soldiers, and officials than had greeted Jofre and Sancia. The twenty-year-old Juan cut a far finer figure than Jofre. Magnificently clothed in a long mantle of gold brocade and a jewel-encrusted doublet of brown velvet, he wore a scarlet hat hung with pearls and rode a bay horse adorned with tinkling silver bells. He was accompanied not only by his squires but also by an unruly crowd of dwarfs and buffoons.
It was soon apparent to the Romans that Cesare and Juan detested each other. Juan was jealous of Cesare, who seemed now to be widely recognized as their father’s right-hand man, while Cesare, the elder of the two, burned with resentment at the indulgence shown to his self-regarding and far less talented brother, who was clearly their father’s favourite. Other than Alexander VI, very few cared for Juan, who was described by the Aragonese chronicler Geronimo Zurita as having been a ‘spoilt boy’ and as being now ‘a very mean young man, full of ideas of grandeur… haughty, cruel and unreasonable.’ He could be seen swaggering about Rome in his gorgeous attire, excessively proud of his figure. Like his father, he had considerable sex appeal — it was widely rumoured that Sancia gave her favours to both her husband’s brothers, further aggravating Cesare’s animosity.
Cesare’s dislike of his brother was increased when Juan, although quite unsuited to such a position, was chosen by Alexander VI to be second-in-command to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino and captain general of the papal armies, which the pope intended to throw against the Orsini, a troublesome family who had sided with the French in their recent campaign in Italy and now controlled much of the Roman Campagna north and south of the city.
On October 26, 1496, the two dukes, dressed in full armour, received their banners of office from the pope in St Peter’s, and the following day they marched north against the Orsini castles. No fewer than ten of these were captured within a matter of weeks. But at Bracciano, where the formidable Bartolomeo d’Alviano was in command, the campaign faltered. Guidobaldo da Montefeltro was wounded, not seriously but badly enough for the incompetent Juan to be obliged to take over command. The Orsini ridiculed him by sending a donkey into his camp with a placard tied around its neck declaring: ‘I am the ambassador of the Duke of Gandia,’ and another insulting message screwed up and inserted into the animal’s anus.
Two assaults on the castle had failed when a report reached Juan that a relieving force commanded by Carlo Orsini was marching on Bracciano, and he unwisely decided to raise the siege and go out to confront Orsini in the open field. On January 24, 1497, the papal forces were routed at Soriano. The army was, in the words of Burchard, ‘heavily defeated in great dishonour.’ Moreover, ‘the Duke of Urbino was captured,’ he continued, and ‘some five hundred of our soldiers were killed and many more wounded, while the Orsini captured all our cannon and utterly scattered our forces.’
Juan, who was slightly wounded in the face, rode back to Rome. A week or so later, Alexander VI, who had been so ill with worry that he had not been to Mass on Christmas Day, was forced to make peace with the Orsini on their terms. He had to give up all the captured castles on payment of an indemnity of 50,000 ducats, which the Orsini hoped to raise by demanding a ransom of that amount for the release of Guidobaldo da Montefeltro.
Despite his failure at Soriano, Juan was soon afterward sent in command of another papal army, this time to besiege the fortress of Ostia, southeast of Rome, where a French garrison still remained in control. This time Alexander VI turned for help to the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, who sent their highly experienced and successful commander Gonsalvo di Cordoba to his aid, as well as a corps of trustworthy Spanish troops from Naples. Ostia surrendered on March 9, and the papal troops marched in triumph back to Rome, where Juan enraged Gonsalvo di Cordoba by claiming equal credit for the success at Ostia. Gonsalvo was rewarded with a papal order of chivalry while, much to the Spaniard’s annoyance, Juan was given the duchy of Benevento to add to his list of titles. Cesare was also angered by the favouritism being shown to his brother, but he was careful not to show his furious jealousy.
— CHAPTER 10 — The Dominican Friar
‘YOUR HOLINESS IS WELL ADVISED TO MAKE IMMEDIATE PROVISIONS FOR YOUR OWN SALVATION’
IN 1481 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA — a small, spare, ugly man aged twenty-nine, with thick red lips and an immense hooked nose — had arrived in Florence to become preacher at the church and priory of San Marco. He gradually acquired so terrible a power of oratory that congregations sat horrified and spellbound by his vivid images, his warnings of the horrors to be faced by those in his audience who did not repent of their sins.
‘Behold the sword has descended,’ he had declaimed when King Charles VIII’s armies had marched on Naples. ‘The scourge has fallen. The prophecies are being fulfilled. Behold it is the Lord God who is leading on these armies… He will unleash a great flood over the earth… It is God who foretold it. Now it is coming!’
The people had listened to his words in silent fear, waiting for the fall of the sword of the Lord that hung so threateningly over them. ‘A Dominican friar has so terrified all the Florentines that they are wholly given up to piety,’ the Mantuan envoy had reported sardonically. ‘Three days a week they fast on bread and water, and two more on wine and bread. All the girls and many of the wives have taken refuge in convents, so that only old women are now to be seen on the streets.’
His claim that Florence had ‘no other King but Christ’ appealed in particular to those citizens disgusted by the corrupt Medici regime and who yearned for a return to the city’s earlier republican values. When Charles VIII invaded Italy, it was not just Naples that suffered. When Piero de’ Medici surrendered the Florentine fortresses to the king without permission from the government, the Signoria, Florence revolted and expelled the Medici, setting up a new government with a new Christian constitution.
God had called upon Savonarola to reform the Church, and he, with crucifix in hand, called upon the Signoria to support him in his mission. He commanded the citizens to fast, to cast aside their showy clothes and ornaments, to sell their jewels and give the money to the poor, to remove silver candlesticks and lavish illuminated books from monasteries and churches. He called upon ‘blessed bands’ of children to march through the streets, their hair cut short, bearing crosses and olive branches, singing hymns and collecting alms for the poor, to enter houses and search out objects of vanity and luxury, to urge their parents to abandon their evil ways and follow the paths of virtue, to report to the authorities all instances of scandalous vice.
The Florentines listened and many obeyed. Courtesans stayed indoors; gamblers concealed their cards and their dice boxes; fashionable ladies walked the streets dressed in quiet sober colours; balladeers closed their books of ribald songs.
In Rome Alexander VI was growing increasingly concerned about the activities and influence of Savonarola; and once the French had withdrawn from Italy after the Battle of Fornovo, he summoned the troublesome priest, now prior of San Marco, to Rome. Savonarola replied that it was not God’s will that he should go. The pope, slowly abandoning hope that the prior’s wild enthusiasm would sooner or later wear itself out, forbade him to preach anymore. But Savonarola, after instructing one of his disciples to preach in his stead, soon resumed his sermons in the cathedral in Florence.
Alexander VI was patient. ‘We are worried about the disturbed state of affairs in Florence, the more so in that it owes its origins to your preaching,’ he wrote to the fiery Dominican.
For you predict the future and publicly declare that you do so by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit when you should be reprehending vice and praising virtue. Such prophecies may easily lure the simple-minded away from the path of salvation and the obedience due to the Holy Roman Church. Prophecies like these should not be made when your charge is to forward peace and concord. Moreover, these are not the times for such teachings, which are calculated to produce discord even in times of peace, let alone in times of trouble.
The pope went on to say that he had resolved to call the friar to Rome again, either to purge himself of the charges or suffer punishment for his behaviour.
Since, however, we have been most happy to learn from certain cardinals and from your letter that you are ready to submit yourself to the reproofs of the Church, as becomes a Christian and a religious, we are beginning
