He had a highly successful career in the church, but his memory is affected by the allegation that he ordered the murder of his own sister and two of her children.

[1] When Battistina died, Luigi ceded his title of marquis to his brother Carlo and determined to enter the ecclesiastical state.

[1] His creation was published in the consistory of 19 February 1496 and he received the red hat and the deaconry of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

[1] Returning to Rome, he lived in the Piazza Scossacavalli, and accompanied the pope hunting in Magliana, and, in 1516, on a trip to North Italy.

[1] In 1510 his sister Giovanna d'Aragona, the widowed Duchess of Amalfi, was discovered to have married her majordomo, Antonio Beccadelli di Bologna, and given birth to two children by him.

Matteo Bandello, who knew her husband, wrote an account of these events, alleging that the Cardinal and his brother had arranged for the Duchess and her children to be strangled, and paid an assassin to kill Antonio.

[2][3] In John Webster's play The Duchess of Malfi, based on these events, Luigi d'Aragona appears in fictionalised form as "The Cardinal", a villainous figure described by the play's version of Antonio in the words, "the spring in his face is nothing but the engend'ring of toads; where he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plot for them than ever was impos'd on Hercules"