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Mary
Hollingsworth.
The
Cardinal’s Hat: Money, Ambition and Everyday Life in the Court of a
Borgia Prince.
Profile
Books, 2005 (previously issued in hardback, 2004).
ISBN
1861977700.
Paperback.
320pp.
Publisher's
recommended price £8.99
An extraordinarily detailed
account of the daily life and political ambitions of a Renaissance
potentate, drawn from a hitherto unpublished archive of original
documents. A tale of gambling, hunting, family feuds, power agendas and
private conflict in Renaissance Italy.
Son of Lucretia Borgia and brother of the Duke of Ferrara, Ippolito
d'Este became Archbishop of Milan at the age of 9 but had to wait
another twenty years before he acquired his coveted cardinal's hat.
This honour was the route to power and wealth in sixteenth-century
Europe - it had little to do with piety.
Ippolito was no devout cleric: he enjoyed gambling, hunting, tennis and
women. This is the story of the five years it took to achieve his
ambition, a story involving family squabbles and private feuds, and the
political agendas of the Pope, the Emperor and the King of France.
Ippolito spent much of this period at the French court, sampling the
sophistication of Paris, the luxuries of Fontainebleau, the pleasures
of hunting in the Loire valley, the excitement of battle in Picardy,
the glamour of an international peace conference at Nice, and the
extreme discomforts of mountain travel.
The Cardinal's Hat
is based entirely on the account books and letters
preserved in the archives at Modena, through which Ippolito emerges
across the centuries with remarkable clarity. The documents also
provide glimpses into the lives of ordinary people, not just his cooks
and stable boys, but shopkeepers, builders, bargemen, peasants and even
beggars. Above all, they provide a unique insight into life in
sixteenth-century Europe.
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