Customer Reviews

The Borgias: The Rise and Fall of the Most Infamous Family in History

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mr. Mallett's book is not only of the Borgian dynasty but also about Italian/Mediterranean politics during their time, and as such I found the book very comprehensive and well researched. Mr. Mallett gives a detailed background to the era before he plunges to the history of the Spanish-born Borgia family, who made a bid to create a Papal dynasty in Renaissance Italy. He gives a very clear picture of these complicated Italian power politics which can be very confusing with their shifting alliances and constant intrigue.

However, I was a bit curious about the way how Mr. Mallett used almost every opportunity to deny all the crimes that the Borgias have been accused of through the centuries. Even the cover of the book advertised that poison and murder were their legacy, but after finishing the book, I could recall only one assassination admitted to Borgias, and even that could be excused as a sort of pre-emptive self-defence. Everything else, according to author, was just rumours and hearsay spread by the Borgia enemies and therefore not true. He may of course be absolutely right but at least a couple of times the author had no problem of accepting similar rumours and hearsay about non-Borgias.

On the other hand, I wasn't looking lurid scandal-mongering, and as a history of a certain period in Renaissance Italy, this book can't be much faulted. But it did give a feeling of overt white-washing and made me scratch the fourth star.

This book will give you a clear picture of a much-maligned family, and will certainly present you with an altogether different image of Lucrezia Borgia. The book itself combines good history-writing with reasonable storytelling. Mr. Mallett is a university professor and it shows in his style; the backflap review suggesting you will be "riveted" by his storytelling-talents is only true if you are easily riveted. For more entertaining writing, Marion Johnson's book on the subject just has the edge. This is a good effort, though and the story itself has much to entertain you.

Many may not be aware that as a certain notorious Italian navigator stumbled upon and laid claim to a New World for his royal Spanish employers, a preternaturally powerful Spanish family ("Borgia" being an Italianized version of the clan's original "Borja") was making a bid for dictatorial power in Italy. Michael Mallett does a professional job of detailing that family's rise to power, the context in which it occurred, its spectacular undoing, and the continued, albeit much more modest and obscure, fortune of its stay-at-home Spanish branch. Mallett begins with the setting in both time and space: an efficient rendition of the roots of the Rennaissance Papacy in the Great Schism of the fourteenth century, and its firm grounding in Italian princely politics in the fifteenth; a sketch of the Vatican and its practices in that era; and an almost futuristically post-apocalyptic walking tour of the anarchic and delapidated Papal States in the 1400's (my favorite part). The key role of the first powerful Borgia (Alonso/Pope Calixtus III) is detailed, although its significance to the big picture is only hinted at: it might be said that the instrumental part played by Alonso in erasing the Papacy's Great Schism was the fulcrum that levered the Borgias into the upper elite of Italy. His reward--nomination to the Cardinal college, and a career in Rome--launched him on his path to the Papal see, and planted the seeds for his family's aggrandizement. And, of course, the bloom was spectacular: Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia and Cesare are the legendary characters of Machiavellian fables and visions of Italian Rennaissance high-life. Although Mallett takes pains not to wallow in glib scandal, it is interesting to note that his story cannot avoid lurid scenes of murder, illicit sex, and an exploitation of Church power so cynical that it borders on blasphemy. No amount of balanced historiography can clean the stains even five centuries later. But this book also presents less graphic aspects--at one point Mallett carefully reconstructs daily routine in the Papal household, right down to the amount of mutton purchased for Shrove Tuesday in 1502 (673 lbs) and the provision of eggs (they were provided by a chicken-keeper on the premises). Some may find this detail tiresome, but I found it almost heart-warming; and perhaps an indication that what we see as endless high-stakes power struggles were really just episodes of crisis and strain interspersed among longer periods of more sedate and orderly Mediterranean humdrum.

I had trouble putting this book down. Mr. Mallet gives us a snapshot of the high Renaissance by focusing on the lives of Pope Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia. The political intrigue can be confusing, but can be followed if the reader pays attention. It brings to life the struggles and ever shifting alliances between the Italian City States, France, and Spain. It also gives life to the amibitions and struggles of Roman families whose villas and palaces you may have visited, but about whom a lay person knows very little. The author makes you understand the great conflict between the Papacy as a temporal and a spiritual power. If you are a visitor to Rome, this book is vital to understanding the history of the city during the Renaissance.

Plodding and dull and, what's worse, not even objective. He defends the Borgias no matter what. It was okay for Alexander to have about 8 children, and one possible after become Pope. But he did (Alexander, that is) keep his affairs private. That makes it all right. Whatever Cesare did, it was justified, including murder. Whatever bad they (Alexander and Cesare did) was only rumor, innuendos or reported by enemies, and not based on facts. However, when it comes to the enemies, the rumors are accepted as "most likely." Evenhanded does not apply to this book.

And worse, it is boring.

The author treats his audience like a class of students who have signed up for a last minute exam review of Italian rennaissance political history to which the Borgias are a footnote. This class is obviously doomed.He needs to read the works of Carolly Erickson and Al'Tabari atleast to learn how to make history a pleasure to read whilst providing focussed information.At the very least, man, read Antonia Frasier!Though dry she is at least succinct.A disappointing read.