Word: bellonci
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Dates: during 1954-1954
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...LIFE AND TIMES OF LUCREZIA BORGIA, by Maria Bellonci, made the famous daughter of profligate Pope Alexander VI a more human and attractive woman than the poisoner of legend, but still conveyed the horrors that went on around her and finally drove her to a hair shirt and piety...
...comes a woman's brief for Lucrezia. Author Maria Bellonci's argument: Lucrezia was no weakling; her tragedy lay in an excess of a virtue that all women used to be taught-womanly acquiescence to her family's menfolks. In her prize-winning (1939) life of Lucrezia, now translated into English, Italian Author Bellonci goes over the evidence with the thoroughness of a housewife at a serious job of spring renovation...
Cesare's Swordplay. Lucrezia grieved over such quick and bloody changes. (Says Biographer Bellonci: "She had al ways been contented with her husbands as long as she was able to keep them.") Still, although she tried desperately to save the life of her second husband, she forgave her brother for this and other crimes...
...Explains Author Bellonci: she was a Borgia, too, and the family ties of this fiery Spanish dynasty were, even for those days, remarkably strong. Enemies of the Borgias contended that the family ties extended to incest between Lucrezia and her father the Pope. But the few actual accusations of this crime came from bitterly hostile opponents and with no supporting evidence. Biographer Bellonci doubts their truth...
Taffeta & Hair Shirts. Lucrezia never poisoned anybody - at least so far as Author Bellonci knows. The other crimes laid at her door were all the work of her brother Cesare or, in some cases, of Pope Alexander. At Ferrara, where she spent the last 17 years of her life, she won the affections of the court and the townspeople by her pleasantness in good times, and her bravery in bad. But even there, she did not escape trouble. She soon found herself in the middle of a family squabble, when one of her husband's brothers had gouged...