City of God

by Cecelia Holland

First published 1979

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3.5(205)

Nicholas Dawson is the highly educated secretary to Ercole Bruni, Florence’s ineffective ambassador at the court of Pope Alexander VI. Nicholas quietly rewrites diplomatic correspondence to compensate for his employer’s failures and uses access to the Roman Curia to advance his own political understanding. His intelligence and concealed sexuality make him both useful and vulnerable in a city where offices, information and intimate relationships are traded as instruments of power.

Cesare Borgia’s campaigns and the ambitions of the papal family draw Nicholas into increasingly dangerous intrigue among ambassadors, cardinals, soldiers and informers. He must decide how far he can manipulate events without becoming disposable to men who treat loyalty as temporary. The novel presents Borgia Rome through an outsider working inside its bureaucracy, connecting private survival with the Italian Wars and the transformation of papal authority into a territorial political project.