The Borgias are a satire on a great form or phase of religion, debasing and destroying it.

They stand on high pedestals, and from their presence radiates the light of the Christian ideal.

In this form we behold and recognize them.

We view their acts through a medium which is permeated with religious ideas.

Without this, and placed on a purely secular stage, the Borgias would have fallen into a position much less conspicuous than that of many other men, and would soon have ceased to be anything more than representatives of a large species.
We possess the history of Alexander VI and Caesar, but of Lucretia Borgia we have little more than a legend, according to which she is a fury, the poison in one hand, the poignard in the other; and yet this baneful personality possessed all the charms and graces.
Victor Hugo painted her as a moral monster, in which form she still treads the operatic stage, and this is the conception which mankind in general have of her.