venetia_sassy | Giulia la bella (Reply)

Had an osteopath appointment today for the first time in a couple of years. Our last osteopath is now working full-time at his northern beaches practice and it really is just a bit far away. Just a bit. *g* So we decided to try a new local practice and we're both quite pleased so far. But an osteo treatment always leaves me feeling exhausted so when I came home I watched another documentary rather than trying for anything active. (I did manage to make dinner but wow, I think I'll fall asleep early tonight. *yawns*)

*

The doco was Famous Mistresses: The Pope's Mistress. Fascinating subject but the doco ... was pretty lousy. Florid narration and cringe-worthy historical re-enactments; skipping from one subject to another with little detail given to any; the information presented could have taken half the time. And having looked up the various persons on Wiki, I'm confused as to various details (and at this point, willing to give more credence to Wikipedia.)

Forget the doco. Some basics: Giulia Farnese became the mistress of Rodrigo Borgia (later Pope Alexander VI) in 1489, while she was still a teenager and he was a high-ranking cardinal in Rome, living with his then-mistress, Vannozza dei Cattanei. Giulia used her influence with him to have her brother Alessandro (later Pope Paul III) made a cardinal. Her daughter was reportedly fathered by Borgia rather than her husband and she was friends with Borgia's daughter, Lucrezia Borgia.

Nearly everything else stated in the documentary is contradicted by online sources so I won't go into details, except to say that it was a time of remarkable licentiousness and corruption within the Vatican, where priests - and popes - lived openly with their mistresses and bribery and murder were commonplace. And yet it was Alessandro, who was known as the "Cardinal of the skirts" because of Giulia's influence, who later became a reforming influence on the Church. Go figure.

The way the doco skipped from subject to subject was irritating because all of these people were interesting. And yet, the doco focused (as much as it focused) on Giulia about whom little is known. Would be an interesting time and place to read about though ...