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Updated: May 19, 2025
Vannozza lived to witness the changes in affairs in the Vatican under three of Alexander's successors. There the Rovere and the Medici occupied the place once held by her own all-powerful children. She saw the Papacy changing into a secular power, and she must have known that but for Alexander and Cæsar it could never have done this.
None but Vannozza, who used to dress that touching and awful wound, and Don Antonio, to whom she revealed it in confession, were acquainted with this extraordinary token of union between the crucified Redeemer and His favoured servant. She suffered intense pain while it lasted, but it was a joyful suffering. Love made it precious to her.
Alexander had induced this kinswoman of his to leave the Orsini palace and to take up her abode with Lucretia in the palace of S. Maria in Portico, where we shall frequently see them and another woman who was only too close to the Pope. Vannozza remained in her own house in the Regola quarter.
A few days later, June 14th, Vannozza invited him and Cæsar, together with a few of their kinsmen, to a supper in her vineyard near S. Pietro in Vinculo. Don Giovanni, returning from this family feast, disappeared in the night, without leaving a trace, and three days later the body of the murdered man was found in the Tiber.
Vannozza fell with her; and, clasped in each other's arms, they were rapidly carried away by the current, and saw no means of escape. "They were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided," might well have been said of them, had the watery grave, which seemed inevitable, swallowed up on that day the two brides of the Ponziani.
She may also have been acquainted with Macchiavelli's "Prince," in which the genial statesman describes Cæsar as the ideal ruler. Although the power of the Borgias had passed away and their children were either dead or scattered, their greatness was felt in the city as long as Vannozza lived.
Nothing but the charity which is of divine not of natural origin could meet such an emergency, or cope in any degree with the awful misery of those days. Francesca, bereaved of every thing but her one little girl, and lodged with Vannozza and Rita in a corner of their dismantled house, had no longer at her command the resources she had formerly possessed for the relief of the poor.
An expression which Vannozza used in signing her letters defines her attitude and position, "The fortunate and unfortunate Vannozza de Cataneis," or "Your fortunate and unfortunate mother, Vannozza Borgia," she used the family name in her private affairs, but not officially.
The godless tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini built a magnificent church, and in it a chapel in honor of his beloved Isotta, who was a regular attendant at church. Vannozza built and embellished a chapel in S. Maria del Popolo.
If Vannozza decorated her salon with any likenesses, that of Cardinal Rodrigo certainly must have been among the number. There was likewise a shrine with relics and pictures of the saints and one of the Madonna, the lamp constantly burning before it.
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