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Updated: May 9, 2025
"His Highness's fears for Prince Ferrante's health have drawn a swarm of quacks to Pianura, and the influence of the Church is sometimes counteracted by that of the physicians with whom the Duke surrounds himself.
To this end he needed great and powerful friends; to this end had he lent himself to the Cibo-Orsini transaction; to this end did he manifest himself the warm well-wisher of Ferrante; to this end did he cordially welcome the latter's son and envoy, and promise his support to Ferrante's petition. But the Holy Father was by no means as anxious for the friendship of the old wolf of Naples.
Then he wheeled his charger and went down the steep ground, riding hard for Ferrante's army, whilst we pursued our way, and came some two hours later without mishap to Pagliano. I found Bianca awaiting me in the gallery above the courtyard, drawn thither by the sounds of our approach.
And so, in December of 1492, came the Prince of Altamura Ferrante's second son to Rome to lay his father's homage at the feet of the Pontiff, and at the same time to implore his Holiness to refuse the King of Hungary the dispensation the latter was asking of the Holy See, to enable him to repudiate his wife, Donna Leonora Ferrante's daughter.
If this trivial instance has been dealt with at such length it is because, for one reason, it is typical of the foundation of so many of the Borgia legends, and, for another, because when history has been carefully sifted for evidence of the "universal dismay with which the election of Roderigo Borgia was received" King Ferrante's is the only case of dismay that comes through the mesh at all.
But in the meantime, towards the end of 1493, King Ferrante's uneasiness at the ever-swelling rumours of the impending French invasion was quickened by the fact that the Pope had not yet sent his son Giuffredo to Naples to marry Donna Sancia, as had been contracted. Ferrante feared the intrigues of Milan with Alexander, and that the latter might be induced, after all, to join the northern league.
"The news of King Ferrante's entry into Naples, which your Highness was so good as to send me, has given me the greatest pleasure, both for his Majesty's own sake and for that of your Highness, since it seems to me that all this must help to deliver us the more speedily from the hands of the French.
But the balmy breath of these Southern climes, the soft luxuriant spell of blue seas and groves of palm and cassia, sank deep into the child's being, and something of the fire and passion, the mirth and gaiety, of the dwellers in this delicious land passed into her soul, and helped to mould her nature during these years that she spent far from mother and sister at King Ferrante's court.
And assure him that we are his firm and loyal friends, whose constancy neither threats nor promises can ever shake." Count Carlo Belgiojoso, Galeazzo Visconti and Girolamo Tuttavilla, Count of Sarno, who was himself one of King Ferrante's exiled subjects, were selected to accompany Caiazzo on his mission. On the 23rd of February they left Milan, and reached Paris towards the end of March.
After Prince Ferrante's death she had gone on a long visit to her uncle of Monte Alloro; and since her return to Pianura she had lived in the dower-house, refusing Odo's offer of a palace in the town. She had first shown herself to the public on the day of the state entry; and now, her year of widowhood over, she was again the consort of a reigning Duke of Pianura.
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