Customer Reviews

The Cardinal's Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life in the Court of a BorgiaPrince

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Few historical periods are as intriguing as the Renaissance; few families fascinate as much as the Borgias. However, we've not been privy to many firsthand accounts of daily life among the powerful in 16th century Italy. Now, thanks to a bit of luck and assiduous research, art historian Mary Hollingsworth presents a detailed picture of Ippolito d'Este, the second son of Lucretia Borgia who later became Archbishop of Milan.

In Modena, Italy, Hollingsworth came upon a treasure - over 2,00 letters and 200 account books pertaining to the days of Ippolito. The ledgers contain such minute details as the items in his wardrobe, what he ate. He wasn't timid about keeping a log of his women right along with his horses, dogs, falcons, peacocks, and a plethora of servants. Nor, was he embarrassed to note how much was spent on bribes and to whom he paid them. Thus, readers have the unparalleled experience of seeing courtly life on a daily basis, even to Ippolito's visit to the mistress of the King of France while she was in her bath.

Ippolito reached the ripe old age of 29 before he received the cardinal's red hat, which at that time was a guarantee of wealth and power. He was a man who enjoyed women thoroughly and often, gambled frequently, and spent time hunting rather than in prayer. Thus, his elevation to such a lofty position had naught to do with religiosity, much to do with politics.

Mary Hollingsworth has created an amazing view of everyday life among the rich and powerful in Renaissance Italy. Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

A boon for the historian of Renaissance Italy is that it was remarkably bureaucratic, and paper trails are all over the place. They do need finding, sorting, and placing in context. Mary Hollingsworth is such a historian, and was forced by weather to make a detour to Modena in 1999. As long as she was there, she started looking through the archives. A friend had already told her that the story of Ippolito d'Este would be worth looking up, and she started to do so. There were 2,000 of his letters, letters written to him, and 200 account books. She had found "a unique account of life in sixteenth-century Europe, a detailed record of how a Renaissance prince lived." Not just a Renaissance prince, but an archbishop who was a climber, aiming for a cardinal's hat and perhaps the papacy. In _The Cardinal's Hat: Money, Ambition, and Everyday Life in the Court of a Borgia Prince_ (Overlook Press), Hollingsworth has set out her findings in detail. Ippolito has, of course, been written about before, but mostly as an important patron of the arts; he built the magnificent Villa d'Este at Tivoli and he was a patron of the musician Palestrina. The life and career have otherwise been ignored, and Hollingsworth here corrects this void through the remarkable documents she found.

Ippolito d'Este was born in 1509 in Ferrara, the second son of Alfonso d'Este and Lucretia Borgia. The firstborn son was fated to be the Duke of Ferrara, and Ippolito was fated to enter the church. Ippolito was no more pious than his brother; their respective careers were merely a matter of birthright. Ippolito became Archbishop of Milan at age nine, and his family was thereupon interested in making him a cardinal. The means for acquiring the cardinal's hat was financial. The cardinalship was in fact purchased from the corrupt Pope Paul III by the Duke for his brother, although there were many complicated arguments made as all the parties involved attempted to improve their positions in the arrangements. Ippolito's candidacy was greatly improved by his friendship with Francis I of France, with whom he seems to have had a sincere friendship. The two men were interested in the sorts of things young men were interested in, hunting, tennis, gambling, and women. A great deal of Hollingsworth's research has been into account books, and many of the entries are for elaborate, strange, or funny items. Ippolito was a dandy, favoring bright colors, especially expensive reds, with elaborate shirts, doublets, coats, breeches, and hose. One inventory includes 611 shoelaces. Another lists fifteen pairs of gloves, and while gloves themselves were relatively cheap, glove-wearing was expensive, because they were perfumed with ambergris and musk. There are relatively few religious items inventoried, evidence that Ippolito liked his pleasures more than his religious duties. Even his rosaries were filled with musk and ambergris.

Much of Hollingsworth's narrative necessarily involves listing of such properties. This is not really a biography as so many of the details of Ippolito's life are not known, but it is a splendid examination of how rich people of the age spent their time and money. The idea of a cleric and his family spending in such a way might strike our own sensibilities even as immoral, but Ippolito was a man of his time. He seems not to have been any sort of tyrant, and he did some modest good in his patronage of artists. Given his own time and his own goals, he was successful. He very nearly missed getting to be Pope, and he would probably have been as good a one as there were in his times. He and his brother did successfully campaign to get him the cardinalship, and after all the expenditures to that end, Ippolito racked in lucrative titles, becoming titular Abbott or Archbishop of Italian or French branches that brought in money. Francis got what he needed, too, as Ippolito went to Rome as Cardinal-Protector of France. The magnificence described here in such detail proved to be a necessity for political power and a virtue for theological advancement.

One of the most admirable tasks of an art historian is to endure long hours, days, and weeks in cold, often musty, archives to produce an incomparable image based on documents. Since the two previous reviews elaborate on the central figures of the D'Este family, their history, roots, and struggle for power, let me guide the reader to the fine details of Mary Hollingsworth's transcriptions of the family ledgers.

We learn about all levels of the "famiglia," the group of servants around the young Cardinal Ippolito, from men who clothed and fed him, to those who emptied his chamber pots and cleaned his bedchambers, made his candles, embroidered his shirts, and looked after his ledger books. Fascinating is the author's account of crossing the Alps in wintertime, the management of Ippolito's large entourage, transport of huge travel chests and the Cardinal's four-poster bed, worries about miniscule details like the cold feet of his favorite dogs. We learn about the life of a prince who spared no money to buy his cardinal's hat and to promote the image of his noble family.

Try a good glass of Italian wine, fresh semolina bread, and the oil from the former D'Este lands while paging through the book. Great reading for scholars and general readers alike.

The beauty of this book is that it uses account books and letters to put together a

very detailed account of the life of an Italian noble churchman who aspired to be

(and near the end of the book becomes) a cardinal. And he's no ordinary cardinal --

he's a favorite of Francois I of France, a patron of Cellini, and the like.

The downside of the book is that every so often you feel as if you're reading an

annotated Visa bill. Long discussions of how much money was paid for different

items, where the best items came from, etc. Not everything is likely to be interesting.

In my case I enjoyed details of how clothing was made (and discovering that furs

were often recycled from one piece to another) but was bored by long discussion of

fees to bargemen and carters for hauling produce.

"The Cardinal's Hat" was a light, yet interesting tale of a `Borgia Cardinal'. This is another book which brings to light how young these boys were entering the "religious life". Some of them were 10 years of age and younger but already well on their way to the Vatican. With all of the `palm slapping', bribes and gifts being presented to win favor, it makes you wonder how much time was actually spent on religious, and philosophical studies which seem so imperative in today's `spiritual society'. Back then it was more about securing political ties to gain approval in the `courts of power'. Even being born to the right family wasn't adequate to secure a cardinal hat as you will find reading this short story. Cardinal Hats were not cheap; they were acquired by a hefty sum which encompassed money, property and most of all, your undying allegiance.

On the other hand, this book was a little slower than anticipated. For example - chapter 2 goes into meticulous detail about every little item and its cost in the household. I personally think chapter 2 could have been MUCH shorter because it proved so hard to keep focus. You find yourself getting bored after a relative short period. I kept longing for the book to pick up and it would, at times... Moreover, I would dive in as soon as I discovered a few juicy details about popes, kings, mistresses and famous plots, only to realize the book was already slowing down again by returning to the minutest facets including every price, expense, wage, bill, fee, charge, amount, cost, expenditure, payment, salary, and stipend, under the sky.

In the introduction, the author states that she was furnished with a chest of archives. One would think that if you have this immense wealth of information at your fingertips - that you could formulate a more enhanced story which is in desperate need of a dose of excitement. Perhaps some more research would have added that missing ingredient to this `book of accounts and ledgers'. Please note: before this book, I read "The Pope's Daughter", by Caroline Murphy which was very different. "The Pope's Daughter" (set in relatively the same time frame) was a fast paced novel-type adventure packed with all the scandalous and riveting tales one would expect from this particular period. I recommend it highly for anyone interested in the times of the Renaissance. It's tough not to compare these 2 books. I have subsequently purchased Caroline's other book, "Murder of a Medici Princess" which I haven't read yet, but will do shortly...

Hollingsworth's book focuses on the daily life of Borgia prince, Ippolito D'Este. Hollingsworth follows the events and geo-political gamesmanship that are hallmarks of the time. She has a wonderful ability to transform the minutiae into a lively account that reads quickly. I was very impressed with the thoroughness of her research, in particular, the way she was able to weave the concurrent actions of the court into the story. However, I was dismayed at how quickly the book came to a conclusion. Perhaps Hollingsworth is saving the second half of Ippolito's life for a sequel.

I read this book after reading Christopher Hibbert's "Borgia's and their Enemies" and think it is a wonderful follow-up. Thanks to this book, I am looking even more forward to the next book in the subject and continuing the story of the Borgias and their progeny.

This is a most remarkable piece of archival research that recreates the everyday life of a 16th-century Italian aristocrat as he and his family pursue his goal of attaining for him the rank of cardinal in the wholly worldly and corrupt Catholic Church of that era. Using an enormous trove of documents she stumbled upon in the archives of Modena, Hollingsworth brings to vivid and detailed life the world of Ippolito d' Este, one of the sons of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia and her last husband, Duke Alfonso d'Este of Ferrara.

In the hands of the wrong writer, this kind of research could be deadly dull--little more than an endless 16th-century shopping list. But in Hollingsworth's hands these "dry" documents come to life, and take the reader into the day-to-day, material world of Ippolito d'Este as no other form of research could do. This is history that takes us from politics and power-seeking all the way to the level of perfumed gloves and crystal urinals, a world of mind-boggling aristocratic affluence and luxury.

The author's writing style, which some might consider a bit dull, is appropriate for her subject, in the sense that Ippolito needs no editorializing-- his documents themselves speak louder than anything the author could say about them. In any case, the writing is always competent, and often enlivened with flashes of dry British humor. Her ability to make sense of endless pages of accounts-- and to make the contents of those account books of interest to a modern reader-- is nothing short of masterful.

My only criticism is that, among all the illustrations, there doesn't seem to be a single one of Ippolito himself.

This book is about as interesting as reading about the travels and costs associated with the sending of a carton by Fedex. Ms. Hollinsworth found and translated a lot of information and tried, unsuccessfully, to wrap a story around a bunch of boring facts. In Ippolito's travels, we discover how many people traveled with him, how much merchandise he had to carry, how much he tipped everyone, how much he paid for rent and meals along the way, etc. I mean "Enough is Enough." Some idea of what he spent would have been fine, but Hollinsworth seems determined to include every scrap of information she translated, regardless of its value or interest. In fact, we learn very little about what the title suggests the book is about. The story of how Ippolito got his cardinal's hat could have been explained in one chapter. All the rest of the information that was included could have been drastically shortened, eliminated, or cited in the biography.
The book was extremely boring and disappointing.

David Strong PhD