Project Gutenberg 2025-10-21 Public domain in the USA. 2174 Rolfe, Frederick 1860 1913 Rolfe, Fr. (Frederick) Corvo, Baron Rolfe, Frederick William Prospero 02009217 Chronicles of the house of Borgia $aLondon :$bGrant Richards, $c1901. Richard Tonsing, Hannah Wilson, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) "Chronicles of the house of Borgia" by Frederick Rolfe is a historical account written in the early 20th century. It reassesses the Borgia dynasty within the tumultuous world of the Italian Renaissance and papal power, challenging lurid legends and arguing from close scrutiny of sources as it traces the family’s rise from Spain to Rome, especially under Popes Calixtus III and Alexander VI. The opening of the book sets out Rolfe’s stance: great houses rise and fall swiftly, the Borgias have been used as a canvas for exaggeration, and many chroniclers are biased, so the narrative will weigh testimony and strip away calumny. The story then begins in 1455, amid the shock of Constantinople’s fall and the influx of Greek learning into Italy, contrasting Nicholas V’s cultural flowering with Rome’s alarm at the Turkish threat. Rolfe details the conclave after Nicholas’s death: factions led by Colonna and Orsini, the near-choice of Bessarion, and the compromise election of the Spanish canonist Alonso de Borja as Calixtus III. A concise genealogy introduces the Borja roots in Valencia, explains contemporary norms about legitimacy, and sketches Alonso’s service to King Alfonso of Aragon and his diplomatic skill in ending schisms. The narrative dramatizes Calixtus’s coronation and the Orsini-led riot at the Lateran, then portrays him as austere, legally minded, and focused on a crusade rather than arts—refuting the tale that he dispersed the Vatican library and illustrating his patronage through the Lorenzo Valla episode. It closes with his firm handling of Emperor Frederick’s envoys and his public vow to wage relentless war against the Turks. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://archive.org/details/chroniclesofhous00rolf/ 20231203114044rolfe 1901 gb en Italy -- History -- 1492-1559 Borgia family Borja, Francisco de, Saint, 1510-1572 DG Text 986402 2025-11-30T10:39:51.976869 text/html 956413 2025-10-21T11:34:11 text/html 2828827 2025-11-30T10:40:06.059325 application/epub+zip 2841205 2025-11-30T10:39:55.232360 application/epub+zip 569216 2025-11-30T10:39:53.502860 application/epub+zip 3592347 2025-11-30T10:40:13.885259 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 3547617 2025-11-30T10:40:04.474330 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 881026 2025-11-30T10:39:50.055897 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 861070 2025-10-21T11:34:11 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 16348 2025-11-30T10:40:14.059257 application/rdf+xml 17253 2025-11-30T10:39:53.913871 image/jpeg 2526 2025-11-30T10:39:53.707868 image/jpeg 3906366 2025-11-30T10:39:52.116925 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia