align="right">Frontispiece

Trajan's Forum, Rome 16 Church of S. Maria del Popolo, Rome 20 Vittoria Colonna 30 The Farnese Palace, Rome 36 Alexander VI 44 Church of Ara Cœli, Rome 58 Tasso 82 Charles VIII 88 Savonarola 94 Macchiavelli 100 Cæsar Borgia 148 Guicciardini 176 Ercole d'Este, Duke of Ferrara 206 Castle of S. Angelo, Rome 210 Ariosto 248 Castle Vecchio, Ferrara 270 Benvenuto Garofalo 278 Facsimile of a letter from Alexander VI to Lucretia 281 Cardinal Bembo 290 Julius II 298 Facsimile of a letter from Lucretia to Marquis Gonzaga 301 Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara 304 Aldo Manuzio 328 Leo X 338 Lucretia Borgia, after a painting in the Musée de Nîmes 360

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INTRODUCTION

Lucretia Borgia is the most unfortunate woman in modern history. Is this because she was guilty of the most hideous crimes, or is it simply because she has been unjustly condemned by the world to bear its curse? The question has never been answered. Mankind is ever ready to discover the personification of human virtues and human vices in certain typical characters found in history and fable.

The Borgias will never cease to fascinate the historian and the psychologist. An intelligent friend of mine once asked me why it was that everything about Alexander VI, Cæsar, and Lucretia Borgia, every little fact regarding their lives, every newly discovered letter of any of them, aroused our interest much more than did anything similar concerning other and vastly more important historic characters. I know of no better explanation than the following: the Borgias had for background the Christian Church; they made their first appearance issuing from it; they used it for their advancement; and the sharp contrast of their conduct with the holy state makes them appear altogether fiendish. The Borgias are a satire on a great form or phase of religion, debasing and destroying it. They stand on high pedestals, and from their presence radiates the light of the Christian ideal. In this form we behold and recognize them. We view their acts through a medium which is permeated with religious ideas. Without this, and placed on a purely secular stage, the Borgias would have fallen into a position much less conspicuous than that of many other men, and would soon have ceased to be anything more than representatives of a large species.

We possess the history of Alexander VI and Cæsar, but of Lucretia Borgia we have little more than a legend,