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Updated: June 30, 2025
Fanatic puritan as he was, vainer than any Medici, it is difficult to understand how he persuaded the Florentines to listen to his eloquence, spoiled as it must have been for them by the Ferrarese dialect. How could a people who were the founders of the modern world, the creators of modern culture, allow themselves to be baffled by a fanatic friar prophesying judgment?
Yet Savonarola, the Ferrarese, whether or no he refused him absolution, did not hesitate to denounce him, with a wild flood of eloquence and fanatic prophecy worthy of the eleventh century. "Leave the future alone," Lorenzo had counselled him kindly enough: it was just that he could not do, since for him the present was too disastrous.
His own character was by no means free from the same imputations; and the Ferrarese poet, Tebaldeo, the friend of Raphael and Castiglione, composed a witty epitaph, in which he warns passers-by to avoid the last resting-place of this singer, who had made so many enemies in life, lest he turn in his grave and bite them.
As early as June the King of France yielded to the Pope's solicitations, and exerted his influence in Ferrara, as appears from a despatch of the Ferrarese ambassador to France, dated June 22d.
Carnal sensuality was the besetting vice of this Pope throughout his life. This, together with his almost insane weakness for his children, whereby he became a slave to the terrible Cesare, caused all the crimes which he committed. At the same time, though sensual, Alexander was not gluttonous. Boccaccio, the Ferrarese Ambassador, remarks: 'The Pope eats only of one dish.
Another Ferrarese poet makes his appearance on this occasion, a man of whom much was expected, Ariosto, who was then twenty-seven years old, and already known at the court of the Este and in the cultivated circles of Italy as a Latinist and a writer of comedies. He also wrote an epithalamium addressed to Lucretia. It is graceful, and not burdened with mythological pedantry, but it lacks invention.
The Ferrarese ambassador spoke of this practice of Lucretia's as a repeated obstacle which might delay the entrance of her Majesty into Ferrara until February 2d. Don Ferrante likewise wrote from Imola that she would rest there a day to put her clothes in order and wash her head, which, said she, had not been done for eight days, and she, therefore, was suffering with headache.
Already in August the Ferrarese ambassador, Manfredi, had written that the death of the Duke of Gandia was being imputed to Bartolomeo d'Alviano, and in December we see in Sanuto a letter from Rome which announces that it is positively stated that the Orsini had caused the death of Giovanni Borgia.
The Ferrarese ambassador announced Sforza's arrival to his master, remarking, "He will be a great man as long as this pope rules." He explained the retirement in which Sforza lived by stating that the man to whom Lucretia had been legally betrothed was also in Rome.
He loved her passionately, superlatively, as the Ferrarese ambassador wrote his master. On the ambassador's suggestion the Duke of Ferrara sent as a wedding gift a pair of large silver hand basins with the accompanying vessels, all of the finest workmanship.
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