You're Dead to Me - The Borgias

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

Greg Jenner is joined by historian Prof Catherine Fletcher and comedian Phil Wang in 15th-century Rome as they introduce us to the infamous Borgias family. With dynastic alliances, poisonous rings, murders and chestnut orgies, it’s not hard to see how they may have inspired Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather. But how much of what we know of Italy’s original crime family is actually true?Produced by Cornelius Mendez Script by Greg Jenner and Emma Nagouse Research by Jessica WhiteA production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a history podcast for everyone. For people who don't like history, people who do like history and people who forgot to learn any at school. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. You might

have also heard my other podcast, Homeschool History, although that one's mostly for the kids. What about this podcast? Well, here we do things a bit different. We weave together threads of history and historical ha-has to outfit you in the finest robes of hilarity. No returns, all sales are final. Today we are donning our papal cassocks and journeying back 500 years to visit the Vatican, not to receive holy orders, but to learn about the salacious, shrewd and saucy Borgia family. And to help me tell verified fact from Vatican gossip, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, we have a literal Renaissance woman. She's a professor of Renaissance history at Manchester Metropolitan University and the author of a brilliant new book,

The Beauty and the Terror, an alternative history of the Italian Renaissance. She's currently writing a chapter on today's subjects for the Cambridge History of the Papacy. Plus, she's a BBC New Generation thinker and she was one of the historical advisors to BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. What a CV! It's Professor Catherine Furcher. Hi Catherine, how are you? I'm very well and thank you for having me. And in Comedy Corner, we're chuffed to have him back with us. He's an award-winning comedian and former president of the prestigious Cambridge Footlights. You'll have seen him on all the telly shows like Live at the Apollo, Would I Lie to You, Drunk History, fantastic Taskmaster

series and of course you'll know him from the wonderful Genghis Khan episode, or Chinggis Khan, as I think we should call it. It's the wonderful Phil Wang. Hi, Phil. How are you? Hello, past fans. I'm good. Thanks for having me back. A pleasure. We had a lot of fun with the Chinggis episode. We really did. I have forgotten that it's supposed to be Chinggis, though. That was quite a nuanced thing. And we did call the episode the Genghis Khan. So I think you're allowed to. I think at this point it's like gif and jif. Look we've already been through this. That was a different episode. I don't know bring it all up

again. Phil last time on you mentioned that you were mostly schooled in the Malaysian education system and that you have a few sort of gaps in your European history knowledge which is completely understandable. Have the Borgias tumbled into that chasm or do you know of them thanks to pop culture and whatnot in malaysia we were taught malaysian history almost exclusively so i don't know very much about european history last time all i knew about genghis khan was from the computer game medieval two total war all i know about the borgias is from assassin's Creed 2, which I think is about as deep a schooling as most people have, really. I know that the Borgias, well, they're like the Murdochs, but sexier. They're kind of like the Murdochs mixed with the Kardashians, basically, set in a time of paintings. Is that

right? A time of paintings. The Renaissance is a time of paintings, Catherine. Is that right? Yeah, that's what most people know about it. I mean, there were a lot of paintings. The Renaissance is a time of paintings, Catherine. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, that's what most people know about it. I mean, there were a lot of paintings. Well, there we go then. Phil's on the money. So, what do you know? Let's crack on with the first segment of the pod. It's called the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you at home might know about today's subject. And if you've heard of the Borgia family, you might be thinking of naughty popes, dastardly dynastic dealings and some serious family drama. Plus quite a lot of rumpy pumpy.

You might know of Rodrigo Borgia. You might know him as a Renaissance pope with a raunchy reputation. And of course, he had some kids, which is rather un-pope. One of them was the particularly notorious Lucrezia, his femme fatale daughter. And then, of course, there was the very stabby son, Cesare. And being such a lively bunch, it might not surprise you they've appeared quite a lot in pop culture. We can go all the way back to 1833 and Victor Hugo, the French writer, he wrote a play about Lucrezia. But in the 1980s, the BBC did a big TV series called The Borgias. And then in 2011, there was a Borgia boom. We got two Borgia projects at the same time. One was a European

one called Borgia, and the other one was an American series called The Borgias. Seriously, people, we need better names for things. That one stars Jeremy Irons as a sort of handsome silver fox Borgia. But can we really say that Rodrigo was raunchy and Lucrezia was lusty and Cesare was callous? Well, let's find out, shall we? Right then, Professor Catherine, this story unfolds in the late 1400s, early 1500s, and it unfolds in two countries, I'm going to call them countries, Italy and Spain. But they're not really countries at the point, are they? Yeah, so Italy, it's not one country. That doesn't happen until the 19th century. On the Italian peninsula, there are five large states and a whole load more small ones.

And one of the large states is the Papal States, which is run by the Pope. And it's much, much bigger than that little Vatican enclave inside the walls that you can visit today. It's a whole big chunk of the peninsula. Same in Spain. It's not one country, lots of different states, but they are starting to merge together. So two of them, Castile and Aragon, have been linked through the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. You've also got Granada, which is under Muslim rule, at least until 1492. So Spain is taking on a little bit more of its modern shape. Italy really isn't.

And I mentioned Spain, of course, because the Borgias are, well, we think of them as Italian, but they're not really, are they? No, they come from Spain. Rodrigo Borgia was born in 1431, near Valencia. And he actually comes over to Italy because his uncle is a cardinal and then his uncle is elected pope. So Rodrigo gets a job thanks to his family connections. He gets made a cardinal himself. And then he takes on one of the great officers of the Catholic Church, the role of vice-chancellor, which puts him in charge of basically all the secular side, practical side of government,

of running the papal states. I love the idea of being in charge of the logistics of the papacy, like admin, stationery, photocopiers. There's actually a plaque up in Rome commemorating his road improvement project. That's what you'll be remembered for, isn't it? I hope that's in the TV shows, just a lot of planning permissions. I mean, this is what local voters care about in Rome. You don't really care about the board, your sex scanners.

You care about the potholes. Nothing's changed. History just repeats itself, doesn't it? So you said that he's vice chancellor of the Catholic Church at a young age, and he's got this gig because his uncle is Pope. Phil, I'm assuming nepotism was also deeply important in you becoming president of the Footlights. It was just handed to you as a birthright, right? Is that how it works? Yeah, yeah, that's right. My uncle was Dean. he was just called dean yeah he's just a guy called dean dean wang and he needed help with emails and i gave me a job and it was my way up actually but yeah being president of footlights it's mainly uh it's mainly potholes

that's what people don't know so i mean the crucial thing to state at this point is that although rodrigo's uncle is Pope, running the church essentially is in charge of it financially, but he's not a priest. No, there's different types of cardinal. Some cardinals do take holy orders. You're cardinal priests, you're cardinal bishops, but there's this category of cardinals called cardinal deacons, and they will often do these more administrative roles within the church,

and they don't actually immediately take holy orders. Yeah, it's not all that unusual. You particularly find the sons of aristocratic families in Italy who go into church careers. So he's not technically a priest, which means he can have some fun with the ladies. And by the sounds of it, a lot of fun, a lot of ladies. There are indeed. He has a number of mistresses. He has at least nine children. The most important, politically speaking, of the mistresses is a woman called Giovanna, better known as Venazza, which is kind of nickname in Italian, comes off Giovanna Venazza

de Catene. And she is the mother of four of Rodrigo's children, Cesare, Giovanni, also known in Spanish as Juan, Lucrezia and Geoffrey and they're all born in the 1470s and 80s. Are we calling her Venazza or are we calling her Giovanna? The proper name is Giovanna but almost nobody calls her that. She's called Venazza so that's the name she goes by. So Venazza is the main love of his life. She's the mother to the four most important children that we'll be talking about today. I like to think of her sort of like, you know, she's the 15th century Kris Jenner, who people on Twitter thinks is my mum. No relation, I assure you I'm not a Kardashian. I don't have the bum for it. I just I'm very skinny. The nice thing about Vinodza is that she's as well as being a bit of a matriarch and a lover,

she's also a businesswoman. Phil, do you want to guess what establishment she owns? Okay, you've got a cheeky grin. so I'm going to think it's something naughty. Is it something naughty? It's not that naughty. It's actually rather, I think it's quite charming. She owns a pub. Yeah. I kind of thought of her as like a sort of highfalutin fancy aristocrat,

and then suddenly I'm thinking Barbara Windsor. I don't know why. I'm thinking, get out of my pub, sort of yelling at Cockney. Get out of my taberna. Do you want to guess what the pub was called the borgias i mean that's that's certainly how the tv series are named but uh no it was called the cow which i think is a good name for a pub i quite like the idea of going down the cow wow it's a bit rude isn't it it's a lady cow specifically a lady cow a milk cow phil what would your pub be called if you suddenly took ownership of a local drinking den the the pints head because we always have a head but it's

never the actual foam on it it always seems a bit irrelevant it's like i want to go for a drink and this place is called the five candles it's like is that right is that gonna just call it drinks drinks in here that's what i call my just call it drinks, drinks in here? That's what I call my pub. Drinks in here, the drinks in here pub. That's what it says on the tin. I think it works. Too many riddles in British pub names.

I'm a teetotaler, so I think I'd have to go for the extortionate lemonade, which is very much my experience of pubs. So Venazza has given him four kids. He's got five kids by other mums. I know he's not a priest, but he is really high up in the Catholic Church. And he's got lots of kids by different women. Is that not a bit scandalous? It's a little bit scandalous. And also, everybody is doing it.

It's extremely common for cardinals to have illegitimate children. The important thing about this all is not taking church property and directly passing it down to your children you're meant to keep your sort of private family dynastic arrangements and what you're doing in church a bit separate i think part of the board just problem comes because they're not that subtle about it they're a little bit in your face when it comes to just the sheer number of children and the prominence of the kids in political activity. And this is embarrassing that I realised this whole time I've been thinking of the Medicis. Oh, have you?

I've confused the Medicis with the Borgias. Well, you know, they both have hopes. They're both sort of renowned for violence and sex and death. The Medicis are like Florence-based and Borgias are more Rome-based. Is that right? Pretty much. In fact, one of the Medici family

who goes on later to be pope leo the 10th is actually in rome at the same time as rodrigo borgia a bit younger the next generation but you know these guys overlap they're involved in diplomacy with one another so yeah all part the same big historical picture are they like rivals yeah well i mean they certainly interact in all the kind of power politics in rome and there are rivalries between the state of florence and the papal states when it comes to rodrigo himself i have to say when i was imagining him in my head i was thinking slightly greasy not very nice you know a sort of sleazeball kind of thing. And then I read this description of him, and he sounds quite hot.

Yeah, he's like a Fonz. Well, I mean, so he is described by a former tutor as being handsome of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice eloquence. The beautiful women on whom his eyes are cast, he lures to love him and moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the magnet influences an iron.

Unprofessional for a tutor, I'd say. I mean, the Jeremy Irons thing suddenly makes sense. I think about a close textual analysis of moves them in a wondrous way and what exactly we're getting at there. Yeah, absolutely. He is certainly popular with the ladies. And clearly some of that is about power, the fact that, you know, he's in an important position, he's got money, he can offer favours

and so forth. But, you know, yeah, he does appear to have been reasonably persuasive and attractive enough that some of these women think, you know, yeah, this could do an awful lot worse than this guy. So actually the hot priest from Fleabag, we need to give him a Spanish accent and then Andrew Scott to play Rodrigo Borja. That's what we want. So in 1492, Rodrigo becomes Pope at last, and he becomes Pope Alexander VI. He takes a papal name, which is a thing you do. Catherine, why Alexander?

Is that a Greek thing? Alexander the Great is obviously part of the picture here. It's an ambitious name to have. You're going to conquer an empire that stretches across to India. I mean, maybe not quite that far, but you get the general sense of what he's aiming at here. Phil, what would your papal name be? If you've been handed the top job and you're not allowed to be Pope Phil, they're like, come on, different name.

What would you go for? I think I'd go for Puri, so that people have to call me Pope Puri. I'd be Pope Puri and I'll be famous for smelling great. You'd just be in the corner of rooms smelling like dried leaves. That's really lovely. Very dry skin, but I smell fantastic. Rodrigo, he finally gets to be Pope. That's an interesting time, actually, because he becomes Pope on the 11th of August, 1492.

Do you know what else happens in 1492, Phil? It's quite a big deal in international history. Is it one of the Crusades? It's Columbus. It's Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492. So it's the first voyage. And remarkably, it's the same month that Rodrigo becomes Pope. And his papal election, Catherine,

are we thinking here this is a case of best man for the job or are we thinking a lot of brown envelope stuff with cash and some knuckle dusters? Oh, well, it's really political. Yeah, there are factions lined up in the College of Cardinals. You've got the people who are pro-French, you've got the pro-Spanish, you've got the people who are like, well, anyone but that guy I really hate. A lot of personalities going on. And yeah, there is money involved. Now, there's a whole story about how Rodrigo Borja got to be Pope, which is that he bribed somebody who had influence over a certain number of votes

with some mule loads of silver, loaded up some mules, sent them round his house, kind of bags on the back. So, you know, here you go. Now, you see, I don't really think that was actually necessary. Rodrigo had this role as vice chancellor of the church been a cardinal for a long time he had acquired an awful lot of officers in the church being bishop of this dean of that that paid him money ah dean oh yeah and my uncle dean wang writes again yeah so he's got all these little officers and so on and convention is when become Pope, you pass those on to your friends. So there's a kind of bribery structured into the process here.

He doesn't need to be loading up mules with bags of silver, you know, anything like that. He'd just say, look, if you make me Pope, I'll see you all right. I will make sure that you get this nice little job, very well paid, doing whatever particular role it is. As Pope, presumably he has to be a priest. He's not a lay person, is he? No, he now has to take holy orders. You can't be Pope without actually being ordained. But he's not the only Pope who acquires the holy orders really at the last minute in order to be able to take on

that highest office. But does that mean that he's not necessarily the best biblical scholar? He's like the Donald Trump of popes. Exactly, yeah. What's your favourite line in the Bible? Oh, all of them, all of them. I love all of them, they're all great. I think what he does know is he does know how to delegate. He actually has, over the course of his papacy, some quite serious religious reform issues that he has to deal with. And what he does is he gets together the half dozen guys in the College of Cardinals who are the experts on this stuff. And he says to them, right, you guys can be a committee, make up some proposals for reform. So, you know, he's an administrator. He appoints 13 new cardinals, one of whom is his son, Cesare, who's only 18. That feels a bit young to be a proper cardinal. Is Cesare talented enough or is this pure

daddy's got the big job and Cesare needs something to do? Well, he's not the youngest cardinal to have been appointed in recent years. Actually, that was the guy who goes on to be Pope Leo X. He's a member of the Medici family. He was made cardinal when he was about 13. So there is this practice of, you know, people from these influential families getting an exemption from the rules and being appointed really quite young because there's a dynastic and political interest in doing it. I mean, Cesare, this is not his first gig. He was Bishop of Pamplona at 15 and Archbishop of Valencia at 17. I love the idea of a teenage Archbishop. Just like they're walking around going, we need more skate rams in the cathedrals.

I like the idea of a bishop in Pamplona just constantly running from bulls. Just trying to keep his hat on. I hate this stupid city. Let's talk about Lucrezia. She is notorious in history. She has a sort of fascinating duality in being both lusty and also a deadly femme fatale who poisons and murders. That doesn't really seem to be her youth, at least.

She seems to be very smart and cultured and educated, speaks languages, plays the lute. Is her youth pretty ordinary or is being the daughter of the Pope quite weird for her? I mean, she gets a very good upper class sort of education. And so she speaks Spanish and Italian. She acquires some Latin and Greek. She can play music. She can dance. She can do embroidery. She takes religious instruction from the nuns at the convent of San Sisto outside Rome. So she's actually really, you know, very polished all round Renaissance woman. And that's because she has a political role to play in terms of advancing the family by marrying appropriately. And that marriage happens way too young.

She is 13 when she is married off to, is it Giovanni Sforza? Yes. Too young. She's not even a cardinal yet. You get a lot of these teenage marriages for dynastic reasons. Sometimes they are more careful about holding off on actually consummating the marriage until they're confident that the bride is going to be old enough to bear children. And sometimes they're really not. And there's a lot of very horrific cases of very young women being forced into childbearing.

And so Giovanni Sforza, her new husband, he's older, presumably, and also he's of a kind of different family. The Sforzas are of Milan, is that right? Yeah, they're the ruling family in Milan. And importantly, they got behind Rodrigo Borgia in his election to be Pope. So this is to some extent, a little bit of payback for that support. And it's also a useful political alliance because Milan is one of these larger states within the Italian peninsula so you know you want to have these allies on side. So it's not actually donkeys full of silver it's actually donkeys full of daughters? Yeah it is a little bit more like that. Well what is the significance of having the Pope on side if you're in Milan or in Florence because they are your separate states aren't you? You're not being directly governed by the Pope?

Yeah I mean this is where the politics of the peninsula comes into it and can get kind of complex. But at this time, it's a big dispute going on between Milan and Naples. Different sides of the ruling family is there, all squabbling and falling out. But of course, the Papal States is important here, because if you're in Milan, and you want to invade Naples or vice versa your troops have got to go through the papal states this is where the geography starts to come into play so it's not just that he's the head of the Catholic church it's literally you have to commute through the Vatican you've got a queue at the gift shop you've got to wait around the back she's just been in a toll gate yeah it's like just said she's got the M6 going through her. Pope Alexander Rodrigo, he's both a political leader

and he's the head of the church throughout Europe at this point. We haven't even had the Reformation yet. He is the sole voice of God really on the planet and yet he's also got lands that he rules as a king really. Yeah, there's one historian who famously calls him the papal prince. It's like one body and two souls. You've got to do this kind of double thing. On the one hand, yeah, you are the vicar of Christ on earth. You're meant to be sort of responsible for the welfare

of Christendom. And on the other hand, you're also in charge of an actual large chunk of the Italian peninsula. And you've got to make people pay their taxes and have an army and defend yourselves, build fortifications in case your country gets invaded. And, you know, sometimes those two sides of being the Pope do come into a certain amount of conflict. Sounds like a sitcom. I mean... So Lucrezia's marriage at 13 doesn't last. By 16, she's divorced. I have to say, I was surprised that a 16-year-old daughter of a Pope, A, was allowed to get married at all, and B, was allowed to then get divorced at all. That feels to me like a bit more freedom than I expected. Well, first of all, you're not really allowed to get divorced in the modern sense, as one Henry VIII

would find out a few decades later. You have to find a reason that the marriage was invalid. And in this case, they think, aha, why don't we say that Giovanni Sforza hasn't been capable of consummating the marriage? Just a bit. And Giovanni naturally is a little bit unhappy about the aspirations being cast upon his manhood here. We get into sort of very standard divorcing couple territory, possibly down the pub, in which sports starts going about saying, they're saying that about me. I'll tell you something about her. She is doing incest with her brother. And the quality of her homework is subpar to say the least. They're spreading rumours saying that she is having incest with

her own father and brother. Yeah. In retaliation forours saying that she is having incest with her own father and brother in retaliation for them saying that he can't get it up. Yeah, it's all quite unpleasant. And she's a child as well, so this is a yucky thing. But this is all playing into her hands, isn't it? It's further argument for

annulling the marriage, isn't it? The thing is it would also ruin Lucrezia's reputation and that isn't good in terms of the longer term strategy of wanting to switch her into a different and more useful dynastic alliance somewhere else. We've had something similar in the Agrippina story as well, that incest is often been used in history as a way of particularly destroying rival families. And it's one of those things that's almost impossible to prove, but you don't need to prove it as soon as you say it it sticks so she has been separated from her husband she's at 16 single again and i guess the other reputational rumors that we have to address with lucrezia is that well phil have you ever heard of lucrezia as a poisoner no no no i've not brushed up on my poisoners recently i i've not heard of lucrezia the poisoner no supposedly she has a poison ring. Ring, like an actual piece of jewellery that is poisoned.

Yes, whatever you're thinking, don't go there. Ring like a piece of jewellery on her finger. Well, I mean, the rumours I've heard about her, you have to believe everything with this girl. She supposedly, there's three different ways of killing Catherine, if I understand correctly. The first is that there's a spike on the ring that she sort of sticks

you in the shoulder with it and the poison is on the spike and you're dead. The second is that there's a little compartment in the ring where she keeps poison in and she opens the lid and pours it into your drink. And the third is that the ring itself is poison. And when people kiss her ring again, don't go there, that they get poison on the tongue. So there's three different stories. Do we think this is complete nonsense? Do we think there's anything in it? I mean, it certainly sounds to me dubious, but are there any slightly suspicious deaths nearby? I think just generally the society is obsessed with rumours of poison. You know, anybody dies a little bit younger than they were expected, people immediately start saying, oh, maybe he was poisoned. And of course, there's no sort of CSI forensics types arrangements. You can never prove one way or the other whether somebody died of

poison. People go out, they have dinner, they come home and they feel a bit rough the next morning. Could be food poisoning, could be a very bad hangover, could be poison. Maybe I've been poisoned by my enemies. So there's a lot of hype about poison at the time. It is a real fear. A lot of people get very worried about it. And, you know, on all these kind of poison ring and so on, I mean, there is a real fascination with novelty mechanical stuff. So Leonardo da Vinci, also around at this time, he keeps getting dragged in to make these sort of novelty mechanical devices like, can you make us a mechanical lion for the king of france so there's you know the technical skills to pull something like that off i mean it's not out of the question at all but you know is it a real story about lucrezia borgia i mean i don't think

so but would these rumors have been to her benefit or detriment because i can never tell in these times of a story like that makes you go oh what an untrustworthy woman or oh what a powerful woman i think one of the reasons they target lucrezia is actually because as a woman she is meant to be much better behaved than her brothers are so she's held to a higher standard so the minute you say lucrezia is doing poisoning it's like that's really bad whereas you say one of my brothers is doing poison oh well you know kind of half the course really what whereas you say one of my brothers is doing poison it's kind of oh well you don't cut up half the course really what do you expect boys will be boys it's just locker room poisoning they're at that age exactly so we've talked about the cretaceous we talked about cesare there are two more kids we want to talk about really they are giovanni or juan how does giovanni become

juan i'm trying to work out this shortening. It's like Jack from John. It's like, are you sure? Giovanni... It just means John, isn't it, Italian? Of course. Yeah, it is. But Giovanni is older than Joffrey. But let's talk about Joffrey because he...

Phil, did you see Game of Thrones? You seem like the kind of guy who'd be into that. I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or the opposite of a compliment. Based on your computer game stuff. It's true. In fact, just in the last week, I've played an online Game of Thrones board game. I'm familiar enough with it that when you said Joffrey, I instantly thought

of Joffrey from Game of Thrones and wondered, what's he doing in this? Yeah, Game of Thrones basically borrows this story entirely because Joffrey is a real son of Rodrigo Borgia, who marries a girl called Sansha, which is very similar to Sansa. And Sansa is older than he is. He's 12. She's 16. She's 16. She's the daughter of Alfonso II of Naples. Played by Sean Bean. So he's been married off too. So it's not just the girls married off too young.

But he is, I want to be kind about him in the sense that he's young, but he is rubbish, isn't he? Rodrigo, as Pope, is not proud of him, really. No, he's not the impressive one. He's not Cesare who, as we will see, starts, you know, going around conquering stuff. He seems to be a bit useless. There's a lot of rumours going around that his wife, who's barely 16,

is cheating on him with everybody, including his own brothers. And actually, there's loads of gossip about Sancia. It's serious enough that the Pope actually has to ask Sancia's father to make inquiries as to whether it's true. Oh, wow wow he sends a chap down there to question servants and servants assure him that sancho is only seeing one her husband and two another man who was over 60 and apologies to any men over 60 who are listening to this but um yeah the assumption

being there that men over 60 are of any interest to her. Especially in those days. If you were walking around at 60, people must have thought you were like a tree or like a god or something. You'd be alive at 60 in the 14th century. The fact they do investigate does suggest that they're a little bit worried. So this marriage was also political because Naples is a major player. But almost as soon as the marriage happens, things go horribly wrong in Naples and the French invade and King Alfonso does a runner. So that marriage becomes kind of useless immediately, doesn't it?

Yeah, Naples is a bit of a mess at this point. You've got an illegitimate line of the Spanish House of Aragon trying to hold on to things. You've also got the French who are very keen on invading Naples and asserting their own claim. You've got a bunch of barons in the realm of Naples who think they should have more power than they currently have. And eventually you give it a few years and actually the Spanish will take it over and just run it directly themselves via some viceroys. So all in all, Naples is just a huge problem at this time and politically.

Poor Geoffrey. But the fact that the rumours that she's Sanctuary's cheating with his two older brothers must also be quite humiliating I suppose is that the idea that he's not really man enough he's not really ready for this he's not even held hands yet can you imagine he's still building up to that particularly when you've got a father who's got like nine children and multiple mistresses I mean there's a family reputation here was kind of setting the tone oh poor joffrey i mean and in terms of the third brother giovanni slash juan slash john he has quite a bad year in 1497 they find him floating in the tiber with lots

of stab wounds uh he is he is very dead poisoning to die maybe it was poisoning everyone's everyone's they're going looking at the stab wounds poison mean, they might have poisoned him first and then gone, oh, sod this, and just stabbed him. Immediately, the suspects list is hilariously long, Catherine, because, I mean, firstly, you'd think Joffrey would be on there because Joffrey would be, like, annoyed about his brother cheating on him with his wife or whatever. But Joffrey is immediately exonerated. Pope Alexander Rodrigo, his dad, thinks, no, you're useless. You couldn't even pull this off.

He's innocent by ineptitude. But the list of possible assassins... But there are loads of people. I mean, the thing is you can't really be Pope or rule any Renaissance state without having a bunch of enemies. So you've got Lucrezia's pissed-off ex-husband.

You've got the Duke of Urbino. He doesn't like the Borgias. You've got the Duke of Urbino. He doesn't like the Borgias. You've got the Orsini family, big barons around Rome. They don't like the Borgias either. You've got a Spanish commander, doesn't like the Borgias. You've got Cardinal Ascanio Sforzo who has a personal axe to grind with the victim, even though he's generally on the side of the Borgias.

There's another chap whose daughter Juan had allegedly seduced. And later on, people start saying it's Cesare so yeah quite a long list of people who just don't really like the Borges and are in the frame for having done this murder. Okay so a list worthy of an Agatha Christie novel we've got a lot of potential assassins but Cesare gets added later on to the list I mean it's fair to say the crime isn't really solved. Cold case. Cold case. We need to get a podcast on this.

So Cesare is not in the frame, although we now think, historically speaking, maybe he did have something to do with it. What about Lucrezia? Presumably the stabbing rules her out. What's going on with her life while this murder is happening?

She is also having an alliance with Naples. She's got married for the second time. She gets married in 1498 to an illegitimate son of the King of Naples, who also happens to be Sanchez's half brother. So let's all just keep it in the family in Naples, just as we're doing in Rome. And she starts to be a little bit more of a political player as she's getting older. She takes on jobs, including on her father's behalf, being governor of the town of Spoleto, which is a rather pretty little hill town, a nice big fortified castle just a bit north of Rome. So she's married off a second time. She's still very young, presumably at this point. What's interesting, I suppose, is that in 1499, Cesare leaves the Cardinalate and he goes off to go sort of have some wars.

And then Pope Alexander or slash Rodrigo, dad, he goes on a bit of a sort of holiday vacation tour around Italy, leaving in charge his daughter, Lucrezia, back in the Vatican. And that feels to me like a real show of trust. That's quite surprising. It is a show of trust. It's quite a shock, I think, to some of the people around him surprising it is a show of trust it's quite a shock i think to some of the people around him because she's a woman women do not have official jobs in the structures of catholic church other dynastic brides in the secular princely states of italy like so you can stand in for the duke of ferrara when he's off traveling wherever the pope's daughter doing it little bit dubious actually so yeah that's one of the things

that really raises eyebrows i mean it's home alone isn't it it's just it's just the pot of home alone i'm just hooking up poison buckets of poison everywhere to stop the invasion 1499 is in the midst of what's called the italian wars which phil i'm not assuming you'll know much about because they aren't they're not very well known, but they are really, really nasty. And it's a really chaotic time, isn't it? Because Italy is a war zone, but it's sort of been fought over by external powers. Italy is one of the richest parts of Europe

in terms of the strength of the economy and so forth. So both your new consolidating state in Spain and the French have got an interest in trying to get as much power and influence as possible in Italy, whether that is by directly invading or whether it's by getting friendly rulers into the various Italian states. So they fight this on-off series of wars between 1494 and 1559 to try and establish their power and influence. And by about three decades in, it's pretty clear the Spanish are winning. But it takes them that long. And it's a fairly horrific time to live through if you're in any of the cities that gets targeted. I mean, routine sacks

of cities, routine atrocities against civilians, and obviously a lot of deaths as well amongst the armies that are fighting. But all the sort of politics, the intermarriage and so on between the papal families, the other Italian dynastic families in this period, are influenced by these decisions about which side to take in the wars. Yeah, and it's quite a complicated affair, obviously, because there's so many moving parts. At some point, Cesare gets married off to a French young aristocrat. She's called Charlotte d'Albray. And presumably that's to sort of ally the family with the French side I guess yes and then that's 1499 and then in 1500 just six months later Lucrezia's second marriage goes horribly wrong

do you want to guess why Phil poison poison ring she mistakes the wedding ring for one of her poison rings guy drops dead right in the church. I mean, he is murdered. It's not poison really, is it, Catherine? No, it's strangulation this time. We've got a novel type of murder coming in here. So we've had stabbing, I think we've talked about poison. And this time there's a really clear suspect.

It is one Don Michele, who is a henchman of Cesare Borgia's. Now, he claims he did it because he'd seen Alfonso Lucrezia's husband threatening Cesare with a crossbow. And it was alleged that Alfonso had done the threatening with a crossbow because he, in turn, had been attacked by some of Cesare's other henchmen on the steps of St. Peter's. Now, whether any of this is right or true, we don't really know. It's kind of hard to piece together.

Yet another cold case forges. Once we know that Cesare is responsible for this murder, everybody starts looking back to the previous murder and going, ooh, maybe that was him as well. So he's definitely murdered his sister's husband. And now people are thinking, well, maybe he also murdered his brother Giovanni as well. He's definitely more of a kind of political operator

than some of the others, perhaps. He seems to be on the darker side, do you think? Yeah, I suppose assassination is a part of the picture of the whole political scene. But I think this kind of level of simply bumping off members of your own family is going a little bit beyond what's generally expected. It's the the opposite of incest they should like it i think even people who are quite used to the the general political climate start thinking wow so the family that slays together stays together that's unfortunately in this case yeah and so cesare has has murdered a rival is there any punishment? No, he gets away with it. The 1% getting away with it again. Yeah, well, by this point, you know, he is very important militarily.

Cesare is now trying to do is to set up for himself a kind of private state in Romania, so that's near Bologna, a little bit further north in Italy. He's trying to establish his family with their own Italian dynastic state so that should his father die and they lose the papacy, they have got their own chunk of Italian territory that they can just get on with being dukes of. So, you know, Cesare is really key to the family strategy. You don't want to mess that up by having him arrested or detained or, you know, anything awkward like that for having done a murder, do you mean? Right. So they just sort of hush that one up. So Cesare is a talented soldier. And I haven't been arrested or detained or, you know, anything awkward like that if I haven't done a murder, do you know what I mean?

Right. So they just sort of hushed that one up. So Cesare is a talented soldier. And one of the interesting things is that he's also potentially a talented, slightly salacious dinner party host, because it's time we get on to the orgies. This is my favourite part of every evening. You know, in every podcast there comes a time where you have to crack on with the orgy. You know, in every podcast there comes a time where you have to crack on with the orgy. Catherine, the infamous one that has gone down in history and certainly I think appears in the TV shows is called The Banquet of the Chestnuts. Phil, do you want to have a guess what happened at The Banquet of the Chestnuts? Everyone got their chestnuts out and went at it.

Put your poison at the door. I mean, Catherine, he's not far wrong, really, because this is very much a nudity scandal, isn't it? It's actually chestnut season. It's late October 1501. And in this case, the novelty of the party was that they put a load of chestnuts over the floor and they invite these women to crawl

naked through the chestnuts on the floor to try and pick them up. What with? Our historical source does not specify. There is then a competition for how many of these women, the men present, are able to shag in the course of the evening and they win things like, I think, maybe fabric and some nice pieces of textiles.

Lads, lads, lads. It's such a weird story because it's like, what are the chestnuts for? I don't quite get what the chestnuts are doing and then suddenly it becomes a sex competition. You've got to make your own fun, you know, before the internet. They didn't have iPads.

They didn't even have TV at this point. Can you imagine? You'd find a bunch of chestnuts here and you'd improvise. Yeah, I mean, they're playing Conkers. I mean, I don't even want to do that. But do we think it's legit, Catherine? It is recorded by the papal master of ceremonies in his official notebook of goings-on at the Vatican court. He may not have got all the details right, but there are other sources that say there was a party. And at least one of the other sources says there are courtesans at this party. And Lucrezia is there as well. The Pope is there.

Cesare is there. Joffre, perhaps, is there. I'm not sure. But we have the family at an orgy. That must be so awkward. Let's get back to Cesare. As you said, Catherine, he is carving out quite a large chunk of northern Italy for himself. He's a very talented military commander. He's very sneaky. He betrays people. He does deals. He backstabs them. He's a smooth operator. And at this point, he then encounters a pretty famous writer

who, Phil, you might have heard of. Ernest Hemingway. A guy called Niccolo Machiavelli. I've read The Prince. So you know the story of Cesare then? It literally wasn't written for me. It was written for The Prince. And it's addressed the entire time to the prince is that your amazon review two stars it's not written for me yeah yeah the whole time you're just listening in on someone else's conversation

to someone more important to you it's kind of bad for the self-esteem is it addressed to cesare he's one of the case studies in it and machiavelli is a real Cesare Borgia fan and he says that he's truly splendid and magnificent there's quite a little bit of fanboys action going on there you know he really writes him up and he's very very impressed at just the way that Cesare conducts himself he writes all these letters but this splendid and magnificent bit comes in the context of a series of episodes which culminate in some of Cesare's commanders trying to conspire against him. Cesare finding this out and setting them up in a kind of trap, getting one of the conspirators, having him murdered again, and leaving his body dismembered in two pieces in the public square. So when you're reading The Prince,

this is one of the guys who is a case study for the whole book. And The Prince really is almost a sort of power manual. It's almost a kind of educational guidebook on how to rule, but it has a reputation that is perhaps slightly unfounded because people think of it as being like a book of cruelty, but it's about pragmatism, isn't it? I read it thinking, oh, it's one of these books that even now you can apply to modern life, to the office environment. The Prince is really about just establishing control in what you do. But it's so specifically about how to win small parts of Lombardy

that it hasn't helped me once in my life. I think it helps a lot. I go into faculty meetings with senior people I don't really know, and they say, what's your work? And I say, Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli is the prince. And they fear you now, Catherine. They don't dare cross you. So Cesare has a big fan in Machiavelli, and he's carved out this land in the north. So he's doing quite well for himself. Meanwhile, Lucrezia, her husband has been murdered by her brother Cesare, and she now gets married a third time. And this time around, she is married to Alfonso d'Este, who is the heir to the Duchy of Ferrara. Is this another political deal cooked up by dad Rodrigo? They're getting a little bit desperate now because Lucrezia's reputation is not the best. You can understand what with the second husband having been murdered and all the kind of, you know, issues around that first divorce.

But the Dukes of Ferrara are quite keen to get papal recognition for their presence there in Ferrara, which they haven't had really in a thorough way before. So that's part of the deal there. Alfonso is not a great match he does have syphilis um which is not a great match how's the new boyfriend he is all right he's got syphilis um aside from that he's nice I guess and she's only 21 at this point and she's on her third husband already do you think she's a slightly broken-hearted romantic or do you think she's quite hard-nosed and just like okay next, next husband, let's get it done? Well, the big advantage of Ferrara is that although it is rainy and in the north, which is not great, it gives her some distance. It gives her a state to be duchess of. She can

have her own apartment. She spends a lot of time decorating their new apartments. She actually gets a little bit more independence in that role of duchess than she has ever had when she's been subject to these more minor dynastic marriages where she's trying to do a job for her father. Is she a mother? I mean, she's on her third husband, the first of whom she was too young, the second of whom got murdered, the third of whom has syphilis. Does she have kids? There's a whole question about whether she has an illegitimate child or not. Somewhere along the way. And historians argue about whether or not this child who knows the infans Romanus is actually hers or whether it's another illegitimate child of her father's. But in any case, she does go on to have children. One of them becomes a nun and is possibly actually quite an impressive composer. One of them becomes a cardinal and builds, Cardinal Ippolito d'Este,

and builds a gorgeous villa in Tivoli. And Venazza's still going as well, still running her pub, presumably. Ah, yeah, Venazza. Just pulling pints. Refilling the peanuts. Or chestnuts. Is Venazza still, are they still, you know,

having fun times with Pope Rodrigo or is she kind of out of the question now? At a certain point, they sort of shift into being just good friends. Alexander VI picks up a new woman called Julia Farnese and she's from a quite important Roman aristocratic family and he very kindly makes the new mistress's brother a cardinal and that's Alessandro farnese future pope paul iii who forevermore will be known as the petticoat cardinal on the grounds that

he got his cardinal thanks to his sister being the pope's bit of petticoat bit of petticoat i like that i want to bring that back the other thing i want to say about Lucrezia, like Venazza, she's also quite a talented businesswoman. And she sets up quite an interesting new industry. I'm going to ask you to guess what you think that might be. Lucrezia's poison rings. The finest poison rings in all the Italian states. Have a bothersome brother. We've got a Black Friday deal.

She goes into the food business. Let's put it that way as a clue. think uh alex james from blur oh okay she's making cheese out in the country she is making cheese that's right she is a mozzarella magnate she sells some of her jewelry catherine and she she pours the money into buying cows she's really unusual it's a very very strong example of a kind of enterprising aristocratic woman in her time. Does she make the burrata, you know, the one with the really soft insides? Does she have a website? She really seems to be the one in the family who just takes it all on the chin, keeps moving, keeps building on it. Cesare, his plans of carving out northern Italy have gone a bit wrong.

And in 1503, their dad dies. Rodrigo dies. Alexander VI is his papal name. So no longer do they have the papal protection. And Cesare now is in trouble, isn't he? He is in trouble. He also gets ill, which leads to suspicions of poison, possibly like... Of course.

These people are obsessed. Well well you have more than one person getting ill it's either a very bad case of food poisoning if it's killed off the pope and also puts Cesare out of action which is bad news for him because it gives the pope's enemies their opportunity a little bit of time and space to make their move against Cesare and make sure that he is kept out of, first of all, the conclave that follows. They elect in the conclave that follows a Pope called Pius III, who dies very, very quickly. Poison. And then they elect Giuliano della Rovra as Pope Julius II, and he is an avowed enemy of the Borgias. He absolutely hates the Borgias.

The warrior pope, is that right? Yes, Julius II, the warrior pope, becomes kind of famous for actually leading military campaigns. Eventually, Cesare ends up in prison. He then manages to escape. He goes and fights for his brother-in-laws, but he dies at war in 1507. So Rodrigo dies in 1503, Cesare dies in 1507, Lucrezia dies in 1514, sadly in childbirth. And then we've got the idiot boy, Joffre,

who, unlike Game of Thrones, has made it to the end. He's still alive in his mid-thirties. He's on to his second wife, but she hates him and he's rubbish and he loses all his lands, apart from a tiny town called Squillace, which I think is quite cute.

But he dies in 1517. There's other kids that we haven't mentioned, but we don't really know that much about them or we don't really care as much. Do we think their reputation, Catherine, is as a family dynasty, are they exceptional or should we be looking at them as par for the course? They're kind of par for the course. And I think when you actually look at what they do back home in Spain, which is where a lot of the other kids end up,

they actually managed to hang on to their dynastic state in Spain for really quite a while. One of them is actually a saint, does so well in the Catholic Church, he actually becomes a saint. You know, they're really involved in the kind of new missionary enterprises and so forth. So there's a whole different picture when you look at this from the Spanish side. But yeah, in terms of trying to set themselves up in Italy, really isn't happening. The nuance window. Okay, it's time for my favourite part of the show. It's called the nuance window. This is where our expert Catherine tells us what we need to know for two uninterrupted minutes. So without much further ado, the nuance window.

The question I always ask about the Borgias is why do they get singled out? Because in the 16th century alone, there were at least four popes, Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII and Paul IV, whose nephews were involved in murders. So why do we obsess about the Borgias? First problem is the Borgias aren't Italian and there's some resentment at the papal court to all these Spaniards in the Borgia entourage coming over here and taking our jobs. But there is more than that to the anti-Spanish feeling. Of all the Western European powers, Spain had the largest Muslim and Jewish populations. In the year of Alexander's sixth election, the king and queen of Spain had conquered the Muslim kingdom of Granada and they'd gone on to expel the Jews. Now, Pope Alexander was under a

lot of pressure to turn away Jewish refugees who fled to Rome, but to his credit, he refused. And people started saying that the Pope himself must have Jewish heritage. Cesare was called a Jewish dog. Alexander's successor, Julius II, who, as I said, really didn't like the Borgias, repeated the allegations, telling an official that the late pope was actually a Jew. And a couple of decades on, all this became grist to the mill of Protestant writers who found in it the perfect opportunity to be both anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic at the same time. So all the tales of Borgia misdeeds fit into a bigger picture of what we call the Black Legend of Spain, a myth that paints Spanish people as particularly cruel, superstitious and

backwards due to their non-Christian heritage. So I would just want to say, for a bit of nuance, that yes, there is some substance to the Borgia stories. The murders aren't made up, but the family gets its unusually bad press for reasons that, when you dig down, are actually quite anti-Semitic. Thank you so much, Catherine. That's fascinating, and I've even thought about it. It sounds so weirdly...

I mean, that's the sad thing about anti-Semitism, this long history it has. Yeah, and it's so interesting that we talk about the Minici and the Borges as the kind of two great families of murder and poison and sex and lust and power. But actually, they weren't necessarily as cruel or dastardly as we think of them. But they've become the kind of poster boys for it, really, which I guess is the process of that black legend, that toxification. So what do you know now? It's time for the So What Do You Know Now? This is the 60-second quickfire quiz to see what our comedian Phil has learned.

Phil, last time out, you got a whopping 10 out of 10. Did I? Yeah. You were flawless on Genghis Khan. How are you feeling on this one? Considering that for half of the show, I thought the Borgias were the Medicis, I'm not feeling great. But I do feel like I know a lot more than I did when we started. Let's get the stopwatch up. You've got 60 seconds on the clock. 10 questions. I believe in you. Here we go. Question one. In what year was Rodrigo Borgia appointed Pope? Oh, 14. Yes.

80. No. 90. Yes. Two. Yay! Very good. Same year as Columbus.

Question two. What was Rodrigo Borgia's papal name? Alexander. It was Alexander VI. Question three. Name one of the other major powerful families the Borgia's papal name? Alexander. It was Alexander VI. Question three. Name one of the other major powerful families the Borgias had dealings with. Muddy cheese, baby.

Yeah, there we go. Question four. Rodrigo's favourite mistress, who mothered the four major kids that we care about, was called Venazza de Catane. And what was the name of her pub that she owned? The Cow, Vasha. It was The Cow. Question five. How old was Cesare Borgia when dad made him a cardinal?

18. 18 is right. Very good. Question six. What infamous literary character was probably moulded after Cesare Borgia? Literary character? You've read it. You've read the book. The Prince. The Prince is right. Question seven. Lucrezia Borgia had Literary character. You've read it. You've read the book. The Prince. The Prince is right. Question seven.

Lucrezia Borgia had a dangerous fashion sense. What was she allegedly supposed to wear on her finger? Poison ring, poison ring all day. Not true, but yes. Question eight. You're doing very well so far. When Alexander went on tour of his properties in 1499, who did he leave behind in charge

of the Vatican? Lucrezia. It was Lucrezia, his daughter. Question nine, when did Rodrigo slash Pope Alexander VI die? Do you remember which year? Oh, 15... Yes. I can't remember. 1510? Oh, 1503. That was a hard one. That's harsh.

Question 10. Last question. Lucrezia had to pawn her jewellery in order to fund one of her businesses. What was it? Cheese in the country. It was a mozzarella empire. Phil Wang, you scored 9 out of 10. Very impressive.

Dates, dates, man. I can never do dates. I mean, dates are always the hard bit. And I'm sure Catherine's delighted. I mean, Catherine, you've clearly taught him well. And the dates is always, you know, as historians, we don't care so much about dates, do we? Dates are terrible.

I can never remember dates. I have to have a note of all the dates written down. So we let you off there, Phil. So well done. Nine out of ten. Very commendable. Well, that was a cracking effort. And I hope you've both had a lot of fun today

learning all about the Borgias. We've learned all the steps of the Borgia boogie. It's a little bit of murder, a little bit of admin, a little bit of potholes, some cheese. I mean, unexpected. If you're in the mood for more of this medieval mayhem, listeners, why not check out our Eleanor of Akitane episode featuring more families at war with themselves?

And if you want to hear more of Phil, you can check out the Chinggis slash Genghis Khan episode remember if you've had a laugh if you learned some stuff please do share this podcast with your friends or leave a review online and make sure to subscribe to your dead to me on BBC sounds so you never miss an episode anyway that's enough from me a huge thank you again to our guests in history corner the fantastic professor Catherine Fletcher from Manchester Metropolitan University. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Greg.

It's a pleasure having you here. And in Comedy Corner, we've had the wonderful Phil Wang. Thank you, Phil. Grazie mille. Beautifully done. Very nice. Join me next time as we take another historical walking tour with a different pair of titillating tour guides.

Anyway, I'm off to go and pawn my wedding ring to fund a fondue emporium. Sorry, bit of a cheesy joke. Never mind. Bye! You're Dead to Me was a production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4. The research and script was by Emma Neguse, Jessica White and me.

The project manager was Isla Matthews and the edit producer was Cornelius Mendez. Hello, me again. If you want more Renaissance things in your life, and why wouldn't you, we have an episode of Homeschool History about Leonardo da Vinci, one of my favourite people from history. It's co-scripted by Professor Kath Fletcher, who you've just heard on the podcast. It's full of information, some of which I didn't know,

and I thought I knew quite a lot about Leonardo. And there's also other episodes as well on there. If you go into the BBC Sounds app and just look at the feed called Homeschool History, you'll see the Leonardo episode and all the ones we've done before. Plus there's new ones coming out each week. Thanks very much. Bye. Hi, I'm Zand van Tulleken. And I'm Kimberley Wilson.

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