Thesis
Ethnicity and Nationality
At the same time, however, Renaissance ethnicity and modern nationality are not two different names for the same thing. Apart from the problem over the development of nations (a problem particularly visible in the Italian peninsula), nationality is a state-conferred legitimacy and as such is more clean-cut and harder to contest. Renaissance ethnicity has more to do with social inclusion and adherence to certain cultural norms. It was not enough to go through certain formalities and to receive recognition, if grudging, of your membership. It was a more fluid process, one that was constantly repeated as one came into contact with other members of the society. Therefore it could both be continually refuted or continually acknowledged but could also be changed (or attempted to be changed) to suit one’s needs. This is why Rodrigo was able to assert that although he was born in Spain and was at this time aligning himself with France politically he was still an Italian. However, it is also why several years earlier Charles VIII of France was able to complain bitterly that, “Alexander VI is a Spaniard” and there was therefore no sense in bringing the claim that France was the rightful inheritor of Naples (instead of the Spanish Aragon family, who at the time ruled it) before Rodrigo.
While it was true that at that time Rodrigo was still allied with Naples and certainly supported a Spanish claim to the throne more than a French one, it has been equally born out by history that this alliance was not set in stone. Rodrigo began to cool to Naples not too long after Charles VIII’s failed invasion. Cesare left Rome to politick at the French court after secularizing himself in 1497 and, with his marriage to Charlotte d’Albret and apparent friendship with Louis XII, crafted stronger ties to France. Cesare was able to add the French lilies to his own coat of arms and would on occasion play up this connection, as in a letter from 1506 where he signed himself “Your majesty’s friend and younger brother, Cesare”. Although this reiteration of connections had much to do with politics and political legitimacy, it is still important to recognize if only because it shows that political alliance and cultural background did not go hand in hand, another reminder that nationality and ethnicity should not be equated. If the Borgias were seen as distinctly Spanish in Italy, then so too in France, especially during these years of rivalry between the Spanish and French kingdoms. Even if Cesare was taken for Italian since he was born and raised in Italy, it still goes without saying that he was not understood to be French even though he found a powerful ally in Louis XII and took on the French holding of Valentinois. They were claiming membership in or alliance to various communities in order to advance their own goals.
It could be argued that Rodrigo had something similar in mind when he asserted that he was Italian. Just as Cesare spoke of his political alliance with Louis XII in familial and personal terms, so might have Rodrigo meant not that he was ethnically Italian but simply that he lived in Italy and was one of its political representatives. He references the geographic bases of his power in the Vatican and the Papal States while simultaneously reminding his audience that he is “Spanish by birth”. This is an action that parallels Cesare being known first as Valencia and then as Valentino in direct reference to his ecclesial and secular holdings and might be seen as similar to someone today being referred to by the title of their job (especially since, due to the high prevalence of simony, many would never visit the territory they were responsible for in name). At the same time, however, this modern parallel does not quite give a sense of the same sort of asserted integration that Rodrigo’s claim to be Italian does. It is a claim to legitimacy in not only the political realm but to the social one as well. Its political aspects are certainly highlighted but because of the contested nature of Rodrigo’s true loyalties and true nature, it reads as an assertion of inclusion in the majority culture as well. Whether or not Rodrigo’s assertion was able to change how people categorized him is another question altogether. Rodrigo’s ethnicity was so publicly visible and so publicly contested that for him to say pointblank that he is Italian carries that extra weight and connotation, even if it should also be understood as a statement about his capability to do his job and a reminder of his position. Simply because he stated that he was Italian does not mean that he was accepted as one. It was evidence to any claim he had on Italian ethnicity, but was no conclusive argument.
Politics and Religion
As Rodrigo showed, politics and ethnicity were not fully separated. As stated above, one of the reasons the Italian majority was initially uncomfortable with the election of Alfonso Borgia as pope was because of the fear that he would either move the papal seat to Valencia, or fill the Vatican with Spanish supporters. Similar cries were raised against Rodrigo when he became Alexander VI. Complaints were issued that he was stuffing the cardinalate with relatives and others with ties to Spain in order to give himself backing and facilitate his political maneuvering. Similarly, in 1500 when Cesare was engaging in a military career, the diplomat Collenucio made a note not only of which men were in his retinue and which were prominent in his household, but where they were from. The nepotism practiced by Rodrigo and Alfonso Borgia, however, was far from unusual. Giuliano della Rovere, the eventual Julius II, and the man perhaps most responsible for Cesare’s downfall, was himself the nephew of Sixtus IV, who also made an illegitimate son cardinal just as Rodrigo did for Cesare. The election of a new pope was taken so seriously in large part because of the benefits he would be able to confer upon his supporters and family members. Accusations that Rodrigo bought the papacy with bags of silver may be false, but he did bestow multiple benefices and offices on Ascanio Sforza in exchange for his dropping out of the running and throwing his support behind him.
The persistence in accusing Rodrigo of nefarious actions during the election and his reign as pope has less to do with the uniqueness of his deeds as with the unusualness of his background, as is occasionally mentioned but hardly ever looked at in more than passing, except to analyze the political situation. Spanish Naples especially was understood to be politically encroaching on Italy in 1492, and tensions ran high between the various important Italian families as old rivalries lent themselves to alliance with either Spain or France. This political tension did not let up over the following years, as France invaded twice (once in 1494 with the intent of overthrowing Rodrigo and once in 1499 with the very different goal of assisting Cesare to reclaim the Papal States) and Naples threatened to take similar steps. An anonymous verse (“More irksome than famine, Frenchman or Spaniard” ) from 1496 pointed to the struggle between the two kingdoms for control over Italian territory.
The election of 1492 saw this strain reach new heights as the Italian Ascanio Sforza dropped out of the running, leaving the Spanish Rodrigo Borgia and the pro-France Giuliano della Rovere. The two men had been personal enemies for quite some time and their rivalry would only increase after Rodrigo beat out Giuliano for the tiara. Machiavelli recorded that Giuliano oversaw the redecorating of several of the rooms in 1503 that Rodrigo had laid claim to during his years as pope. “He did not wish to see the face of his old enemy Alexander VI all the time; he called him a Marrano, a Jew and one of the circumcised.” Not only did Giuliano in this quote post-humorously deny Rodrigo acceptance into the Italian majority community, he more explicitly denied him the political and religious legitimacy that Rodrigo had claimed for himself both in writing as shown above and through his position in the church. By stating that Rodrigo was Jewish he invalidated not only his reign as pope, but his entire ecclesial career.
In the damning quote above, Giuliano called Rodrigo a Jew three times in quick succession (the final time most graphically and humiliatingly), but his use of the word “marrano” is particularly interesting as it refers not just to a person in the Jewish community, but more specifically to those in the Iberian peninsula who continued to practice Judaism in secret after publicly converting to Christianity. As was mentioned above, the Jewish population in Spain was compelled to convert or to leave after the Reconquista. Those Jews who did convert, whether at that point or earlier, were considered at best New Christians and at worst crypto-Jews, a topic and a labeling that Kaplan among others have examined in the past. New Christians were those who were thought to be true converts but who did not have the added legitimacy or respectability of being from an older, “purer” bloodline. Crypto-Jews were thought to continue to practice Judaism in secret, even going so far in some stories as to actively work against the Christian population they were infiltrating, as in the tales of the blood libel in which Jews kidnapped young Christian boys to drain them of their blood for use in cooking the Passover Seder. These tales were intended to mirror the crucifixion story, with the martyred boy becoming a heavy-handed symbol for Jesus and the Jewish murderers supposedly repeating the crime of deicide. Renaissance Italy was well aware of these stories and Innocent VIII, Rodrigo’s predecessor, was rumored to have been attended on his deathbed by a Jewish doctor who tried to treat him with either an elixir or infusion of blood (depending on the translation) taken from three young boys who, as the story goes, later died. By calling Rodrigo a marrano in this context, Giuliano was implying that he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and that he was not a Christian at all but had infiltrated the church for his own nefarious reasons. Furthermore, by choosing to use the term for a converted Jew from Spain, he was reinforcing the idea that Rodrigo was an outside in the Italian peninsula and not a valid member of its community.
The assertion that Rodrigo was a Jew went beyond simply denying him Italian ethnicity, if believed it would have denied him Spanish ethnicity as well to the extent that to be a Spaniard was to be a Christian. The Jewish population was often seen to be outside of any other geographically defined ethnicity because it was outside of Christendom, that overarching unifier that other European ethnicities fell under rather than subsumed into it as other minority groups might be. The Jewish population was certainly integrated into the surrounding majority culture in many ways-Jews spoke local or regional dialects, were subject to the same secular laws, and conversant in the same popular and high cultural artifacts. They were held to different religious laws, however, something that was problematic in Bartlett’s theory of ethnicity if nothing else, and were in some places encouraged to take up certain jobs that were either prohibited for Christians (money-lending is the infamous example) or that offered them protection from the rulers of the various areas but that brought them unfavorable attention from the local population (such as tax collecting or working as middlemen). The trade rulers offered Jews was often protection for labor. This encouraged the perception of the Jewish population as a distinct Other living in the midst of the Self, allowing for the scapegoating of the Jewish community in times of danger or stress and the reluctance to allow its integration, even after the process of conversion when all barriers were supposedly removed. A similar (although on a far lesser scale) question of belonging can be seen in the debate over the proper term for an American of Asian descent: Asian American or Asian-American? The decision to forgo the hyphen in order to indicate an American who also happens to be Asian as opposed to an Asian who is also American in contrast to “normal” Americans who are not is an effort to avoid becoming Americans*, excluded from proper acceptance in the majority culture that was termed ethnicity in the Renaissance even as they participated in it on other levels. This is the same struggle over inclusion that Jews faced during the Renaissance, albeit often with more violent and tragic results. Was a Jewish man living in Florence a Florentine or a Florentine*? Similarly, was Rodrigo an Italian with familial ties to Spain or was he a Spaniard who lived and worked in Italy? Looking at the status of his children muddies this question further, as they were born and raised in Italy but brought up and promoted by a Spanish father.
The Bull and the Calves
Rodrigo’s children were clearly bound to him in the minds of their contemporaries. An anonymous author called for the people of Italy to “Kill the bull who is laying waste the frontiers of Italy, tear out the monstrous beast’s horns. Avenging Tiber, drown the calves in your fast flowing waves!” , a particularly vicious call to arms considering that the Tiber was where Juan’s stabbed body had been discovered. In this metaphor, Rodrigo was the bull, as the bull was prominent on the family’s crest (and incidentally also was a symbol of Spain) and his children were the calves-little bulls themselves, with the bull’s same nature and characteristics. They held high status and visibility precisely because of Rodrigo’s position and he was clearly proud of them, making no effort to conceal their relationship with him, although previous cardinals and popes had insisted upon the euphemism of nieces and nephews to describe their offspring. Rodrigo, however, officially recognized them as his own children, even going so far as to obtain special permission for Cesare to enter the church as his illegitimate son instead of having him declared the son of a relative or of Vanozza’s legal husband, as was the norm. This caused problems when it came time to arrange both Lucrezia and Cesare’s marriages, as several of their potential spouses were opposed to the idea of marrying an illegitimate child of the pope-or at least were able to use it as an excuse to protest the alliance, some successfully.
Both Cesare and Lucrezia, however, made use of the ethnicities of their eventual spouses. Cesare did so with obvious intent, as a large part of the reason why he journeyed to France in the first place was to obtain a wife at the French court. He added the royal lilies to his crest, styled himself the king’s brother, and obtained and publicized his title of Duke de Valentinois. Men were often defined by the geographic location in which they had their holdings, reflecting both the practice of calling a man after his place of birth and the idea that part of what made one a member of a community was interaction with a specific geographic region. Even before becoming il Valentino Cesare was identified by his benefices, as one ambassador recognized in a letter about his meeting with Cesare shortly before Rodrigo became pope. “Their ages are about the same; I believe that Valencia is not more than sixteen years old, while our Strigonia is near that age”, he said, referring to Cesare in shorthand as Valencia. This was not the same as actually being a member of a specific community, however, as not all had much (or any) significant connection to the place of their holdings. There was often a tie, with the title reflecting the geographic community its bearer was a member of, but in this period of heightened simony and nepotism, it is amply established that this was not always the case. In many cases the title was less a claim to ethnicity and more a claim to power.
Cesare was made Bishop of Pamplona at the age of twelve, an act that caused a great uproar in Pamplona, a place he had never been and must have had little attention of ever journeying to. (Ironically, Cesare would eventually die in his old bishopric and have his bones desecrated by one of his successors.) When the twelve-year-old wrote to the city to soothe it, insisting upon his genuine affection for the people and his desire to leave the power structure already in place alone, he used familial terms, calling the people there his brothers. This appears to have been more of a political move, however, than an attempt at establishing any genuine sense of belonging, as it was a response to a volatile situation and an attempt to strengthen his hold on power. If it is to be looked at as part of the process of negotiation into a community, it would be into the community of Bishops, or of those in positions of power. It was an appeal to peace for the sake of political face. Cesare would eventually, however, be embraced by the community of Navarre after he put his support behind their bid for independence (again, in an attempt to strengthen his hold on political power) and is now remembered as a hero of the failed revolution. Five hundred years after the fact he gained acceptance, for reasons I will come back to shortly. But at this time, Cesare’s embracing of his titles was consistently a political move, not one that signified any great shift in his ethnicity or in how it was perceived by others. Lucrezia’s marriage to Alfonso d’Este had somewhat different results. There is no evidence that she entered into it with intentions to use it as leverage for power like Cesare did and yet it is clear by the writings about her that it was during this final period of her life that she was most accepted into the Italian majority community. This was likely due in large part that it was at this time that she lived for an extended period of time away from Rome (and away from much contact with her family, outliving all members of her childhood nuclear family except for Jofre) and could therefore be more fully absorbed into the Italian majority.
Lucrezia: Women and Cultural Identity
Unlike men, who at this period were the heads of their households, women generally became a part of a new family after marriage, at least to an extent. It was seen unusual, even comic, that Vanozza’s husband took on her surname at their marriage in acknowledgement to her higher standing and greater political pull because of her close connection to Rodrigo. Similarly, Giulia Farese, another of Rodrigo’s well-known mistresses, had a brother who was termed the petticoat cardinal because he obtained favor with Rodrigo and was made a cardinal after Rodrigo became pope. In both these cases, however, even though it was the woman who had more power than her male counterpart, this power derived from her sexual relationship with another, still more powerful man. She was still defined according to her connection with him; the difference was simply that this political pull was strong enough to drag others along with it. It was a revisioning of the traditional order, not a radical reshaping of it. In fact, although at least one of Vannozza’s four legal husbands took her surname and she continued to use it as well for most public matters, she also occasionally used “Borgia” in private affairs, reflecting her connection to Rodrigo as well as defining herself according to her relationship with him. Even though Vannozza eventually became a rather prominent figure in her own right, purchasing a series of inns which she managed as landlady and donating lavishly to a hospital for courtesans and prostitutes, the inscription on her tombstone makes no mention of any of that but instead lists the names and titles of her children-even in death she was defined as a mother and, by extension, a mistress.
In a similar manner, Lucrezia would take her husbands’ surnames and, when finally removed from Rome for an extended period of time, was seen to assimilate with their culture. This was a bit unfair, however, as Lucrezia was born and raised in Italy and could therefore arguably be seen as ethnically Italian. Her mother, with whom she spent her early childhood and whom she wrote to throughout her life, was Italian as well. In fact, Lucrezia’s first marriage to Giovanni Sforza can be understood as a political move to better integrate the family into the Italian majority community. It failed, however, because of various political disputes within the peninsula, and was annulled amid great scandal in no small part because of the rumor mongering done by Giovanni to soothe his ego and feed his personal grievances (Ascanio Sforza, Giovanni’s older relative and one of the most powerful cardinals, largely disapproved of his actions and seemed to have preferred a smoother resolution of the matter.). Lucrezia’s second husband, Alfonso de Aragon, marked the attempted strengthening of an alliance between Rome and Naples and, on a larger scale, between Italy and Spain. Alfonso’s murder and the freeing up of Lucrezia for a third marriage coincided with the move away from close political ties with Naples, as was mentioned above. Lucrezia’s first two marriages took her only briefly away from Rome, as she spent very little time in Pesaro with Giovanni and was requested by Rodrigo to move with Alfonso de Aragorn to Rome. It was only in her third marriage to Alfonso d’Este that she could be seen as properly joining another family as was the norm for women at her time.
After marrying Alfonso d’Este, she moved to Ferrara, where she lived the rest of her life, developing a fine reputation as a patron of the arts as well as a capable helper to Alfonso and the running of his estate. Upon her arrival in Ferrara, Lucrezia was still clearly marked out as Spanish. El Prete, who worked for Isabella of Spain, met with her briefly shortly after her arrival and wrote in detail about her Spanish-style dress and pointed out which of her attendants were from Valencia, her father’s homeland in Spain, as well as commenting on the Spanish music and dances they entertained themselves with. He was surely inclined to comment on details relating to Spain because of his employer and his own Spanish background and it is not particularly surprising that he brought them up. Still, such comments grew less frequent as she settled into life in Ferarra, reflecting her acclimation to the culture there, the population’s general acceptance of her, or some combination thereof. Unlike her brother who carried his family name and line permanently, Lucrezia’s background could be altered if not changed completely by marriage. Her removal from Spanish influence and her integration into Italian culture and society has been commented upon by several historians, including Gregorovius who wrote the first lengthy biography on her in 1874. Gregorovius misinterpreted the change of tone in the writings about her to mean that she had had a moral change of heart and had transformed herself from the whore into the virgin, whereas it is more likely that her more favorable standing in the eyes of her contemporaries reflected instead her increased acceptance into the Italian mainstream community, through a combination of her removal from her natal family and its Spanish background and her participation in a more clearly Italian community. It was not, I would argue, that she became more virginal but that she became less Spanish.
Duke Ercole, Lucrezia’s father-in-law, had been suspicious of the match between Lucrezia and his son and resisted the marriage for as long as he could, eventually giving in “owing to practical considerations” -a polite turn of phrase for the increasing pressure by both the pope and the French Louis XII who desired to further their ties by marrying Rodrigo’s daughter to the son of one of Louis XII’s well-known allies. Ercole was apparently won over by Lucrezia’s charm in the end and wrote a somewhat astonished letter to the point that he could see no flaw with her and, in fact, found her very endearing. He was not so charmed by Rodrigo, however, and, speaking as il Moro in 1495, described Rodrigo’s style of Spanish dress in great detail not as the point of his story but simply to set up his punchline.
The duke asked me, laughing, what I thought of it, and I told him that, were I the Duke of Milan, like him, I would endeavor, with the aid of the King of France and in every other way-and on the pretext of establishing peace-to entrap his Holiness, and with fair words, such as he himself was in the habit of using, to take him and the cardinals prisoners, which would be very easy. (Gregorovius 89)
Why did Ercole feel so differently about father and daughter? It could not have been based on personality and personality alone, as so much of his story about his meeting with il Moro hinged on the description of Rodrigo as utterly and completely Spanish. It also could not simply be a matter of needing to familiarize himself with the people in question, as he had met Rodrigo in the past and his unfavorable feelings towards him persisted up through the marriage of Lucrezia to his son and heir. The difference seems to have been one of power and danger. While most biographers and historians acknowledge Rodrigo’s authority and ability, they do not go on to explain this as a reason for his differing treatment from Lucrezia. Rodrigo was in a vastly more powerful position than was Lucrezia, both because of his political position and because of the societal dynamics that had allowed him to obtain it. Rodrigo’s power was referenced very briefly in the above quote when Ercole mentioned the “fair words” that Rodrigo “was in the habit of using”. Rodrigo was well known as a master diplomat-this is often considered to be one of the reasons why he was elected.
As a brief example, in 1494 when Charles VIII invaded Italy (the broader situation that Ercole was speaking about with il Moro above), he had two objectives in mind. He wanted to reestablish the French claim to Naples and he wanted to call a council that would denounce Rodrigo as pope and strip him of his title. In this way, Charles VIII was directly arguing against papal authority. He was backing the argument that the College of Cardinals as a unit held greater power than did the pope himself and was additionally repeating the claim that kings were not subordinate to the pope. He entered into Italy with an army that for its time was unthinkably large and comprised of mercenaries from many different countries, from Switzerland to Scotland. His invasion also triggered a brief schism between the pro-Spanish and pro-French cardinals, causing many (including Giuliano della Rovere) to abandon Rome and rally around him in the name of overthrowing a corrupt and Spanish pope. With both military and politico-spiritual backing, Charles VIII had marched more or less unopposed down the peninsula and into Rome, laying siege to the (now mostly-deserted) Vatican. And yet after meeting with Rodrigo Charles VIII was convinced to turn around and return to France, neither pursuing his claim to Naples, nor, to the anger and chagrin of the cardinals that had sided with him, calling for a council to oust Rodrigo. Rodrigo was, clearly, a masterful diplomat and smooth talker, something that was known even before this particular event took place. He was a dangerous man, all rumors of poisoning and assassination aside, and would remain one for as long as he remained seated at the pinnacle of power because of the nature of his talents and ambitions. Even if he turned his favor to the d’Este clan he would remain dangerous because it was possible that this favor would pass-in light of the fates of Lucrezia’s unfortunate first two husbands, it was even probable that it would.
As for Lucrezia, her danger was of a different nature. As a woman, and one very much in the public eye, the threat to the d’Este family came through her sexuality more than her political power or ethnicity. The rumors that followed her were one of if not the largest obstacle that needed to be overcome to begin the process of acceptance into the Ferrarian community, as they were a large part of what was causing Ercole to balk at the mention of marriage. He was afraid of Lucrezia’s (or her father’s) unfaithfulness up through the wedding itself, as was demonstrated by his refusal to give Lucrezia any present other than the ring with which she would be married. He did not attend the wedding in Rome, but his ambassador Pozzi wrote back to him that, “There is a document regarding this marriage which simply states that Donna Lucrezia will be given, for a present, the bridal ring, but nothing is said of any other gift. Your Excellency’s intention, therefore, was carried out exactly” . This reflected the result of Lucrezia’s first marriage to Giovanni Sforza that had been dissolved for political reasons and, because of stipulations in the marriage contract, had forced Giovanni to not only return Lucrezia’s sizable dowry but to actually pay a large sum to her father. The better known and no less worrying outcome of this annulment had been the very public insistence that Giovanni was impotent. Marriages could only be annulled for very specific reasons and divorce was not an option. The easiest way out in this case was for the Borgias to claim that Giovanni was incapable of consummating the union, something he denied hotly because of the grievous affront to his masculinity and pride and because of the additional implied insult due to the fact that his first wife had died during childbirth. It was Giovanni who, out of rage and frustration, had started the rumor that Rodrigo only wanted to annul the marriage in order to have Lucrezia all to himself, a rumor all the more viable because of Rodrigo’s well-known weakness for beautiful women. Lucrezia was branded a slut-popular song lyrics at the time compared her to the whore of Babylon-and was looked at with suspicion that would follow her and mark her as dangerous for years.
Lucrezia’s precarious position with her reputation as a respectable woman ruined was in some ways made the worse because of how capable she frequently proved herself to be. This was a gendered argument, not an ethnic or racial one. Women at this time would generally help their husbands with their work to the point that noblewomen would assist in the running of the estate, especially when their husbands were away on other business. Lucrezia was prized by her father for her administrative capabilities to the point that she was once recalled, pregnant, from her second husband’s territory in Spoletto to help Rodrigo in Rome when Cesare was unable to. To underscore her capabilities, Jofre, no longer a child and a nobleman in his own right, traveled with her to Rome on this occasion but was not asked to take on any such duties. In 1501, Rodrigo was called away from Rome and
handed over his room, the whole palace, and the current affairs to his daughter Lucretia [sp], who also occupied the papal rooms during his absence. He charged her also to open the letters sent him, and, in case any difficulty should arise, to consult Cardinal Costa and the other cardinals whom she might call upon for that purpose. (Buchard 152)
This particular account was recorded by Johann Burchard, the Master of Ceremonies, a man very familiar because of his job with the inner workings of the Vatican. He wrote that Lucrezia was placed, in effect, above the cardinals and was allowed to act as the pope in many of his duties while he was away. This demonstrates both a remarkable trust on behalf of Rodrigo and an impressive capability on behalf of Lucrezia. Her position was most unusual, as was noted in jest by Cardinal Costa at this time who, when consulting with Lucrezia, asked if someone would keep notes for them. She responded that she could do so herself, to which he replied “Where is your pen?” This joke was a play on the slang term for penis, reminding them both of the rather inappropriate role of her position. Just as there was tension when crossing the barriers between different ethnic communities, so too with gendered ones. The border between the sexes could be pushed against just as the one between ethnic communities could be, and with similar difficulty and necessity of negotiation.
Lucrezia’s familiarity with the masculine realm (and her occasional ventures into it in ways that toyed with the line between what was and was not socially acceptable) made her all the more dangerous because of how (as with her rumored aggressive sexuality) it was seen to threaten the established social order. Similar gendered attacks and accusations of danger and transgression were made against her mother Vannozza, “the whore of Roma”, and the widowed Catarina Sforza, “the she-lion of Fioli” who dressed in armor and took to the field like male rulers. Both of these women were derided because of how they strayed from the traditional gender roles in ways that were seen to threaten either the patriarchal family system or masculine dominance in the wider world, especially when remembering the virgin (Ave) : whore (Eva) dichotomy that existed at the time and was encouraged by Renaissance Catholicism’s focus on the Virgin Mary as salvation’s response to Eve. The attacks on these women were similar to how ethnic outsiders could be seen as threatening if they were different enough from the majority community. In this case, Lucrezia was threatening not because of her Spanish heritage but because she was believed to subvert standard models of femininity and she was accepted into Ferrarian society once she was able to make an impression as suitably safe and within the socially accepted roles for women. Ercole’s ambassadors wrote to him as they escorted Lucrezia to Ferrara that, “the longer we are with her, and the closer we examine her life, the higher is our opinion of her goodness, her decorum, and modesty” . Lucrezia was able to work to reduce resistance against her. Once her dangerous stigma blew away, she could begin to be integrated into the Italian mainstream community.
Italian ethnicity could have been offered to Lucrezia in ways that it could not have been to Rodrigo or to Cesare. She was seen to be dangerous because of how she broke away from the norm for women in this society, as explained above. This caused her to be seen to be transgressing the boundaries of what was and was not acceptable by the majority community but these were mutable characteristics. Lucrezia’s womanhood itself was never questioned, merely what kind of a woman, virgin or whore, she was. By showing herself to not be so unusual at all and by largely removing herself from her family, Lucrezia could achieve a higher level of integration than could her father or brother. Her sex helped as well, as she married into an Italian family instead of, as men did, seeking and obtaining a spouse for herself. The gender imbalance here worked in her favor, if the goal was acceptance in as a member of the Italian majority community. It is questionable if she ever truly became Italian or Ferrarian (as opposed to Italian* or Ferrarian*), but she was certainly able to counteract the arguments against her integration to a much higher extent than were Alexander or Cesare. Although unable to change her blood ties to Rodrigo and, through him, to Spain, she was able to prove herself unthreatening and even useful to her adopted community, making the her integration smoother by proving that she could be seen as qualitatively equal to a natural-born member of its majority community. She could fill the role of a noblewoman in its society and there was an established precedent for her to do so because of the marriage patterns already in place.
Cesare: Territory Building and Ethnic Formation
Unlike his sister, Cesare’s issues in the Italian peninsula highlighted not his gender but his lineage. This was because of his ambitious nature and quick success in the Romagna, which made him valuable to some in the peninsula and dangerous to others. After all, groups that were seen as threatening to the majority community were less likely to be accepted and by causing political unrest Cesare drew attention to the fact that his family was not initially from the peninsula. Shepherd and Withington noted that this process of conflict and exclusion created a sense of self in relation to the other and that “precepts and practices of community were invariably crystallized through attempts to resolve and contain it.” Ethnicity was formed in order to define the safe mainstream when society was broadened enough that other groups of people were encountered and the whole was no longer homogenous. More specifically, Cesare’s actions in the Romagna simultaneously strengthened his claim to Italian ethnicity and made it more difficult for it to be accepted as valid. In seeking to carve out a territory he was also seeking to obtain Italian ethnicity for himself because it would have enabled him to have a very obvious geographic base to locate himself within in the same way that the other important families had their own holdings. This idea was reflected by Rodrigo’s statement, already looked at above, that “Though we are Spanish by birth and show ourselves French by policy, we are still Italians; our seat is in Italy; here we have to live as also our duke.” Rodrigo used geographic location as the basis on which to found his claim for Italian ethnicity and his son followed this policy. There was no sense in doing otherwise: Rodrigo was born in Spain and although Vannozza was Italian, she was Cesare’s mother-not father-and women’s ethnicity or public identity could be affected by that of their husbands’, as Lucrezia demonstrated. The family’s claim to Christianity was, at least, on solid ground, a fact perhaps reflected by the choice of some of Rodrigo’s detractors to attack him here, threatening to remove his final claim to legitimacy. Rodrigo made mention not only of his seat in the Holy See (“our seat is in Italy”), but also of Cesare’s expanding territory (“here we have to live as also our Duke”). Cesare’s geo-political base was in the heart of Italy although he obtained it with French help and a French title to his name, and he reflected this by taking on the title of Duke of Urbino. Urbino was the most prominent of his holdings and he turned it into his base. Others began to refer to him as Urbino as well, for the first time giving him an Italian name, showing acceptance of his geographic claim to the Italian majority community. This acceptance only went so far, however-those that he ousted of Urbino (as well as those who felt threatened by his actions) surely did not accept his claim to legitimacy based on it and his expulsion to Spain by Giuliano held a certain ironic note.
Conclusion
Ethnicity in the Italian Renaissance was part of a process of give and take, of acceptance and exclusion, in which the individual could choose their ethnic identity and in this way exert control, but so too could the community chose to reject an individual from entry. Ethnic identity was a mode through which power was articulated and expressed. It was the integration of the private identity into the public community and as such was not free from abuse, and could be manipulated both by the individual and the community. As with sexual identity, it could be used to pass judgment on others by attaching characteristics to certain unchangeable aspects of birth or biology. It could also, however, be contested if the individual was able to build up a strong enough claim based on other cultural or immutable aspects. The process of inclusion and exclusion served to reinforce the norms of the community by making visible examples of what was and was not allowed-Christianity, for example, was a prerequisite for entrance into the Italian majority community and, as such, for obtaining full Italian ethnicity (to be Italian rather than Italian*). It was possible to live, work, and interact socially with a community without being seen as properly part of it, a fact demonstrated both by diplomatic visits from other nations or city-states as well as by the Jewish minority communities that existed throughout the peninsula. When looking at the Borgia family, one of the questions to keep in mind is just how accepted were they? It is clear that they were seen as Spanish and that they were in that sense outsiders, but did their prominent position in Italy denote a culture of relative acceptance? Or were they kept on the cultural peripheries even as they wielded vast (political, economic, spiritual, social…) power? The problem with these questions, of course, is that they assume a simple answer whereas in reality the situation changed depending on a number of circumstances, including the year, the larger political situation, and the family member in question.
By using this family as a case study we are able to better understand life in this time period and to explore the processes by which people were included and excluded from the majority community of Renaissance Italy. Although the Borgia family should not be taken as an example of a standard family at this time, we can look at the events and clamor around them to find insight about the formation of community and ethnic identity during the Renaissance and how the border between the self and the other might be pushed against or shored up. It is possible to look at this family as part of the social history of the time and to see how the larger patterns of life in Renaissance Italy were reproduced in miniature in their lives. They lend themselves especially to problems of defining the majority community because of the obvious and very much talked about tensions over Rodrigo’s status as a geographic outsider coming into the Peninsula and rising to a position of high power. By studying the microcosm of this family we can see examples of how different factors might have affected the ease with which one could move from one community to another, while the glimpses we have of the macrocosm of the world they lived in show how the larger community chose to respond to this attempted transition with greater or lesser resistance. Ethnicity in the Italian Renaissance was a product of the dialogue between the individual and the community and it could be changed only through a process of negotiation between the two parties.
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So I ran out of space to talk about perceptions of the family through the years. This was supposed to be 40pg min, and the final page count not including bibliography is 49. Also, I got realllly lazy with the formatting here, which means there aren't any footnotes. Pretend the quotes are cited all pretty. ;o;
And that is how I wrote about the Borgias to graduate from college.
The end.