wife to leave Rome and take up
their abode in his princely seat in Squillace, and he set out on August
7th for that place. It is stated the Pope did not want his children and
nepots about him any longer, and that he also wished to banish his
daughter Lucretia to Valencia.[54]

In the meantime, in July, Caesar had gone to Capua as papal legate, where
he crowned Don Federico, the last of the Aragonese, as King of Naples.
September 4th he returned to Rome.

Alexander had appointed a commission under the direction of two
cardinals for the purpose of divorcing Lucretia from Giovanni Sforza.
These judges showed that Sforza had never consummated the marriage, and
that his spouse was still a virgin, which, according to her contemporary
Matarazzo of Perugia, set all Italy to laughing. Lucretia herself stated
she was willing to swear to this.

During these proceedings her spouse was in Pesaro. Thence he
subsequently went in disguise to Milan to ask the protection of Duke
Ludovico and to get him to use his influence to have his wife, who had
been taken away, restored to him. This was in June. He protested against
the decision which had been pronounced in Rome, and which had been
purchased, and Ludovico il Moro made the naive suggestion that he
subject himself to a test of his capacity in the presence of trustworthy
witnesses, and of the papal legate in Milan, which, however, Sforza
declined to do.[55] Ludovico and his brother Ascanio finally induced
their kinsman to yield, and Sforza, intimidated, declared in writing
that he had never consummated his marriage with Lucretia.[56]

The formal divorce, therefore, took place December 20, 1497, and Sforza
surrendered his wife's dowry of thirty-one thousand ducats.

Although we may assume that Alexander compelled his daughter to consent
to this separation, it does not render our opinion of Lucretia's part in
the scandalous proceedings any less severe; she shows herself to have
had as little will as she had character, and she also perjured herself.
Her punishment was not long delayed, for the divorce proceedings made
her notorious and started terrible rumors regarding her private life.
These reports began to circulate at the time of the murder of Gandia and
of her divorce from Sforza; the cause of both these events was stated to
have been an unmentionable crime. According to a reliable witness of the
day it was the lord of Pesaro himself, injured and exasperated, who
first--and to th