The House of Borgia by Christopher Hibbert
Constable, £18.99
When Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope in 1492, his reaction was characteristic. He leapt to his feet, shouting: “I am Pope! I am Pope!” although the result can hardly have been a surprise to him. He had bribed no fewer than 13 of the electoral cardinals, some with mule trains packed with gold, others with promises of jobs.
The new pontiff had form. He hadn’t got where he was without years of backhanders, simony, cynicism, spectacular greed and a gang of heavies. What’s more, his prospects as the world’s leading celibate hadn’t been harmed by a libidinous lifestyle which had brought him at least six illegitimate children – among them, of course, the legendary Cesare and Lucrezia.
Over the next decade, the Borgias carved up large parts of Italy among them, plundered eyewatering amounts of wealth and throttled (or poisoned or stabbed) any opposition. They also ate, drank and screwed anything pretty which crossed their path (including, it was rumoured, Lucrezia herself).
There are two obvious things to say about this undeniably well-worn tale. One is that sleaze, hypocrisy and Italian politics go together as sweetly as Wilson, Keppel and Betty. The other is that few could tell the story better than Christopher Hibbert. The House of Borgia is his final book (he died in 2008) and illustrates his virtues as a popular historian – pacy prose, uncluttered narrative and an eye for resonant detail.
Hibbert had form, of course. All of it admirable. He wrote, on average, one book a year for half a century and while he may not have dug very deep he was a sure-footed and entertaining guide to some of the great set-pieces of history.
The saga of the Borgias is, in his hands, a rattling good yarn in glorious Technicolor. Monstrous figures flicker through the pages, such as Savonarola (“a small, spare, ugly man with thick red lips and an immense hooked nose”) and Charles VIII of France (“tiny, deformed, with the most appalling face that ever man had”). Then there is Alfonso d’Este, whose unsavoury custom it was to walk the streets at night, “a drawn sword in one hand, his erect penis in the other.”
Most monstrous of all, of course, are the Borgias themselves – especially the dastardly Cesare with his black mask, his syphilis, his pet assassins and his ridiculous pomposity. If Hibbert’s sparkling book springs a surprise, it is in his loving portrait of Lucrezia, who comes across as demure, beautiful, fragrant and innocent – well, comparatively.
Andrew Langley
