Titans of History

In the midst of the divorce proceedings, Lucrezia—still claiming to be a virgin—retired to the Roman convent of San Sisto, where she was visited by a messenger from her father, the handsome courtier Pedro Calderon, with whom she soon began an affair. Within a year, a mysterious baby boy appeared among the Borgia clan, and shortly afterward Calderon was found floating in the River Tiber, apparently murdered on the orders of a jealous Cesare. The historian Potigliotto speculated that either Cesare or Alexander had sired the boy.

In 1498, having had her claim to virginity upheld by the divorce court, Lucrezia was offered to the seventeen-year-old Alfonso, duke of Bisceglie, an illegitimate son of Alfonso II of Naples. However, it wasn’t long before the Borgias fell out with Naples and moved closer to the French king, Louis XII. Lucrezia’s young husband fled Rome in fear of his life, and when his bride convinced him to return, he was savagely attacked on the steps of St. Peter’s in Rome. It is possible that Lucrezia was complicit in the assault, although contemporaries believed that she genuinely loved her second husband, pointing out that she tended to his wounds and nursed him back to health. But the court of the Borgias was not a safe place to convalesce, and, on Cesare’s orders, a month after the original attack, Alfonso was strangled while he lay in bed.

Lucrezia was said to be distraught at her young husband’s death. Nonetheless, she soon resumed her part in Borgia power politics. In 1501, the year after Alfonso’s murder, she married Alfonso d’Este, son of Ercole I, Duke of Ferrara.

In 1503, Alexander VI died of fever, at age seventy-two. His reputation is deserved but he was also successful in changing the papacy, improving its finances, administration and diplomatic influence. Cesare was left exposed. He was exiled to Spain where he was killed in battle at age thirty-one. His motto was “Caesar or nothing.” In the end, it was nothing.

Lucrezia became a respected patron of the arts and literature in Ferrara, where she became duchess in 1505, while still finding time to have an affair with her bisexual brother-in-law and the humanist poet Pietro Bembo. She died in childbirth at the age of thirty-nine.

MAGELLAN

1480–1521

… the whole earth hangs in the air … a thing so strange and seeming so far against nature and reason … which is yet now found true by experience of them that have in less than two years sailed the world round about.

Thomas More, Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529), referring to Magellan’s 1519 voyage

Ferdinand Magellan was a fearless and determined sailor who achieved what Columbus had attempted: he sailed westward from Europe and reached the East Indies, thus making the first recorded crossing of the Pacific Ocean. Although Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines, one ship from his fleet of five, after experiencing appalling hardships, finally returned to Spain—becoming the first to complete a circumnavigation of the entire globe.

Born to a noble Portuguese family, Magellan grew up around the royal court. In 1495 he entered the service of King Manuel I, “the Fortunate,” and enlisted as a volunteer on the first voyage to India planned by the Portuguese viceroy Francisco D’Almeida.

Magellan took part in a series of expeditions to the east, as Portugal sought to expand its trade routes and bring valuable spices back to Europe, becoming involved in skirmishes en route and achieving promotion to captain. In 1512 he returned to Portugal. He helped to take the Moroccan city of Azamor but was wounded during the fighting and walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Even worse, he was accused of trading with the Moors and subsequently fell from favor with King Manuel.

It was clear that Magellan’s career in the service of the Portuguese crown was over. In 1513 he renounced his nationality and went to Spain. He proposed to Charles V that he could reach the Spice Islands of the east via the western passage that had eluded Christopher Columbus some twenty years earlier. With the aid of advances in navigation, diligent consultation with an astronomer and the sheer guts to suggest traveling at a latitude of up to 75° S, Magellan was in a good position to trump Columbus. So in September 1519, with five ships and 270 men, he embarked on his historic voyage.

Magellan sailed across the Atlantic, sighting South America in November 1519. He then headed south, wintering in Patagonia, where he had to crush a dangerous mutiny led by two of his captains. He set sail again in August 1520.