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Updated: June 12, 2025
The manner in which Cesare isolated his father, murdering brother, brother-in-law, and other relations or courtiers, whenever their favour with the Pope or their position in any other respect became inconvenient to him, is literally appalling. Alexander was forced to acquiesce in the murder of his best-loved son, the Duke of Gandia, since he himself lived in hourly dread of Cesare.
We do not know whether a marble monument was erected to her memory, but the following inscription was placed over her grave by her executor: "To Vanotia Catanea, mother of the Duke Cæsar of Valentino, Giovanni of Gandia, Giuffrè of Squillace, and Lucretia of Ferrara, conspicuous for her uprightness, her piety, her discretion, and her intelligence, and deserving much on account of what she did for the Lateran Hospital.
"Yes, monsignore," replied Michelotto, who had divined Caesar's meaning at his first word; "the man who is the cause of this is Francesco, Duke of Gandia, and Benevento, your elder brother."
It was not to the States of the Church, not by easy ways of plundering the territories of the Holy See, that he turned to found dominions and dynasties for his children. He went beyond and outside of them, employing princely alliances as the means to his ends. Gandia was a duke in Spain; Giuffredo a prince in Naples, and Cesare a duke in France.
His famous Relazione to the Senate in September of 1500 is little better than an epitome of all the scandal current in Rome during his sojourn there as ambassador, and his resurrection of the old affair of the murder of Gandia goes some way towards showing the spirit by which he was actuated and his love of sensational matter.
This was his last halt: the same day he sought his bed, never to rise from it again; three days later he was dead. His body was taken to Rome and buried without any ceremony in the church of Santa Maria del Populo, where lay awaiting him the corpse of his friend the Duke of Gandia; and there was now no more talk of the young cardinal, high as his rank had been, than if he had never existed.
On her right, her eldest, Gandia, fair, weak-mouthed, sensually beautiful, splendid in velvet, and chain of gold, and deep-red silk, his blue eyes glancing now and then, half scornfully, half anxiously at his strong brother.
July 19th the Venetian ambassador wrote to his Signory: "It is not known who wounded the duke, but it is said that it was the same person who killed the Duke of Gandia and threw him into the Tiber. Monsignor of Valentinois has issued an edict that no one shall be found with arms between the castle of S. Angelo and S. Peter's, on pain of death."
He dilates with gusto upon the accusation of incest. Lastly, PANVINTO is in the same category as Guicciardini. He was not born until some thirty years after these events, and his History of the Popes was not written until some sixty years after the murder of the Duke of Gandia.
And then hoarsely asked, "And Antonia?" Giovanni dismissed the question abruptly. "She saw, yet she knows nothing." And then on another note: "Up now, Pico!" he cried. "Arouse the city, and let all men know how Gandia died the death of a thief. Let all men know this Borgia brood for what it is." "Are you mad?" cried Pico. "Will I put my neck under the knife?"
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