although much has been written regarding the borgias, no monograph devoted to caesar—the most interesting member of the family as a psychological study—has hitherto appeared in english.
with the passing of the “great man theory,” biography and history have become completely separated, and a personality such as caesar borgia is interesting now chiefly as a product of the egoism of the age. vast, unrestrained selfishness was the predominant characteristic of the men of the italian renaissance. the peninsula was in the grasp of a number of petty tyrants who, to advance their own interests and those of their families, hesitated at no crime.
never before was love of power so general and carried to such extremes. men and women were mere pawns in a stupendous political game. in the governing families the women especially were regarded as assets to be used in establishing alliances to increase the power of the clan.
men of iron played fast and loose with states6 and principalities; to them the lives of a city’s population were nothing except so far as their own projects and power were concerned.
of this world the borgias were part, although they were interlopers in the affairs of the peninsula; they saw other upstarts securing vast wealth and dominion, and why should not they? the thing were easy with rodrigo borgia on the throne of st. peter. money in unlimited amounts was at their command and the spiritual weapons of the church had not yet been cast on the rubbish-heap—there were still kings and princes that quaked at the threat of excommunication.
other men, other families, have played a much more important part than the borgias in the drama of history; others have committed as great crimes; others have surpassed them in every field of human activity—in fact, no member of the borgia family ever produced anything of enduring value to italy or the human race. we are therefore led to ask why alexander vi., caesar, and lucretia borgia have always aroused such profound interest. gregorovius ascribes this to the violent contrast of their mode of living—their morals—with the sacredness of the holy office. an explanation wholly adequate; for, although there were temporal princes who equalled or surpassed alexander vi. and caesar borgia in wickedness, the papacy furnishes no other example, in the person of pope or cardinal, of as great moral obliquity. caesar had been a cardinal, and in all his projects, after as7 well as before he relinquished the purple, he was supported by the pope, his father.
drum and trumpet histories are now fortunately fast becoming obsolete, and it is a truism to say that any man whose claim to fame is based on acts prompted by unbridled egoism can have little, if any, lasting effect upon the progress of the human race. a great scientist, scholar, or inventor may by his discoveries change the mode of living, the institutions of mankind, and, therefore, the subsequent history of humanity. the overthrow of the feudal system has been ascribed to the invention of gunpowder; and the mariner’s compass, the steam-engine, and the printing-press have altered the very nature of man; the discovery of an an?sthetic or an antitoxin may have greater effect upon the history of mankind than the victories of an alexander.
mere men of violence, the so-called conquerors, the military geniuses, whom little children were once taught to admire, and whom moral perverts are still wont to exalt—the ferocious egoists, who sigh for more worlds to conquer—are the most useless creatures produced by humanity in the painful course of its evolution.
even had these men never existed the great historic movements with which they were connected would undoubtedly have run their course and reached the same goal. the roman empire would have come without caesar, and without napoleon france would still have become the republic.
8 however interesting alexander the great, julius caesar, and napoleon may be as examples of unbridled egoism, they failed to attain the ends they sought; their conquests did not last; the victories of fraud and violence never can endure.
renascent italy furnished numerous examples of power built up by these means, and even the beneficiaries knew how unstable was their dominion. professor achille loria has pointed out that machiavelli’s admiration for caesar borgia was due to his perfect comprehension of the true nature of feudal property and to his understanding of the inherent necessity for the spoliations, extortions, and crimes which characterised it; and also of the historical justification of the acts that favoured the preservation of this dominant social form.1
the bombastic chronicles of great men are now recognised as of slight value, for the economic interpretation of history teaches us that the individual plays but a small part in the march of events, even when his character is the noblest, his aims the highest; without washington the colonies would have become the united states, and the slaves would have been freed without lincoln.
a great man, especially in the domain of politics, is the product of his age. a genius appearing before society is ready for him is a visionary, but if the times are ripe for him he is a genius; the great man is he who best discerns the spirit of9 the age and enters the lists as the champion of popular ideals. he is essentially the product of his environment, and is so much a part of it that it is impossible to think of him as belonging to any other.
men being products of history, under similar conditions similar men will be produced; but as they in the aggregate are the makers of history there is a constant mutation in conditions and therefore ceaseless change in men.
in every epoch there are men who although in many respects unlike their prototypes resemble them in others, and bear a close relationship to them. unchecked egoism asserts itself in every age, but the mode of its expression varies according to the institutions of the day.
in italy from the twelfth to the sixteenth century this egoism was embodied in the tyrant or despot; it has found expression in the absolute monarch, and in the present bourgeois epoch it is exemplified in the captain of industry, the domineering genius of modern finance.
in the fifteenth century italy was swarming with tyrants great and small—men of boundless ambition and greed, striving for power, deterred by no principle, hesitating at no crime. duplicity, treachery, murder, had become fine arts.
a host of adventurers, upstarts, brigands, soldiers of fortune, had managed to secure possession of the domain of st. peter and were building up petty principalities for themselves and their10 kinsmen. originally these tyrants were feudatories of the holy see, which based its claim to the territory on the donation of the countess matilda, who, dying in 1115, left her vast estates, which extended from mantua to pisa and thence almost to the walls of rome, to the pope.
as soon as these vassals of the holy see felt themselves strong enough they refused all allegiance and declined to pay their annual tribute. alexander vi. was thus afforded an excellent pretext for attempting to recover st. peter’s domain—and this he set about doing, ostensibly for the church, but in reality to build up a kingdom in central italy for the benefit of his family.
