VIII XXVI, Nov.

And again, just as we know nothing of her family origin, neither have we
any evidence of what her circumstances were when she caught the magnetic
eye of Cardinal Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja--or Borgia as by now his
name, which had undergone italianization, was more generally spelled.

Infessura states in his diaries that Roderigo desiring later--as Pope
Alexander VI--to create cardinal his son by her, Cesare Borgia, he
caused false witness to be borne to the fact that Cesare was the
legitimate son of one Domenico d'Arignano, to whom he, the Pope, had
in fact married her. Guicciardini(1) makes the same statement, without,
however, mentioning name of this d'Arignano.

1 Istoria d'Italia.

Now, bastards were by canon law excluded from the purple, and it is
probably upon this circumstance that both Infessura and Guicciardini
have built the assumption that some such means as these had been adopted
to circumvent the law, and--as so often happens in chronicles concerning
the Borgias--the assumption is straightway stated as a fact. But
there were other ways of circumventing awkward commandments, and,
unfortunately for the accuracy of these statements of Infessura and
Guicciardini, another way was taken in this instance. As early as
1480, Pope Sixtus IV had granted Cesare Borgia--in a Bull dated October
1(1)--dispensation from proving the legitimacy of his birth. This
entirely removed the necessity for any such subsequent measures as those
which are suggested by these chroniclers.

1 See the supplement to the Appendix of Thuasne's edition
of Burchard's Diarium.

Moreover, had Cardinal Roderigo desired to fasten the paternity of
Cesare on another, there was ready to his hand Vannozza's actual
husband, Giorgio della Croce.(2) When exactly this man became her
husband is not to be ascertained. All that we know is that he was so in
1480, and that she was living with him in that year in a house in Piazza
Pizzo di Merlo (now Piazza Sforza Cesarini) not far from the house on
Banchi Vecchi which Cardinal Roderigo, as Vice-Chancellor, had converted
into a palace for himself, and a palace so sumptuous as to excite the
wonder of that magnificent age.

2 D'Arignano is as much a fiction as the rest of
Infessura's story.

This Giorgio della Croce was a Milanese, under the protection of
Cardinal Roderigo, who had obtained for him a post at the Vatican as
apostolic secretary. According