Borgia, Giovanni

Juan de Borja or Giovanni Borgia (presumably 1475 , 1476 or 1477 , Rome - June 14, 1497 , Rome ^[1] ) - the second duke de Gandia and Sessa of the Borgia clan, son of Pope Alexander VI ( Rodrigo Borgia ) and his mistress Vannoztsy dei Cattanea . The brothers are Cesare Borgia , Joffre Borgia , sister of Lucrezia Borgia .

Character, background and family

His father intended Giovanni (Juan) for a secular career, and his brother Cesare - for a career in the church. The question of the seniority of the sons of Vanozza causes controversy, but it is more likely that Cesare was the eldest and Giovanni the second ^[1] .

By agreement of Alexander VI and King Ferdinand, he received the duchy of Gandia in Valencia after the eldest (all-blooded) brother Piero Luigi (Pedro Luis in Spanish) who died in 1488. ^[2] In September 1493 he married his bride, Maria Enriquez de Luna . Her father was the brother of Queen Juana Enriquez , and her mother was the granddaughter of the Duke of Trujillo . They had two children ^[3] :

• Juan de Borgia (in Spanish Borja) Enriquez ( 1494 - 1543 ), third duke of Gandia .
• Isabelle (1498-1557), took the veil in the monastery of St.. Clara , Gandia .

Palace built in Valencia for Piero Luigi Borgia, first duke of Gandia

I’m not so happy with my new cardinal dignity, as saddened by the news of your bad behavior in Barcelona, ​​which was reported to dad: at night you run through the streets, killing dogs and cats, visiting a brothel, playing big instead of obeying your test Enriquez and Honor Dona Maria.

Military and political activities

In August 1496 , with the permission of King Ferdinand, returning from Rome to Spain, he took the title of Church Gonfaloniere (commander of all the forces of the Pope) to lead the war against the clans hostile to him, primarily against the Orsini family. In the military, he did not understand enough; together with him, he commanded the army of Guidobaldo , Duke of Urbinsky [five]

After an unsuccessful campaign against Orsini (an attempt to take the castle of Orsini Bracciano failed in January 1497, Guidobaldo was captured, and soon after Giovanni was wounded) the pope sent his son to the Spanish army of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba , fighting the French for the Neapolitan kingdom , and created in the Papal States, for him the hereditary duchy of the bishops of Terracino and Benevento ^[5] .

Murder

Giovanni Borgia was killed in Rome on the night of June 14, 1497 not far from Piazza della Giudecca . He left that evening with his brother Cesare and a relative Cardinal Giovanni Borgia, the eldest from his mother’s house, and wished to go away in an unknown way with his unknown masked servant, while both his companions returned to the Papal Palace.

Coat of arms of Borgia on the wall of the palace in Gandia

... then a rider appeared on a white horse; he had a corpse of a dead man behind him, with his head hanging from one side on his shoulder and his legs from the other; near this corpse two on foot were walking, supporting the corpse so that it would not fall from the horse. They drove along the place from which the manure is dumped into the river, as described above; then, near the end of this place, they turned the horse that had stopped with its tail to the river, and both the observers mentioned — one by the arm and shoulder, the other by the foot — dragged the corpse from the horse and, after swinging it, threw it into the river with all their might.

He sat on his horse approached and asked if the corpse had gone to the bottom; they answered him: "Yes, signor." Then the one sitting on the horse looked at the river, saw the mantilla of the corpse floating in the river and asked the footmen that it was black floating on the river. They answered: "Mantilla"; one of them threw stones so that the mantilla would plunge into the depths. After the plunging into the mantilla, all five of them left, the other two on foot, who came out of the second street, looking for someone to enter, joined the rider and the other two and went along another lane, which gives an approach to the strange home of St. Jacob, - and more they did not appear ^[6] .

Later, a few years later, rumors spread that his own brother, Cesare Borgia (who took the same place as commander of the papal army) three years later, ordered the murder: Juan’s death was beneficial to Cesare, who did not want a church career he was identified by his father ^[7] . It was believed that Cesare, who killed Alfonso ’s sister’s husband, could have been able to kill his brother. There were even rumors that his brother had killed Giovanni, because he was competing with him in bed of his sister Lucretia and found out that Lucretia was pregnant by Giovanni.

Another version is that the murderer was the father of a young girl, Antonio Maria della Mirandola, whose home was in proximity to the Tiber. Shortly before his death, Juan did not miss the opportunity to mention that he had dishonored the daughter of one of the representatives of the ancient Roman family.

The most realistic hypothesis explains the murder by the revenge of relatives for the death in Virginia Orsini’s Neapolitan prison, one of the heads of this hostile dad to a family whose father’s possession was just planning to give to his dead son (the murder was committed in the neighborhood where many of their people lived and the victim’s mule there) [5] ^{[8] [9] [10]}

The reasons for revenge could have been Giovanni Sforza , Lucrezia’s husband, disgraced by the Borgia family, with whom the late Giovanni swore publicly, or his relative Cardinal Ascanio Sforza , with whom the deceased was also in such a quarrel that their servants were cutting each other on the streets of Rome, and the duke Guidobaldo da Montefeltro , whom Giovanni accused of their recent military defeat and who did not buy from captivity, and even his younger brother Jofre , with his wife, according to rumors, was in touch ^[7] .

The killer was never found.

The widow of Giovanni, who survived him for 42 years, was no longer married, lived in her palace in Gandia , raised children and patronized many churches and monasteries of Valencia . Subsequently, she blamed it on Cesare for killing her brother, but she herself had never even been to Rome and, in fact, simply repeated the rumors that had been circulating. She died after taking vows in the monastery of St.. Clara in Gandia.

Popular Culture

As a character appears in numerous works of art devoted to the Borgia family:

• The Borgia Family, by Alexandre Dumas ,
• "Madonna of the Seven Hills" and "Halo of Lucretia" Eleanor Hibbert ,
• "The City of God: A Tale of the Borgia Family" by Cecilia Holland
• " Family " by Mario Puzo
• "Lucretia Borgia: Three Weddings, One Love" by Sarah Dunant
• The series " Borgia " (Canada, Hungary, Ireland. 2011-2013). The role is played by David Oaks .
• The series " Borgia " (France - Germany - Czech Republic - Italy. 2011-2014). The role is played by Stanley Weber .

Notes

Literature

• Burkhard I. The diary of Roman urban affairs: fragments // Stefano Incesura, Johann Burchard. Diaries. Documents on the history of the papacy of the XV-XVI centuries. M. State anti-religious publishing. 1939 .
• Klula I. Borgia. - Rostov-n / D, 1997. - (Next in history).
• Bradford S. Lucretia Borgia. - M. , 2008.
• Mallet M. Borgia - the rise and fall of the Renaissance dynasty. / Per.Yu. Kiryukova.
• Pastor L. The Middle of Ages. - London: Kegan Paul, 1898. - Vol. 5, 6.
• WH Woodward. Cesare Borgia. - NY: Dutton, 1914.
• "Keeper of the Secrets of Borgia" - a novel by Jorge Molista.