The Life of Lucrezia Borgia

Includes:•Charles River Editors original biography of Lucrezia Borgia•Ferdinand Gregorovius biography of LucreziaLucrezia Borgia is the most unfortunate woman in modern history. Is this because she was guilty of the most hideous crimes, or is it simply because she has been unjustly condemned by the world to bear its curse? The question has never been answered…We possess the history of Alexander VI and Cesare, but of Lucrezia Borgia we have little more than a legend, according to which she is a fury, the poison in one hand, the poignard in the other; and yet this baneful personality possessed all the charms and graces. Ferdinand GregoroviusHistory remembers Lucrezia Borgia in unflattering terms. She has been portrayed as an incestuous adulteress and a murderer, but her contemporaries thought of her in very different terms. Lucrezia was a political pawn in her father and brother's plots and a political power in her own right. She was well-educated and well-respected during her lifetime. While she was, in all certainty, a part of multiple political plots, she was also considered to be pious, thoughtful, and mannerly. While these facts reveal a very contradictory nature, it may very well have been impossible for Lucrezia to have lived any other way given her gender and position within the Borgia family. But as the German historian Ferdinand Gregorovius so aptly notes in the introduction of his biography of Lucrezia, the positive characteristics attributed to Lucrezia by her contemporaries have gone largely forgotten. The world has always had a fascination with femme fatales, and few historical women have ever been portrayed as one quite like Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia is a baseless, immoral villain in Victor Hugos Lucrezia Borgia, and she continues to be depicted as a schemer and manipulator on par with her famous brother and father in film and critically acclaimed television series. Indeed, it would be hard to find another woman in the historical record who is remembered in any way comparable to the legacy of Lucrezia that remains nearly 500 years after her death. The great irony is that Lucrezias reputation seems to be wildly at odds with the actual woman herself. Though political opponents of the Borgias successfully portrayed Lucrezia as an incestuous schemer, Lucrezia was unusually moral for a powerful woman during the Renaissance. Aside from adultery, hardly unusual in that era, Lucrezia proved to be both an efficient and benevolent ruler when her husband was away from Ferrara, and the two of them had an unusually close and loving relationship in an era where political marriages were made out of convenience, not love. The Life of Lucrezia Borgia looks at the life and legacy of the famous woman, including an original biography about her and Gregorovius famous biography of Lucrezia. This collection also includes a Table of Contents and pictures of important people, places, and events in her life.