November 10, 2020 • 40 mins
Italian noblewoman Lucrezia Borgia was the illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who would later become Pope Alexander VI. Considered a famous beauty during the Italian Renaissance, she also notoriously rivaled her family members in jealousy, intrigue, and homicide -- but history may have it all wrong.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and Welcome to Criminalia.
This season, we are exploring the lives and motivations of
some of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm
Mariach from Marquis and I'm Holly Fry and today's episode
(00:22):
is about a woman with an infamous reputation as a
political schemer and poisoner in fifteenth century Italy. So we'll
be talking about the Borgia family, specifically the notorious Lucretia Borgia,
who was born in April of fourteen eighty just outside
of Rome. Lucretia was the illegitimate daughter of future Pope
Alexander the sixth at the time of her birth, though
(00:45):
he was still known as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his
favorite mistress but Notese de Katane was her mother, and
she was also the mother of Lucrezia's two dashing and
handsome older brothers, Chase, which is the Italian form of
the names Easier and Giovanni, the Italian equivalent of John.
Now it may found odd to us today a Roman
(01:07):
Catholic cardinal with a mistress or more, but posts and
cardinals were pretty much expected to have mistresses during this
time in Italy. It was totally normal, and this was
not just a thing with the Borges. So Lucretia was
born during the Italian Renaissance, which spanned from thirty to
(01:28):
fifteen twenty, and she grew up at a time when
artists and scientists were becoming not only appreciated, but also
highly respected. And on the day she was born, her
father summoned astrologers, who at that time were considered scientists,
to their home to tell the future of his newborn
and we know that they foretold a remarkable future for her.
(01:50):
But the details of that remarkable future have since been
lost to history. And while we can't know what their
predictions were, whether or not they came true, we do
know that she did grow up in a very prominent family,
and that family was very scandalous. But even if you
haven't seen the television series The Borgia's, you have almost
(02:10):
certainly heard this family's name and maybe even know some
of the family's legacy. Lucretia was born into one of
the most well known families in history. The Borgia family
included military leaders, dukes to popes and even a saint.
(02:32):
Yet the legacy of the Bores is not one of
generosity or inspiration or saintliness in any way. Their reputation
actually was more for greed, violent political corruption, megalomania and
power hungry control over vast regions of Italy, and the
Famili's alleged immorality and corruption, whether that's all true or not,
(02:56):
date all the way back to Alphonse de Borgia, who
was born in the third teen hundreds, so centuries worth
of drama. Yes, their story line goes way back. Um
but with the Borgias, the you know, I mean, it
does go way back in the apple today and then
does not fall far from the tree. So first, there
was Lucretia's father, Rodrigo, who was a cardinal and was
(03:20):
accused of buying the papacy, and he probably did. Yeah,
in fact, it was believed by many that he had
quote given his soul and body to the great demon
in hell. That he probably didn't do. But you never know,
You just don't know what happened in the fifteenth century.
(03:40):
I believe that he believed if he did, indeed believe it,
if it was believed, it was true. Um. So Lucretia
had two brothers, which we mentioned earlier, and Giovanni was
assassinated in fourteen under mysterious circumstances and by mysterious circumstances.
And you can you can hear my air quotes. I
(04:02):
think when I say that, we mean that his power
hungry brother may have murdered him in a fit of jealousy.
But but but maybe not. It's equally possible that Giovanni
was killed while having an affair that went wrong, or
possibly in an argument with a non family member, a
non borgia. So uh, this we're talking about because this
(04:24):
is the environment in which Lucretia was born into. So
we can get back to her now. So Lucretia was
not raised by her parents. She was instead sent to
live with her father's cousin who was a widower living
in a palace in Rome, and she was educated at
the convent of St. Sixtus. She was really well educated
for a woman in the hundreds, and she was able
(04:46):
to converse and write in several languages, including Italian, French, Latin,
and Greek. She was considered, and we're quoting, a model
of good breeding. And that quote comes up in various
form spit in so many places. Um, she though is
yet often maligned, and Lucretia has long been characterized in literature,
(05:10):
films and you know, just various forms of art as
a woman who was vicious, extravagant, and also guilty of nepotism, incest,
and murder, which the poisons fit in there, kind of
like the description of anyone else in the Borgia family
as a whole clan throughout their history. And here is
where we want to turn our focus. Was she actually
(05:32):
guilty of the many bad acts she is accused of
having done, because that list is pretty long, man. So
in fact, though the real life Lucretia may have been
much different than the stories we think of when we
think of her and her family. So today scholars actually
believe that there probably isn't enough proof that she was
(05:52):
a political schemer and murderer herself, like her notorious family members,
but that instead she may have been a political palm
that was used by her father for family gain. Um,
So let's lay that all out. Before we do that,
we're going to take a quick break and have a
word from a sponsor, and when we come back, we'll
(06:13):
be talking about Lucrezia's three marriages. Welcome back to Criminaliot.
Let's talk about Lucrezia's marriages and how each was designed
(06:35):
to politically advanced the Borgia family. So, Lucrezia is described
as having light blue green eyes and wavy golden hair.
It is said that she later bleached that hair to
maintain its goldenness. I love that. I actually when I
saw that detail, I was like, was she the first
bottle blonde? Like? Yeah, I wonder if she went platinum like.
(06:57):
I just loved that detail about out how she was like,
I'm not going gray, I will just stay golden like
and like her mother, she was considered to be a
great beauty. The famous painting known as Disputation of St.
Catherine is actually said to have been modeled after her,
and it was written that her whole being exuded and
(07:18):
we quote gaiety and humor, and it was often noted
that she was quite graceful. Definitely not the kind of
thing that goes alongside with she was a horrible, scheming monster.
But anyway, you know, so, um, she was married three times, um,
and all three times it was not for love. Her
(07:40):
marriages were all strategic and they all were to align
the Borgia family with other influential families. They were all
relatively easy for her father to do. Um and and
you know, a marriage wasn't a big deal back then.
You weren't in love, you were just building the family's
political power. And as we get into her relationships, we
(08:02):
got to get this part out of the way first. Yes,
there are many many stories about orgies and incest among
the Borges, but there's no evidence, like literally goose egg
big zero, that Lucresias left with her father or her brother,
both of which are rumors that have persisted through time centuries.
It's just like the orgies her father was said to
(08:24):
have hosted. There's simply no proof that they or these
stories of incest are in any way true affairs though, absolutely,
but that's not the same thing. Modern historians consider this
to all be rumor and exaggeration, and yeah, sorry to
break the news. So the big stories of the Borges,
but they're all kind of fairy tales stories, not as
(08:47):
fun and salacious, but they're not. Sorry. Let's do, though,
talk about her marriages, because they are, you know, in
their own way, they have their own problems. So the
first time Lucrezia was engaged. She was just eleven years old.
We have talked before about how you know, as was
the case and is the case here where this is
for political gain. It has very little to do with
(09:10):
the actual marriage and more of just like a business contract. Correct.
We've seen six year old and three year olds who've
been engaged to each other, which is just I don't
even have a word for it, but a political poem. Yes, yeah.
And so this first engagement was to a Spanish nobleman,
and it was arranged by her father, who at that
point had ascended to become Pope Alexander the sixth. I
(09:33):
hear he paid for it, right, that's the rumor. That
was a cash transaction. But wanting to align themselves then
politically within Italy, her father and brother decided to call
off that engagement. Instead, Lucretia would marry Giovanni Sportsa, a
man in his late twenties who was unfortunately best known
(09:56):
for his vicious temper. Yeah. So they married in Rome
in fourte but not long into the marriage, the creatious
father and brother became interested instead in aligning themselves politically
with Spain and also with Naples, and they no longer
saw a need for Giovanni um so worried that he
(10:19):
was losing favor with the Borges, and he was in
fact losing favor with the Borges. Giovanni fled for his life.
The marriage was annulled by Pope Alexander under the pretense
that it was never consummated. However, when the marriage was
officially annulled in four Lucrezia was six months pregnant, so
(10:41):
that would suggest that that marriage was consummated definitely, at
least with someone, which would have made it way more
problematic to annull it in the Catholic Church. Correct, rumors
swirled throughout the country as to who the father of
this child might be, so there were reports of her pregnancy,
but they were initially refuted, and in March she gave
(11:06):
birth to a son, so you could no longer refute
that pregnancy. She named him Giovanni, and the baby was
born in secret, and he wasn't actually revealed to the
public until he was about three years old. And her
pregnancy and the secrecy surrounding it, of course, actually made
the whole situation worse because it kicked the rumor mill
(11:29):
into its highest possible gear. But because her son's paternity
was never established, gossipers kind of went crazy. They could
just run with it because there's nothing to refute them.
It was suggested in this gossip and rumor mill that
the baby was a product of incest. Here we go
right from either her brother or maybe her father. The
(11:49):
baby was not a product of incest, but it is
possible that she'd had an affair with her father's chamberlain,
Pedro calderone Um and though they were married when she
got pregnant, no one actually ever assumed it was her
husband Giovanni's child. Romans even went so far as to
question whether or not Lucretia was actually the baby's mother.
(12:10):
Like they took it that far, Like they somehow introduced
this problematic child just for fun, right, she just appeared
on's we won't say who. Yeah, uh. Lucrezia was not
single for long despite all of this madness and scandal
surrounding her her father and brother, And by now you
(12:32):
can see exactly who was really running this family and
running Lucrezia's life. Chose seventeen year old Alfonso of Aragon,
who was the illegitimate son of Alfonso the Second, the
King of Naples to be Lucretia's second Husband's a lot
of twos in that one second husband, Alfonso the second
get the astrologers on the lawn. There's meaning here. The
(12:57):
pair were married in so she she wasn't single very long,
like we were saying, this is a very fast marriage
put together. And it was said that Alfonso was handsome
and he had good manners, and unlike many or most
political marriages that we talked about, the evidence actually suggest
that two of them did love each other, or at
(13:18):
least were really rather fond of each other. Um they
had one child together too, and they named him Rodrigo,
after her father. But just a year into that second marriage,
which was going quite well, Alexander and cisare considered the
partnership of political Hindrance. So yes, again just mere curial
whims of their political desires. Now they wanted to align
(13:42):
politically with France, and so, fearing for his life, Alfonso
fled Rome, and actually for good reason because in the
Crucians brother tried to have Alfonso assassinated by stabbing, but
it failed, and it's reported that he then visit did
her husband's bedside to deliver a chilling message what was
(14:04):
not finished at breakfast would be complete by dinner, which
is you know, I have this like vision of him
and like crawling into the window and like sliding into
the bed, like whispering it into his ear. And I
came like real creepy about, like a spirit that's come
in from nature. Really, it's just, you know, it's kind
of Borgia as charming, charming at every turn. Now depleted
(14:35):
as an option out, he decided that the next manner
of approach should be strangulation. And this assassination attempt did work,
and it left his sister a widow, and Lucretia was
sent to the countryside to mourn, and allegedly and because
her brother and her father grew tired of watching her grieve,
(14:57):
which to me is a detail that seems very Borges
to ask, doesn't it. I mean, she they're like, why
do you keep crying here? Just cent her to Tuscany
for a little while, you know. So when she did
return to Rome, she actually began working for her father
um and basically she did some secretarial work for the
papal court um and that included responding to his mail
(15:19):
when he was away. Now that we know that there
may actually have been more to it, and this kind
of jibes with what historians today believe. That she was
frequently left in charge of the papal court during her
father's absence, and that is a huge detail because she
was a woman, after all, and this is a very
powerful place to have that much free reign. Some actually
(15:43):
also go on to suggest that because she was frequently
left in charge of the court, she was not the
pawn that some historians believe she may have been, and
that instead she was given a unique position of power
for any woman at this time. And it's it's really
hard to know just how involved she she really was
(16:03):
able to be. And really we should point out that
these two things could simultaneously be true, which would have
made for a very strange dichotomy in her life. So
she may have had a great deal of reach and
power as her father's trusted assistant in the papacy, and
also have had very little to no control over the
arrangements of her personal life. And I think that that
(16:25):
might be on something there um it certainly sounds like
it because of the political motivations of her father and brother. Again,
Lucretia was yet married a third time, and her third husband,
again was not of her own choice. So in February
two she wed widower Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and
(16:48):
although this was an arranged marriage, it said that Lucrecia
was actually pretty eager to marry Alfonso because it meant
that she could leave Rome, get away from her father
and brother and live in northern Italy. She could just
have a little space of her own where they were
not up in her business at every moment. Exactly. They're
not like, your marriage is over, your marrying number ten now,
you know, She's like, I just want to I want
(17:10):
to get out. And I think that's very telling about
the kind of life that she wanted to lead versus
the kind of life that she was being told to lead. Um.
But let's talk about her husband, Alfonso, the third husband,
because the second husband was also Albano, just for a
quick minute, because he's kind of an interesting man. On
(17:30):
one hand, he was into artillery and tournament's dogs, horses.
He made pottery. He played the viol which is a
musical instrument that was popular during the Renaissance. Um it
was at six strings. Um, I know you're probably trying
to like envision a viola or violin, but it didn't
truly look like that. It was held vertically, it was
played with a bow. Yet on the other hand, he
(17:53):
was also well known for his cruelty and his stinginess
and just kind of strange behavior in general. I looked
and looked for what kind of strange behavior Alfonso might
have engaged in, And I mean, even tell me, you're
not curious, right, so I like, but I actually came
up a very little UM, so I wouldn't qualifies the stream, right,
(18:14):
you know? Did he was he the kind of guy
who just walked to the mailbox in his boxers? Or
was he really strange like he was? I don't know.
And like, your imagination can sort of take it to
many places where history is not really taking it. But
those two things together made me feel like he was
(18:34):
and she seemed to really love him like he seemed like.
This was also another good relationship for her. Um and
scholars believe that Lucrecia became both very capable and popular
duchess while she was married to him. She was a
patron of the arts that was and the art community
was flourishing during the Renaissance, and as she grew older,
she devoted herself to various charities, and much like how
(18:57):
she managed the papal court when her father was away,
she also administered the affairs of state when her husband
was away. If it seems that history has turned the
Borgia's into a twisted, entangled story perfect for a primetime drama,
that surely may have. In fact, as we mentioned earlier,
their legacy is so strong that it has literally been
turned into a primetime drama, not one that I have
(19:20):
ever watched. But yet it seems like it really kind
of leans towards the the the the fantasy if with
the Borgia family may or may not have been um.
So it's actually long scenes of bleaching hair, that's really
all it is. I should watch A Quick Way to
Do My Roots by the Cuisia Borgia. So they were
(19:46):
definitely guilty as a family of nepotism and simony, and
let's face it, I mean they were surely criminals of
one sort or another. But historians today believe that it
was actually unlikely that the clown was actually any worse
than any other family who was continually vying for the
(20:06):
throne during the Italian Renaissance. Yeah, the papacy and all
of that is so tied up in so many mack
nations throughout the aristocracy there there. It's it's funny that
this one family got separated out. Yes, they absolutely surely
took bribes, Yes they definitely had affairs. They one hundred
(20:28):
percent took advantage of any in every situation where they
could use it to advance their family's power. And they
surely did order the assassination of more than one rival.
They certainly did not hesitate to get rid of Lucrezia's
second husband, if you recall, and Lucrezia couldn't wait to
get away from them. I think that's very telling. But
(20:50):
why their story is so outrageous compared to other contemporary
political families is kind of a little bit strange, right.
You think that everybody get treated at least sort of
vaguely equally. Um, everyone was power hungry and everyone was corrupt.
But there are a couple of things in play, right
that explained to some degree why they became kind of
(21:14):
the the apex vision of all of this greed and powermongering.
One big problem for the Borgias, as we have seen
before in other episodes, is that they suffered the ill
fortune of having been foreigners in a country that hated foreigners.
If you were not from Italy at this time, it
(21:35):
was believed that you were most likely to be corrupt
and vile. And the Borgias were not originally from Italy.
They were Spaniards and they were trying to rule Italy,
so it's like a double down on their their vileness,
you monsters. Anti Spanish propaganda in Italy was really popular
(21:56):
at this time, and it painted all Spaniards as brutal
and oppressive. But you probably don't get an expression like
and I'm quoting here, and many of you probably have
heard this quote before. If you, if you want to live,
don't dine with the Borges. And few who have dined
(22:18):
with the Borges have lived to tell of it. If
you're not at least a tiny bit, just a little
bit murderous, People say that about my house all the time,
Ye don't, Hollieses like, right, she's gonna cook some weird
thing and you're not gonna want to eat it. Many
(22:41):
Borgia stories actually are centered around Lucretia's brother, Jason Ay
and his appetites, and those appetites are of course agreed
and lust and power and murder. That's pretty well documented,
and it is pretty fair to say that murder by
poison has long been associated with this family aim But
that doesn't mean that every Borgia was guilty of any
(23:04):
of these acts. Some probably didn't do any of the poisoning.
Some just wanted to move away. Please do marry me
off again. That would be great, love to go to
northern Italy. Get right from here. So we're gonna take
this opportunity for a quick break and a word from
our sponsor. But when we come back, we'll be talking
finally right about the Borgia family's poisonous legacy. Welcome back
(23:40):
to Criminalia, where we are about to start getting into
the Borgia's secret recipe for poison. I know, isn't that
like that's that whole like dot done. They have a
secret family recipe. I love it, So keep thinking about
like ads for companies that make food to talk about
their long standing family recipe. Feel like we slow cook
(24:01):
Our poison. Poisons are teasinal summer poisons can It's a
craft poison. It's made with heritage arsnack. So we are
finally here at the poisons. And when it comes to poisons,
(24:25):
the creatious father and brother likely did use many many
of them to their political advantage, and as did many
other politically important families at the time, not just the Boorses,
like we were saying, But it was rumored that the
pair poisoned a cardinal or maybe two, maybe maybe more
um but again one of those stories that modern scholars
(24:48):
think is probably unlikely. Uh, just because everyone else was
doing it, doesn't mean that the Boerses were also doing it,
but it does make their sealicious stories way more fun.
So we have spent a lot of time throughout this
entire season talking about poison being used as a political tool,
used all the way back into antiquity. During the Italian Renaissance,
(25:12):
poisonings were so frequent that most people assumed when anyone
of royalty, or a pope or a cardinal died, basically
anyone with any kind of shred of power, it was
probably not a natural day. We see that so often,
right right, right right, because this is kind of just
a common way for people to go about their affairs
unhindered by the person who had been blocking those affairs
(25:34):
exactly there, And there's a lot to choose from. It
doesn't always have to be arsenic, which the Borges at
least show us that there is a rainbow of poisons
available to us to use. Uh. There is an interesting
history about this family and poisons, and it said that
they were known to use several types, Like I was
just saying, um, when we see a lot in this show,
(25:54):
which is arsenic because it's odorlessen, it's taste. Listen. You
can mix it into things and you won't be there
when the person dies. And it's it's popular poison. But
they also used several other slow acting and powerful poisons,
which included stryct nine and conferred in, which you probably
know as Spanish fly in. In larger quantities, it won't
(26:16):
just engorge your genitals, it will kill you. Um, and
the flower wolf Spain. So poisons would be added to
food and drinks, clothes, gloves which you talked about before,
pages of books, and even flowers. I was interesting. Yeah,
don't smell the tulips, don't do it. Uh. Tasting the
cup of the Borgias came to be a euphemism for
(26:36):
death by porsha. It's a bad way to die, but
it's a good turn of phrase. There are stories describing
poisonous balls which were formed and placed in fireplaces, and
when you burned them, they would produce toxic fumes that
would waft through the house and kill people. That was
an interesting one, um. But where they actually kind of
(26:58):
jump ahead of their peer in the art of poisoning
is how they selected and mixed their poisons. So it
said that the Boorges did that, and they would make
rare poisons because they're apparently Boorges can't just use arsenic.
They would mix them in their cellars with like consider
(27:19):
it with as much thought as if you were saying
making or storing vintage wines. They had poisons. So their
ideal poison was reliable, effective, deceptive, and slow acting, but
strong enough to kill the victim, which, of course, when
it comes to poison, every single one of those attributes
totally makes sense, right. I mean, I see that they
(27:39):
had a list or they're checking off there, like yep,
does it does it all as it should? It's a poison.
Their qua is like, doesn't you know what it's It's
not deceptive, but it is reliable and effective. They've got
a big white board, They've got it off flow charted out,
you know, So the family's poison legacy is so said
(28:00):
to have included a secret family recipe for a poison
called cantarella, and it was a variation on arsenic plus
a few other deadly ingredients. So if you didn't happen
to have arsenic on hand, you could still make it
and you could still kill someone. But the complete composition
of what it was remains mostly unknown except for kind
(28:22):
of one or two ingredients. We don't really know how
to put it together, which is probably a good thing. Interestingly,
the family took cantarella so seriously that it was one
of those things that was only fabricated in their own sellers.
And it had, as Maria said, this secret list of ingredients,
and it mimics the properties of arsenic, perfect for its
(28:45):
odorless and flavorless nature. Whatever it was was kind of
the perfect poison, at least by Borgia standards, right. It
hit all of those bullet points. We do know, though.
There's this one ingredient. Um, it's so gross, but apparently
it was used in the composition of cantarella, and it
(29:06):
was an important ingredient in this poison, which is yuck. Yuh.
Let me tell you the good news is, I suppose
you would be deceased and not have time to be
grossed out when you realized what you had consumed. Okay,
so a little bit of science. Alkaloids, which are naturally
occurring organic compounds that contain nitrogen. We're not unheard of
(29:28):
in the poison business. In fact, for example, the poison
Strycht nine is an alkaloid, right, not not not out
of the realm of possibility that a lot of others
had them, um, but alkaloids that were used in the
Borge's favorite poison. This is where it starts to get gross.
And if you don't want to hear about animals and grossness,
just skip ahead a seconds, I meaning uncomfortable reading it,
(29:55):
So I understand if you just skip ahead. But they
were obtained from poisons at pigs that they poisoned with
arsenic um, and it gets worse. Multiple accounts refer to
how it was the froth from around the pig's mouth
that was collected and then stored for knarella making it's awful. Yeah,
(30:17):
take a moment, it is so awful. But here's the thing.
It was actually a common practice to suspend a poison
like arsenic in animal fats. So this pig story is
actually pretty plausible historically. Yeah, it's it probably. I always
wonder like, who's the person that gets that idea and goes,
you know what we gotta do, Yeah, is poison a
(30:39):
pig and then collect a froth around use that and
that's what we're going to use for our poison. So
symptoms of being poisoned by cantarella include a lot of
the usual stuff that we have seen when we've talked
about poisoning before. So the victim would experience confusion, vomiting,
(30:59):
a dominal pain, and probably diarrhea, all of which could
mimic several other conditions as well as several other poisons. Uh.
It is said that this could kill with precision timing,
so depending on how you manage the dose, you could
make sure they died the same day or even in
a week. Uh, just you know, on carefully measuring out.
(31:21):
And there was of course no antidote right um. And
it was so potent that the poison became known as
the liquor of succession, meaning it was perfect for eliminating
other cardinals and other people in positions of power, but
probably man and cardinal there as needed for Rodrigo and
(31:42):
his family to get ahead. Now, there is a very
popular story about how Lucrezia wore a poison filled rings,
sprinkling cantarella from it into wineglass. One of my favorite
stories about Lucretia. Oh, it's a great story, and who
doesn't love a poison ring? Um, But this doesn't appear
to have actually been true. And if there was a
(32:04):
poison ring in the Borgia family, and that is a
big if it is believed that it was Chase who
actually wore it, I believe it. Just reading about him,
I believe it. Um. So the truth about this alleged
notorious lady poisoner is that it's unlikely that she ever
poisoned anyone at all. Um. And some scholars, modern scholars
(32:28):
like to tell a joke here and I we're gonna
follow suit because it's dead accurate. So instead of poisoning,
it was Lucretia herself who was poisoned by the pen
of history. That's how it goes. How can you not
laugh when you hear that? Like, it's perfect. I think
(32:53):
I'm more laughed at your dramatic delivery, which I practiced. So,
although of course it is way more interesting to think
that she was as corrupt as history has suggested throughout
the centuries, but Lucretia was actually generally admired and respected
in her time by her contemporaries. So it seems pretty
(33:15):
clear looking at modern research and documents from contemporary scholars,
that Lucretia Borge's reputation does not at all precede her
and that the stories of her as a poisoner and
generally as a wicked woman are completely undeserved. As for
(33:37):
Alexander and Chase, that a we hope that the story
that they died from accidental cantarella poisoning were true. We
wish it's not true, not true, but I like the
idea that the Iroonic story would be there, but it
is not. Um and sadly, Lucretia she died at the
age of thirty nine, just ten day is about a
(34:00):
week to ten days after giving birth to a stillborn daughter.
And it said that Alfonds wept at the loss of
and we quote his sweet companion, So at least she
got a quiet end to her life. Yeah, you know,
moving out of Rome was a great thing for Lucretia,
and moving away from her family seems to have done
(34:22):
her really well. Although history doesn't seem to tell us
that Lucretia didn't have any poison, but Hollywood's yours. Uh well, okay,
I know everybody thinks I'm going to do something gross here.
I'm not. The thing that I kept thinking about when
(34:43):
trying to come up with a good cocktail for her
was her many weddings, And I thought about wedding cocktails
and the kinds of drinks that you're often served, like
the signature cocktail and a wedding, And since she had three,
I came up with a cocktail I'm calling thrice wed
and it starts with three fruits, one to represent each
(35:05):
of her husbands. So, uh, you're gonna have some watermelon
and some plum and some apricots. You know, Italy is
the largest producer of apricots in the European Union. I
did not know that. I did not know a little
a little fun factoid for you today. Uh, sole cup
(35:26):
a quarter cup of each of those fruits diced, you know,
just roughly chopped. Throw them in the blender. Um, you're
gonna just crank that up and let them go until
they're smooth. For me, the what I really like about
it is that it smooths out in this it's this
very pretty kind of peachy pink color, but the skins
of the plums don't completely break up, so you have
(35:49):
these little dark flex in it, which is kind of
pretty um. And so then you take that blended fruit
and you pour it. You fill half of a champagne
flute or coope with it, and then add five drops
of bitters on top. I used Elmculate teaky bitters, but
whatever bitter you prefer is probably fine, uh. And then
(36:11):
I just put a little bit of prosecco in and
I mixed it with a cocktail spoon, just to get
everything smoothed out, because otherwise sometimes the alcohol will just
float on top of the fruit and you don't get
the You want them to definitely combine. And then you
can just finish filling it up with prosecco and you
can keep stirring as you go if you want, or
you can just top it off. I'm so excited to
(36:34):
tell you how delicious this one was, because I will
completely I have been very frank before on the show
that like, I'm not a bartender. I just like to
play in the kitchen and play with my blender and
makeup cocktails um, and so often one of the things
that I'm never very good at is balancing a cocktail.
There's always something that's driving the bus. Um. But in
(36:58):
this case, all of these things balance each other so
beautifully that none of them overwhelms it. Like you don't
drink it and go prosecco, and you don't drink it
and go all watermelons. Like it really makes this beautiful,
unique flavor that isn't any one of those things. It's
all of those things very much in lucreation beverage, I
think you nailed it, why hope. And it is super
(37:21):
delicious And I made too much. I started with like
way too much fruit. So then I was like, well,
I have to just keep pouring them because I have
so so much fruit. I don't want it to go
to waste, like incorporate. It even got the seal of
approval from husband Brian, who, as we've said before, is
(37:42):
not a drinker, but he was like, this is delicious, um,
So I think it's a good thing. It's a little um.
It's a little bit summary for this time of year.
But those bidders that I used the mculate have things
like cinnamon and allspice in them, so it warms it
up just a little and makes it feel like a
late summer early fould. I think this is great, Like,
(38:04):
there have been many drinks that you have done so
far that you have liked, but there have only been
a couple where you've been like, this drink is great,
and I love hearing that. Um it's right up there
with White Toad for me, is like my greatest contributions
to the world, right I was thinking, I was actually
(38:24):
thinking specifically of White Toad when I was thinking about
drinks that you have loved. This one also very delicious,
and I didn't. It's another one that I didn't know
if I'd be super into it. I'm not that big
of a prosecco drinker. I'm not really big on fruity
drinks usually, but this one is just but apparently when
you combine them all together you find them delicious. It's
(38:46):
like a prosecco smoothie. It's fantastic, actually exactly what it
sounds like, prossecco smoothie with a little bit of bitters.
We hope that you give it a world. The other
thing I wanted to mention is that, UM, I did
not want to have, you know, five cocktails. So you
can make this as a non alcoholic version and instead
(39:06):
of prosecco, use something like a ginger ale or even
a club soda. Um. But if you still use those bidders,
you get like a nice little little something in it
that tastes more like a smoothie and less like you're
just having like a fruity soda. So um, that's another
option if you are not a drinker. Yes, we want
to make sure everybody can enjoy all of these yummy fruits. Also,
(39:28):
I should point out in case you're doing any calendar
math and you're like, hey, those fruits aren't all going
to be in season at the same time right now.
They're not. I used canned apricots, I'm confessing to you now, um,
and they were fine. Uh, you're gonna blend them anyway.
It's right. There's no shame in a canned fruit in
(39:48):
a mixed drink. And um. And like I said, you
can sub out non alcoholic things for the prosecco and
still get a really yummy, delightful taste adventure. All right,
thank you so much for listening to us blather on
about fruit and blenders as well as poison. We appreciate
our listeners so much. If you would like to subscribe
(40:10):
to the show and you haven't already, you can do that.
It's easy, ast Pie. You can do that on the
I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it
is you listen to your favorite podcasts. Criminalia is a
production of Shawonda land Audio in partnership with I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shawonda land Audio, please visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(40:33):
to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and Welcome to Criminalia.
This season, we are exploring the lives and motivations of
some of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm
Mariach from Marquis and I'm Holly Fry and today's episode
(00:22):
is about a woman with an infamous reputation as a
political schemer and poisoner in fifteenth century Italy. So we'll
be talking about the Borgia family, specifically the notorious Lucretia Borgia,
who was born in April of fourteen eighty just outside
of Rome. Lucretia was the illegitimate daughter of future Pope
Alexander the sixth at the time of her birth, though
(00:45):
he was still known as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his
favorite mistress but Notese de Katane was her mother, and
she was also the mother of Lucrezia's two dashing and
handsome older brothers, Chase, which is the Italian form of
the names Easier and Giovanni, the Italian equivalent of John.
Now it may found odd to us today a Roman
(01:07):
Catholic cardinal with a mistress or more, but posts and
cardinals were pretty much expected to have mistresses during this
time in Italy. It was totally normal, and this was
not just a thing with the Borges. So Lucretia was
born during the Italian Renaissance, which spanned from thirty to
(01:28):
fifteen twenty, and she grew up at a time when
artists and scientists were becoming not only appreciated, but also
highly respected. And on the day she was born, her
father summoned astrologers, who at that time were considered scientists,
to their home to tell the future of his newborn
and we know that they foretold a remarkable future for her.
(01:50):
But the details of that remarkable future have since been
lost to history. And while we can't know what their
predictions were, whether or not they came true, we do
know that she did grow up in a very prominent family,
and that family was very scandalous. But even if you
haven't seen the television series The Borgia's, you have almost
(02:10):
certainly heard this family's name and maybe even know some
of the family's legacy. Lucretia was born into one of
the most well known families in history. The Borgia family
included military leaders, dukes to popes and even a saint.
(02:32):
Yet the legacy of the Bores is not one of
generosity or inspiration or saintliness in any way. Their reputation
actually was more for greed, violent political corruption, megalomania and
power hungry control over vast regions of Italy, and the
Famili's alleged immorality and corruption, whether that's all true or not,
(02:56):
date all the way back to Alphonse de Borgia, who
was born in the third teen hundreds, so centuries worth
of drama. Yes, their story line goes way back. Um
but with the Borgias, the you know, I mean, it
does go way back in the apple today and then
does not fall far from the tree. So first, there
was Lucretia's father, Rodrigo, who was a cardinal and was
(03:20):
accused of buying the papacy, and he probably did. Yeah,
in fact, it was believed by many that he had
quote given his soul and body to the great demon
in hell. That he probably didn't do. But you never know,
You just don't know what happened in the fifteenth century.
(03:40):
I believe that he believed if he did, indeed believe it,
if it was believed, it was true. Um. So Lucretia
had two brothers, which we mentioned earlier, and Giovanni was
assassinated in fourteen under mysterious circumstances and by mysterious circumstances.
And you can you can hear my air quotes. I
(04:02):
think when I say that, we mean that his power
hungry brother may have murdered him in a fit of jealousy.
But but but maybe not. It's equally possible that Giovanni
was killed while having an affair that went wrong, or
possibly in an argument with a non family member, a
non borgia. So uh, this we're talking about because this
(04:24):
is the environment in which Lucretia was born into. So
we can get back to her now. So Lucretia was
not raised by her parents. She was instead sent to
live with her father's cousin who was a widower living
in a palace in Rome, and she was educated at
the convent of St. Sixtus. She was really well educated
for a woman in the hundreds, and she was able
(04:46):
to converse and write in several languages, including Italian, French, Latin,
and Greek. She was considered, and we're quoting, a model
of good breeding. And that quote comes up in various
form spit in so many places. Um, she though is
yet often maligned, and Lucretia has long been characterized in literature,
(05:10):
films and you know, just various forms of art as
a woman who was vicious, extravagant, and also guilty of nepotism, incest,
and murder, which the poisons fit in there, kind of
like the description of anyone else in the Borgia family
as a whole clan throughout their history. And here is
where we want to turn our focus. Was she actually
(05:32):
guilty of the many bad acts she is accused of
having done, because that list is pretty long, man. So
in fact, though the real life Lucretia may have been
much different than the stories we think of when we
think of her and her family. So today scholars actually
believe that there probably isn't enough proof that she was
(05:52):
a political schemer and murderer herself, like her notorious family members,
but that instead she may have been a political palm
that was used by her father for family gain. Um,
So let's lay that all out. Before we do that,
we're going to take a quick break and have a
word from a sponsor, and when we come back, we'll
(06:13):
be talking about Lucrezia's three marriages. Welcome back to Criminaliot.
Let's talk about Lucrezia's marriages and how each was designed
(06:35):
to politically advanced the Borgia family. So, Lucrezia is described
as having light blue green eyes and wavy golden hair.
It is said that she later bleached that hair to
maintain its goldenness. I love that. I actually when I
saw that detail, I was like, was she the first
bottle blonde? Like? Yeah, I wonder if she went platinum like.
(06:57):
I just loved that detail about out how she was like,
I'm not going gray, I will just stay golden like
and like her mother, she was considered to be a
great beauty. The famous painting known as Disputation of St.
Catherine is actually said to have been modeled after her,
and it was written that her whole being exuded and
(07:18):
we quote gaiety and humor, and it was often noted
that she was quite graceful. Definitely not the kind of
thing that goes alongside with she was a horrible, scheming monster.
But anyway, you know, so, um, she was married three times, um,
and all three times it was not for love. Her
(07:40):
marriages were all strategic and they all were to align
the Borgia family with other influential families. They were all
relatively easy for her father to do. Um and and
you know, a marriage wasn't a big deal back then.
You weren't in love, you were just building the family's
political power. And as we get into her relationships, we
(08:02):
got to get this part out of the way first. Yes,
there are many many stories about orgies and incest among
the Borges, but there's no evidence, like literally goose egg
big zero, that Lucresias left with her father or her brother,
both of which are rumors that have persisted through time centuries.
It's just like the orgies her father was said to
(08:24):
have hosted. There's simply no proof that they or these
stories of incest are in any way true affairs though, absolutely,
but that's not the same thing. Modern historians consider this
to all be rumor and exaggeration, and yeah, sorry to
break the news. So the big stories of the Borges,
but they're all kind of fairy tales stories, not as
(08:47):
fun and salacious, but they're not. Sorry. Let's do, though,
talk about her marriages, because they are, you know, in
their own way, they have their own problems. So the
first time Lucrezia was engaged. She was just eleven years old.
We have talked before about how you know, as was
the case and is the case here where this is
for political gain. It has very little to do with
(09:10):
the actual marriage and more of just like a business contract. Correct.
We've seen six year old and three year olds who've
been engaged to each other, which is just I don't
even have a word for it, but a political poem. Yes, yeah.
And so this first engagement was to a Spanish nobleman,
and it was arranged by her father, who at that
point had ascended to become Pope Alexander the sixth. I
(09:33):
hear he paid for it, right, that's the rumor. That
was a cash transaction. But wanting to align themselves then
politically within Italy, her father and brother decided to call
off that engagement. Instead, Lucretia would marry Giovanni Sportsa, a
man in his late twenties who was unfortunately best known
(09:56):
for his vicious temper. Yeah. So they married in Rome
in fourte but not long into the marriage, the creatious
father and brother became interested instead in aligning themselves politically
with Spain and also with Naples, and they no longer
saw a need for Giovanni um so worried that he
(10:19):
was losing favor with the Borges, and he was in
fact losing favor with the Borges. Giovanni fled for his life.
The marriage was annulled by Pope Alexander under the pretense
that it was never consummated. However, when the marriage was
officially annulled in four Lucrezia was six months pregnant, so
(10:41):
that would suggest that that marriage was consummated definitely, at
least with someone, which would have made it way more
problematic to annull it in the Catholic Church. Correct, rumors
swirled throughout the country as to who the father of
this child might be, so there were reports of her pregnancy,
but they were initially refuted, and in March she gave
(11:06):
birth to a son, so you could no longer refute
that pregnancy. She named him Giovanni, and the baby was
born in secret, and he wasn't actually revealed to the
public until he was about three years old. And her
pregnancy and the secrecy surrounding it, of course, actually made
the whole situation worse because it kicked the rumor mill
(11:29):
into its highest possible gear. But because her son's paternity
was never established, gossipers kind of went crazy. They could
just run with it because there's nothing to refute them.
It was suggested in this gossip and rumor mill that
the baby was a product of incest. Here we go
right from either her brother or maybe her father. The
(11:49):
baby was not a product of incest, but it is
possible that she'd had an affair with her father's chamberlain,
Pedro calderone Um and though they were married when she
got pregnant, no one actually ever assumed it was her
husband Giovanni's child. Romans even went so far as to
question whether or not Lucretia was actually the baby's mother.
(12:10):
Like they took it that far, Like they somehow introduced
this problematic child just for fun, right, she just appeared
on's we won't say who. Yeah, uh. Lucrezia was not
single for long despite all of this madness and scandal
surrounding her her father and brother, And by now you
(12:32):
can see exactly who was really running this family and
running Lucrezia's life. Chose seventeen year old Alfonso of Aragon,
who was the illegitimate son of Alfonso the Second, the
King of Naples to be Lucretia's second Husband's a lot
of twos in that one second husband, Alfonso the second
get the astrologers on the lawn. There's meaning here. The
(12:57):
pair were married in so she she wasn't single very long,
like we were saying, this is a very fast marriage
put together. And it was said that Alfonso was handsome
and he had good manners, and unlike many or most
political marriages that we talked about, the evidence actually suggest
that two of them did love each other, or at
(13:18):
least were really rather fond of each other. Um they
had one child together too, and they named him Rodrigo,
after her father. But just a year into that second marriage,
which was going quite well, Alexander and cisare considered the
partnership of political Hindrance. So yes, again just mere curial
whims of their political desires. Now they wanted to align
(13:42):
politically with France, and so, fearing for his life, Alfonso
fled Rome, and actually for good reason because in the
Crucians brother tried to have Alfonso assassinated by stabbing, but
it failed, and it's reported that he then visit did
her husband's bedside to deliver a chilling message what was
(14:04):
not finished at breakfast would be complete by dinner, which
is you know, I have this like vision of him
and like crawling into the window and like sliding into
the bed, like whispering it into his ear. And I
came like real creepy about, like a spirit that's come
in from nature. Really, it's just, you know, it's kind
of Borgia as charming, charming at every turn. Now depleted
(14:35):
as an option out, he decided that the next manner
of approach should be strangulation. And this assassination attempt did work,
and it left his sister a widow, and Lucretia was
sent to the countryside to mourn, and allegedly and because
her brother and her father grew tired of watching her grieve,
(14:57):
which to me is a detail that seems very Borges
to ask, doesn't it. I mean, she they're like, why
do you keep crying here? Just cent her to Tuscany
for a little while, you know. So when she did
return to Rome, she actually began working for her father
um and basically she did some secretarial work for the
papal court um and that included responding to his mail
(15:19):
when he was away. Now that we know that there
may actually have been more to it, and this kind
of jibes with what historians today believe. That she was
frequently left in charge of the papal court during her
father's absence, and that is a huge detail because she
was a woman, after all, and this is a very
powerful place to have that much free reign. Some actually
(15:43):
also go on to suggest that because she was frequently
left in charge of the court, she was not the
pawn that some historians believe she may have been, and
that instead she was given a unique position of power
for any woman at this time. And it's it's really
hard to know just how involved she she really was
(16:03):
able to be. And really we should point out that
these two things could simultaneously be true, which would have
made for a very strange dichotomy in her life. So
she may have had a great deal of reach and
power as her father's trusted assistant in the papacy, and
also have had very little to no control over the
arrangements of her personal life. And I think that that
(16:25):
might be on something there um it certainly sounds like
it because of the political motivations of her father and brother. Again,
Lucretia was yet married a third time, and her third husband,
again was not of her own choice. So in February
two she wed widower Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, and
(16:48):
although this was an arranged marriage, it said that Lucrecia
was actually pretty eager to marry Alfonso because it meant
that she could leave Rome, get away from her father
and brother and live in northern Italy. She could just
have a little space of her own where they were
not up in her business at every moment. Exactly. They're
not like, your marriage is over, your marrying number ten now,
you know, She's like, I just want to I want
(17:10):
to get out. And I think that's very telling about
the kind of life that she wanted to lead versus
the kind of life that she was being told to lead. Um.
But let's talk about her husband, Alfonso, the third husband,
because the second husband was also Albano, just for a
quick minute, because he's kind of an interesting man. On
(17:30):
one hand, he was into artillery and tournament's dogs, horses.
He made pottery. He played the viol which is a
musical instrument that was popular during the Renaissance. Um it
was at six strings. Um, I know you're probably trying
to like envision a viola or violin, but it didn't
truly look like that. It was held vertically, it was
played with a bow. Yet on the other hand, he
(17:53):
was also well known for his cruelty and his stinginess
and just kind of strange behavior in general. I looked
and looked for what kind of strange behavior Alfonso might
have engaged in, And I mean, even tell me, you're
not curious, right, so I like, but I actually came
up a very little UM, so I wouldn't qualifies the stream, right,
(18:14):
you know? Did he was he the kind of guy
who just walked to the mailbox in his boxers? Or
was he really strange like he was? I don't know.
And like, your imagination can sort of take it to
many places where history is not really taking it. But
those two things together made me feel like he was
(18:34):
and she seemed to really love him like he seemed like.
This was also another good relationship for her. Um and
scholars believe that Lucrecia became both very capable and popular
duchess while she was married to him. She was a
patron of the arts that was and the art community
was flourishing during the Renaissance, and as she grew older,
she devoted herself to various charities, and much like how
(18:57):
she managed the papal court when her father was away,
she also administered the affairs of state when her husband
was away. If it seems that history has turned the
Borgia's into a twisted, entangled story perfect for a primetime drama,
that surely may have. In fact, as we mentioned earlier,
their legacy is so strong that it has literally been
turned into a primetime drama, not one that I have
(19:20):
ever watched. But yet it seems like it really kind
of leans towards the the the the fantasy if with
the Borgia family may or may not have been um.
So it's actually long scenes of bleaching hair, that's really
all it is. I should watch A Quick Way to
Do My Roots by the Cuisia Borgia. So they were
(19:46):
definitely guilty as a family of nepotism and simony, and
let's face it, I mean they were surely criminals of
one sort or another. But historians today believe that it
was actually unlikely that the clown was actually any worse
than any other family who was continually vying for the
(20:06):
throne during the Italian Renaissance. Yeah, the papacy and all
of that is so tied up in so many mack
nations throughout the aristocracy there there. It's it's funny that
this one family got separated out. Yes, they absolutely surely
took bribes, Yes they definitely had affairs. They one hundred
(20:28):
percent took advantage of any in every situation where they
could use it to advance their family's power. And they
surely did order the assassination of more than one rival.
They certainly did not hesitate to get rid of Lucrezia's
second husband, if you recall, and Lucrezia couldn't wait to
get away from them. I think that's very telling. But
(20:50):
why their story is so outrageous compared to other contemporary
political families is kind of a little bit strange, right.
You think that everybody get treated at least sort of
vaguely equally. Um, everyone was power hungry and everyone was corrupt.
But there are a couple of things in play, right
that explained to some degree why they became kind of
(21:14):
the the apex vision of all of this greed and powermongering.
One big problem for the Borgias, as we have seen
before in other episodes, is that they suffered the ill
fortune of having been foreigners in a country that hated foreigners.
If you were not from Italy at this time, it
(21:35):
was believed that you were most likely to be corrupt
and vile. And the Borgias were not originally from Italy.
They were Spaniards and they were trying to rule Italy,
so it's like a double down on their their vileness,
you monsters. Anti Spanish propaganda in Italy was really popular
(21:56):
at this time, and it painted all Spaniards as brutal
and oppressive. But you probably don't get an expression like
and I'm quoting here, and many of you probably have
heard this quote before. If you, if you want to live,
don't dine with the Borges. And few who have dined
(22:18):
with the Borges have lived to tell of it. If
you're not at least a tiny bit, just a little
bit murderous, People say that about my house all the time,
Ye don't, Hollieses like, right, she's gonna cook some weird
thing and you're not gonna want to eat it. Many
(22:41):
Borgia stories actually are centered around Lucretia's brother, Jason Ay
and his appetites, and those appetites are of course agreed
and lust and power and murder. That's pretty well documented,
and it is pretty fair to say that murder by
poison has long been associated with this family aim But
that doesn't mean that every Borgia was guilty of any
(23:04):
of these acts. Some probably didn't do any of the poisoning.
Some just wanted to move away. Please do marry me
off again. That would be great, love to go to
northern Italy. Get right from here. So we're gonna take
this opportunity for a quick break and a word from
our sponsor. But when we come back, we'll be talking
finally right about the Borgia family's poisonous legacy. Welcome back
(23:40):
to Criminalia, where we are about to start getting into
the Borgia's secret recipe for poison. I know, isn't that
like that's that whole like dot done. They have a
secret family recipe. I love it, So keep thinking about
like ads for companies that make food to talk about
their long standing family recipe. Feel like we slow cook
(24:01):
Our poison. Poisons are teasinal summer poisons can It's a
craft poison. It's made with heritage arsnack. So we are
finally here at the poisons. And when it comes to poisons,
(24:25):
the creatious father and brother likely did use many many
of them to their political advantage, and as did many
other politically important families at the time, not just the Boorses,
like we were saying, But it was rumored that the
pair poisoned a cardinal or maybe two, maybe maybe more
um but again one of those stories that modern scholars
(24:48):
think is probably unlikely. Uh, just because everyone else was
doing it, doesn't mean that the Boerses were also doing it,
but it does make their sealicious stories way more fun.
So we have spent a lot of time throughout this
entire season talking about poison being used as a political tool,
used all the way back into antiquity. During the Italian Renaissance,
(25:12):
poisonings were so frequent that most people assumed when anyone
of royalty, or a pope or a cardinal died, basically
anyone with any kind of shred of power, it was
probably not a natural day. We see that so often,
right right, right right, because this is kind of just
a common way for people to go about their affairs
unhindered by the person who had been blocking those affairs
(25:34):
exactly there, And there's a lot to choose from. It
doesn't always have to be arsenic, which the Borges at
least show us that there is a rainbow of poisons
available to us to use. Uh. There is an interesting
history about this family and poisons, and it said that
they were known to use several types, Like I was
just saying, um, when we see a lot in this show,
(25:54):
which is arsenic because it's odorlessen, it's taste. Listen. You
can mix it into things and you won't be there
when the person dies. And it's it's popular poison. But
they also used several other slow acting and powerful poisons,
which included stryct nine and conferred in, which you probably
know as Spanish fly in. In larger quantities, it won't
(26:16):
just engorge your genitals, it will kill you. Um, and
the flower wolf Spain. So poisons would be added to
food and drinks, clothes, gloves which you talked about before,
pages of books, and even flowers. I was interesting. Yeah,
don't smell the tulips, don't do it. Uh. Tasting the
cup of the Borgias came to be a euphemism for
(26:36):
death by porsha. It's a bad way to die, but
it's a good turn of phrase. There are stories describing
poisonous balls which were formed and placed in fireplaces, and
when you burned them, they would produce toxic fumes that
would waft through the house and kill people. That was
an interesting one, um. But where they actually kind of
(26:58):
jump ahead of their peer in the art of poisoning
is how they selected and mixed their poisons. So it
said that the Boorges did that, and they would make
rare poisons because they're apparently Boorges can't just use arsenic.
They would mix them in their cellars with like consider
(27:19):
it with as much thought as if you were saying
making or storing vintage wines. They had poisons. So their
ideal poison was reliable, effective, deceptive, and slow acting, but
strong enough to kill the victim, which, of course, when
it comes to poison, every single one of those attributes
totally makes sense, right. I mean, I see that they
(27:39):
had a list or they're checking off there, like yep,
does it does it all as it should? It's a poison.
Their qua is like, doesn't you know what it's It's
not deceptive, but it is reliable and effective. They've got
a big white board, They've got it off flow charted out,
you know, So the family's poison legacy is so said
(28:00):
to have included a secret family recipe for a poison
called cantarella, and it was a variation on arsenic plus
a few other deadly ingredients. So if you didn't happen
to have arsenic on hand, you could still make it
and you could still kill someone. But the complete composition
of what it was remains mostly unknown except for kind
(28:22):
of one or two ingredients. We don't really know how
to put it together, which is probably a good thing. Interestingly,
the family took cantarella so seriously that it was one
of those things that was only fabricated in their own sellers.
And it had, as Maria said, this secret list of ingredients,
and it mimics the properties of arsenic, perfect for its
(28:45):
odorless and flavorless nature. Whatever it was was kind of
the perfect poison, at least by Borgia standards, right. It
hit all of those bullet points. We do know, though.
There's this one ingredient. Um, it's so gross, but apparently
it was used in the composition of cantarella, and it
(29:06):
was an important ingredient in this poison, which is yuck. Yuh.
Let me tell you the good news is, I suppose
you would be deceased and not have time to be
grossed out when you realized what you had consumed. Okay,
so a little bit of science. Alkaloids, which are naturally
occurring organic compounds that contain nitrogen. We're not unheard of
(29:28):
in the poison business. In fact, for example, the poison
Strycht nine is an alkaloid, right, not not not out
of the realm of possibility that a lot of others
had them, um, but alkaloids that were used in the
Borge's favorite poison. This is where it starts to get gross.
And if you don't want to hear about animals and grossness,
just skip ahead a seconds, I meaning uncomfortable reading it,
(29:55):
So I understand if you just skip ahead. But they
were obtained from poisons at pigs that they poisoned with
arsenic um, and it gets worse. Multiple accounts refer to
how it was the froth from around the pig's mouth
that was collected and then stored for knarella making it's awful. Yeah,
(30:17):
take a moment, it is so awful. But here's the thing.
It was actually a common practice to suspend a poison
like arsenic in animal fats. So this pig story is
actually pretty plausible historically. Yeah, it's it probably. I always
wonder like, who's the person that gets that idea and goes,
you know what we gotta do, Yeah, is poison a
(30:39):
pig and then collect a froth around use that and
that's what we're going to use for our poison. So
symptoms of being poisoned by cantarella include a lot of
the usual stuff that we have seen when we've talked
about poisoning before. So the victim would experience confusion, vomiting,
(30:59):
a dominal pain, and probably diarrhea, all of which could
mimic several other conditions as well as several other poisons. Uh.
It is said that this could kill with precision timing,
so depending on how you manage the dose, you could
make sure they died the same day or even in
a week. Uh, just you know, on carefully measuring out.
(31:21):
And there was of course no antidote right um. And
it was so potent that the poison became known as
the liquor of succession, meaning it was perfect for eliminating
other cardinals and other people in positions of power, but
probably man and cardinal there as needed for Rodrigo and
(31:42):
his family to get ahead. Now, there is a very
popular story about how Lucrezia wore a poison filled rings,
sprinkling cantarella from it into wineglass. One of my favorite
stories about Lucretia. Oh, it's a great story, and who
doesn't love a poison ring? Um, But this doesn't appear
to have actually been true. And if there was a
(32:04):
poison ring in the Borgia family, and that is a
big if it is believed that it was Chase who
actually wore it, I believe it. Just reading about him,
I believe it. Um. So the truth about this alleged
notorious lady poisoner is that it's unlikely that she ever
poisoned anyone at all. Um. And some scholars, modern scholars
(32:28):
like to tell a joke here and I we're gonna
follow suit because it's dead accurate. So instead of poisoning,
it was Lucretia herself who was poisoned by the pen
of history. That's how it goes. How can you not
laugh when you hear that? Like, it's perfect. I think
(32:53):
I'm more laughed at your dramatic delivery, which I practiced. So,
although of course it is way more interesting to think
that she was as corrupt as history has suggested throughout
the centuries, but Lucretia was actually generally admired and respected
in her time by her contemporaries. So it seems pretty
(33:15):
clear looking at modern research and documents from contemporary scholars,
that Lucretia Borge's reputation does not at all precede her
and that the stories of her as a poisoner and
generally as a wicked woman are completely undeserved. As for
(33:37):
Alexander and Chase, that a we hope that the story
that they died from accidental cantarella poisoning were true. We
wish it's not true, not true, but I like the
idea that the Iroonic story would be there, but it
is not. Um and sadly, Lucretia she died at the
age of thirty nine, just ten day is about a
(34:00):
week to ten days after giving birth to a stillborn daughter.
And it said that Alfonds wept at the loss of
and we quote his sweet companion, So at least she
got a quiet end to her life. Yeah, you know,
moving out of Rome was a great thing for Lucretia,
and moving away from her family seems to have done
(34:22):
her really well. Although history doesn't seem to tell us
that Lucretia didn't have any poison, but Hollywood's yours. Uh well, okay,
I know everybody thinks I'm going to do something gross here.
I'm not. The thing that I kept thinking about when
(34:43):
trying to come up with a good cocktail for her
was her many weddings, And I thought about wedding cocktails
and the kinds of drinks that you're often served, like
the signature cocktail and a wedding, And since she had three,
I came up with a cocktail I'm calling thrice wed
and it starts with three fruits, one to represent each
(35:05):
of her husbands. So, uh, you're gonna have some watermelon
and some plum and some apricots. You know, Italy is
the largest producer of apricots in the European Union. I
did not know that. I did not know a little
a little fun factoid for you today. Uh, sole cup
(35:26):
a quarter cup of each of those fruits diced, you know,
just roughly chopped. Throw them in the blender. Um, you're
gonna just crank that up and let them go until
they're smooth. For me, the what I really like about
it is that it smooths out in this it's this
very pretty kind of peachy pink color, but the skins
of the plums don't completely break up, so you have
(35:49):
these little dark flex in it, which is kind of
pretty um. And so then you take that blended fruit
and you pour it. You fill half of a champagne
flute or coope with it, and then add five drops
of bitters on top. I used Elmculate teaky bitters, but
whatever bitter you prefer is probably fine, uh. And then
(36:11):
I just put a little bit of prosecco in and
I mixed it with a cocktail spoon, just to get
everything smoothed out, because otherwise sometimes the alcohol will just
float on top of the fruit and you don't get
the You want them to definitely combine. And then you
can just finish filling it up with prosecco and you
can keep stirring as you go if you want, or
you can just top it off. I'm so excited to
(36:34):
tell you how delicious this one was, because I will
completely I have been very frank before on the show
that like, I'm not a bartender. I just like to
play in the kitchen and play with my blender and
makeup cocktails um, and so often one of the things
that I'm never very good at is balancing a cocktail.
There's always something that's driving the bus. Um. But in
(36:58):
this case, all of these things balance each other so
beautifully that none of them overwhelms it. Like you don't
drink it and go prosecco, and you don't drink it
and go all watermelons. Like it really makes this beautiful,
unique flavor that isn't any one of those things. It's
all of those things very much in lucreation beverage, I
think you nailed it, why hope. And it is super
(37:21):
delicious And I made too much. I started with like
way too much fruit. So then I was like, well,
I have to just keep pouring them because I have
so so much fruit. I don't want it to go
to waste, like incorporate. It even got the seal of
approval from husband Brian, who, as we've said before, is
(37:42):
not a drinker, but he was like, this is delicious, um,
So I think it's a good thing. It's a little um.
It's a little bit summary for this time of year.
But those bidders that I used the mculate have things
like cinnamon and allspice in them, so it warms it
up just a little and makes it feel like a
late summer early fould. I think this is great, Like,
(38:04):
there have been many drinks that you have done so
far that you have liked, but there have only been
a couple where you've been like, this drink is great,
and I love hearing that. Um it's right up there
with White Toad for me, is like my greatest contributions
to the world, right I was thinking, I was actually
(38:24):
thinking specifically of White Toad when I was thinking about
drinks that you have loved. This one also very delicious,
and I didn't. It's another one that I didn't know
if I'd be super into it. I'm not that big
of a prosecco drinker. I'm not really big on fruity
drinks usually, but this one is just but apparently when
you combine them all together you find them delicious. It's
(38:46):
like a prosecco smoothie. It's fantastic, actually exactly what it
sounds like, prossecco smoothie with a little bit of bitters.
We hope that you give it a world. The other
thing I wanted to mention is that, UM, I did
not want to have, you know, five cocktails. So you
can make this as a non alcoholic version and instead
(39:06):
of prosecco, use something like a ginger ale or even
a club soda. Um. But if you still use those bidders,
you get like a nice little little something in it
that tastes more like a smoothie and less like you're
just having like a fruity soda. So um, that's another
option if you are not a drinker. Yes, we want
to make sure everybody can enjoy all of these yummy fruits. Also,
(39:28):
I should point out in case you're doing any calendar
math and you're like, hey, those fruits aren't all going
to be in season at the same time right now.
They're not. I used canned apricots, I'm confessing to you now, um,
and they were fine. Uh, you're gonna blend them anyway.
It's right. There's no shame in a canned fruit in
(39:48):
a mixed drink. And um. And like I said, you
can sub out non alcoholic things for the prosecco and
still get a really yummy, delightful taste adventure. All right,
thank you so much for listening to us blather on
about fruit and blenders as well as poison. We appreciate
our listeners so much. If you would like to subscribe
(40:10):
to the show and you haven't already, you can do that.
It's easy, ast Pie. You can do that on the
I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it
is you listen to your favorite podcasts. Criminalia is a
production of Shawonda land Audio in partnership with I heart Radio.
For more podcasts from Shawonda land Audio, please visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(40:33):
to your favorite shows. H
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Holly Frey
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