Madonna of the Seven Hills

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope that my readers will bear in mind the proverb Altri tempi, altri costumi, and adjust their mental vision to the fifteenth century when Popes took their vows of celibacy merely as a form, and when murder was so commonplace that an old Tiber boatman on seeing the body of the Pope’s son thrown into the river did not think it necessary to report it because he saw bodies thrown in every night.

Only by judging the Borgias against their own times can they arouse our sympathy, and only if they arouse our sympathy can they be understood.

Below are some of the books which have been of great help to me:

Lucrezia Borgia: A Chapter from the Morals of the Italian Renaissance. Ferdinand Gregorovius.

The Life and Times of Lucrezia Borgia. Maria Bellonci. Translated by Bernard Wall.

Lucrezia Borgia. Joan Haslip.

The Life of Cesare Borgia. Raphael Sabatini.

Lucretia Borgia, The Chronicle of Tebaldeo Tebaldei, Renaissance Period, Commentary and Notes by Randolph Hughes. Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Life and Times of Roderigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI. The Most Rev. Arnold H. Mathew, D.D.

Chronicles of the House of Borgia. Frederick Baron Corvo.

Hadrian the Seventh. Frederick Rolfe (Frederick Baron Corvo).

Alma Roma. Albert G. MacKennon, M.A.

Cesare Borgia. Charles Yriarte. Translated by William Stirling.

Cesare Borgia. William Harrison Woodward.

An Outline of Italian Civilization. Decio Pettoello.

History of the Italian Republics in the Middle Ages. J. C. L. Sismondi. (Recast and Supplemented in the light of historical research by William Boulting.)

Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino: Illustrating the Arms, Arts and Literature of Italy from 1440 to 1630. (3 Vols.) James Dennistoun of Dennistoun.

J.P.