Cesare was evidently not present on this occasion; and it appears that there was at this time a growing friction between father and son, the pope becoming increasingly annoyed by his son’s ‘turning day into night and night into day,’ as one of the Ferrarese envoys put it, and extremely hard to pin down to a meeting to discuss affairs of state.
It seemed as though Cesare, increasingly independent, elusive, and self-assured, and liable to fly off the handle at the least hint of criticism of his actions, no longer valued the advice of his father and certainly rarely sought it. Cesare’s arrogant atheism was another bone of contention since, although his father’s morals were widely held to be deeply corrupt — indeed, Agostino Vespucci told Machiavelli that it was ‘known to everyone that His Holiness brought every evening to the Vatican twenty-five women or more… so that the palace is manifestly made the brothel of all filth’ — the pope was scrupulous in the outward observances of his religious duties and had an apparently sincere devotion to the cult of the Virgin Mary.
When wearing his black mask by day, Cesare naturally became an object of curiosity on the streets of Rome; but men who stared at him soon learned that it was dangerous to do so. Cesare had one man arrested and imprisoned for apparently making a critical remark; that night his hand was cut off, his tongue ripped out and attached to the little finger of the severed hand, and the whole grisly ensemble was hung out of the prison window for all to see. Yet another, guilty of some unknown offence, was ‘secretly strangled and his body cast into the Tiber.’ Men naturally grew evermore wary in Cesare’s presence.
‘He cannot tolerate insults,’ his father confided in conversation with the Venetian ambassador. ‘I have often told him that Rome is a free city and that everyone may speak and write as they please. Evil is often spoken of me but I let it pass. The Duke replied to me, ‘It may be true that Romans are accustomed to speak and write as they please but I will teach people to take care what they say about me.” He was as good as his word — more than one man had a hand struck off or his tongue ripped out for writing or speaking mockingly of the Duke of Valence.
Uneasy as relations between the pope and Cesare were from time to time, both remained devoted to Lucrezia. Indeed, the pope patently adored his daughter, the ‘apple of his eye,’ and, useful as her marriage to Alfonso d’Este would be to both of them politically, providing a reliable alliance with Ferrara, both father and brother looked upon it as a sacrifice, one that would bring Lucrezia’s inevitable departure from Rome.
Meanwhile, Duke Ercole’s ambassadors continued to send favourable reports regarding the behaviour of the girl soon to be his daughter-in-law. ‘Lucrezia is a highly intelligent, gracious and extremely graceful young lady, modest and lovable,’ one envoy reported in November 1501. ‘She is also devout and dutiful as a Christian. Tomorrow she will go to confession and intends to receive communion during Christmas week.’
The duke’s daughter, Isabella d’Este, however, was suspicious of this attractive twenty-one-year-old woman who was to become her sister-in-law and was to receive so many valuable family jewels and sumptuous clothes in consequence. She dispatched to Rome a man who could be trusted to send her accurate reports of the unwelcome bride, her trousseau, and the ladies of her court. The man, having undertaken ‘to follow the most excellent lady as a shadow follows a body,’ sent back to Mantua reports that cannot have pleased Isabella, describing a ‘charming and very graceful lady’:
On Sunday I went to see her in the evening [one of the reports ran] and found her sitting near her bed with ten maids of honour and twenty other ladies wearing handkerchiefs on their heads in the Roman fashion. They soon began to dance and Madonna Lucrezia did so very gracefully… She wore a camorra of black velvet with a white chemise… a gold-striped veil and a green silk cap with a ruby clasp… Her maids of honour have not yet got their wedding dresses. Our own ladies are quite equal to the min looks and, indeed, in everything else… The number of horses and people the Pope will place at her disposal will amount to one thousand. There will be two hundred carriages… The escort which will take her to Ferrara will travel in these.
Finally, at the beginning of December 1501, Duke Ercole gave the order for the departure of the grand cavalcade that was to travel to Rome in order to escort his son’s bride back to her new home. Three of Alfonso’s brothers — Ferrante, Sigismondo, and Cardinal Ippolito — led the party of ducal courtiers, secretaries, councillors, bishops, soldiers, and servants, horses, mules, and wagons. The weather was dreadful, the going exceptionally hard. They struggled for three weeks through the snowbound passes of the Apennines and down to the flooded Tiber plain. Finally, just before Christmas, the long line of horsemen, carriages, and carts drew to a halt outside the walls of Rome at the gate by Santa Maria del Popolo.
— CHAPTER 20 — Frolics and Festivities
‘THE CUSTOMARY FESTIVITIES [FOR CARNIVAL], INCLUDING THE HORSE RACES, WILL COMMENCE AFTER CHRISTMAS’
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON of December 23, 1501, the entire papal court assembled, at Alexander VI’s orders, at the gate of Santa Maria del Popolo to greet the Este princes and their courtiers, who had come to Rome to escort Lucrezia back to Ferrara. The cardinals waited an uncomfortable hour on their mules before dismounting and retiring to the comparative warmth of the church, where they waited another hour before the visitors finally arrived.
They were received by Cesare, who was accompanied by pages in silk tunics, a band of trumpeters, and four thousand soldiers, all wearing his personal livery. And after the lengthy speeches of welcome had been finished, he escorted the Ferrarese party through the city, across the Ponte Sant’Angelo, to the deafening roar of cannons that thundered from the ramparts of the castle, and on to the Vatican. His appearance thrilled the crowds that had gathered on the streets to watch the cavalcade pass: Burchard recorded that he ‘excited great admiration in the minds of all who beheld him, for he was magnificently dressed in a coat of the French fashion, fastened with a gold belt which set off his graceful yet athletic form to advantage, and rode a fine, strong charger which was so magnificently caparisoned that its trappings alone were said to be worth 10,000 ducats.’
At the Vatican Alexander VI graciously welcomed his guests, the bridegroom’s three brothers, Ferrante, Sigismondo, and Cardinal Ippolito. Cesare then led them across the piazza of St Peter’s to be greeted by his sister, who was looking dramatically radiant in a white dress, her long fair hair partially concealed by a green gossamer net, secured by a gold band and two rows of fine pearls encircling her forehead.
The preparations in Rome for the reception of the Ferrarese visitors could scarcely have been more impressive. Cesare, in his extravagant way, was determined to make everything as splendid as possible: ‘The things that are ordered here for these festivities are unheard of,’ wrote the Florentine ambassador Francesco Pepi, shocked at the extravagance, adding, ‘The shoes of the Duke’s footmen are made of gold brocade, and so are the shoes of the Pope’s grooms while he and the Duke vie with each other in wearing the most magnificent, the most fashionable and the most expensive things.’