Read Online Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford - Free Book Online

officials that they should accept the livestock and possessions of my subjects for their security . . .’ 8
    In mid August Sanudo reported that Alfonso had sent forty artillery pieces to Parma and that Lucrezia had asked Venice for a safe conduct for herself, her children and her possessions to go there, but that Venice did not want to grant it to her without licence from the Pope. 9 On 21 August there was panic in Ferrara; Sanudo wrote that Lucrezia had her carriages ready to leave with her children for Milan but that the citizens rose up saying that if she left they would also flee the city, so she stayed. That very day, alone in charge at Ferrara since Alfonso was away in camp and Ippolito also, Lucrezia, despite Sanudo’s report of panic, kept her head, informing Alfonso of all she was doing to help, including sending a spy to Venice to find out whether the Venetians were arming forces and, if so, of what kind. She also reminded him, among his many other preoccupations, ‘of that affair of the Marchese [Gonzaga] about which you spoke to me before you left’. It can hardly be a coincidence that that same day she had Strozzi write a letter to Gonzaga conveying her feelings towards him: ‘. . . the love, faith and trust she has in Your Lordship is of such an order that she has more hope in Your Lordship than in any other person in the world, and with all her heart she begs you not to abandon her in these times, and to demonstrate effectively the fraternal love that Your Lordship bears her.’ And as if that were not enough, Strozzi added a verbatim report of what she had told him: ‘The Duchess said to me: “Lorenzo, if it were not for the hope that I have in the Lord Marchese that in my every need he will aid and protect me, I would die of grief. . .”’ 10 There was a certain practicality behind these effusions: beyond the military and diplomatic capabilities of her husband and brother-in-law, maintaining her hold on Francesco’s affections was the most effective form of insurance for Ferrara, which Gonzaga, as Julius’s commander, was now pledged to attack. As we have seen, there was mutual dislike between the Este men and Gonzaga, a feeling which, as far as Francesco was concerned, now extended to his own wife. In view of the discussion about Francesco which Lucrezia says she had with Alfonso before he left, it seems likely that they agreed that she should act as a conduit between them —as to just how friendly, however, Alfonso was no doubt left in ignorance.
    The twenty-first of August seems to have been a key day. Quite apart from the two letters she wrote to Alfonso and the one to Gonzaga, she wrote a third enclosing a letter containing important news which she had received from one Abraham Thus, a Jewish contact in Parma. The Este were known as protectors of the Jews. During the fifteenth century the Jewish population of Ferrara had developed rapidly: they were allowed autonomy as a community and permitted to live wherever they wished in the city – although in practice they mostly lived together in certain streets in an area known as ‘La Zuecca’. They were neither ‘ghettoized’ nor walled off from the Christian inhabitants. Their activities were not confined to money-lending: they were active as retailers, manufacturers and tradesmen. They were exempt from the extra taxes demanded by the papal legates but in 1505, confirming their privileges, Alfonso had declared that they should share the – by now—heavy burden of tax borne by the rest of the community. The Jewish population had rapidly expanded after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal under Ferdinand and Isabella: on 20 November 1492 the fugitive Sephardim received their passports from Ercole and on 1 February 1493 an agreement was made by which they shared all the privileges of the established community: they were permitted to follow any trade, farm taxes, act as apothecaries and practise medicine among Christians. By the end