"Italian fruit ripens faster!" According to popular legend, this was what Bona was supposed to say in 1518, when her newly married husband noticed the first signs of pregnancy in her. Zygmunt easily counted that the child could not be his, and was conceived in Italy. And it was only the first in a series of romances that were alleged against the queen.
According to one version of the above story, the naive ruler believed a lying Italian viper; according to another - a real scandal broke out at Wawel. Whatever the case, the gossipers were rubbing their hands. The story didn't end there. An extensive search was carried out, probably at the behest of hostile courts, for the alleged lovers of the queen. The action echoed even a hundred years later, when two Italians, Sylwiusz and Askaniusz Coron, published a chronicle filled with spicy details, sometimes even pornographic, The Truth About Princes.
Is it appropriate to sleep with the son of your mother's lover?
According to this early modern harlequin, before leaving for Poland, Bona was embroiled in a promiscuous love quadrangle . Her lover was the Neapolitan aristocrat Hektor Pignatelli, and her mother's lover - the father of the young man. The shameless relationship was brought to an end only by the marriage of Bona. Hektor did not want to take her to the Vistula River with her and continue the romance behind the Polish king's back. As if that were not enough, he quickly found consolation in the arms of another fan.
Thanks to the black legend spread by the Habsburgs, Bona is still considered a dissolute murderer ...
Offended to the living Sforza, she could not turn a blind eye to such an insult. Burning with hatred and thirst for revenge, she ordered her agents to poison the unfaithful lover. The scandalous chronicles by a certain Filonico Alicanasse, which had been published earlier, were in a similar vein. Also according to this reading, Bona was involved in the worst sins against morality.
In turn, the German Chronicle of von Zimmern graphs from the 1660s, it told a legend that was as offensive as it was demeaning. Bona is depicted there as a stupid Italian goose. Allegedly, Sforzówna was so naive that on her way to Poland in 1518 she believed a random member of the retinue that he was in fact King Sigismund in disguise. Throughout the journey, she gave him her body at night. It was only before the Polish border that the alleged monarch disappeared, explaining that he had to prepare the wedding ceremony. The mystery was cleared up shortly after Bona arrived in Krakow. The king who welcomed her outside the city was a completely different man.
There was, however, no time for translations. The real Polish monarch immediately became passionate when he saw his new wife. Feeling that he would not be able to keep his lust in check, he ordered that he be immediately left alone with Bona. The herald cried out:"Everyone leave! Our king wants to copulate! ” . The moment of bodily elation quickly turned into a moment of humiliation. The ruler was horrified to discover that Bona was not a virgin at all.
Find out what is truth and what is a lie in the history of Bona Sforza thanks to the latest book by Kamil Janicki "Ladies of the Golden Age" (Horizon Mark 2014).
Half-Virgin of Naples
In the light of legends, the queen's actions did not end even with her marriage to Zygmunt Jagiellończyk. The aging king, instead of cooling the queen's temperament, only inflamed her need to seek new erotic sensations. The new secular tradition introduced by Bona raised the most doubts among the public. The official version was as follows. The Queen, as a caring lady and guardian of the fraucimer, not only cared for the good marriage of her maids, but also for their safe pregnancy and childbirth. Therefore, during this particular period, she invited former members of the fraucimer back to the court, where they were to stay under the care of the best doctors and midwives until they were dissolved.
The gossip version differed in several key points. According to it, pregnant women did not get pregnant, but Bona herself, basking in pleasures without restrictions. Everything else was just a smoke screen.
Carefully selected "surrogate mother" came to the court several months in advance, hid with the queen in the privacy of her chambers, and when the new bastard finally came into the world, she returned home with him as her own child. Which version was true? The former is beyond doubt.
Zygmunt Stary in the last years of his life.
All the Queen's bastards
Rumors of the queen's erotic appetites have fired the imagination for centuries, but there is not a shred of evidence to back them up. Even Bona's fiercest enemies did not believe the fucking stories in confidential conversations and correspondence. Stanisław Górski, who hated Sforzów (her own secretary, by the way!) Wrote to his friend, Klemens Janicki:
Your ode made me suspect that something had been said that in this place where the highest authority is located, there was a sin against shyness. And I swear to you by all the saints that if they say so, it is basically a lie and the greatest lie.
Later, Górski even got the suggestion that he would like the rumors to be true. Then he could:"confess everything to [Janicki] because of our mutual kindness and friendship." The reality, however, could not be enchanted. The secretary reluctantly, reluctantly, but was forced to admit that at Wawel "everything is so clean, so spotless that even the slightest suspicion of such a stain cannot take place."
Even if he - a remarkable moral rigor who searches for sins and blasphemies everywhere - saw nothing, apparently there was nothing to discern. The same is true of Bona's adolescent romances. The whole story of "fast-ripening fruit" has clearly been pulled out of the finger. Bona's first child was born exactly nine months after her marriage to Zygmunt, and real historians - interested in facts, not inventions - failed to locate any trace of the young princess' amorous outbursts in Italy.
The myth of the debauched queen
The same goes for the rest of Bona's life. If the queen wanted to have any affair, she would have had more than enough opportunity to do so. Betrayal, also by women, was not uncommon in this era. Bona could easily spice up Zygmunt's horns. The only thing the queen would have to take into account in such a situation was the knowledge of the environment. In front of the manor of over a hundred, which accompanied her at any time of the day or night, it was impossible to hide a relationship with another man. So if such a relationship was not noted in reliable sources - then apparently it was not.
On the one hand, it is a conclusion that restores the honor of the queen who has been humiliated and spat on for several hundred years. On the other hand, this is an extremely sad conclusion. It turns out that Bona has never known true, fulfilled love throughout her life. She probably didn't even get carried away by any unfulfilled feeling - no fantasy that would help her get through difficult days in a hostile environment waiting for her every stumble.
Bona at a mature age. A drawing by Jan Matejko.
For the sake of the family, for her mother's and her own ambitions, she married an elderly, ugly and uninteresting man . Due to the dignity of the house and the honor of her son, she did not even allow herself to talk more freely with other men, let alone any intimacy. She treated every member of the opposite sex, even the most devoted and sympathetic, with imperious coldness. As if she was afraid that a different approach could lead to a catastrophe unnoticed. Anyway, it only deepened the hatred for her.
Zygmunt's courtiers accused her of having brought dissolute customs with her to Poland. The truth was, however, that revolts and indecency were commonplace at the bachelor and widow court of Sigismund before, not after Bona's arrival. It was she who put an end to the indecent games and the Horacian belief that you should have fun every day as if it were the last one. A diplomat even praised the queen for "putting away Polish drunkenness". And the people around the king could not forgive her for anything.
Source:
The text of the article is an excerpt from the latest book by Kamil Janicki, entitled "Ladies of the Golden Age" (Znak Horyzont 2014). Buy with a discount on empik.com