Lucrezia Borgia [antikvár]

Author's NoteMoney ValuesEconomic historians now regard equating the value of fifteenth-and sixteenth-century coinage with today's money as unrealistic owing to the number of factors involved in the calculation. However, a rough rule of thumb would be to multiply each currency (gold coins such as ducats, francs, florins and scudi were aU much the same) by one hundred to arrive at a modern sterling equivalent.Time CalculationsIn fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy there were twenty-four hours in the day (Hke ours) but, instead of starting the day at midnight as we do, the ItaUans began the day half an hour after sunset: thus the twenty-fourth hour was the last hour of daytime.ForewordLucrezia Borgia's name has been a byword for evil for five hundred years, her life distorted by generations of historians and seen through the prism of the crimes of her family, themselves magnified by hostile chroniclers of the time. Lucrezia herself has been charged with murder by poisoning and incest with her father. Pope Alexander VI, and her brother, Cesare Borgia. As an archetypal villainess she has featured in works by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, an opera by Donizetti and a film by Abel Gance - to name but a few. Byron was so fascinated by her reputation that, after viewing her love letters in Milan, he stole a strand from the lock of her blonde hair which accompanied them.A cautious rehabihtation of her reputation began in the nineteenth century, but the general conclusion was that, if she were not a murderer and a whore, she was no more than an empty-headed blonde, helpless victim of the males in her family. The truth is that in a world where the dice were heavily loaded in favour of men, Lucrezia operated within the circumstances of her time to forge her own destiny. Born the illegitimate daughter of one of the most notorious of Renaissance popes, Alexander VL she was married at the age of thirteen to a man she had never met, then divorced from him at the behest of her father and brother and remarried to a second husband who was murdered on the orders of her brother when she was just twenty. It was then that she took her fate into her own hands and was actively involved in the promotion of her third marriage, to Alfonso d'Este, the future Duke of Ferrara, whom she knew to be violently opposed to the idea of her as his wife. As Duchess of Ferrara, Lucrezia came into her own, showing a powerful intelligence and skill in managing her life. Winning over her hostile in-laws - with