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Not Just the Tudors
Mysterious Murder of Juan Borgia
00:34:46
One of history's greatest cold cases investigated
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit. With a historyhit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Brilliant Rivals, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:30]
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Bachelor Clues
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- [01:29]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. It's the 14th of June 1497, and the streets of Rome are alive with the sound of revelry. No one pays much attention as Juan, also known as Giovanni Borgia, the favored son of Pope Alexander vi, steps out into the balmy evening after a family dinner at the home of his mother. What then occurs is not clear. In one account, Juan's brother Cesare urges him to return to the papal palace. Juan tells Cesare that he's going to find entertainment elsewhere and dismisses his retinue. He takes with him only his valet and a masked man whose identity is unknown, but who had already been accompanying Juan when he arrived at dinner and has been visiting him almost daily at the palace for about a month. The duke rides to the Square of the Jews, where he orders the servant to wait for him until 8:00 and, if he's not appeared by then, to return to the palace. Juan then rides off with the masked man behind him on the back of his mule. The next morning, Juan's mule returns without its rider and one of the stirrups cut off. Later, a gruesome discovery is made, and this we know for certain. A man's body is found floating in the Tiber River. His throat has been violently slashed, his torso punctured by nine fatal stab wounds. It is Juan Borgia who was behind this brutal crime. Was it Juan's own resentful brother Cesare, who stood to gain significantly from his death? Or could it have been his sister Lucrezia, who had her own tumultuous relationships within the family? Then there's Juan's youngest brother, Joffrey, who may have discovered the affair between his wife and Juan. Or is it a calculated political assassination by the powerful Orsini family rivals to the Borgars, who mean to strike at Pope Alexander VI by eliminating his favorite son? In an unprecedented move, Pope Alexander VI launches an exhaustive investigation into Juan's murder. But his efforts will leave more questions than answers. It remains one of history's greatest cold cases. Returning to join me is Professor Catherine Fletcher, who, in the last episode of this special series, explored with me the life of Cesare Borgia. Together, we're going to get to grips with one of history's most enigmatic, unsolved crimes, shrouded in intrigue, betrayal and power struggles within the infamous Borgia family. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb, and this is not just the Tudors from history hit.
- [04:54]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Right, so we're thinking about the murder of Juan Borgia on the night of June 14, 1497. What can you tell me about his movements leading up to his murder?
- [05:07]
Bachelor Clues
Juan Borger had been at his mother's residence that evening. It's a little bit of discussion about whether it's his mother's palace or his mother's vineyard. Either way, he has been out with his brothers Cesare and Joffre, in one account, possibly with another relative, Cardinal Juan Borgilanzol, and they were having a little bit of a farewell party for Cesare. So they go out for the evening. They all start heading back towards the Vatican with their entourage as night falls. So this is probably quite late, with it being the height of summer when they're about to cross the Ponte Sant'Angelo's. That's the bridge leading over towards the Vatican. Juan excuses himself, says he's got some urgent business to see to, and heads off in the company of his groom and possibly also in the company of a mysterious masked man, the tales of whom just add some drama to this whole affair. Now, there's a report that his groom is sent back at one point to collect his light armour. There's another report that says he has been seen with Madonna Damietta, who's a well known Roman courtesan. It's all rather imprecise, but the basics of the story that he's initially with his brothers, then he leaves them, making his excuses in a rather unspecific way, and then simply doesn't appear again until the next day. That's more or less the picture that we have. And in fact, he isn't particularly missed initially because he's the kind of guy who often does stay out partying all night. In fact, he's got into a bit of trouble for this before. And it's only the following afternoon when his father really starts to worry and sends out people to find out exactly where Juan is.
- [07:10]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
And the state of his body tells of a particularly brutal assault. What is known of the immediate aftermath of the crime and how it was investigated.
- [07:21]
Bachelor Clues
So we know that it was a very brutal assault. There are multiple stab wounds on his body, his neck is half cut, but on the other hand, he still has his money with him and he still has his fine clothes with him. So immediately it's possible to rule out a motive of robbery. Unless the robbers were particularly incompetently interrupted, and even then it's hard to see how they would have disposed of his body in the Tiber. So the motive seems to be political, because why, you know, why would you not take the money? And also quite openly political, because you could fake a robbery if you felt so inclined. If you just wanted to get rid of this guy, you could set it up in such a way as to pretend that it was street robbery. But this is clearly a killing with a motive that is not just common or garden violence and theft.
- [08:22]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
So let's talk then a bit about Juan prior to his death. You've given us an idea already that he's something of a party animal. His personal life had been characterized by reckless spending, alcoholism and adultery. What can you tell me about his marriage to Maria Enriquez de Luna of the famous house of Castile?
- [08:40]
Bachelor Clues
Yes, well, you know, she's very, very impressive match. She's Spanish royalty, she's related to King Ferdinand of Aragon. Juan is sent off to marry her after his father's election as Pope. So when Rodrigo Borgia is elected Pope, he immediately scales up his plans for all the weddings of his children. And Juan is going to look after the family fortunes over in Spain, which is where they originally come from in the previous generation. And he gets into quite a lot of trouble. And we know this because he is told off in letters from Cesare and in letters from Alexander saying, Juan, you need to get your act together. People are very cross with you because you're just going out partying, you're gambling, you're seeing lots of women and you are not having sex with your wife in order to get her pregnant, which is basically what you're there for. You need to provide an heir, you should get on with it. So eventually he gets his act together and he gets Maria pregnant, which is all good from the point of view of expectations at the time. However, he then comes back to Italy in 1496 and perhaps that's because everybody is happy that the first pregnancy has been achieved and he takes on the role of Captain General of the Church, which essentially puts him in charge of the papal armies. So this is in 1496 and at this point he is only 20 years old. So he's given this enormous military responsibility at a very, very young age. And as we'll see this, this creates a certain number of tensions around his role, particularly in relation to the broader military command and the people who are around who actually know what they're doing.
- [10:29]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
So there's a sense that Juan's life has been organized by his father to exploit his value as a political pawn.
- [10:39]
Bachelor Clues
Yes, very much so. We don't actually know a great deal about Juan. We don't have much of his own voice. We have these reports about his conduct. He is somebody for whom we know him for these two things, for the marriage and then for this very brief period of being Captain General and then for his quite outrageous and mysterious murder. But he's quite elusive in a sense to know what he might have been thinking of anything, except that perhaps to imagine that it's rather difficult for a young person at the age of 16 to suddenly have their expectations as to their long term career and marriage prospects and such like, turned on their head when their father rather unexpectedly becomes Pope. So perhaps there's a story about teenage life there in the Vatican, which is an interesting one about which to speculate, although we don't have a great deal of evidence.
- [11:40]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Yeah, thinking about evidence, I mean, he's often described as the Pope's favourite son. But do we know much about their relationship?
- [11:46]
Bachelor Clues
We don't know a great deal specifically about the relationship that I think is extrapolated to some degree from Alexander's response to his murder, when he seems to be really very, very genuinely upset. And indeed, in the aftermath of the murder, becomes quite notably pious and committed to church reform in a way that for the first five years of his papacy had not seemed to be a priority. There's a change there that suggests he is quite cut up and by the event, and wants to do something to perhaps not exactly to atone, but takes a slightly different religious turn into, you know, thinking about the need for reform. And, you know, perhaps I was thinking that things around here need to change. So that, I think, is where that tends to be extrapolated from. But it's not 100% clear to me that it was the case prior to the murder.
- [12:49]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
What effect did Juan's death have on the stability of the Pope's power in Rome?
- [12:54]
Bachelor Clues
I think Juan's death really shows up some of the tensions that already existed around the Pope in Rome. So if we look at the list of suspects, it's quite striking that the number of people who had a motive to do away with a son of the Pope, particularly this son of the Pope who had that role as Captain General of the Church, and the fact that so many people have a motive for this murder, I think says something about the need for the Borgias to maintain many different alliances in order to be able to manage the Church and the problems that that poses for them.
- [13:38]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
And how did the killing in its aftermath increase the intensity by which the infamous Borgia family were already being scrutinized on the wider political stage?
- [13:50]
Bachelor Clues
It's quite a horrific incident. I mean, for somebody to be openly stabbed in Rome, for the body then to be thrown into the Tiber, to have to be fished out of the Tiber and then put on display in the Castel Sant'Angelo. I mean, this is a big, big city occasion. And initially, I think the question of, you know, how does it feed into the reputation of the Borgias? Well, look, there are already some people who are quite hostile to Borges, who write some quite nippy little poems about it. They get post up satirical poetry. So there's one that plays on the whole idea of Christ's disciples and the Pope as fishers of men, to say fishers of men. You can't even fish your own son out the Tiber or something, sort of jokes along these lines, which are quite nasty and imply already that Alexander's papacy and the favoritism he shows towards his children and facts like, you know, the marriage of Lucrezia Borgia in the Vatican, the very open approval of the illegitimate children that he shows that, you know, there's already some Criticism of that. And this sort of plays in to some extent to that line of criticism that, you know, he shouldn't be putting these children on display so proudly because, after all, they're illegitimate children. He is the pope here. He is, I mean, you know, openly keeping a mistress, having eight or nine children altogether. And this is not really the way a pope should comport himself.
- [15:31]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
And is this something that is being said within the Italian city states or is it in other kingdoms beyond the Italian borders?
- [15:40]
Bachelor Clues
I mean, we know already that Juan's personal behavior had rather irritated the Spanish. So he had not taken his responsibilities seriously. He'd gone out partying and so on. And so he had end. I mean, the idea originally had been that he would consolidate family lands in Spain, and he ends up only getting them in the realm of Naples, so he doesn't really achieve what he wants. Which suggests that, you know, prior to the murder, the Spanish were quite unhappy with him. The tricky thing about this particular murder is that the way it's assessed is often clouded by a second murder case, which is the murder of Lucrezia Borgia's second husband. And one of the difficulties was understanding what happened with the murder of Juan Borgia, is that a lot of the historians who are writing even just within a few years, see it with hindsight. And so they tell the story with hindsight, knowing that Lucrezia's brother Cesare killed his brother in law, Lucrezia's second husband, Alfonso. So given that fact of that second murder, that often gets read back into the analysis of this murder to suggest that the Borgias themselves may have played a role. But at the time, that is not something that is particularly being talked about. There is a different set of suspects who split down really into the people who are the Borgia's political enemies, and then people who had individual access to grind with Juan himself for one or other reason. So this is where I think that you're picking apart what actually happened in 1497 gets quite complicated because so many of the people who are writing it up looked back and said, ha, Cesare did that later murder. He must have done this one too.
- [17:45]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Okay, so before we move on to look at the other suspects, how much evidence, if any, is the of Cesare's involvement really?
- [17:55]
Bachelor Clues
Not very much at all. I mean, he is in that position, he and the other family members of being the last people to see Juan Borgia before he died. And of course, you watch any crime show, you'll say, well, you know, who saw him last? And they will be quite high up the list of suspects. And with hindsight, because Cesare then left the cartelate and took on the sort of secular military roles that Juan initially had, you can see why Cesare might be given a motive, but his is not. One of the names that's talked about early on. The fingers are all being pointed elsewhere.
- [18:49]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
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- [20:49]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
And yet I still feel like I need to press you on the degree to which there is any professional or personal rivalry between Cesare and Juan. Or am I, am I barking entirely up the wrong tree? I think you're telling me I am.
- [21:01]
Bachelor Clues
But you know, I think that looking back on things, you might well ask the question, you know, was Cesare always thinking that he secretly wanted a military career rather than a career in the church? But if you bear in mind where Cesare had had got to by this point in the ecclesiastical career, well, he'd had. He'd apparently been a very good law student when he was at university. He went on to acquire all these very lucrative benefices within the Church, he would have stood a good chance, probably, of being pope himself in future. And, of course, there was nothing necessarily militating against him taking, if not a direct commanding role in the military sphere. Although, in fact, Pope Julius II did that. Pope Julius ii, Alexander's successor, but one went out on the battlefield and led troops himself as pope. So it could be done. It was a bit of a departure when Julius did it, but there isn't much that Cesare couldn't do, apart from publicly marrying and having children as pope or cardinal, that, you know, he could have done outside the church. So it's not clear to me that that is a really, really strong motive for him. And I think there are probably. There are people who have better and clearer immediate motives, either political or personal, that are talked about as suspects at the time in the rather limited range of sources that we have.
- [22:35]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
So let's have a think about those other suspects, then. Someone with a personal motive for the killing was Giovanni Sforza, Lucretia's first husband. How would it have suited him not only to kill a member of the family who had led to his public shame, but to implicate another of them for it?
- [22:56]
Bachelor Clues
Yeah, I mean, Giovanni obviously has a huge axe to grind against the Borgias, given that in order to justify the ending of the marriage to Lucrezia, they have effectively claimed publicly that he's impotent and he has fired back accusations of incest against Prezia and her father and brother. So this has got very, very unpleasant. There is a sense in which he is a potential suspect because of the culture of vendetta and the culture of honour killing that exists in Italy at this time, whereby taking vengeance on somebody who has attacked your honor is perceived as, broadly speaking, acceptable. Now, going all the way to murder might seem a little over the top, but it's a plausible thing that a very aggrieved young man in this situation might believe was a fair sort of thing to do within the norms of the vendetta system. So he's possible. There's also another member of the Forza family, Cardilascanio Sforza, whose servants, whose servants and Juan's servants had been in a dispute which had involved some of them killing the others, and then the killers being executed, which also gave potentially gave him a bit of a motive, particularly going, given what was going on with Giovanni Sforza, a broader sort of familial motive for the Sforza family in attacking the Vauces. So his name was in the frame, although quite quickly, Alexander said that he absolved Ascanio and Giovanni of blame. So that may have been a bit of a diplomatic maneuver to settle things with the Sforzes. But it does seem as if, you know, there are some people he doesn't absolve. So that might lead us in towards the idea he didn't particularly blame them, or at least he didn't publicly want to do so.
- [24:56]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
And then, of course, we've got the question of political revenge against the Borgia family. With regard to the Orsini, what can you tell me about the relationship between the Borgias and the Orsini?
- [25:09]
Bachelor Clues
The Orsini are one of the big baronial families in Rome, so they're major landowners, they own a lot of land and castles, which are very militarily important in the countryside outside Rome. And like quite a lot of European monarchs in this period, one of the things that Rodrigo Borgia's pope is trying to do is to rein in the influence of the barons in favour of having a more centralized monarchian government in which he and his court are in charge and the feudal lords have less say over what's going on. And there are various ways he's tried to do this. For example, setting up a new militia within the Papal States, which undermines the military role of some of the Orsini in general. There are these sort of centralizing moves and then there are also some specific issues. So, for example, the head of the Orsini family, Virginia Orsini, had recently died in prison, a death for which the Borgias got the blame because they were implicated in the fact he was in prison in the first place. So that's one set of people who have quite a strong motive for making a political statement through an assassination against the papal family. Interestingly, though, Hareem Huad has also managed to annoy people on the other side of the war, on his own side of the war, and particularly has managed to annoy the Spanish commander, Gonsalvo de Cordova, who is a really, really leading general. I mean, the sort of person whose name turns up in the World's Hundred Best Generals books even today, who was very frustrated, I think. I mean, having to work with this man, 20 years his junior, who didn't really know what he was doing and yet was being given precedence over him at the Papal court. So you can imagine that some people on the Spanish side were also felt that their honour had been somewhat slighted by Juan's behaviour and by the behavior of the Borgias towards the Spanish. Again, this might seem a little bit trivial. But these sort of quite small incidents where these men get a sense of there being a slur on their honor quite frequently escalating to violence. So he's not out of the question. And, you know, the sort of list goes on. We have the Duke of Urbino, Guido Baldo della Rovera, who was annoyed because the voyages had left him in the prison of the Orsini family and had made him pay his own ransom. Now, that's a bit cheeky because he was a condottiere and he should have been paying his own ransom in the first place. That was not part of the deal that the Borgias should pay his ransom. But again, quite impressive the number of people who Juan has managed to alienate in some way and who either personally or more generally, have a reason to be frustrated with him. So hard to say that any of these individuals have an overwhelming motive to kill Juan in particular, but any of them might plausibly have done it. And I mean, the most interesting personal rumor is simply one where the person responsible is said to be Count Antonio Maria della Mirandola, on the grounds that Juan had seduced his daughter. Very straightforward matter of family honor. Excuse me, you don't do that with my daughter. I am calling it a guy to throw you in river. And that one seems to me almost the most plausible because it's just very basic, it's very straightforward, you know. But again, we can sort of go through these lists and say, who might it be? But I do think they all show up. This question of family honor, personal honor, the importance of that culture of not disrespecting people according them the appropriate treatment in court or in the military context. So very, very hard to disentangle, but really quite fascinating business.
- [29:21]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Absolutely fascinating. And such an insight into an entirely different worldview. Only a week after the murder inquiry had begun, the Pope ordered its sudden cessation. What was the reason he gave for this?
- [29:36]
Bachelor Clues
It's not very clear exactly why it was called off. One suspects that perhaps it was called off because he had identified who was responsible, but did not want a formal conclusion about that responsibility to be sort of publicly declared. So that in some cases that has been interpreted saying, ah, that's because he knew that it was one of his family members and therefore wanted to call off the inquiries so that they did not get the blame for it. On the other hand, it may have been a decision taken because it's likely to be the Orsini, but he did not want to escalate the conflict with the Orsini. He wanted to sort of put a lid on it. One of the things that he pointedly then doesn't do is to openly absolve the Orsini. So there are some people who he's come under suspicion. He says it wasn't any of these people, it wasn't the Duke of Urbino, it wasn't the sports. He doesn't say it wasn't the Orsini, which is a sort of notable way of perhaps acknowledging that the Orsini are either known or. Or the prime suspects for this. But on the other hand, not wanting to step up a vendetta with the Orsini, because there are other things that he wants. He has other priorities. And perhaps, given the way that this sort of honour system works, if he had said openly it was the Orsini, that would almost have obliged him to go after the Orsini by not naming them publicly and but allowing it to be implied that they were responsible, that gives a little bit of a way out of an escalating vendetta. All these little nuances of what goes on are fascinating, and I'm looking at this from one point of view. But, you know, there are many, many different ways of looking at this source material, because it's very partial, it's very fragile. You don't want to very legitimately arrive at different interpretations and different readings. And, you know, I think. I'm not sure we'll ever know who killed Juan Borg, but I actually think it's something. What's more interesting is the fact that when we start looking at this murder case, we discover all these fascinating things about the way that this society worked and the political dynamics and the personal dynamics of Roman politics in this period that are as interesting as actually knowing for sure who done it.
- [32:22]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Now, you're probably going to tell me off, because I'm coming back to Cesare. But you did mention that three years later we have Lucretia's husband killed, then blame falls on Cesare, and it gives a sort of irresistible presumption of guilt to Juan's murder. And one person who remained convinced of Cesare's guilt was Juan's wife. How did she, with the support of her aunt Isabelle of Castile, attempt to have him tried for the crime? And why wasn't she successful?
- [32:53]
Bachelor Clues
I think from the point of view of Maria Enriquez, she has obviously, you know, she's experienced something of Juan's behavior. She has some knowledge of, you know, perhaps that broader social context of how the Borgias behave. Perhaps she's heard stuff from him directly about other members of the family. And I think it's also, you know, maybe it's easier for them to want to pin the blame on the Borgias collectively rather than to get into the detail of who was doing what in Rome. At the end of the day, I mean, when the Spanish do eventually get hold of Cesare, not particularly about this, but in the aftermath of his father's death, they hold him in prison for some time, but he escapes. There's a limit to what they can do when he's in Italy. They are to some degree, involved. Well, I mean, they are involved in a war in which at certain points they're on the sides of the Borgias, and at other points they're against them. But Cesare has a lot of protection from the French in that later stage of the wars in Italy. So for the Spanish trying to capture him and put him on trial, I mean, you're talking about trying to capture the enemy commander of the people that you're at war with. And that, I think, is inevitably going to be challenging.
- [34:21]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Finally, then, given the fact that this murder is still unsolved, likely to remain unsolved. But how much, over the years, has the mystery of Juan's murder contributed to the mythology, the mythology of the Borgias as ruthless and bloodthirsty and corrupt?
- [34:41]
Bachelor Clues
I think it's contributed quite considerably because it's such a dramatic murder. I mean, it's got all the ingredients you want of, you know, there's a mysterious man in a mask, there's a man on a white horse who's got the body across the white horse as he rides down the Tiber and rolls it in. We've got the, you know, the body floating away there, the boatman who's trying to just get a night's sleep in his boat, watching as the body goes into the water. And then, you know, the next day when he hears about the search, reporting this story, and then they all go out and they basically have to fish for the body in north northern Tibet. I mean, it's an incredibly cinematic opening scene to a film or a TV show. You could really imagine it, and perhaps even more so than some of the. That, you know, the other. The later murders were murders, but they don't quite have this sort of sense of drama and mystery around them that lends itself to all the many, many adaptations of the Borgia story that has been. That have been made over the years. And I think there's a very attractive, simple telling of this, which is that Cesare murdered his brother so that he could take over as the leading prince of the family. And that motivation itself, if you're a dramatist writing a story about a murder mystery and family intrigue and so on, and particularly if you want, you want to clear up the relationship between Cesare Lucrezia, then also you have him murdering her husband. It really works as an intimate family drama. But unfortunately for historians, the documentation makes it quite problematic to be, you know, while we can't absolutely rule out that it happened that way, the weight of the evidence pushes somewhere slightly different. And so could Cesare have done it? Well, yes, he could have done it. Is he top of my list of suspects? Well, no, but, you know, we'll never know. And you know, the great fun thing about historical fiction is that, is that the writers and dramatists get to explore and go off and do their thing, but the Borgias have not always necessarily been very well served historically by some of the way that their stories told.
- [37:10]
Professor Catherine Fletcher
Well, thank you very much for taking us into this cold case and making us think about it historically. Catherine Fletcher, thank you for your time.
- [37:22]
Bachelor Clues
Thank you.
- [37:25]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher, Alice Smith and my producer, Rob Weinberg. If you haven't heard them yet, do go and find our two previous episodes on the rise of the Borgias and Cesare Borgia. And do join me for the next episode in this series on the Borgias, when we'll be concluding by looking at the woman who played a different but equally crucial role in the Borgia family's schemes, Lucrezia Borgia.
- [38:10]
Pace Case
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