When was the borgias made

However, on the night of the 11th, a Wednesday, de Beaumonte was able to get a convoy of mules carrying provisions into the castle under cover of a sudden torrential storm. Cesare, alerted, led seventy horsemen out to attack de Beaumonte and his escort, who were now riding away from the castle. In his eagerness he far outdistanced his men and the enemy spotted him and ambushed him in a ravine. Hopelessly outnumbered, he was dragged off his horse and overwhelmed. His killers stripped his armour off and left his naked, bloodstained body with the marks of at least twenty-five wounds showing he had sold his life dearly.

The attackers did not realize who Cesare was and de Beaumonte, when he discovered, was furious at the loss of an exceptionally valuable potential captive for ransom. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.

Italian Dominican theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas was one of the most influential medieval thinkers of Scholasticism and the father of the Thomistic school of theology.

A leading figure of Italian High Renaissance classicism, Raphael is best known for his "Madonnas," including the Sistine Madonna, and for his large figure compositions in the Palace of the Vatican in Rome. Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance-era. Pope John Paul II made history in by becoming the first non-Italian pope in more than years. Lorenzo de' Medici was Florentine statesman, ruler and patron of arts and letters, the most brilliant of the Medici.

He killed his mother, persecuted Christians and is said to have "fiddled while Rome burned. A notorious reputation precedes her, and she is inextricably, and perhaps unfairly, linked to the crimes and debauchery of her family. In the early fifteenth century, Martin V had secured immense estates for his Colonna relatives in the kingdom of Naples, but within a century, nepotism had become so extreme that even Machiavelli felt obliged to attack Sixtus IV — who had elevated six of his relatives to the Sacred College — for this crime.

Similarly, there is no doubting that Alexander VI was a lusty and sexually adventurous pope. He openly acknowledged fathering a bevy of children by his mistress, Vannozza dei Cattanei, and later enjoyed the legendary affections of Giulia Farnese, renowned as one of the most beautiful women of her day.

But here again, Alexander was merely following the norms of the Renaissance papacy, and it is telling that Pius II had no shame about penning a wild, sexual comedy called Chrysis. Popes and cardinals were almost expected to have mistresses. Julius II, for example, was the father of numerous children, and never bothered to hide the fact, while Cardinal Jean de Jouffroy was notorious for being a devotee of brothels. Homosexual affairs were no less common, and in that he seems to have limited himself to only one gender, Alexander VI almost seems straight-laced.

Sixtus IV was, for instance, reputed to have given the cardinals special permission to commit sodomy during the summer, perhaps to allow him to do so without fear of criticism, while Paul II was rumoured to have died while being sodomised by a page-boy. He was, of course, a ferociously ambitious figure who indulged in some pretty low tactics.

In all this, murder seemed not an occasional necessity, but an integral part of everyday existence. Later, he even slaughtered three of his own senior commanders at a dinner in Senigallia after rightly suspecting them of plotting against him.

But from a certain perspective, all of this was only to be expected. It was quite normal for the relatives of Renaissance popes to set their sights on conquest and acquisition. This meant war.

And in an age in which war was the preserve of mercenaries, war meant cruelty on a grand scale. The wild, bisexual Pier Luigi Farnese, for example, was infamous for his brutality, and not only pillaged at will, but also made a habit of hunting down those men who resisted his advances. So too, Francesco Maria della Rovere, was nothing more than a soldier for hire, who ordered his troops to slaughter Cardinal Francesco Alidosi after his own failure to capture Bologna.

Indeed, if anything, Cesare was unusual only in his tactical brilliance and in his comparative self-restraint. Yet this leaves us with a problem. Crime Drama History Romance. Did you know Edit. Trivia The show was originally going to have four seasons, but when Neil Jordan thought about doing the fourth season, he didn't have the energy or even story to do ten episodes.

Instead of that, he proposed Showtime to wrap up everything with a two-hour television movie. He even wrote the screenplay, but the network refused, arguing it was too expensive, and the season three ending worked as a series finale. Jordan eventually published the screenplay as an e-book called "The Borgia Apocalypse".

Goofs Caterina Sforza's eldest son's name was Ottaviano, not Benito. None of her sons were named Benito; in fact, Benito is not even an Italian name, but Spanish. User reviews Review. Top review. Pure Entertainment. While the acting is absolutely fantastic and the casting is out right seamless accepting for David Oakes as Juan the show is only flawed in that it is historically inaccurate in several areas.

Jeremy Irons is always fun to watch is roles like this, he can't help but wear his heart on his sleeve.

It's too bad one can't squeeze both of them together to make a really great story about this transgressive family. They don't make stories of this nature often.