hat on the thirtieth of April of the preceding year,
1491, the marriage contract of Lucretia and Gasparo had been executed by
proxy with all due form, and that in it Cardinal Rodrigo had bound
himself to send his daughter to the city of Valencia at his expense,
where the church ceremony was to be performed. However, since the
marriage contract between Lucretia and the young Centelles had been
legally executed on the twenty-sixth of February of the same year, 1491,
and was recognized as late as the following June, there is room for
doubt regarding the correctness of the date; but both the instrument in
Beneimbene's protocol-book, and an abstract of the same in the archives
of the Hospital Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, give the last of April as the
date of the marriage contract of Lucretia and Don Gasparo. In these
proceedings her proxies were, not Antonio Porcaro, but Don Giuffre
Borgia, Baron of Villa Longa, the Canon Jacopo Serra of Valencia, and
the vicar-general of the same place, Mateo Cucia. Hence follows the
curious fact that Lucretia was the betrothed at one and the same time of
two young Spaniards.

In spite of the rejection of her first affianced, the Centelles family
appears to have remained on good terms with the Borgias, for, later,
when Rodrigo became Pope, a certain Gulielmus de Centelles is to be
found among his most trusted chamberlains, while Raymondo of the same
house was prothonotary and treasurer of Perugia.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Accedit studium illud tuum et perquam fertile bonarum litterarum in
quo hac in aetate seris.... Non deerit surgenti tuae virtuti commodus
aliquando et idoneus praeco.--At tu Caesar profecto non parum laudandus
es; qui in hac aetate tam facile senem agis. Perge nostri temporis
Borgiae familiae spes et decus. Introduction to the Syllabica. Rome, 1488.
Gennarelli's Edition of Burchard's Diary.

[15] Regarding Caesar's studies at Pisa, see Angelo Fabroni, Hist. Acad.
Pisan. i, 160, 201.

[16] On June 16, 1491, some changes were made in this contract, which
Beneimbene has noted in the same protocol-book.

CHAPTER VI

HER FATHER BECOMES POPE--GIOVANNI SFORZA

On July 25, 1492, occurred the event to which the Borgias had long
eagerly looked forward, the death of Innocent VIII. Above all the other
candidates for the Papacy were four cardinals: Rafael Riario and
Giuliano della Rovere--both powerful nephews of Sixtus IV--Ascanio
Sforza, and Rodrigo Borgia.

Before the el