Today we're in Renaissance Italy, with a family admired by Machiavelli for their audacity

and ruthlessness. A family whose history is said to have inspired Mario Putzo's depiction

of the Cholione's in his novel The Godfather. But do the Borgers deserve their reputation

for depravity? How did they rise to power? How did a man with that many illegitimate children

become Pope? Did his son Chesare commit fractricide? Were their entertainments pure cruelty?

Was their ostentatious extravagance considered magnificent or immoral?

To find out, I'm speaking to Mary Hollingsworth. She holds a PhD in Renaissance art from the

University of East Anglia and is the author of a number of wonderful books on the period,

among them princes of the Renaissance, the Medici, Conclave 1559, the Cardinals hat,

and the book we're going to be talking about today, The Borgers' History's Most Notorious Dynasty.

Mary, it is lovely to see you and I relish the chance to talk to you about Renaissance society.

And the Borgers, this is wonderful. Thank you for being here. Thank you for asking me.

So perhaps we can start with some scene settings, some sort of sense of context of what

Renaissance Italian society in the late 15th century was like. In other words, what do we need to

know to understand the world in which Rodrigo Borgia operated? I think we need to understand for

a start that it's a very class-ridden world. The nobles are completely different from people in

trade and people who work on the land and ownership of people in all sorts ways. It's a period

which we would find quite offensive. People aren't exactly slaves, but there is an awful lot of

ownership of people and expectations that people will do what you told. It's massively more violent

society and life is short, life is much much shorter, although quite a lot of people, particularly

the wealthy, do live quite long lives. There were all sorts of diseases they didn't have jewels for,

you've got appendicitis, that was the end. And childbirth was a major killer of women. So at the

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