Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Who Put the Fun in Family Dysfunction?

The other night I caught the premiere of the latest gorgeously shot, historical guilty TV pleasure, The Borgias, about the notorious Spanish papal dynasty.   




As I told my friend, "They had better not try to rewrite too much history--there is no possible way they could top what the Borgias actually did!"  My specialty being English history, I knew little about this family until I read William Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire--a problematic book to be sure,* but worth a reading if only for his rundown of all the latest Borgia on-dits of the early 16th century.  The head of the family was Roderigo--later Pope Alexander Sextus [commence adolescent giggling here], who had four acknowledged children by his mistress, Vannozza.  Yes, you heard correctly--a Catholic prelate admitted having a mistress and children.  So much for chastity Of the children, the two best known are Cesare [who inspired Macchiavelli's Prince] and the lovely Lucrezia.



Detail from a mural in the Vatican--painted by Pinturicchio,
 the painter in Episode I for whom Guilia Farnese sits.
  Lucrezia was known as dolce ciera, "sweet face," in her youth.  
The Borgias must have had some Spanish Celtic blood way back--
that hair had to come from somewhere!



I must confess to being a bit of a Lucrezia fangirl.  She seems like a Renaissance version of Elizabeth Taylor, impossibly gorgeous but you can just tell she must've gotten sick of all the fawning and papal politics and just wanted to kick back with margaritas with her girl-peeps.  (She was close friends with her father's mistress, Giulia Farnese.)  And she's gotten an unfair historical rap (although the scholarship on this has been changing)--as deliciously scandalous as the image of the icy blonde femme fatale mixing her poisons may be, she was a pawn of her family more than anything.  15th/16th century Italian noblewomen had very little agency.


BUT.   Let's get to the juicy stuff--which alllll goes back to Il Papa.  As Cracked.com puts it in their article "The Five Biggest Badass Popes," 


Any story you've ever heard about crooked popes started with this guy. He bought the papacy with four mule loads of silver. He nailed Rome's most eligible bachelorettes. He made his 17-year-old bastard son an archbishop. He started wars, poisoned cardinals and took their money, and probably ate live frogs while feeding people to the Rancor.


 And--the Banquet of Chestnuts.  This was a Borgia gala right out of the movie Bachelor Party, "with chicks and guns and fire trucks and hookers and drugs and booze!"**  The guests included courtesans and high-ranking clerics--to get the action going, chestnuts were thrown onto the floor and the courtesans (whose clothing had conveniently been auctioned off) had to crawl on their hands and knees after them.  I'll leave it to you to imagine what happened next.  There were even observers standing off to the side, recording who and how and how long.  The only thing missing was a mule!

A Borgian orgy!


Oh, and that hint of incest between Cesare and Lucrezia you caught in the first episode?  Is based on fact.  Yes, Cesare and Lucrezia were the 15th century Italian version of Christopher and Cathy (shut up, I loved those books).  I'll leave the "Infans Romanus" affair to another post but suffice it to say, the Borgias kept it in the family.




*As fascinating as is his theory that the Pied Piper was actually a forest-dwelling murderer who preyed on children, there is no compelling documentary evidence to support it.  And no CITATIONS!  Bad Manchester!

**Okay, maybe not fire trucks.

3 comments:

  1. Leave it to you to compare a Borgia to a Star Wars character.
    Love it!

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  2. "the image of the icy blonde femme fatale mixing her poisons" ... Strangely enough, Clara, this is how I remember you.

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  3. Star Wars is pretty much my template for life :) And Lyle, if by poison you mean a pitcher of dry martinis, nothing's changed!

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