Banquet of Chestnuts
The Banquet of Chestnuts, known more properly as the Ballet of Chestnuts, refers to a fête in Rome, and particularly to a supper held in the Papal Palace by Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI on October 30, 1501. An account of the banquet is preserved in a Latin diary by Protonotary Apostolic and Master of Ceremonies Johann Burchard (it is entitled Liber Notarum).
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[edit] History
The banquet was given in Cesare's apartments in the Palazzo Apostolico. Fifty prostitutes or courtesans were in attendance for the entertainment of the banquet guests. After the food was eaten, lamp stands holding lighted candles were placed on the floor and chestnuts strewn about. The clothes of the courtesans were auctioned; then the prostitutes and the guests crawled naked among the lamp stands to pick up the chestnuts. Immediately following the spectacle, members of the clergy and other party guests together engaged in sexual activity with the prostitutes.[1] According to Burchard: "Prizes were offered--silken doublets, pairs of shoes, hats and other garments--for those men who were most successful with the prostitutes."[2]
According to William Manchester: "Servants kept score of each man's orgasms, for the pope greatly admired virility and measured a man's machismo by his ejaculative capacity."[3] Manchester also refers to the use of sex toys.[4] Burchard, however, makes no reference to this in his account of the banquet.[2]
[edit] Alternative view
Vatican researcher Right Reverend Monsignor Peter de Roo (1839-1926), strongly rejects the story of the "fifty courtesans" as described in Louis Thuasne's edition of Burchard's diary (vol. 3). While granting that Cesare Borgia may have indeed given a feast at the Vatican,[5] de Roo attempts, through exhaustive research, to refute the notion that the Borgias - certainly not the pope - could have possibly participated in "a scene truly bestial" such as Burchard describes, on grounds that it would be inconsistent with:
- Alexander VI's essentially decent but much maligned character[6]
- Burchard's otherwise "decent ways" of writing.[7]
- The majority consensus of modern writers, who either question the story, or reject it as outright falsehood.[8]:
Msgr. de Roo believes that a more credible explanation for the alleged "orgy" is a later interpolation of events by those hostile to Alexander:
To support the interpolated story, the enemies of pope Alexander VI bring forth of late other writers of the time. So does Thuasne produce Matarazzo, or the Chronicle ascribed to him. But Matarazzo essentially alters the tale, taking away its greatest odium, when he replaces Burchard's courtesans and valets with ladies and gentlemen of the court. Thuasne also quotes Francis Pepi, who writes that it was Cesar de Borgia, not the Pontiff, who invited low harlots, and who cuts away the most abominable details, by saying that they passed the night in dancing and laughing, and by leaving out the presence of Lucretia de Borgia. The anonymous letter to Silvio Savelli is also mentioned to prop up the report of Burchard's diary. This letter, however, states only that the courtesans were invited to eat at the palace and offered a most shocking sight. It notices no further particulars nor the presence of any of the Borgias.[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Mundt 2006, p. 239.
- ^ a b Burchard, Johann (1963). Liber Notarum [At the Court of the Borgia]. Trans. Geoffray Parker. London: Folio Society.
- ^ Manchester 1992, p. 79.
- ^ Manchester, William (1992). A World Lit Only by Fire. Boston, New York and London: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0316545562.
- ^ "After all the witnesses have been heard, there seems to remain the possibility of a feast given by Cesar de Borgia, at his private apartments in the Vatican palace, to some ladies and gentlemen of his court; a feast transformed into an immoral monstrosity, as the colored rumor of it spread farther and farther. Before it had attained all its viciousness, the rumor reached Bologna, where it was picked up by the compiler of Matarazzo's chronicle, who declares that he believes it, because, he says, my vouchers are not only the people of Rome but of all Italy. This remark, Gregorovius sensibly observes, reveals the true source of the scandalous tale to be the talk of the common people. Matarazzo is of no authority, he adds; and who shall ever believe that Lucretia, the newly married bride of Alfonso of Este, whom she was on the point of joining in Ferrara, was a willing spectator of the disgraceful scene." Monsignor Peter de Roo (1924), Material for a History of Pope Alexander VI, His Relatives and His Time, 5 vols.), Bruges, Desclée, De Brouwer, vol. 5, p. 196. [1] HathiTrust has no preview, but does allow basic searches to find frequency and page number of specific words and phrases for all five volumes.
- ^ In 5 volumes totaling nearly 3 thousand pages, and including many unpublished documents,* Msgr. de Roo labors to defend his thesis that pope Alexander, far from being a monster of vice (as he has so often been portrayed) was, on the contrary, "a man of good moral character and an excellent Pope." Material, vol. 1, preface, xi. [2]
* "[Peter de Roo] must have devoted to his task many years of research among the Vatican archives and elsewhere. As he tells us himself in a characteristic passage: "We continued our search after facts and proofs from country to country, and spared neither labour nor money in order to thoroughly investigate who was Alexander VI., of what he had been accused, and especially what he had done." Whether all this toil has been profitably expended is a matter upon which opinions are likely to differ. But we must in any case do Mgr. de Roo the justice of admitting that he has succeeded in compiling from original and often unpublished sources a much more copious record of the pontiff's creditable activities than has ever been presented to the world before." -- Pope Alexander VI and His Latest Biographer, in The Month, April, 1925, Volume 145, p. 289.[3] - ^ "It is evident that Burchard was not an eyewitness of the orgy, and nowhere does he, in his long diary, write such foul matter, nowhere does he, even from hearsay, report any occurrence apt to injure the good reputation of any of the Borgias. How could he here suddenly descend from his accustomed decent ways to the lowest rank of a filthy writer, how could he describe a scene calculated to ruin the character of all the Borgias at once? Burchard is certainly not himself on this occasion. It is no wonder, therefore, if every modern historian either denies or discusses the genuineness of this Diary's passage." de Roo, Material, vol. 5, p. 195. [4]
- ^ De Roo writes: While "Pastor believes it and the whole outrageous story as found in Burchard's diary, to be a counterpart of the pretended carousal in Siena, which we have proved to amount to nothing and to be a slanderous forgery.... [he nevertheless] acknowledges the whole affair to be probably exaggerated. Nay, Thuasne himself admits that many historians, little suspected of partiality towards Alexander VI, have refused to believe the tale, 'l'historiette', on account of the scandalous immorality which it supposes - and for other reasons. Gregorovius, the bitter enemy of pope Alexander VI and of all popes, strongly rejects the scandal of the fifty courtesans, and calls it a fib and a worthless anecdote." Material, vol. 5, pp.196-197. [5]
- ^ de Roo, Material, vol. 5, pp. 195-196.[6]
[edit] Bibliography
- John (Johann) Burchard, Pope Alexander VI and his Court: extracts from the Latin diary of the Papal Master of Ceremonies, 1484–1506; ed. F. L. Glaser, New York, 1921
- Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly. New York: Knopf, 1984; p. 106 ISBN 0394527771; another issue has ISBN 0-349-13365-4
- Burgo Partridge, A History of Orgies, Bonanza Books, 1960, p.106
