Gillian
Vine reviews The House of Borgia.
THE HOUSE OF BORGIA
Christopher Hibbert
Constable & Robinson, $69.99, hbk
The House of Borgia is the last work by popular
historian Christopher Hibbert, who died in December 2008,
aged 84.
The book is a story in which nepotism takes centre stage.
Pope Alexander VI, who died in 1503, was probably the
highest-profile member of the Borgia family, although his
children, Cesare and Lucrezia, come close.
Hibbert traces their lives and those around him, as greed,
murder and the push for ever-greater power dominate
Renaissance Italy.
There are some brilliant scenes in the book, notably the
descriptions of how Alexander VI's servants ransacked his
apartments after his death and of efforts by porters to
squeeze the pontiff into a coffin that was too small.
It was an ignominious end for one who had once wielded so
much power in the military and the Church.
Despite Hibbert's lucid writing, if a reader comes to the
book with no understanding of Church history nor any notion
of the political structure of the warring states of what was
to become Italy centuries later, that can be confusing.
Relationships can be confusing, too.
It would have helped immensely had there been a genealogical
chart and an historic timeline.
Without them, The House of Borgia comes across as
somewhat unfinished.
- Gillian Vine is a Dunedin
writer.
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