Verònica Zaragoza admits it: “the bibliography on the Borjas is endless.” But, with worthy exceptions, hardly any contrasting references are offered to the women who were part of this mythical family saga that dominated Europe from the Vatican between the 14th and 15th centuries. This doctor in Catalan Philology and professor at the UV has published Les dones Borja, històries de poder i protagonisme occult (3i4/HEB), an ambitious work that defines the great role played by characters such as Isabel de Borja, mother of Alexandre VI ; his daughter, Lucrecia Borja or the Pope’s sister, Tecla Borja, who was a friend of Ausiàs March, among others.
Being a woman in the 14th and 15th centuries should not have been easy, you speak of “medieval misogyny”.
The medieval world, and that of subsequent centuries, was forged around men. They were being prepared to exercise power, while the social norm and the laws constrained women to remain subordinate to men. Despite the fact that we are leaving behind such a patriarchal society, in some areas this misogyny persists.
Am I a woman from the Borja family?
As I have tried to show, the protagonists of this book saw some inconveniences of being a woman offset by the determination and strength of their characters, and by having belonged to a family like hers. In the Borja lineage we find powerful ladies with resources, contact networks and privileges acquired due to their high social status; educated women with access to a scholarly education and literature, and great figures, in short, who played responsible roles in the convent, at court and in their territories. We are talking about ruling duchesses in the absence of their husbands (María Enríquez), charismatic writers and scholars (Isabel de Borja y Enríquez), abbesses and founders of monasteries of great social and political influence in the Austrian monarchy (the Borja nuns), patrons of art and literature that establish a cultural court in their ducal palaces (Lucrecia Borja)…
Let’s talk first about Isabel de Borja i Llançol, sister of Pope Calixto III and mother of Pope Alexandre VI. You say that she worked hard to raise an offspring that would end up changing the destiny of Europe.
Isabel de Borja was an essential piece in the rise of the lineage. When her husband died, she became the head of the family and took charge of the administration of the patrimony and the possessions that the Borjas would pass down through the centuries. This woman expressed great concerns about offering the highest education to her family and she put all her efforts into marrying her daughters to the social elite of the moment. The firmness and tenacity of her temperament led her to confront the wishes of her brother, the Pope himself, and would earn her the consideration of a “very manly and distinguished woman” with which some ancient historians remember her.
How little is the figure of Tecla de Borja, daughter of Isabel, sister of the Pope and a brilliant poet. She was a friend of Ausiàs March…
That’s right: Tecla de Borja was the daughter of Isabel de Borja and sister of the second Pope, Alexandre VI. But, beyond these family relationships, she is remembered for the intellectual relationship she had with the great Ausiàs March and for that text she sent to the poet, which immortalized her name in front of other women who, like her, also played a role important in literary courts. In fact, in the chapter that she dedicated to him in the book, she explained her contribution in the Valencian cultural context of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when Valencian women began to assert themselves as educated subjects with literary interests.
I already told you that I have a weakness for Vannozza Cattanei. The Magnificent Vanozza was said of her by those who attended her funeral. She is the lover of the Pope and mother of Lucrecia, César, Jofré and Juan. They said of her that she was very intelligent and very beautiful.
The almost conjugal relationship that Vannozza maintained with Alexandre VI led her to acquire a high social position. But her prestige would come to her as she was the only known and recognized mother of some of the powerful Pope’s children, in the face of the anonymity of other women with whom the Pope also fathered children. In addition to this, Vannozza also knew how to carve out her own destiny.
Vannozza knew how to have her own profile apart from the powerful figure of her lover, she became rich in the real estate sector and helped great artists of the moment. For a woman at that time it must not have been easy. And the memory of her is limited to a simple plaque in a Roman church.
Yes, precisely, I have tried to make visible this most unknown role, which goes beyond Vannozza’s relations with the Pope. In her mature years, Vannozza became a businesswoman dedicated to managing lodgings, at a time when Rome was a center of pilgrimage. And, like other wealthy women of her time, she dedicated herself to charity and religious and cultural patronage, activities that force us to see her with new eyes.
We come to Lucrecia Borja, a historical figure who has reached the category of myth. Why has such a cruel climate been generated against her figure?
When we talk about the stereotypes that weigh on Lucrecia Borja, we cannot forget the considerations of historians of the Borges clan such as Santiago La Parra, who points out that “Lucrecia’s most serious sin was her feminine nature.” It is this misogyny that we spoke about at the beginning that has conditioned the dichotomous reception that has been made of the figure of Lucrecia Borja: either as a pawn who acts at the expense of her father, or as a femme fatale with a life sullied by slip-ups and immoralities In the book I try to show how this falsified image of Lucrecia Borja, which has shaped our collective imagination, is being updated in the light of new historical investigations.
There are not a few authors, and you also say so, who emphasize in the case of Lucrecia her political intelligence and her love for culture.
Yes, in Rome Lucrecia exercised political tasks accompanying her father in his pontificate. But the most intellectual and political facet of her was carried out above all in the last stage of her life, in Ferrara, after her marriage to the heir of the Este house. Being Duchess of the Duchy of Modena and Ferrara, Lucrezia Borja maintained a lively literary, artistic and musical court in her palace, and established well-known relationships with renowned writers such as Pietro Bembo. In addition, she favored the foundation and maintenance of convents of Poor Clares in Ferrara, and the publication of some spiritual works. As you can see, this is a renaissance lady role that is totally different from what we inherited from the character.
I have a curiosity. Is it true that Pope Alexandre VI listened more to Lucrecia’s advice than to the rest of her children?
The Pope is aware of all his children and advises them based on the specific roles they play within the family. He held her daughter in great regard and esteem, and he manifested absolute confidence in her intelligence and high leadership capacity when he delegated her responsibilities in Rome to Lucrecia, during her absence, and entrusted her with the government of some of her possessions.
In the book I was discovered by a character I did not know, María Enríquez de Luna, wife of Joan de Borja, II Duke of Gandia. He says of her that after the mysterious death of her husband “she assumed the duties of regent duchess and looked after the interests of her children as well as the prosperity of the Borja lands of which she became the owner.” ”.
Despite having starred in a fascinating episode of our history, their contributions have rarely crossed the borders of the “academy” and are still little known to the Valencian people. Her biography of María Enríquez is intended to be, in this regard, a vindication of the vast facets that she exercised within her family. The one who was Duchess of Gandía for more than a decade and later a nun at the Santa Clara convent in the city, she was a highly educated woman, marked by her noble blood and her overwhelming personality; Aware of her responsibilities in the family and political spheres, she was deeply qualified to govern, with a high sensitivity for cultural and religious patronage.
He dedicates an entire chapter to the convent of the barefoot Poor Clares of Gandia. Many Borja women consecrated themselves to religion, and you emphasize that managing a lot of power. And even that they broke the tradition of hermeticism of these places.
The chapter on the numerous Borja women who entered the community of Santa Clara de Gandía aims to show what the experience of the cloister represented for these nobles, and also to put an end to certain prejudices and a presentist view that we tend to cast when thinking about the convent. And it represents a very innovative line of research in gender studies and monasticism of the time. As the nuns of our clan exemplify, in the Old Regime, the convents were spaces for the training and performance of great women, who, without breaking their social and family ties, had access to a wide range of knowledge and made the cell a space for writing and exercising a social, political and religious agency.
Do you think that history has been unfair to these women by not giving them more prominence in such an important family saga in the history of Europe?
The story that we have inherited about the Borjas (following a general trend of historiography) remembers them especially for the meteoric trajectories of Popes, clergy, soldiers (and some saints); men who, indeed, carried the fame of the lineage far away. As for the female section of the clan, although in this Borgian story the names of some of the women who parade through the book were not unknown, a new perspective was needed that would put cultural, political and social agency at the center of the story. exercised by these women. And this is what I have tried to offer, precisely, in the genealogy of women provided by the book Les dones Borja. Histories of power and hidden role.
