains (soracomiti), and, dismissing most of his party, continued his voyage down the Adriatic with them, keeping Lucrezia informed all the while. Having landed incognito at Trani in Puglia, he surveyed the surrounding countryside from a belltower before going on to Bari where his cousin, Isabella d’Aragona, the widow of Gian Galeazzo Sforza, now resided with Lucrezia’s son, Rodrigo Bisceglie, in her care; whether or not Alfonso saw him there has not been recorded. Alfonso and his two Venetian captains next set off for Ragusa on the Dalmatian coast and then Corfu, pursuing some pirate ships in the hope of capturing them. In fact his true intention was almost certainly to familiarize himself with the situation of the Venetians in the Adriatic. Venice responded in fury, imprisoning the two captains and turning away Alfonso’s envoy Niccolò da Correggio, sent there to plead innocence since Alfonso had been given (limited) letters of authorization. Alfonso’s attempts to ingratiate himself with Venice had failed; he now had personal experience of the arrogance of La Serenissima. He decided to return to Ferrara, where he arrived on 2 July, moving with his usual swiftness and unexpectedness, so much so that Ippolito and Ferrante, who had gone to meet him at Monastirolo, missed him.
Yielding to Isabella’s advice and, possibly that of Lucrezia, Giulio was by then safely out of the way at Mantua. But neither Ferrante, nor the co-conspirators, the Boschetti, seem to have been aware of imminent danger. Alfonso had written in a friendly manner to Boschetti, offering him unaccustomed favours. Suspicion appeared to be centred on Giulio: Isabella and Francesco sent Capilupo to Ferrara to see Alfonso on a mission of reconciliation, but Alfonso responded by demanding that Giulio return in person to Ferrara to explain himself, as he told Giulio in a written ultimatum on 22 July: ‘If you do not return within two days we will judge that you do not wish to return and we will commence an investigation into your case.’ Giulio replied indirectly to Niccolò da Correggio, refusing on the grounds that ‘he had [as] good cause to fear returning to Ferrara as he had in leaving there’ since many days before Isabella had been warned that ‘certain evil’ would have been done him if he did not. This warning, apparently, had been at the instigation of Ferrante at the time of Tuttobono’s arrest.
Gonzaga then asked for safe conduct for Giulio or, at the very least, the raising of the two-day ultimatum. Alfonso replied in a letter of 25 July that he would certainly give Giulio safe conduct and that he would not be harmed by anyone, specifically mentioning Ippolito, but that he could not guarantee him a safeguard against justice should Giulio be found guilty of plotting against him.
Events were now moving swiftly and an inquiry had already begun on 22 July; on the 25th Albertino Boschetti was arrested and detained in the Castello, and on the 26th the craven Ferrante denounced Giulio to Alfonso, as he told Francesco Gonzaga in a panic-stricken letter pleading for his protection:
If Your Lordship does not help and save me I shall perish because, having been induced yesterday morning to reveal the conspiracy of Don Julio to my Illustrious Lord and brother and thus having facilitated Julio’s escape although knowing him to merit every evil and punishment for conspiracy, nonetheless I earnestly pray Your Lordship that you will give up the person of Don Julio to the Most Illustrious Don Sigismondo, my brother, and Messer Antonio de Costabili, because thus Your Lordship will give me life since the Lord Duke will be content with that for all [despite] the punishment I might merit and however, once again I pray Your Lordship to have more respect for my safety than that of Don Julio and to grant me this grace . . .3
Gonzaga, however, refused to hand over Giulio to Costabili and Sigismondo, provoking an agitated letter from Alfonso who had taken to his bed with a fever caused by the anxiety of the case. There is no doubt that he had been horribly shocked by the revelations of his brothers’ plot against him and, he told Gonzaga, more and worse facts against Ferrante had been discovered and he had therefore had him imprisoned in the castle. Naively, he still seems to have had absolute trust in the friendship and good faith of Francesco Gonzaga, reminding him of the obligations they had towards each other as heads of state – ‘of being of one mind and will in every fortune’. Far from being trustworthy, however, two days later, Gonzaga wrote to the Pope’s nephew, Galeotto Franciotti della Rovere, Cardinal of San Pietro in Vincula, asking him for his protection of Gian Cantore ‘whom I have always known to be a good man and recognised as such by the Most Illustrious Duke Ercole, my late father-in-law’.4 Gonzaga’s reasons for doing this are hard to fathom; by this time the complicity of Gian Cantore and his gross betrayal of his patron, Alfonso, were known. Bacchelli attributes it to Gonzaga’s hostility towards both Alfonso, for his pro-Venetian policy, and Niccolò da Correggio, promoter of that policy. That same policy had provoked a hostile reaction in Rome where the fratricidal conduct of the Este brothers had made the worst possible impression.
The trial of the conspirators began, on Alfonso’s orders, on 3 August, in the privacy of Sigismondo d’Este’s house and concluded with sentences against Albertino Boschetti, Gherardo de’Roberti and Franceschino Boccacci da Rubiera. The guilt of Ferrante and Giulio was pronounced on 25 August and 9 September. The judges (the Savi) were among the most distinguished men in Ferrara, and the executive sentence was given on 9 September by their leader, the Giudice dei XII Savi, Antonio Costabili. The involvement of the Savi showed that Alfonso was determined to keep to his oath of justice; there were to be no summary punishments even though the eventual fate of all the conspirators was to be cruel. Ferrante had been under arrest since 29 July when Alfonso had personally accompanied him to the castle and had him imprisoned in a room in the Torre Marchesana. After four days, the windows were blocked halfway up so that Ferrante could not see out.
On the same day Alfonso had had Gherardo de’Roberti brought from Carpi and taken through the piazza to the piazzetta where a great crowd waited to see him. From the windows of Alfonso’s rooms in the via coperta the triumvirate of Alfonso, Lucrezia and Ippolito watched. Afterwards, Alfonso visited de’Roberti in the castle dungeon to interrogate him: enraged, he seized a baton and gave him such a blow that he almost took out an eye. De’Roberti was then consigned to the lowest dungeon of the Great Tower and shackled. The discovery of the plot, symbolized by the imprisonment of the two men, was greeted with the ringing of all the bells, and bonfires were lit that evening all over the city; this continued for three days. Lucrezia and the noblewomen of Ferrara attended solemn mass sung by the ducal singers in the cathedral, and afterwards thanksgiving processions wound through the city, attended by Alfonso and Ippolito with the noblemen and populace.
Lucrezia no doubt found the whole business hard to bear and the tension within the family and household excruciating. She had been fond of both Ferrante and Giulio: Ferrante had been her proxy husband at the Vatican ceremony and her companion on her wedding journey north. Giulio had frequently accompanied her on her forays to the Este villas and had been one of her favourite dancing partners. Ippolito was ruthless and unyielding, Alfonso bitter and emotional. On 19 August Lucrezia rode to Belriguardo for a few days to escape the atmosphere. Alfonso remained nervous and mistrustful. He gave orders that only his guards should have access to the Castello and, probably to her great annoyance, moved Lucrezia from her beautifully decorated apartments in the castle to the rooms in the Corte she had occupied during his absence. Di Prosperi reported:
The principal cause I believe is because His Lordship wishes to restrict access to the Castle by anyone except the guards and it seems that he has moved the Lady to the rooms in the Corte – The Lord keeping for himself his camerini with the two camere dorate[gilded rooms] above the piazzetta of the Castello, from which he can come to the small salon with the balcony and the Sala Grande. However every day he changes his mind but he has told Madonna that she cannot at the moment enjoy her beautiful Rooms and princely apartments which she had had decorated (and was still having done) and on which have been spent thousands of ducats.
As a show of force Alfonso held a review of his light horse and a new display of men-at-arms.
Still Francesco Gonzaga held out, refusing to return Giulio; Sigismondo d’Este and Costabili, now reinforced by Niccolò da Correggio with twenty-five crossbowmen, failed to persuade him to hand over Giulio and, after a blazing row, returned to Ferrara empty-handed. Gonzaga continued to demand humane treatment for Giulio and also for Ferrante, although, as Bacchelli remarks, the latter did not even have the excuse of bad treatment by Ippolito for his treachery. In Ferrara, however, the courtiers besieged Alfonso with advice as to how the prisoners should be punished, Antonio Costabili pointing out that in ancient Rome traitors were put in a sack with animals and thrown into the Tiber. Alfonso, however, promised Gonzaga that neither Giulio nor Ferrante should be personally harmed but that they would be imprisoned. Meanwhile, in the Castel Sant’ Angelo in Rome, Gian Cantore confessed to papal and Ferrarese commissaries that he had been drawn into the plot by the Este brothers: he had not yet been handed over. Alfonso expelled the Boschetti family from their castle of San Cesario; in Mantua the unfortunate Boschetti daughter was forced into a convent. Giulio, now confined to his room in the castle at Mantua, his goods confiscated, had written a grovelling letter of apology to Alfonso, excusing his treachery by blaming Ippolito’s attack on him and Alfonso’s apparent alliance with the cardinal, an excuse unlikely to further his cause. Moreover, Ippolito was enraged by any attempt to lay blame upon him and was working cunningly behind the scenes to cover his tracks, even to the extent of instructing Ariosto, now his employee, not to mention the part he had played in the eclogue which Ariosto was writing about theCongiura.
Alfonso was determined to lay his hands on Giulio, and Francesco Gonzaga could no longer hold out. On 6 September, with two hundred light horse, crossbowmen and stradiots (the dreaded Albanian light cavalry brought to Italy by the Venetians), he arrived in Ferrara en route to meet Julius II, whose Gonfalonier he had been appointed, at Urbino preparatory to the campaign against the Bentivoglio. On the day of his arrival he was escorted by Alfonso to see Lucrezia in the Camera de la Stufa Grande where she was then lodged. He spent two days in the city, lodged in the Palazzo del Corte, leaving on the 8th. Giulio, in chains, was handed over to Alfonso’s representative in Mantua on Isabella’s orders on 9 September and taken the next day to Ferrara by the brothers Masino and Girolamo del Forno, trusted henchmen of Alfonso and Ippolito. He was imprisoned in the deepest dungeon in the Torre dei Leoni and shackled. He was only twenty-six years old.
The grisly punishment of the non-Este conspirators took place publicly: they were taken on a wagon from the castle to a tribune in the piazza where the process against them was read out. Franceschino da Rubiera was the first to suffer. Blindfolded, stunned with the executioner’s axe and kicked as he lay on the floor, he was then dragged to a block, decapitated and then quartered. Boschetti and Gherardo suffered the same fate. Their heads were placed on lances on the tower of the Palazzo della Ragione, their butchered body parts above three gates of the city. On 8 October, Ferrante and Giulio were sentenced to death but pardoned by Alfonso and imprisoned in rooms on two floors of the Torre dei Leoni. Finally, Gian Cantore was brought to Ferrara, seated on a horse with his hands tied behind him and his feet bound together under the horse’s stomach. Before him rode the executioner, holding a rope tied round the singer’s neck, and as he was led through the streets the populace spat in his face, pulled out his beard and aimed blows at his ribs. He was imprisoned in the Castello until 6 January 1507, Epiphany, when he was put in an iron cage suspended halfway up the Torre dei Leoni. Dressed in thin rags, shivering in the cold, icy wind, he remained there subsisting on bread and wine until the night of the 13th when either he hanged himself or was hanged by his gaolers. His body was then stripped and dragged by the heels through the streets behind a cart, to be hung by the feet from the bridge of Castel Tedaldo above the Po, the same bridge by which Lucrezia had entered the city.
As far as the Este family was concerned, the story was over. Giulio and Ferrante were kept imprisoned in the Torre dei Leoni while court life went on as if they had never existed. Their goods were handed over to Alfonso’s favourites with Niccolò da Correggio receiving the prize of Giulio’s magnificent palazzo on the Via degli Angeli. Ferrante died in prison in February 1540, aged sixty-three, after spending thirty-four years without a visit from any of his family. Giulio was released by Alfonso’s grandson, Alfonso II, on his accession, after fifty-three years’ imprisonment. Aged eighty-one, Giulio emerged to astound the people of Ferrara, still dandified and, according to the chroniclers, ‘a most handsome man’ but a figure from the past with a long beard and clothes which had been made for him in the fashion of fifty years ago.
Julius II, meanwhile, had revived Alexander VI’s campaign to bring the Papal States under the control of the Church. The Bentivoglio of Bologna, who had only escaped being taken over by Cesare in the name of the Church by very substantial bribes, were now a prime target. They were deprived of their status as papal vicars of the city, which was excommunicated as long as they remained there. On 14 October 1506, a copy of the papal interdict against Bologna had been nailed to the door of the cathedral in Ferrara. Under its terms anyone who killed a Bolognese would be granted remission of his sin and a papal indulgence, as well as the goods of his victim. Any priest who failed to leave Bologna would forfeit his benefices. The author of this Christian document, the belligerent, bibulous Julius II, was on his way north; having already received the submission of Gian Paolo Baglioni of Perugia, he was approaching Imola with his army which included Francesco Gonzaga. The Bentivoglio family had already been excommunicated. Alfonso and Ippolito, who were related by marriage to the Bentivoglio and who had already outraged the Pope by their treatment of his godson, Ferrante, hastened to Imola to pay reverence to him. On 28 October a relieved Lucrezia wrote to Alfonso to tell him of her delight at hearing he had been well received there by the Pope and cardinals. He was not, however, prepared to participate totally in the humiliation of his friends and on his return to Ferrara on 3 November he issued a proclamation to the effect that anyone who had taken cattle and other animals from a Bolognese should register them with the Giudice dei Savi on pain of payment of a fine or, if not, tracti de corda. (This particularly painful torture involved tying the victim’s arms behind his back, then hoisting him up by cords tied around his wrists, thus dislocating his shoulders.) He also refused the Pope’s invitation to accompany him on his triumphal entry into Bologna.
The Bentivoglio had scattered before the Pope’s advance; Alfonso diplomatically retired to Belriguardo and Ostellato en route for Comacchio on 9 November, shortly before the arrival that afternoon of his half-sister Lucrezia Bentivoglio and her children, as refugees in Ferrara. Lucrezia, too, kept her at arm’s length, as di Prosperi told Isabella on 12 November: ‘Yesterday evening the Most Illustrious Madonna Lucretia [Bentivoglio] was to have been taken to see the Duchess, but Her Excellency was celebrating the feast of St Martin with the Cardinal and Messer Sigismondo and others.’ That day with Niccolò da Correggio she received her half-sister-in-law for a lengthy conversation which, however, di Prosperi noted acidly, did not appear to have been of great consolation to Lucrezia Bentivoglio: ‘I did not see her return to her lodging more comforted than before, not so much for her adversities, but for reasons I cannot write: Your Ladyship, I believe, will hear of this from her . . .’ Lucrezia Bentivoglio’s mother-in-law and sister-in-law arrived that day and lodged outside the city walls. They were clearly not invited in. Ippolito had not seen his half-sister Lucrezia since her arrival although he had called and been told that she was at table. Some of the leading noblewomen of the town had visited her but it was clear the ruling family could not risk incurring the Pope’s wrath and possible excommunication by harbouring his enemies. On 11 November, Julius II made his formal entry into Bologna.
Meanwhile, what of Lucrezia in all these Este family affairs? Apart from a brief intervention when she had been warned off by Alfonso, she seems to have kept herself apart, although undoubtedly aware of what was going on. Only one letter of that year from her to Alfonso has survived—assuming that there were more —and that, dated from Ferrara on 28 October, when the Congiura and its attendant horrors were over, refers to her pleasure at hearing from him of the good reception he and Ippolito had received from Julius II at Imola, where the warrior pope was on his way north to take Bologna. There is not one letter from her to Ippolito but since they were together in Ferrara for much of that year it is understandable. There are many letters to Francesco Gonzaga, some of them via trusted messengers such as Tebaldeo, Alberto Pio da Carpi and Hector Berlinguer, who transmitted her messages orally. Others, more explicit, were mainly of an administrative nature: requests for clemency for various subjects, asking him to take action concerning the reduction of water to their lands in Carpesana and their subjects there, caused by the construction of a watermill by a Mantuan citizen on the canal leading to their mills. She repeated Alfonso’s request to him to return the situation to what it had previously been. She was a passionate defender of the interests of her citizens and friends; she took up the cause of one Messer Amato Cusatro, who had suffered greatly from losing Gonzaga’s esteem and was now being unjustly persecuted by the podestà of Sermide in consequence: ‘I pray with all my heart that Your Lordship will not deny me this favour, because the love that I bear Messer Amato is such that I would hold any injury done to him as if it were to my own person, having found him a rare and affectionate servant to my Illustrious consort and myself . . .’ In December she wrote in her own hand asking Francesco to favour Ercole Strozzi: ‘Your Lordship knows that affection I bear to Messer Hercule Strozza [sic] and the obligations I have to him for his singular virtues and merit. He is coming to ask you a favour, as he will explain to you. I recommend him with all my heart and pray you that you will for love of me do for Messer Hercule as I am sure you would do for myself, because for the reasons I have referred to no less do I desire his wellbeing and ease than my own: whatever favour you will do him I will receive as done to me . . .’
Angela Borgia’s up-and-down erotic career appeared finally to have reached a happy conclusion, despite her contrary mother-in-law. In June, di Prosperi reported that Alessandro Pio had appeared in Ferrara and ‘remarried’ Angela. Early in December, he wrote to Isabella that Angela had had a row with her husband over a golden robe which she wanted and which he told her should be paid for out of her dowry. This quarrel was resolved: a few days later she was ceremonially accompanied to the rented house she was to share with her husband, in a carriage with Lucrezia and attended by Alfonso, Ippolito and all the court on horseback ‘to the sound of trumpets’. She was dressed in brocade, richly adorned and her fine carriage covered with satin striped with black velvet which, di Prosperi gossiped, had ‘cost her dowry but little’. There was a collation with plates of sugar confections, supper and dancing.
For Lucrezia, the great event of that extraordinary year was the news which reached her in the last week of November that Cesare was at liberty again. On the night of 25 October, he had made a dramatic escape from La Mota, injuring himself quite severely when the rope down which he was climbing was cut from above, precipitating him into the fosse. He made for Navarre and the court of his brother-in-law, Jean d’Albret, taking a tortuous route to evade capture, and reaching Pamplona on 3 December. Somewhere along the way he managed to get word to Lucrezia, who learned of his escape on 26 November and wrote immediately to Gonzaga, expecting him to share her joy. By the end of December, Lucrezia had learned where he was from his chancellor, Federico, whom she sent on to Gonzaga with the happy news and a letter from Cesare. (Cesare had also written to Ippolito; he did not, significantly, write to Alfonso.) ‘I am sure,’ Lucrezia wrote disingenuously, ‘that this [news] will make you rejoice and you will derive from it as much contentment as does the Duke [Cesare] . . . loving him as you do as a brother . . .’5
One other important person certainly did not share her joy: Julius II, now triumphantly ensconced in Bologna. As Federico passed through Bologna, the Pope had him seized. Lucrezia was distraught and wrote to Gonzaga asking him to intercede with Julius for his release, assuring him that Cesare intended no harm to the Pope, nor would she have allowed Federico to engage in any such activity, ‘being a most devoted and faithful servant to His Beatitude together with my consort. I know that he is not here for anything other than to give me the news of his [Cesare’s] liberation.’ Such a detention could only do harm to her brother and herself, giving the impression that they were not in the Pope’s good graces, therefore she begged Francesco to obtain Federico’s speedy release. In fact Julius had little to fear from Cesare. Although il Valentino still signed his letters ‘Cesar Borgia de Francia, duca di Romagna’, these were but empty words. As Julius himself sneered, Cesare now had ‘not one rampart in the Romagna’. He was practically penniless: Julius had sequestrated the money which his bankers had distributed around the leading Italian banks, and the treasure which Florence and the Bentivoglio had captured. Louis XII had refused his request for the restitution of his duchy of Valentinois and his offer to take service with him once again. Yet where the charismatic, driven Cesare was concerned you could never be sure that he was finished. As Ferdinand of Aragon’s chronicler Zurita wrote, the news of his escape ‘put the Pope in great consternation, because the Duke was such a man that only his presence was sufficient to raise new troubles in all Italy: and he was greatly loved, not only by the soldiery, but also by many people of Tuscany and the States of the Church’.6 And in Ferrara he had his loyal and loving sister who would do anything to help him.