Spartan Gold: Lucrezia Borgia

pg 441

Their discovery of the lost diary of Lucrezia Borgia, the 15th century Machiavellian political operator/seductress, had been front page news.

Lucrezia Borgia (Italian pronunciation: [luˈkrɛttsja ˈbɔrdʒa]; 18 April 1480 – 24 June 1519) was the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, the powerful Renaissance Valencian who later became Pope Alexander VI, and Vannozza dei Cattanei. Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia. It is often suggested that Cesare and Lucrezia may have had an incestuous relationship.
Lucrezia's family later came to epitomize the ruthless Machiavellian politics and sexual corruption alleged to be characteristic of the Renaissance Papacy. Lucrezia was cast as a femme fatale, a role she has been portrayed as in many artworks, novels, and films.
Very little is known of Lucrezia, and the extent of her complicity in the political machinations of her father and brothers is unclear. They certainly arranged several marriages for her to important or powerful men in order to advance their own political ambitions. Lucrezia was married to Giovanni Sforza (Lord of Pesaro), Alfonso of Aragon (Duke of Bisceglie), and Alfonso I d'Este (Duke of Ferrara). Tradition has it that Alfonso of Aragon was an illegitimate son of the King of Naples and that her brother Cesare may have had him murdered after his political value waned.

 "The man you're looking for is named Pietro Tradonico, the Doge of Venice from 836 to 864. Chronologically he was the 11th doge, but by tradition he is considered the 13th.

Pietro Tradonico (Latin: Petrus Tradonicus) (died 13 September 864), an Istrian by birth, was the Doge of Venice from 836 to 864. He was, according to tradition, the thirteenth doge, though historically he is only the eleventh. His election broke the power of the Participazio. He was illiterate, and forced to sign all state documents with the signum manus. He was a warrior, not an administrator.
He nominated his son Giovanni as co-doge, continuing the process begun a century earlier of establishing a hereditary dukedom and dynastic succession. All previous attempts had failed and this was no different: Giovanni predeceased his father.
He fought the Saracens of Bari and Taranto, who had earlier defeated Venice in the Battle of Sansego, on an island south of Pola. He had to deal not only with Saracen pirates, but with Slavs as well. He led a large fleet against in 839 to punish the Narentines for raiding and slaughtering several Venetian traders returning from Benevento in 834–835. He made peace with Duke Mislav of the Croats of Dalmatia and a Narentine prince by the name of Družak (Drosaico, Marianorum judice). His military assault on the Neretvians in 840 failed and he lost more than 100 men and had to return Venetia. The Neretvians continued to push against him and, in 846, breached Venice itself and raided the neighbouring lagoon city of Kaorle.
In 840, the Emperor Lothair I recognised the independence of Venice and its authority over the lagoon as far as acquas salsas, already recognised by Byzantium. From the latter he received the titles of spatharius and hypatus.

"Catacombs," Andrej said.

Catacombs are human-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place is a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman empire. Many are under cities and have been popularized by stories of their use as war refuges, smugglers' hideouts, or meeting places for cults.

 The first place to be referred to as catacombs was the system of underground tombs between the 2nd and 3rd milestones of the Appian Way in Rome, where the bodies of the apostles Peter and Paul, among others, were said to have been buried. The name of that place in late Latin was catacumbae, a word of obscure origin, possibly deriving from a proper name, or else a corruption of the Latin phrase cata tumbas, "among the tombs". The word referred originally only to the Roman catacombs, but was extended by 1836 to refer to any subterranean receptacle of the dead, as in the 18th-century Paris catacombs.