#auth: g.j. meyer

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Is Meyer's book on The Borgias subtitled 'Hidden History' or is that another book lol I want to make sure I get the right one (Meyer's is good, right?)

Yes, it’s the same book, anon. Is it good? I mean, it has its issues like any other bio. Personally I don’t think Meyer did a good job where Cesare, Lucrezia, and their sibling relationship are concerned. He doesn’t challenge much of the official narratives and assumptions made about their characters and lives, not like he does with Rodrigo. I don’t think they were his point of interest, either. Indeed, it’s easy to see his interest, his focus were on their father, Rodrigo, and his papacy as Alexander VI. I’ll put my thoughts under keep reading because idk if you are reading it now, and I don’t want to impose my conclusions about his work without you having formed your own first, so if you like you can check the rest after you’re done reading, or you can check it now, it’s your choice ;)

He is a diehard fan of Rodrigo, more so than previous scholars I think, although I’m still less of an expert on Rodrigo’s historical literature. So naturally, he tries his best to give him justice, and to set the record straight in regards to his reputation as Pope. I believe he follows De Roo, and the phenomenal work about Rodrigo and his family, published in 1924 iirc. I think it was Meyer’s intention to make De Roo’s research, and his great questionings more easily available towards a general audience, since De Roo’s work is very scholarly, very long and not so easy to find. And I understand what he was trying to do, I appreciate his effort, at least he tried to deliver something new, I just don’t think it worked out that well tbh. Because no matter how strongly you may disagree with De Roo’s interpretation of Rodrigo, some even call him an apologist (which he certainly was not imo), there is no denying his arguments are all incredibly well constructed. He meticulously exposes all of his evidence for his claims and conclusions. He gives the reader a pathway for his thought process. Meyer often does not offer evidence for his claims and conclusions about Rodrigo, much less about Cesare, Lucrezia, and other popes lol, nor he tries to explain his thought process at all. You have to guess, or just take his word for it, which always gets a big no no from me. And that leads to many confused moments, and contradictions on his part. It gets messy from time to time and you have to check other sources. He also goes about the wrong routes when trying to give Rodrigo justice. His tactic is basically: I’ll attack and blame anyone around Rodrigo, esp. Cesare, in order to acquit him. Cesare has to be thrown under the bus, again, (as he always is by all sides btw) in order for Rodrigo to get his rehabilitation. He is the “dark force” working behind his father, forcing him to do his will. Which not only it’s laughable, it’s also truly unfair to Cesare as it is for Rodrigo himself. He was not a Sixtus IV. He was and remain the patriach of the family until the end. And in the same way he doesn’t deserve to still be remember as one of the worst Popes in history (quite contrary actually) Cesare also doesn’t deserve to be everyone’s scapegoat, and still remember as this evil tyrant, or Renaissance’s villain. Or perpetually as Machiavelli’s Prince, with all its negative implications attached to it. The latter which, whether Meyer intended or not, he certainly feeds into it and helps to perpetuate. In addition, this narrative doesn’t help in understanding Rodrigo and Cesare’s complex and amazing relationship. It completely ignores the fact they mostly worked together, and their interests were very much interwined. That they were one of the most remarkable, powerful duo of this period. One that made the whole of Italy tremble in envy, anxiety and hatred for their accomplisments. Understanding their dynamics has a direct link to understanding one of the key factors of how the Borgian myths came about, and it was a missed opportunity for Meyer, sadly. De Roo seems to have understood this better, unlike other Rodrigo scholars I’ve read, he miraculously tried to be fair to both father and son. Giving them a honest, equal treatment. He does not see the need to attack nor blame others to justify Rodrigo’s behavior. He prefers to simply insert the man within his historical and social context, and let the evidence do the talking. Only pointing out what’s malicious gossip with its political agenda behind it, and what’s hostile and uncredible sources. Had Meyer followed these routes and approaches of De Roo here, instead of not offering historical evidence to back up his claims, and letting his bias go unchecked, his book would have been better imo. As it is, it’s ok. Definitely better than Bradford’s bios for example, (not a hard thing to accomplish tbh, but still lol) or the other more popular, generic bios about the Borgia family. The same caution needs to be applied though, when it comes to Rodrigo’s family, as well as other people outside his family. Meyer is accurate about the lords of the Romagna in general, but not so much about other Popes. He tends to be a bit too harsh and dishonest about them and their papacies, again, in order to rehabilitate Rodrigo. Other good aspects for me about his book were his treatment of Juan Borgia, he was possibly the least venomous one, that I've read. Dealing with him more fairly than others, at least acknowledging we don't actually have a lot about Juan to make so many claims about his character. And I adored the way he constructed the book, with chapters about Italy in between the ones about the Borgia family. It was the hightest point for me. It was a nice, creative addition, that allows you to understand the political and social context of the time the Borgias were borned and lived in. If you already know these things, it’s still very enjoyable to read it. Meyer, like the majority of Borgia scholars, is clearly a skilled writer. I really wish he would write a bio about the Catholic Church and Italian politics from the 11th to 16th century. I think he would thrive there.

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[...]The black myth of the Borgias is largely a manufactured thing, produced for a purpose, and that the process of manufacturing it was fully under way even before Alexander VI's death. It got off to an impressively fast start thanks to the pope's blithe indifference not only to personal criticism but to gross slander, and his consistent failure to respond. It accelerated further when he was in his grave, with Julius II not only encouraging fresh slanders but actually having onetime Borgia associates tortured in an almost Stalinist campaign of terror aimed at generating damaging material. That nothing of substance was turned up in this way mattered hardly at all; the rumors and fabrications were quite colorful and numerous enough to satify every need and the retailing of them was encouraged and rewarded by Julius and others. Memories of what a formidable character Cesare had been, and of how potent a combination he and Alexander had formed, encouraged the generation that followed them to believe the worst. As the stories accumulated, and then as the Reformation threw the Catholic Church on the defensive and used Alexander and his family as prime examples of the decadence of Rome, it came to be assumed on all sides that the Borgias were indefensible, and that to question the established view of pastime for fools.

G.J Meyer - The Borgias

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Cesare will learn to enjoy Machiavelli’s company, and it is not hard to see why. In addition to their shared fascination with power, Cesare the practitioner, Machiavelli one of the most original students the subject has ever had, they have in common a lively wit and a kind of intelligence that can be hard and cold as ice. If Machiavelli is perhaps not capable of rising to Cesare’s level of ruthlessness -life will give him no opportunity to find out- he is certainly capable of appreciating Cesare’s attainments in that regard. They have been brought together by matters vital to both of them, under circumstances that make it impossible for either to be entirely forthright. Each has to look for hidden meanings in whatever the other says. Something clicks between them all the same. They are more than shrewd enough, both of them, to take each other’s measure quickly, and see how well they are matched.

G.J Meyer - The Borgias

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"This lord is truly splendid and magnificent, he reports to his masters in Florence. "in the pursuit of glory and territory he is unceasing and knows neither danger nor fatigue. Such words are remarkable, coming as they do from Machiavelli of all people. Few men in history have been less easy to impress. [...]His writings drip with contempt for some of the greatest figures of his day. To see him lavishing praise on someone he has just met, an adversary five years his junior, is not only unexpected but little short of astonishing. Despite all the reasons he has to despise Cesare and depict him in the ugliest possible terms -he is, after all, a mortal danger to the Republic of Florence- Machiavelli's description reads like a hymn of praise, a rapture, almost a love song. Cesare is loved by his soldiers, he writes. Cesare is victorious and formidable, and enjoys good fortune. As the words pile up, one begins to wonder if Machiavelli had lost the ability to think critically, if he is in the grip of something akin to infatuation. Once again, we catch a reflection of the power, the raw charisma, of Cesare’s personality. Of the almost preternaturally magnetic force felt by almost everyone who ever came near him, and of the physical appeal that came with being what he was repeatedly called: " the handsomest man of his time". [...]He decided that Cesare, more than anyone else then living, had the vision, the boldness, and the strength of character needed to rescue Italy from the divisions that had made it so vulnerable to invaders.

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As for Cesare, the ruthlessness for which he has always been famous is explained, if not excused by the milieu in which he operated, and the character of the enemies with whom he was obliged to contend. If he had been less hard and less relentless, he would not have survived long enough to be remembered, and his place would have been filled by men far worse than himself. That he insisted on surrendering a secure place at the top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy is as plausibly interpreted as testament to his integrity as to anything else, and he transformed himself into such an important figure at such a young age is proof of his immense gifts. And it is fair to ask: If he had achieved his ambitions, establishing himself securely as ruler of a powerful state, in what way would that have been worse for the people of Italy than what they experienced over the centuries after his death? In what way would it have been worse for Europe?

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias

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“Early on the morning of July 27, disguised as a knight of the Order of St. John and accompanied by only three companions, he rode out of Urbino with his destination, as usual, unstated. The next day he showed up in Ferrara, where he found an epidemic of some kind ravaging the city and his sister Lucrezia both pregnant and dangerously ill. The two talked all night, using the Valencian dialect that had been the language of their childhood and that prevented eavesdroppers from understanding what they said.” @lucreceborgia I wonder what could have been so secretive and important that they felt the need to speak in the Valencian dialect. especially if we are to consider the image that some historians want us to have of Lucrezia ( the pawn, the vapid fool that knew nothing of her family’s plans ever, the angel. hehe)

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On one side alone behind an expanse of polished tabletop, sits Cesare, master of the situation no less than of the sleeping city of Urbino. Cesare the crafty, the self-dramatizing, playing his little trick of meeting with callers in the middle of the night, a single burning candle placed behind him so that he can see the faces of his visitors while his own remains in shadows. Dressed as always in a simple black tunic that sets off his ivory skin and is adorned with nothing except the emblem of the Order of St. Michel that the king of France first placed around his neck. Cesare, the conqueror. Valentino.

The Borgias - G.J Meyer

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“Whenever the Borgias tested the resolve of the men plotting against them, they found weakness and readiness to cut deals - even separate deals, when that seemed feasible. They could be confident that in a showdown each of the conspirators would look at his own immediate interests regardless of the fate of the others. They had reason to be worried all the same. The risings south of the Romagna, and the fact that Cesare was all but trapped at Imola, left Alexander feeling deeply insecure. He feared that everything the two of them had achieved and were planning to achieve, the whole grand enterprise into which he was pouring the wealth of the papacy, was suddenly on the verge of collapse. […]Cesare by contrast waited and watched in silence, using his own inscrutability to unnerve his enemies. When Ernes Bentivoglio moved his troops near the outskirts of Imola but failed to provoke the expected countermove by Cesare, failed even to get an acknowledgment of his presence, he lost heart and withdrew in befuddlement. When it became certain that the plotters could expect no help from Venice or Florence, and that when Louis XII’s army arrived on the scene it would come as Cesare’s friend, their resolve disintegrated.” lmaoo when you call Cesare Borgia to a fight and he doesn’t even acknowledges your presence bc you know, he’s better than you. plus I’m sure It’s more fun to just watch your enemies panic and ask for your forgiveness. 

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“When on October 2 Cesare embarked on his second impresa, he marched out of Rome at the head of an army of some ten thousand men. Waiting to join him in the Romagna was a force three-quarters that size provided by Louis XII. This was a terrifyingly large number of troops by the standards of the time, and Cesare made himself all the more frightening by telling no one what he intended to do.”

Cesare deliberately terrifying all of Italy and its tyrants. I appreciate his tactics so much.  😂😂👌👌

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“Having achieved the dream of his life, as Pope Julius II he continued to brim over with ambitions unfulfilled. In a decade on the throne, this violent, irascible character would turn himself into one of the epic figures of the Renaissance and one of history’s legendary popes. He would be remembered as a reformer in spite of systematically selling offices and benefices and allowing his courts to be corrupted, and would be honored for a restrained use of nepotism that was made easier by the things his uncle Sixtus IV had already done to enrich their kinsmen and the fact that only one of his illegitimate children, a daughter, lived to adulthood.” @lucreceborgia here Tha, a bit of Della Rovere trashing for you, like I promised. lmao

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The most surprising aspect of the attack on the Gaetani was not the fact that Alexander attempted it but his way of disposing of the seized properties. He sold them, and to, of all people Lucrezia Borgia. She by this time was reunited with her husband, had just weeks before given birth to a son they named Rodrigo, and in the aftermath of her good performance at Spoleto was now in charge of the papal city of Nepi as well. Where she obtained the purchase price of eighty thousand ducats  is unknown; possibly it was given to her out of the pontifical treasury, which if true, made the transaction not a sale but a swindle. The whole affair is  in any case another example of the extent to which restoring the power of the papacy and advancing the fortunes of his family had come to be interwined not only in the pope’s thinking but in his actions.

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias

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Alexander ended his investigation sooner than anyone had expected and forbade further inquiries into Juan’s death. In the fullness of time it would be suggested, and repeated in almost everything written about the Borgias, that he did this upon learning that the murderer was in fact Cesare. This is a logical inference- but only if one begins by assuming Cesare’s guilt. For at least a century now virtually every responsible student of the Borgias has found it impossible to assume anything of the kind. Scholars have concluded instead that Cesare was almost certainly not guilty (certainty being impossible in a matter of this kind). They finally noticed, if belatedly, that in the aftermath of his brother’s death Cesare was never so much as mentioned among the possible suspects, even by the gossips, and that when he began to be mentioned and then declared guilty, this was invariably done by propagandists and sensation-seekers. Cesare had actually stood to gain little or nothing from the murder. Juan survived by a wife, an infant daughter, and a small son who as third duke of Gandia inherited all of his father’s possessions in Italy as well as Spain. Cesare remained exactly what he had been when Juan was alive: a wealthy and restless young cardinal, ridiculously out of place in the vocation in which he found himself.

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias

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It is likely that much of Europe owed its safety and survival [against the Turks], at this juncture, to what was happening in the East. The regions where the Roman Christianity gave way to the Orthodox faith became the setting for exploits of an epic character. Though most italians paid little attention, great things were accomplished decade after decade and made an immense and lasting difference. One of the most brilliant of the heroes was Stephen III, who in 1457 at age twenty-four was crowned prince of Moldavia in what is now Romania and immediately launched into a career that over the next forty-seven years would see him defeat one invasion after another by various, always numerically superior, enemies. He won forty-six of his forty-eight battles, repelling a lifelong series of Turkish attacks while also having to fight off the attempts of his Roman Catholic neighbors, Hungary and Poland in particular, to take possession of his homeland. [...]Better remembered today, for macabre and not entirely imaginary reasons, was Vlad III of Wallachia, like Moldavia an independent principality in the fifteenth century and today part of Romania. Known even in his own time as Dracula (son of the dragon), and to the Turks as "the impaler prince" for his favored method of dispatching enemies, he became ruler of Wallachia a year before Stephen took charge of Moldavia and was about the same age. Despite his lurid reputation, he was on the whole a good if severely firm ruler, and the intensity of his hatred for the Turks is explained by his life story. in boyhood he had become a hostage of the sultan, his father surrendering him and a brother as security for good behavior, and he was regularly beaten for recalcitrance. The Turks ultimately killed his father and blinded and buried alive an elder brother. Though after achieving his freedom Vlad succeeded in retaking Wallachia from the invaders, this early success simply opened the way to a life of unceasing conflict. Like Stephen, he became an immovable obstacle to Turkish progress west of the Black Sea, and he continued to stand firm. The West owned him, as it owed Stephen, an immense debt. The two kept whole Ottaman armies tied up for decades.

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias

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We see here the first clear manifestation of Alexander’s defining weakness as a man and as pontiff: his growing and soon all but unrestrained willingness to subordinate everything else to his favorites. No doubt he remembered how Calixtus III had turned to him and his brother under similar circumstances and had increased his effectiveness as pope by doing so. If the increasing extremes to which he carried his nepotism might to any extent be rationally explained, the explanation must surely have to do with the perception that Juan and his siblings, if empowered, could become Alexander’s most effective tools in the pursuit of his policy objectives.

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias

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Several of Alonso's nephews and cousins, Isabella's son Rodrigo and Catalina's Luis Juan de Milà among them, were steered toward careers in the Church. This was customary because practical: it was in the ecclesiastical field that an uncle who was first a bishop and then a cardinal could be most helpful. Vatican records show Rodrigo and Luis Juan being singled out, as early as the reign of Eugenius IV, for benefices, offices generating ecclesiastical income, that would have been unimaginable without the intervention of a patron who had access to the pope's ear and the king of Aragon's as well. We see Rodrigo, still no more than a schoolboy, becoming the recipient of ecclesiastical revenues first from his hometown of Jàtiva, then from the cathedral of Barcelona, and finally from the cathedral of Valencia. In 1499, when Rodrigo was about eighteen and his uncle was in his fifth year as a cardinal resident in Rome, Pope Nicholas V issued a bull allowing him to keep his benefices (all of which were in Spain) even if he resided at a university or in Italy. This cleared the way for the youth to leave Spain for study at one of the great universities of Italy without sacrificing the income that permitted him to live in the style of a young lord -a cardinal's nephew. [...]Everything known about Rodrigo makes it reasonable to suppose that he was both an able student -not even his enemies would ever deny his intelligence- and a conscientious one, consistent hard work being one of his defining characteristics throughout his life.

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias

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[...]So...some other compromise has to be found. The cardinals, frustrated and weary and wanting to be set free, find it quickly. find him quickly. The desire to be done with his tiresome business awakens them at last to the fact that there is in their midst a man of whom no one has a bad word to say. A man who, if not a champion of the new humanism in the manner of Capranica or Bessarion or Pope Nicholas, is an esteemed scholar nevertheless, with two doctorates in law and an international reputation as an authority on the subject.  A good man, untouched by scandal and known to all Rome for his sponsorship of hospitals, his genorosity to the elderly and the poor, and the simplicity of his life. A peacemaker of the first order, a key player in bringing the Western Schism to an end and settling a long conflict between Naples and Rome.. Not greedy, not even ambitious. And, what matters more in this deadlocked conclave, free of politics: unaffiliated with any of the Sacred College's factions after ten years as a member, so detached from the intrigues of the papal court that no one, no Orsini, no Colonna, no anyone has reason to regard him with distrust. And finally -what's best of all, the clincher- seventy-six years old and in declining health. It is unconceivable that he will live much longer. This makes him perfect. And so, when Cardinal Bessarion rises to his feet and declared in solemn tones that he is giving his vote to Alonso Borgia, his compeers all but fall over themselves in their haste to do the same. They do so with joyful relief, confident that they are settling on a man who will reign benignly, passively, and above all briefly, soon departing for the hereafter having distressed no one and changed nothing. Little do they know.

G.J. Meyer - The Borgias