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Updated: June 26, 2025
To cap the climax, imagine the effrontery of a pope who dared, in the face of the ecclesiastical rule enjoining celibacy upon the priesthood, to parade his delinquencies before the eyes of all the world, and seat himself in state, for a solemn pageant at Saint Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia upon one side of his throne and his daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other!
Already has mention been made of the wanton ways of Giuffredo's Neapolitan wife, Dona Sancia. That she was prodigal of her favours there is no lack of evidence, and it appears that, amongst those she admitted to them, was the dead duke.
Although Lucretia, owing to her fright, fell sick of a fever, she and his sister Sancia took care of him; they cooked his food, while the Pope himself placed a guard over him. In Rome there was endless gossip about the crime and its perpetrators.
In his own hands he held, to be sure, only the least in size of the Italian territories; but by the marriage of his daughter Lucrezia with the lord of Pesaro he was stretching out one hand as far as Venice, while by the marriage of the Prince of Squillace with Dona Sancia, and the territories conceded to the Duke of Sandia, he was touching with the other hand the boundary of Calabria.
In August he succeeded in making peace with Pope Alexander, and even consented to a marriage contract between his granddaughter Sancia, and Godfrey Borgia, the Pope's young son. This new departure alarmed Lodovico seriously, and produced a marked alteration in his foreign policy.
The last, the Pope's youngest son, was united in marriage, May 7, 1494, in Naples, to Donna Sancia the same day on which his father-in-law, Alfonso, ascending the throne as the successor of King Ferdinand, was crowned by the papal legate, Giovanni Borgia. Don Giuffrè remained in Naples and became Prince of Squillace.
Another command in the same ranks was one of 700 lances under the youthful Giuffredo Borgia, now Prince of Squillace and the husband of Dona Sancia of Aragon, a lady of exceedingly loose morals, who had brought to Rome the habits acquired in the most licentious Court of that licentious age.
When the Venetian ambassador called, July 3d, he found Madonna Lucretia, Sancia, the latter's husband, Giuffrè, and one of Lucretia's ladies-in-waiting, who was the Pope's "favorite," with him. Alexander was then seventy years of age. He ascribed his escape to the Virgin Mary, just as Pius IX did his own when the house near S. Agnese tumbled down.
There was Gandia, who rose hurriedly at his approach, and came to meet him; there was Cesare, Cardinal of Valencia, who was to go to Naples to-morrow as papal legate, yet dressed tonight in cloth of gold, with no trace of his churchly dignity about him; there was their younger brother Giuffredo, Prince of Squillace, a handsome stripling, flanked by his wife, the free-and-easy Donna Sancia of Aragon, swarthy, coarse-featured, and fleshy, despite her youth; there was Giovanni's sometime wife; the lovely, golden-headed Lucrezia, the innocent cause of all this hate that festered in the Lord of Pesaro's soul; there was their mother, the nobly handsome Giovanozza de Catanei, from whom the Borgias derived their auburn heads; and there was their cousin, Giovanni Borgia, Cardinal of Monreale, portly and scarlet, at Madonna's side.
Lucretia certainly must have been pleased by her brother's long absence; the Vatican was less turbulent. Besides herself only Don Giuffrè and Donna Sancia, who had effected her return, maintained a court there.
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