Guicciardini( 1) makes the same statement, without, however, mentioning name of this d'Arignano.
1 Istoria d'Italia.
Now, bastards were by canon law excluded from the purple, and it is probably upon this circumstance that both Infessura and Guicciardini have built the assumption that some such means as these had been adopted to circumvent the law, and--as so often happens in chronicles concerning the Borgias--the assumption is straightway stated as a fact.

But there were other ways of circumventing awkward commandments, and, unfortunately for the accuracy of these statements of Infessura and Guicciardini, another way was taken in this instance.

As early as 1480, Pope Sixtus IV had granted Cesare Borgia--in a Bull dated October 1( 1)--dispensation from proving the legitimacy of his birth.

This entirely removed the necessity for any such subsequent measures as those which are suggested by these chroniclers.
1 See the supplement to the Appendix of Thuasne's edition of Burchard's Diarium.
Moreover, had Cardinal Roderigo desired to fasten the paternity of Cesare on another, there was ready to his hand Vannozza's actual husband, Giorgio della Croce.( 2) When exactly this man became her husband is not to be ascertained.

All that we know is that he was so in 1480, and that she was living with him in that year in a house in Piazza Pizzo di Merlo (now Piazza Sforza Cesarini) not far from the house on Banchi Vecchi which Cardinal Roderigo, as Vice-Chancellor, had converted into a palace for himself, and a palace so sumptuous as to excite the wonder of that magnificent age.
2 D'Arignano is as much a fiction as the rest of Infessura's story.
This Giorgio della Croce was a Milanese, under the protection of Cardinal Roderigo, who had obtained for him a post at the Vatican as apostolic secretary.