Who Was The Naughtiest Pope In History?

Summary

Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

Episode: Who Was The Naughtiest Pope In History?

Host: Kate Lister | Guest: Catherine Fletcher
Date: September 19, 2025

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Overview

In this rollicking episode, sex historian Kate Lister is joined by Renaissance historian and author Catherine Fletcher to expose the scandalous reign of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) – arguably history’s naughtiest pope. Through lively conversation peppered with jaw-dropping stories, they explore the Borgia pope’s sex life, mistresses, family scandals, legendary orgies, and lasting influence on both the papacy and popular imagination.

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Main Discussion & Key Points

Setting the Stage: The Borgia Pope and Renaissance Rome

[01:31–04:52]

• The episode opens with a vivid, time-traveling reimagining: Kate "arrives" at a wild Vatican party reportedly hosted by Pope Alexander VI, setting the tone for the episode’s irreverence and intrigue.
• Kate introduces guest Catherine Fletcher, expert on the Italian Renaissance, to help untangle truth from myth in the Borgia legend.

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The Power and Context of the Papacy

[04:54–09:54]

• The Papal Role:
  • In the 15th century, the pope was not only the religious head of Western Christianity but also a powerful secular ruler of the Papal States, with immense diplomatic and territorial power.
  • Quote – Catherine Fletcher [09:54]:
    "He's a big deal and literally like the representative of Christ on Earth."
• Alexander VI’s Era:
  • Became pope in 1492—an era of global change (Columbus’ voyage) and church upheaval.

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Celibacy, Sex & the Church’s Double Standard

[11:43–12:34]

• The Catholic priesthood, including popes, were officially celibate: “not meant to marry, not meant to have sex, not meant to have a mistress.”
  • But in practice, many cardinals and popes had mistresses and illegitimate children, provided they kept it discreet.
  • “Did it always happen like that? No.” – Catherine Fletcher [11:50]

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Rodrigo Borgia: Origins, Ambitions, and Family Ties

[12:56–18:03]

• Rodrigo’s rise was facilitated by nepotism – his uncle was pope, leading to his own appointment as cardinal at a young age.
• Borgia’s ambition may have been circumstantial: he wasn’t the Vatican’s first-choice candidate, but political deadlock and his competence helped him win the papacy.

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Scandalous Personal Life: Mistresses and Children

[18:05–28:51]

• Mistresses & Social Mobility:
  • Rodrigo Borgia had many children (7-9 or more) with different women; most publicly, with Vannozza dei Cattanei.
  • Vannozza parlayed her role as papal mistress into a business empire:
    Quote – Catherine Fletcher [24:55]:
    "By the time she is buried...she has amassed a fortune whereby she runs about 10% of the hotel business in Rome."
• Visibility of Scandal:
  • His mistresses and children were not hidden but celebrated and married into nobility in public spectacles, pushing boundaries of respectability.
  • Borgia’s second notable mistress, Giulia Farnese, was 16 when “matched” with the sixty-something pope, arranged for family ambition.
    • Her brother, nicknamed “the petticoat cardinal,” gained his rank via her relationship with the pope.

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Open Scandal and Dangerous Rumors

[31:16–34:07]

• The Borgias’ open flouting of social and religious norms incited scandal, but public criticism was often muted by fear of Borgia retaliation.
  • Quote – Catherine Fletcher [31:37]:
    “People don't tend to say very much about the Borgias...they're quite nervous about the consequence of saying very much.”
• Rumors of murder, secret pregnancies, and incest swirled around the family – sometimes born of political necessity, sometimes pure salacious gossip.

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The Banquet of Chestnuts: Orgies in the Vatican

[34:15–40:23]

• Most infamously, tales abound of “The Banquet of Chestnuts”—a Halloween party featuring fifty courtesans, nudity, sexual contests involving chestnuts, and orgies at the Vatican itself.
  • Quote – Catherine Fletcher [38:37]:
    “There is definitely an out-of-hand Halloween party that went on in the Vatican at that point...it just sort of...adds fuel to the fire.”
• These rumors, plus allegations of incest between Lucrezia, Cesare, and Pope Alexander, further inflamed their reputation – aided by anti-Spanish and anti-foreigner sentiment in Rome.

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Women of the Borgia Circle: Outrage and Opportunity

[23:46–28:51, 40:23–41:50]

• Women close to the papacy, like Vannozza and Lucrezia Borgia, defied expectations: running businesses, holding land, and—even more unusually—being wielded as open political actors.
  • Lucrezia at times governed papal territories, shocking even by scandal-tolerant Renaissance standards.

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The End of Alexander VI and the Legacy of Scandal

[45:02–52:49]

• Alexander died in 1503, possibly of poisoning (though unclear), passing his power—and notoriety—onto his children.
• His model of papal corruption and sensuality became a Protestant talking-point in later church disputes, and a source for centuries of lurid storytelling.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Scandal as Legacy:
  • “The thing we remember him for is the scandal. And, you know, the thing about the scandal is it was there in his own time...then it's also written up in an opera...and up to this day, we get the TV shows…”
    – Catherine Fletcher, [49:23]
• Vannozza’s Remarkable Ascent:
  • “She is the person who makes her reputation and makes her money off the Borgias and who they are and what they could give her...does that dozen years or so as mistress and walks away from it with a fortune.”
    – Catherine Fletcher, [52:49]
• Why the Borgias Were Singled Out:
  • “The visibility of the family at the Papal court, lots of people are always like, well, you know, it would only be a small step from this for them to actually be behaving in even worse transgressive ways.”
    – Catherine Fletcher, [36:43]
• Host’s Wry Summation:
  • “You can absolutely see how they would have been like a huge—not a hit with the Protestants—but that was just gold for them, what they did and what this story was.”
    – Kate Lister, [51:06]

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:31] – Episode opens: Kate’s Vatican party daydream
• [04:52] – Introduction of guest Catherine Fletcher
• [06:41] – How the Vatican handles Alexander VI’s legacy
• [09:46] – Meaning of the papacy’s power in the Renaissance
• [11:43] – Rules on celibacy vs. the reality of papal sex lives
• [14:36] – Borgia origins and family advancement
• [18:05] – Borgia’s mistresses and public acknowledgement of children
• [24:11] – Was being a pope’s mistress advantageous?
• [31:16] – Why scandal wasn’t always reported overtly
• [34:15] – Incest rumors and “The Banquet of Chestnuts” orgy
• [43:27] – Lucrezia as a political actor in the papal government
• [45:02] – Alexander’s death and aftermath
• [49:23] – Assessing Alexander VI as a pope beyond the scandal

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Tone & Style

The episode is cheeky, fact-packed, and highly irreverent, mirroring Kate Lister’s trademark enthusiasm for the bawdier corners of history. Fletcher supplements with sharp scholarship and vivid detail, always with a dry wit and reluctance to paint history in prudish terms.

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Conclusion

Kate and Catherine vividly unravel why Alexander VI remains infamous as the “naughtiest” pope – and why, beneath Italy’s Renaissance glamour, sex, power, and scandal often walked hand-in-hand at the heart of Christendom. The legacy of the Borgia Pope is both sordid and significant, a warning, perhaps, that even those who claim to serve the highest ideals are still, all too often, human.

Transcript

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[Kate Lister]

Hello my lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. You are listening to Betwixt the Sheets. If you've clicked on the link thinking this is an entirely different podcast, this is your chance to get out now. But if you did fancy sticking around, I better warn you that things can get a little bit rude around here. So this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in adulty wake covering range adult subjects and you should be an adult too. Now, fair dues, we have warned you. Right, on with the show. Come with me. Lovely betwixters. It's 30-10-1501 and we are going to the Vatican. That's right. We need some spiritual replenishment. We need a holier than holy atmosphere to cleanse our souls and to just get us that little bit close. What on earth is happening around here? Is this the Vatican? This is the Vatican. This looks like the aftermath of Glastonbury. There's rubbish everywhere. There's food on the floor. Roasted meats and dried fruit. It stinks of sweat in here. What on earth is. Hang on. What are they doing there? There's 15 women in the nip crawling around on their hands and knees and what are they doing? What on earth is going on here? I don't remember this in Sunday school. Oh, my God. They're collecting chestnuts with the. Oh, God. Ladies, really, there are better ways to forage than that. Have we actually come to the right place? Is this definitely the Vatican? This is the Vatican. What on earth is going on? Turns out that we are in a Vatican house party hosted by none other than Pope Alexander VI himself. And what we're witnessing now was probably just a slow Tuesday. Are you ready to learn more? Well, I certainly am. Let's do it. What are you, a corny man?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Oh, money. Of course you're supposed to rise when.

[Kate Lister]

An adult speaks to you.

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[Catherine Fletcher]

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[Kate Lister]

Now, yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Goodness, What a beautiful diamond. Goodness. I have nothing to do with it, dearie.

[Kate Lister]

Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of Sex Scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. When you think of the most outrageous Halloween party you've ever been to, you're probably not thinking of the Pope. At least I hope you're not thinking of the Pope. But let us take you back to 15th century Rome to meet possibly the naughtiest Pope in all of Pope history, Alexander vi, formerly Rodrigo Borgia. Now, was it unusual for a Renaissance Pope to have a mistress? Not really, as long as he did it quietly. But how did Pope Alexander abuse his position? And just how much sex was going on in the Vatican? To guide us through the Borgia's Rome, I am joined by none other than the marvelous Catherine Fletcher, a historian of the Renaissance in early modern Europe and author of the Beauty and the Terror, an alternative history of the Italian Renaissance. So if anyone's going to be able to tell us what the hell was going on, it's her. Chestnuts at the ready, I guess. Let's do it. Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Katherine Fletcher. How are you doing?

[Catherine Fletcher]

I'm very well, thank you.

[Kate Lister]

Well, thank you so much for swinging by. I can't wait to talk to you about today. So we're talking about a naughty Pope. That's what we're talking about today. Pope Alexander vi. I'm not great on Popes, so I'm trying to like Work out where he fits in. But before we get to him, you know, you are a scholar who works on the Renaissance and you've spent a lot of time actually in the Vatican doing your research. What was that like?

[Catherine Fletcher]

It's quite strange. The first thing that's awkward if you go in as a student. I first went in when I was doing my PhD and they've got a dress code, and the dress code is just modest and appropriate. You can imagine. There I was in May in Rome, and I'd just been shopping, obviously, as you do, and I bought all these tiny strappy tops and I was just thinking, oh, wow, okay. Like, maybe, maybe not. Maybe I'm just going to go in and have to buy some, like, shirts and, you know, how high does the neckline of a T shirt have to be to legitimately fit the dress code? So then you go in. But, you know, once you've got past that bit, which is all a bit kind of odd and not something that happens in pretty much any other archive I've ever been into, it's very friendly. Like, the guys behind the desk are very nice, and you just kind of get on with doing research. It is not like anything you've seen in a Dan Brown movie. There are not, like, weird airlocks and so on. No, it's just quite a modern archive room. But, yeah, the dress code did throw me slightly when I first went in there, but, you know, no, no, it's ordinary in some ways and it's extraordinary in others, because you are in the privilege of being in the Pope's what used to be called a secret archive. They now call it the Apostolic Archive, because they tried to, like, be a little bit more open and scientific about it all. But, yeah, it was the Archivio Segretto Vaticano, the secret Vatican archive.

[Kate Lister]

And what do say about this particular Pope, because his reputation is not exactly holier than thou? Pope Alexander vi. Do they just sort of skim by him very quickly and just don't say much at all?

[Catherine Fletcher]

I mean, it's quite funny. If you go online, there's a 1911 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia that you can search online, and you just read through the entries of the different Renaissance popes. They're like, yeah, well, he tried to do some good stuff and here are a few good things that he did. But I think we can ultimately say that perhaps he did not fully live up to the expectations that would have been desired. And, you know, you can just see them working through this and say, is it any surprise that The Reformation happened because if you look at the whole run of people who were around just beforehand, who didn't really ever fully get to grips with all the arguments that were going on about how we need to reform the Church, Yeah. You can kind of see why people were quite unhappy at some points.

[Kate Lister]

Wow, that is quite a legacy, isn't it? Let's start by thinking about the role of the pope in the 15th century, because the Pope is still a very, very big deal today. And when the last Pope passed away and the new one was voted in, it was headline news. Whether you were Catholic or not, it was a big deal. What was it like in the 15th century? The Pope?

[Catherine Fletcher]

So the Pope was the head of the Western Christian Church. There hadn't yet been the Reformation, there was no Protestant church. There was one church covering Western Europe. There had been the previous split from the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and the Pope was head of that. The Pope was also ruler of a state like a normal country, if you like, that covered a big swathe of central Italy, so covers Rome, covers Bologna, covers a whole large amount of land holdings in between. So the little tiny Vatican state that exists today is the remnant of that. Most of it joined Italy when Italy was unified in the 19th century. And the Pope was just sort of stuck in this tiny little bit. And so the Pope had all the practical jobs of running a country as well as running a church. And the point at which Rodrigo Borgia Alexander VI became Pope was the point at which the Catholic Church started to go global. He became pope in 1492, same year of Columbus's voyage, where he accidentally runs into what turned out to be the Americas, etc, etc. So he's actually the Pope who decides how the world is going to be divided up, who oversees the treaty between Spain and Portugal. So really, at this very, very pivotal moment in global history, where we start to have like contact all around the globe, you know, this is the guy who's in charge and has all this sort of supranational authority to, you know, do diplomacy between nations and so forth. So it's an incredible time to be doing that job.

[Kate Lister]

A big deal. Then he's like the head honcho. Enormous amounts of power over many, many countries and millions of people.

[Catherine Fletcher]

He's a big deal and literally like the representative of Christ on Earth.

[Kate Lister]

Of course, I forgot that bit.

[Catherine Fletcher]

There is so much going on in the secular world that it's easy to kind of slightly lose the religious side of it. And to some extent, he doesn't have a choice but to focus on all these crises that are happening, because apart from what's going on, there's a war happening that breaks out in Italy. There's an awful lot of stuff taking him away from those religious aspects of running the papacy. So he's got a pretty tough job.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, he does. And what's Rome like at this point? Is it the same, you know, Renaissance beautiful architecture, hub of intellectual learning and sophistication that we think of it today?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, so there's been a lot of that going on. Rome has attracted really leading artists. You've had the Sistine Chapel. We haven't got to Michelangelo doing the ceiling just yet, but we've got the walls of the Sistine Chapel being decorated under one of Rodrigo's predecessors. There's a lot of talk about, you know, what might be done to restore Rome, but we have all these different cardinals running their courts, building their palaces, really trying to say that the way Rome looks, that's a sort of reflection on the papacy. It's a reflection on the church. It's got to be a beautiful city, it's got to be elegant, it's got to really show off its status as the central city of Christendom. And Rome has a little bit of a role, a bit like Brussels does today, in being a centre for diplomacy, a center where all these different nations send their representatives. And so it's quite an international city. So it's not just a church place. It's got a lot of secular politics going on there, too.

[Kate Lister]

So one of the most important questions for this podcast and our listeners was the Pope supposed to have sex?

[Catherine Fletcher]

No. No, popes were not, and priests were not in the Catholic Church. This is a church with a celibate priesthood. You were not meant to marry, not meant to have sex, not meant to have a mistress. You were supposed to devote your life to the church. Now, did it always happen like that? No. So Rodrigo Borgia is, you know, we'll hear about him shagging around a bit. He's not unusual in. I can't say he's not unusual, but we're going to come on to whether he's usual or not. But, yes, he's not meant to be having sex. No, priests are meant to be having sex, and yet many of them are. In fact.

[Kate Lister]

Why would he want this gig, then? Because this sounds like a very stressful job to me. If you said to me, right, you have to go and have this job, you're Christ representative on earth, but also you have to oversee wars. Rome is a really big city. You have to run this and several other countries as well. And millions of people around the world are going to look to you. That's too much. I don't want that. Why does Rodrigo Borgia want this gig?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Well, it's not really clear that he does want it because he was not expected to be elected Pope. When they went into that conclave in 1492, there were four people ahead of him as the likely candidates. And what happens is that to get elected pope, people might have seen the movie Conclave, so you know how much you've got to kind of clearly win the College of Cardinals round. And what became apparent in that conclave in 1492 was that none of the top candidates were able to do that. So there's lots of horse trading back and round. Okay, if you become Pope, like, what job are you going to give me? And some of these jobs have very lucrative salaries attached to them, essentially. So, you know, lots and lots of trading around who's going to be doing what. And eventually Rodrigo, who's been a cardinal for a very long time, by this point, he's very well qualified. He's done the job of Vice Chancellor of the Church, which is basically the job that runs all of the secular government of the Papal States. He knows what he's doing. Competent in some senses. He could be quite a safe pair of hands, if you look at it one way. And he comes through the middle. So there he is in 1492. He's 61 that year, so he's had plenty of time before he gets to this point of the conclave in papal government. He's been in Rome since he was very young man, about 18 or so. So he really knows the ropes. And they decide to elect him.

[Kate Lister]

And he's a Borgia. Now, that's a name that even hundreds of years later, makes people go, o elo. So tell me about, like, tell me his origin story. Where did he come from? How did he even end up being a cardinal?

[Catherine Fletcher]

So the family are originally from Spain, and he became a cardinal because his uncle was the pope. So he is the second one of the Borgia family. There's quite a lot of this goes on in the Renaissance papacy. You get cardinals and they're like, okay, I've been made Pope. I really need some allies in the College of Cardinals. I'm going to bring in a nephew or two or three or four to just have some friends and family around me who I know are 100% going to be loyal to me and not to any other faction. So you can imagine this College of Cardinals, it's got quite an international membership. It's got people with all sorts of different views about the future of the Church. You want your people in there, and one of the ways you get your people in there is by appointing somebody in the family. So young Rodrigo, who's from this Spanish noble family, is already moved over to join his uncle in Rome. And then when his uncle becomes the pope, he becomes a cardinal. And at that point, we're into the 1450s. He's in his late 20s.

[Kate Lister]

What was he like as a cardinal? Was he a quiet, shy, retiring wallflower who just piously worked his way up church?

[Catherine Fletcher]

We don't know a whole lot about his personal behavior. A lot of people look at some of the latest scandals, and they try and read back something into this one incident where he and another cardinal get told off for behaving scandalously at a party as if they were laymen and not taking their kind of role as cardinals seriously. But the pope who says that letter obviously has second thoughts, because a few days later, he writes another letter saying, I'm sorry if I overreacted a bit with that. And the pope who sends that letter, Pius ii, I mean, he's a character in himself. He has an illegitimate child, at least one. He was writing, you know, quite saucy love poetry when he was a young man again before he ended up being pope. So it's like, you get this. Says with that letter, Pius is saying, look, we've got standards to uphold. If you must do it, do it discreetly. Don't let anybody find out. And I think one of the things about how men in this environment operate is that if you do things discreetly, if, like Pius, you know, in your younger days, you had a fling with a woman in Strasbourg, you send her some money to look after the kid. This is all kind of fine. You handle it in a certain way. That's okay. You get a lot of popes who have got one or two illegitimate children, and they're kind of managing the situation, and the children are more or less discreetly away from court, or sometimes they are somewhat present and they get married off, or. There's lots of different variables here. So Rodrigo gets into a little bit of trouble as a young man, but mostly he does a pretty competent job. You know, he does his government role. He has a fairly solid reputation. He doesn't screw anything up. But he does have a number of children, and this is what he becomes famous for. He has a lot of children. There are, uh, well, seven, eight, nine. It's hard to put it exact to be exactly sure, because we actually don't know a whole lot about what he was up to in his earliest years. So.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, all to the same woman or to different one?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Oh, no. Oh, no. So the first three, we don't actually know who their mothers were. We've got Pedro, Louise, he dies quite young. Isabella and Girolamo, and those two are married off to kind of fairly minor Roman noblemen. But we don't know really a great deal about either them or their mother or mothers. We start to know a bit more when we get to Vonozza de Catanei, because Venozza is probably the most prominent of Rodrigo's mistresses, certainly before the point that he became Pope. She was in the picture from around 1470 and they had four children together, Juan, Cesare, Lucrezia and Joffre. And over a relationship for more than a decade, Vannozza really used her position as Papal mistress to go from being somebody who's really not for a prominent family at all, through three different marriages, because she was always married off to some papal official at the court who got some nice job as a bonus for the fact he was basically providing cover for Pope's mistress and, you know, officially making sure that their children were legitimate, although the children were always acknowledged as Rodrigo Borgias. And Vannozza, you know, works her way up so that by the time the relationship is over and she is widowed, she has amassed a fortune whereby she runs about 10% of the hotel business in Rome. She is a self made woman and it's quite slouchy. They own about 60 hotels and Roman hotels are really lucrative because a lot of pilgrims come to Rome, a lot of people come to Rome on business because they've got to get some paperwork through the Papal Court. You know, every country across Europe, the Catholic Church is a major landholder. Every time you want to appoint a bishop, somebody has to come to Rome and they have to stay somewhere. And so Vannozza, alongside being the mistress of the Pope, sort of exploits this position to build a business empire, which I think is just absolutely fascinating. That's incredible that you can do that. And she is just great. I really like her. And she is, I suppose, somebody who could have been perceived quite scandalously and indeed was at the time. I mean, there are people saying this woman is above her station. This woman, you know, when she is eventually buried, having outlived Rodrigo by many years, she has this funeral ceremony in one of the Roman churches and she's buried with all the pomp and ceremony, like a cardinal. And you could see people raising their eyebrows at this. But, you know, she's buried there. She has a tombstone with her children's names on it. She has a picture of herself, the Pope and their family together in a church in her chapel. I know. And you are so, no, not meant to do this. And she's just like, I don't care. I am, you know, Voza Borgia. I am claiming that name again, never legally entitled to it, but she just sort of helps herself.

[Kate Lister]

And so, yeah, this isn't secret, then. This isn't hushed up. Nobody knows.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Absolutely. It's very open. And this is one of the things where in some ways it differs a little bit from some of the ways that other popes behave with children from similar backgrounds. So the children are not sort of left out in the countryside, living in a village, being brought up by a wet nurse. And maybe they'll have a moderately decent marriage alliance later on. Oh, no, these kits are absolutely in the picture. And as soon as Rodrigo becomes Pope, he starts to make all these different dynastic alliances for these children. So Lucrezia is going to be married into the ruling family of Milan. Cesare starts off as a cardinal and then gets married to a French Navarese heiress. Juan is married into Spanish royalty. So he's just really going for it. And, you know, there's a little bit of a precedent for this, but, you know, one child of the previous pope who was married into the Medici family. So it's not like nobody has done it before, but nobody has done it quite on the scale of I've got seven children so far and one at least, possibly two to come. So really, he is open. He is so open about all of this. Lucrezia gets married in the Vatican. Again, that's really pushing the boundaries of acceptability in terms of what you do with your mistress, with your illegitimate children. And this is partly where the Borgias start to get their reputation for crossing the line. Doesn't help either, that they're Spanish and foreign, because the Italian sort of stereotype of the Spanish is that they're a little bit rustic, they're a little bit backwards, they're not quite as civilized as the Italians are. So in a lot of the literature of the period, you get this idea that these people are a little bit vulgar, they're not properly Christian. There was historically, Spain was quite a mixed society. It had large Muslim and Jewish population. So you get that sort of stereotype being used against Spanish People as well. There are stories go round after Rodrigo's death that he was secretly Jewish, for example. There's no evidence this is true at all, but people start to get scandalized and outraged about the Borgias. And this is a part of the picture.

[Kate Lister]

What was it like to be the Pope's mistress then? Is that a good gig, do you think? Because this is also at the time of a real courtesan culture in Italy and Rome, where you have courtesans becoming, I guess, like the celebrities of their day. You know, the Kardashians of their day is they're sort of respected but also looked down on and they're, you know, known for their fashion and their beauty. And was it a good gig to be the Pope's mistress?

[Catherine Fletcher]

I think that probably depends a little bit on what the alternatives are. So for somebody like Vannozza, who's from a relatively modest background, so far as we can tell, it's not like she was ever going to contract a great dynastic marriage. And so for her, this is a route to social mobility. By the time she is buried, you know, on her tombstone she can write that she is the mother of the Duchess of Ferrara, which is where Lucrezia eventually ended up. You know, that is a proper sort of social ascent. She's made money in the process. She's been able to buy this very nice sort of vineyard and country house on the hills of Rome, just sort of up above the Forum, where she can host al fresco dinners.

[Kate Lister]

Not too shabby.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, she can be a big charitable patron. You know, she can do very nicely for herself. It's probably a little bit different for Rodrigo's second mistress, Julia Farnay's. Oh, there's a second one.

[Kate Lister]

Okay.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, there's another. There's another major one who we know quite a bit about, and we know quite a bit about Julia because she was the mistress during his papacy. But she's quite a different type of person socially. She is from a very wealthy noble family in Rome and she was only about 16 when she got together or I suspect was put together with a 60 year old pope. And this is like. Yeah, so Vinaz is probably only about a decade of age gap between them and they get together when she is, you know, in her late 20s, he's in her late 30s. This seems to be a much more sort of even kind of partnership in a sense. Julia, it's like, oh, you're the beautiful Julia. Well, you, young lady, are going to be the Pope's mistress. Now you are also getting Married off to a nobleman. But this is for cover. You are off there with Rodrigo Borgia, who's now the Pope. And this is a great honour for the family. And by the way, it also means your brother is going to be a cardinal. So she is. You know, I'm not sure that for Julia this is such a great option.

[Kate Lister]

It doesn't sound brilliant, does it?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Does not sound brilliant. And I mean, it's also like for her brother, Alessandra, who appears to broker this whole situation, ends up being nicknamed the Petticoat Cardinal because everybody knows exactly how he got to be a cardinal. It's like your sister shags the Pope. That's why you have got this job. So I slightly feel for Julia. She ends up having a daughter with Rodrigo. It's fairly clear that it's his and not her husband's.

[Kate Lister]

Was her husband at least nice? Was he a nice person, her husband?

[Catherine Fletcher]

I'm not even sure she gets to spend a lot of time with her husband. I mean, she does eventually spend time basically just decorating a nice castle out of town and doing quite a bit of art patronage. So, you know, there are kind of worst things you could do and the daughter gets married off to another papal nephew in the end. So, you know, could be worse. But yeah, I sort of feel for Julia, this is perhaps not the first choice.

[Kate Lister]

It's not every 16 year old's dream, is it?

[Catherine Fletcher]

This, it's. It's really not. And so I think there's a kind of contrast, in real contrast for me in these stories between the woman who goes into this relationship, probably with her eyes quite wide open at, you know, a reasonable age, and ends up basically becoming a very successful businesswoman off the back of it, and this teenager who is, you know, clearly doing this with her family, seeing it as being to their social advantage and pushing her into it. Because at that age, in this climate, you are not getting to make your own decisions about who you're marrying, who you are. Mistress to. I mean, maybe it's to, you know, to her advantage that he is probably not going to last that long.

[Kate Lister]

I was just thinking that you didn't want to say it out loud. She's probably just hoping to ride it all out.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, exactly. That is what happens in the end. I mean, she spends just under a decade as his mistress, has the one daughter, and then, you know, that relationship ends. Rodrigo's in his last years and she goes on and brings up her daughter, but, you know, she's around, she's there at the papal court she's there to be a sort of decorative to show off again in a kind of very weird way for a pope, this is more open about your mistress than you are really meant to be.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Catherine after this short break.

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[Catherine Fletcher]

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[Kate Lister]

Did people not question this? I understand that there's a sort of an unspoken like, look, lads, we all do it, but let's just keep it on the slide. But this is very visible and even at the time people would have been noticing Julia is very young compared to how old he is. Like, did nobody say anything? Did everyone just, just go along with this? Nobody said, hang on a minute.

[Catherine Fletcher]

People don't tend to say very much about the Borgias at the time and some of that is because they're quite nervous about the consequence of saying very much about the Borgias.

[Kate Lister]

So I forgot it was the Borgias for a second there. Yes.

[Catherine Fletcher]

And you know, I think you read some of the account and there's sometimes there's so little written or you just get these hints that it's probably better not to say too much about exactly what happened here or who was responsible. There's a case in the 1490s where the body of a papal chamberlain and the body of a maid who are called Pedroto and Panthesileia, wash up in the Tiber, found in the Tiber river. And people are like, what's going on here? And a rumor goes round that Pedrotto has got Lucrezia Borgia pregnant and that there's a secret baby and possibly, you know, is the maid being disappeared because she's helped deliver it. Now whether or not that's true is very, very difficult to say. Either way, there is certainly a baby. It could be Lucrezia's, it could be Rodrigo's, it could be the brother Cesares, but. But this guy is no more. Now it's either a coincidence or that he's been got rid of. And this is part of the backdrop to why you don't necessarily get a lot of rumor and gossip put down.

[Kate Lister]

Well argued, Catherine. Well, well pointed out.

[Catherine Fletcher]

You just.

[Kate Lister]

He wouldn't say anything.

[Catherine Fletcher]

There are quite a lot of raised eyebrows. There are quite a lot of said that this is not really appropriate. Who is going to go out there and say, absolutely, you shouldn't do this? I think we get the sense with the next pope, Pope Julius ii. Julius also has an illegitimate daughter, but she behaves very much more discreetly. So she hosts dinners in Rome. She's a bit of a diplomatic hostess, but basically she gets on with being a proper married woman and not putting herself about too much at the Papal court, because I think she has observed and learned the lessons of what happened with the previous papacy. Julius and Alexander also hate each other, which is a whole other rivalry issue. But yes, you just see as time goes on that people are much more cautious about what they do.

[Kate Lister]

Right, that makes sense.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Not always, not always, but they get kind of nervous and they try to be more careful. It doesn't almost work out, but that's it.

[Kate Lister]

You would think that having a 16 year old mistress and another mistress who owns a fleet of hotels and if that would have been enough for him, but there's still rumours that swirl around this man, when he was Pope, that He was not just indulging in a couple of one night stands, but indulging in like orgies. Right?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, I mean, that's somewhat more his children by the time we get to the real orgy tales about, you know, the parties that go on at the Papal court. But yeah, there's all sorts of things. I mean, for a start, there's the incest allegations, which we should probably talk about because. We probably should. Yeah, we should probably talk about. This is one of the things that I think really doesn't quite stand up in relation to the Borgias, but it was one of the things that was said about them and it's part of the scandal that surrounds them. So the, the rumor specifically is that Lucrezia Borgia was having sex with both her father and her brother Cesare. And this rumor comes about, however, in the context of a divorce. So for political reasons, Rodrigo Alexander decides that his daughter Lucrezia should get divorced from Giovanni Sforza, from the ruling family of Milan, and marry somebody more politically useful instead. And because this is the Church and it's the 15th century and so on and so forth, you can't just get a divorce. You have to find a solid reason. So they invent the reason that Giovanni is impotent. So this, of course, is incredibly humiliating to Giovanni. So basically the board just go around town saying, you, Giovanni, cannot get it up. So our Lucrezia is gonna have to annul her marriage to you. You can imagine, you know, you'd be down the pub with a divorcing couple. You can imagine, like, you know, he can't get up. And he comes back with, well, she's shagging her dad and her brother. Like, this is just the. Then it goes. But of course, because the Borgias are really pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable in terms of mistresses and family and so on, and the visibility of the family at the Papal court, lots of people are always like, well, you know, it would only be a small step from this for them to actually be behaving in even worse transgressive ways. And this is a period when, you know, printing is relatively new and, and all those stories by Suetonius about the Roman emperors Nero and Caligula, who of course are all doing incest and such lives and having orgies, they're really popular in Rome. So when you're saying that, it's also making a comparison to these scandalous ancient Roman emperors that everybody is so familiar with. So it might be literal in one way, but it's also like you guys, you're as bad as Nero, you're as bad as Caligula. You are with those classic bad emperors who are all sexual deviants in multiple ways. So that's the incest bit is part of the story. But yeah, then there's this incredible story about the banquet of the chestnuts, which.

[Kate Lister]

Earth was going on there. That's just one of the maddest stories I've ever heard.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah. It is not what you get when you go to the Vatican these days. You know, you go see the Sistine Chapel. Yeah. Please do not, do not try to go to the Vatican and recreate this. This is your.

[Kate Lister]

God. No, don't even ask them about it. They want to move on.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah. So the story goes, this is a Halloween party, right? It's All Saints Eve. Cesare and Lucrezia have this Halloween party at which there are 50 courtesans invited to this party who start off clothed and later on strip and are naked. And at a certain point in the party, they put all the kind of candelabras down on the floor and they throw chestnuts around. Chestnuts, these warm chestnuts. They're lovely. They're a kind of Roman specialty. You can still get them. Anyway, they throw these chestnuts round and they have these courtesans crawl around the floor trying to pick up the chestnuts. So this is with their hands. It's. It's not actually specified in the sources, unfortunately. I just like. I mean, you can imagine what people were making of this, this story as it went along.

[Kate Lister]

Yes, I can.

[Catherine Fletcher]

And then, you know, everybody ends up in an orgy. It is pretty outrageous. And, you know, we have this written down in sort of various versions of the rumor about exactly, you know, who's involved, how many people, what's gone on. And there's enough of it about to think, yeah, there is, there is something in this story. There is definitely an out of hand Halloween party that went on in the Vatican at that point. And I think it just sort of, you know, this is the kind of incident that really just adds fuel to the fire. There was that one off, historic, scandalous party. And then there was the mistresses, and there are a lot of children. And then there's this tale about a secret pregnancy of Lucretius. And there's been that sort of thing that people were saying about incest. And a lot of these things, you know, in and of themselves, they're not necessarily that huge a deal, but they stack up and they stack up and they stack up and you just get this sense that you've got these people who are somewhat foreign running the Vatican and they don't really belong in Rome. They've brought in a lot of. There's a certain amount of resentment because of the number of appointments from Spain that have been made that people in Italy think should go to them instead. There's a certain amount of hostility. There's also a whole question going on with the war and the fact that there are Spanish troops fighting in Italy now who have a whole load of other resentment against them. And all of this just builds up into this massive sort of blow up scandal about the Borgias. And it then gets even worse when Cesare and one of his henchmen are implicated in murdering Lucrezia's second husband, which is.

[Kate Lister]

Oh God. Right, okay.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, another major scandal in itself. And of course you can sort of start to see why. Well, you know, people were saying that these two are shagging and that's why he's murdered her second husband.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah, yeah, Rumor.

[Catherine Fletcher]

And it just builds up, builds up and up and up and up. And the motive for that, that murder is, is very difficult to pin down. It's not a sensible, logical thing to do. But there is a whole lot of very hot headed vendetta type violence that goes on in Rome at this time where people are literally, that's a rival family and they get into fights in the street, people get stabbed and then somebody else has got to go out and do the sort of Romeo and Juliet style vengeance on them. So it's possible it fits into that kind of picture. But yeah, as they go on, they get more and more scandalous and more and more outrageous. And Vanozza just sort of gets on with her, building her hotel portfolio. She is somewhat out of this. I love how she's just like, oh, do you know what? My husband's died, I'm now widowed. I'm going to buy another really nice hotel. She's got quite a prominent hotel. It's called the Cow Inn, the La Canda della Vacca. And you can still see her coat of arms on the side of it. It's near Campo de Fiori in Rome. So, yeah, I just like to think she, she is looking at this in, in slight horror and thinking, do you know what, do you know what? Sometimes interior design.

[Kate Lister]

That's me.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it. Let's sort out really nice, you know, upmarket hotel on offer for our clients.

[Kate Lister]

I'll be back with Catherine after this short break.

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[Kate Lister]

So is the suggestion that Pope Alexander Rodrigo was there when these orgies were happening or is it just that he's allowed his family to take over them, which is bad enough. Take over the Vatican and have their mad Halloween sex chestnut orgies?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, well, I mean, some of it is. It's that. But worse, he's actually allowed his daughter to run a bit of the papal government. He's left the Vatican. Like that's really shocking. It's like the party's about it off, but he's put a woman in charge. And you've got to remember, like, this is not a place where women are allowed to have any official role within the administration whatsoever. It's not like all these other kind of the courts of northern Italy where, okay, the dukes away doing some fighting in the war, the duchess is in charge and running everything. This is the papacy. It doesn't work like that. You are meant to delegate to a cardinal. You are not meant to be delegating the governorship of Spoleto or just running things day to day in the Vatican to your daughter. That is not.

[Kate Lister]

No, that's not the rules.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Yeah, that's it. And it's almost like that stuff, I think to the people around him, it's almost as bad as, okay, your kids had a wild party. Well, they probably shouldn't have done it in the Vatican, but if they'd taken it out to a castle somewhere in the countryside. We have just overlooked it. But the fact that they're there, they're right in the heart of things and they are being given government responsibilities that is pushing a boundary quite as much, I think, as some of the, you know, look, we had an outrageous sex party.

[Kate Lister]

So what happens to Pope Alexander then? Normally when we hear these kind of stories, they meet a pretty sticky end somewhere. Someone's off with their head. Or if it's a Roman woman, they get abandoned on an island somewhere. But he's the Pope, so what happens to him? Does he just live out his life doing mad stuff?

[Catherine Fletcher]

Well, he dies in 1503 and he's in his 70s by this point, so that's a, you know, a reasonable life lived.

[Kate Lister]

Yeah.

[Catherine Fletcher]

It's possible he might have been poisoned, but it's not absolutely clear and he might well have just, you know, died. It was a. It was a hot summer. There are obviously stories about how he died. Like when he died, he was surrounded by seven devils who dragged his soul down to hell and that kind of thing, because that all goes around afterwards. Possibly he just died quite normally of old age. And then there was another conclave. And what happened after his death was that Cesare was quite quickly double crossed by Rodrigo's successor. So he lost all the lands that he'd been trying to acquire in northern Italy. Lucrezia stayed as Duchess of Ferrara, where she already was, was, and actually had her own very successful business career. And what's interesting is she seems to have followed her mother's example and she was all into land drainage projects, draining the marshes around the area. Buffalo, mozzarella herd. Yeah, I know. There's a kind of incredible sitcom to be made in which, like, Lucrezia Borgia is head of a mozzarella business and she's trying to manage, you know, all these guys sort of around the farm. I just love, you know, Mum running hotels and D cheese. I just think it's perfect she's up there and. Yeah. And the papacy moves on and the next papal daughter, who's called Felicia della Rovera, the daughter of Pope Julius ii, she does her thing and I think she's just much more discreet about it. She never has a formal position. She's there, she hosts dinners, she entertains people. She is appropriately married to somebody in a proper noble family, but she doesn't push the boundaries in the same way that Lucrezia did.

[Kate Lister]

Did they learn from this then? When Pope Alexander finally popped his clogs, I mean, they must have been desperate to get rid of them.

[Catherine Fletcher]

By this point, desperate, they eventually elect his great rival. I think Pope Julius II tries to be much more serious, be much more image conscious. He does still do some things that are a little bit pushing the boundaries, but in a different way. So he actively goes out and leads the TR groups of the Papal state to try and assert the borders of the Papal states and to try and capture land and so on, which, again, is not something that Popes are quite normally meant to do. But he really does get away from the sex scandal. You know, he is from an Italian family, so nobody is going to argue that he is a foreigner and not quite proper and not quite Christian. So he brains it in a bit. But he also has a nephew, behaves outrageously and does a murder a few Popes down the line. Alessandro Farnese. So Julia's brother, the one who got promoted to cardinal on account of his sister shagging the Pope, he becomes Pope himself. And he has a huge amount of issues with his son, who is basically a serial harasser and rapist of young men. So, you know, Pope's having problems with. Yeah, he is a dreadful person. And Pope's having problems with their illegitimate children. Just causing trouble for them is something that. Yeah, the Borgias. The Borgias have a lot of problems with that, but so do multiple popes that follow on. And it's always the thing for prominent parents, isn't it? You can't really control what the kids are going to do. You just have to find a way of living with it.

[Kate Lister]

So as a final question, then, maybe it's just. It's too big to answer. I'm not sure. But do you think that Alexander VI was a good Pope? I mean, if we attempt to move him away from. I don't know if you even can, actually. But his moral behavior that he definitely wasn't supposed to be doing, and that makes him a bad Pope. But the actual running of the Vatican, did he do a reasonable job of that?

[Catherine Fletcher]

I think given all the context, given the fact that two years into his papacy, a war breaks out and he has to a whole lot of managing what's necessary in wartime. He has to do a whole lot of trying to manage the rivalry between Spain and Portugal over this new world that they are claiming to have discovered. He has to deal with demands for church reform and a very big prominent issue that's going on in the city of Florence, where this hellfire preacher called Savodarola has taken over the government and is running Florence in this really sort of quite Extreme theocratic way. He's got so much on his plate and he manages most of it pretty competently. But the thing we remember him for is the scandal. And, you know, the thing about the scandal is it was there in his own time. It's written up in entertaining ways in his own time. And then it's also written up in an opera by Donizetti about Lucrezia Borgia. There is, you know, there's play after play. There is drama after drama about the Borgias. I mean, right up to this day, we get the TV shows, and I think they are just such an incredible example. Also, once we get Protestantism for the Protestants, of everything that's wrong with the papacy. So that side of things really takes off and you get in. So the 16th century England, you get the Borgias on the English stage as part of that really, you know, dramatic Jacobean theater stuff where you just get this sense, oh, yeah, sex scandal. And it's in Italy. Perfect. That'll kind of bring in the audience.

[Kate Lister]

You can absolutely see how they would have been like a huge. Not a hit with the Protestants. But that was just gold for them, what they did and what this story was. I mean, it was just perfect for them to point at the Catholic Church and go, no, they were all awful.

[Catherine Fletcher]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And also because they were getting criticism from their own side as well. There were plenty of people in Rome who say, this has gone too far. So you've got Lucrezia's ex husband accusing her of incest. You've got.

[Kate Lister]

It just goes on.

[Catherine Fletcher]

People like, yeah, it just goes on. I mean, you've also got the fact that Machiavelli in the Prince writes about how magnificent Cesare Borgia is. This is Cesare Borgia who's just, you know, murdered all of his lieutenants because. Because he believed they were conspiring against him, which they were, to be fair. But there is a kind of whole sense in which Machiavelli, you know, who obviously ends up with his books on the Index as quite a scandalous writer in that early period. His association as somebody who says the Borgias are kind of impressive also plays into this idea of them as these sort of the evil, Machiavellian, scheming sort of popes. So, yeah, I mean, it's an incredible story. I find it quite fascinating. But I think, you know, the person who I think comes out in his best is absolutely Vanozza, the Hotel Triplettis, because she is the person who makes her reputation and makes her money off the Borgias and who they are and what they could give her and you know, does that that dozen years or so as mistress and walks away from it with a fortune.

[Kate Lister]

Well played. Oh Catherine, you have been fascinating to talk to. I knew that you would be. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

[Catherine Fletcher]

So I've written about the Borgias in my book the Beauty and the Terror An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance. And you can find more about [e-mail].

[Kate Lister]

Thank you so much for coming along to tell us about this very, very naughty pap. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Catherine for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is you get your Podcasts Coming up we are exploring why single women get such a bad rep in the movies and we'll be diving into the world of sex work once again. If you've got a subject you'd like us to explore, or maybe if you just fancied saying hello, then you you can email us @BetWixt History hit.com this podcast was edited and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the Sheets the Tree of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sounds.

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