Interesting, I thought, how quickly history becomes stories rather than reality; one step already from the truth.
And, such was the sound that the chorus made together, that to have been a part of it at all was enough for me.
You draw(the painter)
There is more glory in peace than in war,
If you love a man for his honesty, you cannot become angry when he shows it.
What was once the language of secrecy is now the language of power.
Venice the peaceful demands Venice the just.
Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister.
He spends the night in prayer. God’s voice, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, tells him what the politician in him already knows: that whatever he might stand to gain from playing one ag...
Together he [Girolamo Savonarola] and his archenemy Lorenzo [de' Medici] would have been the stuff of gargoyles. One could almost imagine the diptych in which their profiles confronted each other, the...
This then is Borgia Rome: a city where a traveler entering the gates must still cross acres of country before he reaches the center, where animals still outnumber citizens, goats and cattle grazing th...
Missing rubs the soul raw.
Either you’re standing under your halos, eyes up to heaven, or you’re munching apples in their faces and flashing your bush. I’m not even sure they know which they prefer. The best you can do is choos...
Any man in love with Cesare is already half in love with his sister. Now, when [Pedro Calderon] shuts his eyes, he cannot see anything else.
When there is fear about the future, it is comforting to take it out on outsiders who can be blamed for the past.
She has always felt safe inside his arms, this beautiful, powerful elder brother, whom so many fear but who has always been as tender as a lover with her.
It is the ones who keep you in thrall to more than their snatches who command the houses and the gowns to go with them. And for that they have first to love themselves.
Ambassadors, of course, do not blush. It is a requisite of the job that they can sustain any manner of insult without any visible change at all to their face.
A young woman seeks sanctuary with us. It is not for us to deny her that right. Tell His Holiness that we will protect her with our lives and care for her until she is ready to leave. Not even Alexand...
The journey from Rome to Siena is harder than its distance warrants. Once outside the great walls of the city the route becomes as treacherous for humans as for animals. Before the coming of Our Lord,...