Lucrezia Borgia: A Study

by Joan Haslip

Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of the future Pope Alexander VI and his most favoured mistress was, from the age of puberty, a trump card in her father's plans to establish the Papacy as a great temporal power.

This account of Lucrezia's turbulent life is necessarily the story of the whole family of Borgia during the thirty years in which her father and her brother, by political opportunism, bribery, nepotism, and assassination and an outward observance of piety, made the Borgia power the most significant force in late 15th century Italy.

It is a long book because the story is packed with complicated manoeuvre and rapidly moving events, but from it emerge remarkably credible portraits of Lucrezia and her brother Cesare, for so long the subject of legend and dramatic interpretation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, British Literature

279 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Joan Haslip was an author of historical books, often focusing on European royalty. She was born in London and educated in London, Paris and Florence. Her first book, Out of Focus, appeared in 1931; among her other notable publications are Lady Hester Stanhope (1934) and Parnell (1937). She also wrote for the London Mercury, the Daily Mail and Evening News, and the Illustrated London News.
She also worked for the Italian section of the BBC from 1940 to 1944. Her books were generally regarded as accurate and fairly complete although at times falling prey to "outdated interpretations".

Reviews

[VJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Haslip's biography of Lucrezia Borgia, I know much more about how the RC Church of the 15th C worked than about Sra. Borgia's poisoning escapades. She was much more the pawn of her father's, POPE Alexander VI, and her brother's, Cesare, avaricious ambitions.

Her marriages were arranged with political ends in mind rather than her desires or interests.

The unwholesomeness said to have existed in her relationships with both her father and brother Cesare was hinted at in this text, but never fully fleshed out. While there are records of the trashy spectacles produced in the Vatican during Pope Alexander VI's reign, nothing conclusive was presented to support the charges of incest.

I learned an awful lot about the RC Church of the time and was quite scandalized, just as I am with today's Church antics, but I see the current acts have a long documented history.

Then, there is the Index of Prohibited Literature of 1501, which prohibited, banned, censored the reading of all books and/or documents that challenged church dogma, a gift of Pope Alexander VI, the same man who hosted parties in the Vatican that included dancing, naked women who picked up chestnuts with their backsides.

[jessica]

I put this biography down around a third of the way through. This is definitely more of a look at the political climate of the era and a history of the Borgia dynasty on a broader scale, rather than an intimate study of Lucrezia, which is what I both expected and wanted. However, I may revisit this in future. It's a beautiful book to adorn my shelves at the very least!

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say, this is less a biography of Lucrezia Borgia and more a picture of the entire Borgia family, because it's almost impossible to separate her from her infamous father and brothers; even more impossible to view the Borgias as separate from the state of Italian politics at the time, so that Haslip's book ends up a lovely illustration of the entire Italian arena with its occasional incursions of French or Spanish invasion. The Borgias are fascinating for me because they got so far, and yet fell just shy of everything they had ever wanted with the inopportune early death of Pope Alexander VI - their power was so based on family ties that it instantly collapsed. A truly enlightening book.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a good read so far on page 232