A CLOUDED CENTURY

Taranaki Daily News, 21 February 1931, Page 13 (Supplement)

A CLOUDED CENTURY

CESAR BORGIA, THE OGRE?

(By

“Michael.”)

From time to time horrible and revolting crimes are brought to our notice by the news services of the world. There has been the Dusseldorf ripper, individual gunmen and their Chicago quarrels, and the murdering bank robbers of eastern Australia. And, with the news of arrest, have come stories of human passion; love, jealousy and envy. Occasionally in our own quiet country savagery involving loss of life and property through one or other of these thwarted desires, ha.s shocked our citizens and eventually demanded of twelve of them the words which cause the judge to don the black cap. This is a calm, deliberate and correct century. True, its leaders have made mistakes and those mistakes have been purged by international war but, for all that, right and wrong are well defined and the transgressor is punished. For the modern reader, the history of Cesar Borgia and his family forms a chain of horrors terminated only by the stirring death of the central figure at the hands of Louis de Beaumont’s mercenaries beyond the walls of the Navarre Castle of Viaua in the February of 1507.

One writer tells us that the history of Cesar Borgia, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, is no Chronicle of Saints nor yet a History of Devils. “It is a record of certain very human, strenuous men in a very human, strenuous age; an age red with blood and pale with passion "at white-heat, an age of steel and velvet, of vivid colour, dazzling light and* impenetrable darkness; an age of swift movement, pitiless violence and high endeavour, of sharp antithesis and amazing contrasts.” For us to judge that age from the calm of our own century, he says, would be for sedate middle-age' to judge from its own standpoint the “reckless, hot, passionate, lustful, humours of youth, of youth that errs grievously and achieves greatly.’’ It stands to reason that, if it is wrong to judge a past epoch collectively by the standards of our own time, it is hopelessly wrong to single out individuals for judgment by those same standards after detaching them for the purpose from the environment in which they had their being. Without bearing these facts in mind, readers of Borgia’s life must certainly class him and his associates as the greatest criminals of all tim'd For, where the murderer of to-day will risk his life for the theft of a fortune m modern money, the Borgia of the Renaissance gambled with the lives of royal friends and men-at-arms for the possession of additional lands and the Strengthening of family fortunes. Whole kingdoms were- gained by intrigue. If a brother stood in the way,, he was perfunctorily murdered. . Borgia was a typical product of a tempestuous age and, through the centuries, stands out from his fellows',only by reason of his excellence in the general- traits of violence, and unscrupulous cleverness in conquest, and unusual firmness and justice to the conquered. Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI., followed the ruling custom of the clergy and forgot the vows of celibacy, circumventing them by dispensing with, the outward form and sacrament of marriage. He was no worse than most of his fellow church, men of that period; a great deal better than some. Cesar’s mother was Vanozza der Cattanei and he was born about 1470. Upon his father’s elevation to the Papacy in 1492, Cesar was created Archbishop of Valencia and a year later Cardinal. He went, as Papal legate, to Naples in 149'7 for the crownin'* of Frederick of Aragon, and to France later on, to annul the marriage of Louis XII. with Jeanne of Francs because Louis wished :•> make Anne of Brittany his wife. Many honours Avere bestowed on Cesar besides credit of the murder of his brother Giovani and die Duke of Bisceglie, Lucrezia Borgia s third husband. •Successful military ventures .ntd the further acquisition of wealth and, kingdoms followed one another in quicx succession. Through his cruelty during conquest, his want of scruple, .and the crood fortune which attended his movements, he became the terror of all Italy. French and Spanish intrigues over the partition of Naples vvorried him but, at the death of his father, without whom success could not have amended him as it did, Cesar was prepared for everything but the. fever (vhich laid him,, low. Conspiracies against him and enemies rose up on all sides. Pope Julius 11. bore the house of Borgia a deadly hatred. Cesar was arrested, escaped to Spain, was put. in chains and then managed to reach France where he was denied his rigli , as a prince of that country, to en t e i her service. Betrayed, abandoned and landless his sword and his courage went to the first Bidder,- a -brother-in-law, KingjJean of Navarre. (By virtue of its importance. as a political, force, the house of Borgia has been detached from the background of the Renaissance and, in the words of Rawdon Brown, “used as a canvas upon which to depict the turpitudes of the 15th. and ,16th. centuries. The history of the family differs little from that of many others of the same time, yet its members have' come to be regarded as the greatest of rogues and unscrupulous seekers of glory, for ce turies before and after. . It is impossible to conceive of an.V man of 1931 living the private hfe of Cesar and his father. They lived as other men of their time d.d and cannot be classed as immoral. From our standards, they certainly were. But immorality has been defined as a .departure from tlie morals that obtain at a given time and in a given place. Tne age of which Cesar was a typical product was so universally immoral that it can scarcely be termed immoral. Literature is the soul of an age, the survivin'* and immortal part of it; and in the literature of the Cinquecento you shall behold for the looking, the ardent, unmoral, naive soul of the Renaissance that was sprawling in its lusty, naked infancy and bellowing hungrily for the pap of knowledge and other things. • - ■lt was an,epoch of reaction from the Age-of Chivalry; an'epoch of unbounded luxury, of the'cult and worship of the beautiful externally . • - J - he ” 1S ". torv of the Cinquecento is a history developed in broken pledges, trusts, dishonoutedj and basest treacheries. There can be but one conclusion. Forms of insane immorality are undoubtedly conducive to crime.but, crime itself, like morality and sanity, is but a relative term. Environment plays the greatest of parts in forming.the chaifeter of an age and few emldren of this calm century could envy the Boi gia of those days.