Wednesday, 8 February 2012

Aims

Recently I have managed to get a good block of reading done for Hibbert's book. I'm past halfway now and while I still have 140-150 pages left to read the last 60-70 pages refer to what occured after Rodrigo's death in 1503. This means that most of the information that I should be able to gather from Rodrigo's life in this book will finish with roughly 70-90 pages left. After I finish this book I shall be looking back over the chapters and taking out main points/areas concerning my topic/question.
So far, I feel my progress has been good concerning the research, but I feel right now that I have enough information and sources available to me concerning Rodrigo's life. I now need to look more at debates and views in reference to Rodrigo's behaviour/actions and whether he was not as horrible as many claim. This brings me to my next point, I feel that my main question should be around the lines of:
"In the context of the Italian Renaissance and the Renaissance Papacy, was Pope Alexander VI or Rodrigo Borgia based on his actions/behaviour an appalling Pope who committed various crimes or was he a decent Pope and person, with his controversial status being entirely fabricated?

I want to ask questions such as:
"Who was Rodrigo Borgia?"
"How his life panned out before and after his rise to the papacy, even leading up to his death"
"What actions and decisions he made during his reign"
"Who were his allies and who were his enemies?"
"What did others think of him?"
"What did he do to become marked with this controversial status?"
"Who made negative claims against him and were these claims factual or made up?"
"Did he do more good than bad, or more bad than good during his time as Pope?"
"How do Historians interpret Rodrigo as a Pope?"

These are the series of questions I'm thinking of tackling so far. Thoughts and opinions concerning whether I'm on the right track or not are appreciated. Also, as I said before I was going to write about both : "The March of Folly" and "The Borgias and their enemies" in detail this week, but I've decided instead to push that back abit and put two posts up soon regarding both books.

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