The Tigress of Forli (44 page)

Caterina had suffered a terrible bout of fever, probably the first signs of tuberculosis brought on by the malarial quartan fever that had afflicted her for all of her adult life. She wrestled with the illness for a month and by the time Ottaviano wrote she had already emerged victorious—yet very fragile—from the struggle. Caterina knew it had been a close call. Her first thought upon recovery was to make a pilgrimage to Loreto in thanksgiving. It must have been heartwarming to hear that several of her friends had vowed to make the same trip when they heard of her illness and her recovery, and she was reinvigorated by plans for the trip and seeing old friends.

But just as the May flowers bloomed, Caterina's health started to fail. This time she was gripped by a racking pain in her chest, called
mal di costa,
"rib sickness." The many years of malarial fever had given way to pleurisy and the membranes in her chest cavity were inflamed, making each breath and coughing fit excruciatingly painful. Her two doctors, Giuliano degli Anterigoli and master Giovanni de'Malingegni, hovered at her bedside, using the traditional cure for pleurisy, hot barley cakes applied to the chest and side, but to no avail. Without cortisone to reduce the inflammation or medicines to treat the underlying tuberculosis, there was little to be done but bind her chest tightly, administer narcotics to ease the pain, and wait for the end.

Her saddened friends offered prayers and Masses all over Italy. The religious sisters in the convents that Caterina had long supported recited their rosaries day and night for her. But by May 28, Caterina had been transported from Castello to the Medici house on the Via Larga, where, lucid and in complete possession of her faculties, she asked for a notary to write her will. Surrounded by two priests, two doctors, and three Florentine citizens of the Medici household, Caterina put her worldly affairs in order.
¹³

Her first point was to commend her soul to the glory of Heaven, but for her earthly remains Caterina wanted no pomp and expense. Unlike Renaissance rulers who purchased elaborately carved marble coffins and bronze monuments, Caterina asked to be laid to rest without ceremony in the church of the convent of the Muratte.

From her restored fortune, Caterina thanked her new city by leaving a bequest for the care of the Florentine cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore and for the maintenance of the city walls. To her best friend and confessor, Don Fortunati, she allocated the task of organizing one thousand Masses for her soul to be said within two months, and asked the sisters of the convent of the Muratte to offer thirty Masses a year for her soul in perpetuity. She left four gold ducats a year to the convent for the lifetime of the abbess in thanks for this service.

Savonarola had once told her that almsgiving was particularly pleasing to God, so she left a sizable donation to the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina across the street from where the great preacher had once lived. She asked them to construct a room for the use of her son Giovanni, so that his spiritual formation could continue after her death. Caterina also took pains to care for her grandchildren, both legitimate and not. Cornelia, Ottaviano's natural daughter, and Giulia, Galeazzo's daughter by Maria della Rovere, were both left money for their dowries and what remained of Caterina's beautiful clothes and linens. Giulia, the fruit of a successful marriage with a noble family, was given one thousand ducats, while Cornelia, Ottaviano's daughter, was given two thousand. At long last, she acknowledged Carlo Feo as her legitimate son by her marriage to Giacomo Feo and left him two thousand gold ducats.

Her maids were cared for with dowries and new positions, but one in particular, Mora Bona, most likely a freed slave in her retinue, was placed in the service of her son Giovanni. Her other servants were rewarded and her debts paid by Don Fortunati. The kind priest, as executor, was entrusted with Caterina's letters, books, and papers and would become custodian of her literary legacy. That he also received fifteen hundred ducats was revealed to him only a month after her death.

The castle from which Girolamo Riario had first earned his title of count, Castel di Bosco, was left to Galeazzo Riario, who as a non-cleric would be able to pass the title down through his line.

Her beloved Giovanni, as she always referred to him, received all the family holdings within the territory of Florence, which were considerable despite his uncle Lorenzo's mismanagement. One third of Caterina's will provided dispositions for Giovanni. The eleven-year-old boy would be raised in the house of Jacopo Salviati, of a noble Florentine family long associated with the Medicis. Don Fortunati would continue to supervise the education of the child. Caterina also imposed a condition on the inheritance: that Giovanni be married as soon as possible. She knew the importance of his lineage and the merging of the Sforza and the Medici families and hoped to ensure a dynasty even after her death. The Riario name had become a curse, but the Medici name was magic.

Ottaviano, Cesare, Galeazzo, and Sforzino, her four sons by Girolamo, would then divide all the holdings and goods outside of Florence plus an inheritance left by their father. The greedy foursome wrote Don Fortunati two weeks after their mother's death, announcing their decision to consider the now wealthy Giovanni their full brother. Four days later Ottaviano wrote again, asking for his mother's dogs and falcons and reminding Don Fortunati to make a perfectly even division of her belongings. Even five years after his mother was dead and buried, Ottaviano still complained to Don Fortunati that he had not had "all that was his."

It might seem strange that Caterina's will makes no mention of her beloved daughter, Bianca, and her two legitimate grandchildren, but as Caterina was dividing properties left in trust by several husbands, it was probably easier to give Bianca her bequest outright, as her daughter would have certainly been by her side from the first illness, thus saving her the difficulties of settling Giovanni's affairs and then receiving the inheritance from him. Caterina had obviously thought out the complexities of her estate beforehand to have made such clear dispositions.

Caterina faced her last hours much as she had confronted other challenges. As she had done in her defense of Ravaldino, she gave orders and organized strategies through her will and then waited for the siege of her illness to end. It didn't take long. Burning the candle at both ends for most of her life as mother, warrior, ruler, lover, extravagant sinner, and meek penitent had taken its toll. Although many noblewomen like Isabella d'Este or Catherine de' Medici lived into their sixties, Caterina's life spark had shone brightly and was extinguished quickly. For the first time in her life, Caterina surrendered. A few hours after she wrote her will, Caterina Riario Sforza died at the age of forty-six.

Condolences poured in from all over Italy, from the broken-hearted laments of those who had long loved her, to fervent promises of prayers from the many priests and nuns who had benefited from her generosity. Michele Marullo of Constantinople, who had been at Caterina's service at Ravaldino during the siege of Cesare Borgia, wrote a long poem in honor of Caterina in measured verse, full of classical allusions.

Her body was placed in a simple tomb in the austere chapel of the Muratte. Fifty years later, Cosimo de' Medici, the first grand duke of Tuscany, placed a marble slab on her grave, crowned with the combined coats of arms of the Sforza and Medici families, to commemorate his celebrated grandmother. It bore the simple inscription
CATERINA SFORZA MEDICI.
The tombstone was destroyed in 1835 and her remains were lost ten years later; the convent of the Muratte was transformed into a prison. The honors and losses that characterize her gravesite reflect her extraordinary life. From triumph to defeat, notoriety to obscurity, great gain to devastating loss, Caterina remains a woman who will not be forgotten.

T
HE DOZENS OF
candles did nothing to lessen the chill in the room. The oppressive stone walls sealed in the December air, as cold as the lifeless body laid out on the table. A steady stream of people filed through the narrow doorway and, approaching the dais, leaned over to peer at the immobile features of the youthful face. A few glanced surreptitiously to catch sight of the stump of the young man's leg, but the lower body was discreetly covered.

Giovanni di Giovanni de' Medici, the son of Florence's beloved Giovanni de' Medici Il Popolano and Caterina, lay dead in the foreign church of San Francesco in Mantua, struck down at the age of twenty-eight in the midst of a glorious military career. He was soon to be laid to rest in hostile territory.

Caterina's youngest son had shown pure Sforza determination from the beginning. Although he had been raised by the noble and cultured Salviati family, they had never been able to tame his wild streak. Taking no interest in books, art, or math (unlike most other noble Florentines), young Giovanni leaned toward arms, horses, and martial activities. All those who cared for him during his early years concurred that the only person the rebellious child ever obeyed was his mother. After her death, no one could control him. In time, another woman had won him over to some extent, his foster mother, Lucrezia Salviati, who as the daughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent had inherited his charming manner. The rare flashes of courtliness and piety in young Giovanni were no doubt due to her influence.

In 1512, the scions of Lorenzo the Magnificent returned to Florence after a long exile. An exuberant fourteen-year-old Giovanni witnessed the triumphal parade, calling it "a fine sight." Lucrezia's brother Giuliano de' Medici, the duke of Nemours, gathered up the reins of the Florentine government. Crowning the glorious rise of the Medici family, Lucrezia's older brother Giovanni was elected Pope Leo X on March 11, 1513. Although the younger Giovanni belonged to the cadet branch of the Medicis, his foster mother's exalted family connections promised a brilliant career as either a statesman or a prelate.

At seventeen Giovanni was summoned to Rome by Pope Leo and it seemed that the young man's star was on the rise, but he soon earned a reputation for duels and brawls. Ironically, Giovanni's aggressive escapades would reveal his greatest strengths and point the way to his future. The Orsini family, hoping to obtain an important hostage for political leverage, ambushed Giovanni and his ten companions one night in one of the dark alleys near the river. The Orsinis kept a small army of mercenary soldiers in their fortresslike palace, always ready to avenge an insult, bully a lesser family, or simply display their power. In the cramped quarters, weakly lit by a few flickering torches, Giovanni and his little band found themselves surrounded by dozens of professional fighting men.

Giovanni didn't waste time in negotiations. Every bit his mother's son, he pulled his sword and rushed the soldiers. His friends, emboldened by the bravery of their leader, drew their weapons and followed. Giovanni sliced his way through the soldiers, who, shocked by this display of reckless courage, drew away from the fierce young men. Giovanni and his crew fought their way out of the ambush without a casualty. Physical courage, a scarce quality in the political landscape of Italy since Lorenzo the Magnificent's solo foray into Naples and Caterina Sforza's heroic defense of Ravaldino, had returned in the person of this young man.

When the story reached the pope's ears, he finally knew what to do with the teenage dynamo. Giovanni was given command of a hundred men and a job: to capture the town of Urbino under the orders of the papal nephew Lorenzo de' Medici. On this campaign, Giovanni discovered that he had been born for the battlefield.

Giovanni had fulfilled his mother's dreams of a heroic scion of the house of Medici, and at the age of eighteen he complied with the wishes expressed in her will, marrying Maria Salviati, the daughter of Lucrezia and granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who loved him deeply but also possessed the clear-eyed political pragmatism of the Medicis. The union of Giovanni and Maria brought together the cadet branch of the Medicis—of which Giovanni was the most important member—and the principal line of Lorenzo the Magnificent. In their son, born in 1519, the two Medici clans, so often at odds, would become one. Pope Leo was so delighted that he stood godfather to the child and suggested the name Cosimo, to revive "the memory of the wisest, bravest, and most prudent man yet born to the house of Medici."

Giovanni's qualities accelerated his military career. By the age of twenty he commanded an army of six thousand infantry. In an Italy where Francis I, the king of France, and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V were preparing to turn the peninsula into a theater of war, there was plenty of work for Giovanni and his men. Giovanni's soldiers displayed utter loyalty to him, idolizing his decisiveness, his ingenuity, and most of all his indefatigable courage. Undefeated as they battled from one end of the country to the other, Giovanni's army had been dubbed L'Invincibile. Giovanni himself had also earned a new title, L'Italia. The exploits of Caterina's son were uniting the people of Italy. But this very success would be the beginning of Giovanni's undoing.

 

A
ROUND THEIR CAPTAIN'S
bier, Giovanni's soldiers wandered among the mourners, easily recognizable with their close-cropped hair amid the flowing locks of the nobility. Giovanni had shorn his hair early in his military career, claiming that "long hair was good only for housing lice and getting caught by the enemy," and his men had emulated their leader. Their armor also distinguished them, decorated as it was in black bands. At the death of Pope Leo X in 1521, Giovanni donned the bands as a sign of mourning for the pope who gave him his first
condotta.
The army would eventually be known by these black bands, and named for posterity the Bande Nere.

The soldiers eagerly shared anecdotes about his exploits. They boasted that their commander had always fought as one of them. He never wore any recognizable markings that would signal his value alive as a hostage but rather fought side by side with his infantry, risking death equally with them.