The Strange Reputation of Lucrezia Borgia | History for Sleep

She has been called a poisoner, a seductress, and a political weapon. Her name has appeared in operas, novels, and scandals for five hundred years. Almost all of it was invented. This evening we travel to late fifteenth-century Rome, into the narrow alleys and painted palaces of a city running on ambition and rumor. We follow Lucrezia Borgia from her first arranged marriage at thirteen, through the murder of the husband she loved, to her quieter later life in Ferrara. Along the way we take apart each of the four great accusations against her, tracing every one back to the man who said it, the year he said it, and the reason he had. What is left when the rumors clear is a real woman, sold and moved and spoken for, who never once got to tell her own story. A slow and careful evening in Renaissance Italy, for anyone who would like some company tonight.