Giovanni Borgia, 2nd Duke of Gandía. (part 1).Giovanni Borgia, 2nd Duke of Gandía (Spanish: Juan de Borja; Valencian: Joan Borja; c. 1476 – 14 June 1497) was the second child of Pope Alexander VI and Vannozza dei Cattanei and a member of the House of Borgia. He was the brother of Cesare, Gioffre, and Lucrezia Borgia. Giovanni Borgia was the pope's favourite son, and Alexander VI granted him important positions and honours. He was murdered in Rome on 14 June 1497. The case remained unsolved and is still considered one of the most notorious scandals of the Borgia era. Early life. Giovanni Borgia was born in Rome around 1476 to Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia and his mistress, Vannozza dei Cattanei. He was the second son of the couple, after the firstborn Cesare. No exact birth dates are known for him and his brother, and Giovanni was long thought to be the couple's eldest son, but modern research agrees that he must have been younger than Cesare. Cesare and Giovanni were brought up together in a house provided by their father, probably supervised by his confidant, Adriana de Mila. An instrument of 29 January 1483 removed the guardianship of Giovanni from his mother's family and gave it to his older half-brother, Pier Luigi and another relative, Otto Borgia. Pier Luigi died in September 1488 and by his will, Giovanni succeeded him as the 2nd Duke of Gandía. The duchy was located in the Kingdom of Valencia, the Borgia's ancestral homeland, and it was cobbled together by Rodrigo Borgia in 1485 with the help of his patron, King Ferdinand II of Aragon. A marriage contract was written on 13 December 1488 for Giovanni and María Enríquez de Luna, the king's first cousin, who had been betrothed to his brother, Pier Luigi. Because Giovanni was only twelve years old, the wedding was postponed. The situation changed four years later when Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia was elected pope as Alexander VI. A political alliance between the Crown of Aragon and the papacy made the long-planned union more urgent for both sides. Years in Spain. In August 1493, Alexander VI sent the then-17 year-old Giovanni to Spain equipped with a large amount of textiles, jewels, silver and portable goods. "He left Rome loaded with loot and was expected to return next year to make more," wrote the ambassador from Mantua, Giovanni Lucido Cattanei. Giovanni was received with great ceremony by the Catholic Monarchs in the Royal Palace of Barcelona. His wedding to María Enríquez was celebrated at the end of September 1493. Initially there were rumours, to the great dismay of the pope, that the marriage was not consummated. Alexander VI rebuked his son in a letter dated 30 November 1493, and repeatedly advised him to be a good husband. Eventually, María Enríquez gave birth to two children. Juan de Borja y Enríquez (later the 3rd Duke of Gandía) was born on 10 November 1494. A daughter, Isabel de Borja y Enríquez, was born on 15 January 1497, seven months after Giovanni's departure to Rome; she grew up to be abbess of Santa Clara in Gandía with the name Francisca de Jesús. Giovanni Borgia spent three years in Spain where he kept a sizeable court of 130 noblemen and their entourage. The pope was constantly worried about his reckless spending, and urged his son to live more moderately and expand his estate. Alexander VI was a keen businessman, and the region around Gandía was a major centre of sugarcane production where buying up lands of the cash-strapped local nobility was a smart plan. In this regard, Giovanni, like his brother before, simply acted as his father's manager in the duchy but his acquisitions were limited. Alexander hoped that his son would receive large estates in the recently conquered Kingdom of Granada and become an important figure at the Spanish court. However, the Catholic Monarchs did not heap any more favours on the duke. Queen Isabella was particularly annoyed that the pope was so focused on the promotion of his children, and refused to provide any assistance in this regard. Still, the pope was relentless in this pursuit: he managed to get the new King of Naples, Alfonso II, to grant the fiefdom of Tricarico and the counties of Carinola, Claramonte and Lauria, worth 12,000 ducats a year, to Giovanni on the occasion of his coronation in May 1494. However, the subsequent Italian campaign of Charles VIII of France made these Neapolitan estates unavailable for the Borgias. The young man was already homesick in 1494, and wrote letters to his father to send ships to take him back to Rome. "Each day seems like a year to me in the delay of those ships which His Holiness has written in recent days he will send soon", he wrote to his brother, Cesare. At this point, Giovanni Borgia was effectively a pawn in the hands of the Catholic Monarchs, as his presence in Spain guaranteed the alliance between the House of Aragon and the papacy against the French. Captain General of the Church. The Duke of Gandía was...
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Jun 29 202616 mins