Where is borgia pope buried

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.

Months Past. The Renaissance political figure died on 12 March Italy Political. Related Articles. It was beginning to get late, on a November evening which was starting to aim for freezing, and the first few people we asked had no idea either. We located it, and there indeed it sat, the white facade, the inset columns, the neat blank triangle pediment, the carved correct name, and the sign on the door saying that it is open only for Masses at seven and nine a. This is not actually that uncommon a situation with churches in Italy.

They do not always enjoy being treated as art objects and goals for a tourist tramp. Open every Sunday actually indicates that S. Maria in Monserrato has a devoted and habitual congregation, quite possibly composed of the expatriate Spaniard community for whom it was originally built.

We had had to give up all hope of seeing the grill of St. Then I will go in and perniciously look at all the art! But fortunately, we had tramped out to find Rodrigo Borgia on a Saturday afternoon, and Sunday lay before us. So we hauled ourselves out of bed on Sunday morning, and were at the church doors just before nine a. Now, any Mass at a church of this sort is open to anybody, but it is rude to hang around for very long if you are not actually going to go to the service, and it is very rude to wander around a lot taking pictures and gawking and then leave visibly.

We did not even go up to the front. There may well be some decent statuary or painting in there somewhere, but we did not see it, because we went straight to the Borgia tomb, which luckily is in the first niche on the right-hand side, and stayed there, out of the way of the entering crowd.

The tomb of the Spanish king, which is under it, is very much more mourning-centered and has a motto about how much his people loved him; I am pretty sure the contrast was intentional. It landed well, on the floor in front of the tomb. We slipped out of the church just as the doors were shutting and Mass was about to start, blinking into the bright morning. Speculating over whether, when they came to clean the niches, the staff would think the rose was for the King of Spain, and whether this happens often.

This is very much the way the City of Rome turns out to work, sometimes. Like how Caesar was stabbed on the messiest junction of the overground tram tracks, a gentle and unmarked unintentional joke upon history. I am not entirely certain it is worth going out of your way for his tomb, as a tourist, unless you are the way we are about the Borgias and happen to have a free Sunday morning, but it was certainly worth it to us, and the option is there for those who may want it.

Rush-That-Speaks writes book reviews of sci-fi and fantasy literature, and blogs about many things including reading an impressive range of books, a lot of genre topics. She recently completed a project to read books in days, a fascinating and impressive undertaking. You can find her own blog here , or hosted through LiveJournal. Comments were disabled for a little while due to a spam attack.

They should be enabled again now. If anyone has trouble commenting, please e-mail me to let me know, at urbe at exurbe dot com.

Comments were again disabled for a little while, but I believe they are enabled again. Please, if you have trouble leaving comments, let me know. Hi, I liked this set of stories, especially since Machiavelli is so often discus I was wondering about the Caser Borgia and Syphilis story.

Anyway, I was impressed by the Cesare Borgia Syphilis factoid on first reading this set of essays. Also planned are commemorative concerts of Renaissance music, Renaissance banquets, exhibitions, conferences, Borgia souvenirs and theatrical re-enactments of his death. And Borgia is a fascinating personality, very literary. I'd have liked to meet him. Spain's Catholic hierarchy is unsurprisingly reluctant to restore to prominence a man whose family symbolises all the perversions of papal power, let alone transfer his remains inside the church.

After his death, Borgia was originally buried in an alabaster tomb in the Santa Maria church, but that was destroyed after the visiting bishop of Calahorra expressed outrage that a sinner should be buried in a holy place, and his remains were banished beneath Viana's main street. The bones were exhumed in and put in their present resting place near the church's main door, and the plaque installed in The main transfer is from here to eternal life.

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies.