Chapter XI: The Italian School of Poisoners

The study of the criminal methods of using poisons developed into a cult in Italy during the Middle Ages, and the Italian school of poisoners became known throughout Europe. There is authentic record that its members were ready on receipt of certain fees to carry out murder by poison to order.

A document drawn up by Charles King of Navarre throws some light on the systematic manner in which the poisoning of obnoxious persons was carried out. It is in the form of a commission to one Wondreton to poison Charles VI, the Duke of Valois, brother of the King, and his uncles, the Dukes of Berri, Burgundy and Bourbon. It reads:

“Go thou to Paris; thou canst do great service if thou wilt. Do what I tell thee; I will reward thee well. There is a thing which is called sublimed arsenic; if a man eat a bit the size of a pea, he will never survive; Thou wilt find it in Pampeluna, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and in all the good towns thou wilt pass at the apothecaries’ shops. Take it, and powder it; and when thou shalt be in the house of the King, of the Count de Valois his brother, and the Dukes of Berri, Burgundy and Bourbon, draw near and betake thyself to the kitchen, to the larder, to the cellar, or any other place where thy point can best be gained, and put the powder in the soups, meats, or wines; provided that thou canst do it secretly. Otherwise do it not.”

It is satisfactory to learn that the miscreant who was entrusted with this diabolical commission was detected in time, and executed in 1384.

From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century there were schools of poisoners both in Venice and Rome. The Venetian poisoners who first came into notoriety began their operations early in the sixteenth century. At that period the mania for poisoning had risen to such a degree that the governments of the States were formally recognizing secret assassination by poison, and considering the removal of emperors, princes and powerful nobles by this method. This is not a myth, as record of the notorious Council of Ten, which met to consider such plans, and an account of their proceedings still exists. It gives the number of those who voted for and who voted against the proposed removal of certain persons, the reasons for their assassination and the sums paid for their execution. Thus these conspirators quietly and secretly arranged to take the lives of many prominent individuals who displeased them. When the deed was executed it was registered on the margin of their official record by the significant word “Factum.”

On December 15, 1543, John of Ragusa, a Franciscan brother, offered the Council a selection of poisons, and declared himself ready to remove any person whom they deemed objectionable out of the way. He openly stated his terms, which for the first successful case were to be a pension of 1,500 ducats a year, to be increased on the execution of future services. The Presidents, Guolando Duoda and Pietro Guiarini, placed this matter before the Council on January 4, 1544, and on a division it was resolved to accept this patriotic offer, and to experiment first on the Emperor Maximilian. John, who had evidently reduced poisoning to a fine art, submitted afterwards a regular graduated tariff to the Council, which reads as follows:—

For the great Sultan, 500 ducats.

For the King of Spain, 150 ducats, including the expenses of the journey, etc.

For the Duke of Milan, 60 ducats.

For the Marquis of Mantua, 50 ducats.

For the Pope, 100 ducats.

He further adds at the foot of the document, “The farther the journey, the more eminent the man, the more it is necessary to reward the toil and hardships undertaken, and the heavier must be the payment.”

What may be called the Roman school of poisoners became prominent in the early sixteenth century, and their operations continued until the early part of the eighteenth century. During this period the magnitude and daring of their crimes struck terror into the hearts of the chief nobles and rulers of the country. The books on what were called “secrets,” published in Italy about this time, which contain formulæ of various descriptions, contain many allusions to poisons. Stories are told of poisons supposed to be unknown, whose secrets died with their originators.

The mania for poisoning appears to have seized on all classes from the highest to the lowest, and no one who made an enemy was safe. Baptiste Porta, who wrote a book on the subject in 1589, made a careful study of the subject, and describes methods which were no doubt used in his time. He mentions various means for drugging wine, a favourite medium for administering poison. For this purpose belladonna root, nux vomica, aconite and hellebore were employed, all of which are very deadly in their effects. He gives a formula for compounding what he calls a very strong poison named “Venenum Lupinum,” which was composed of aconite, taxus baccata, caustic lime, arsenic, bitter almonds and powdered glass. These substances were to be mixed with honey into a stiff paste and made into pills the size of hazel nut. His method of poisoning a sleeping person was to make a mixture of hemlock juice, bruised stramonium, belladonna and opium, which was to be placed in a leaden box with a perfectly fitting lid, and allowed to ferment for several days. When this was done it was to be uncovered and placed under the nose of the intended victim while asleep. So long as the individual only smelt and did not swallow the compound, it could not have done him much harm.

During the early part of the seventeenth century the southern parts of Italy, including Sicily, also appear to have been infested by unscrupulous practitioners in the use of poison, and Naples became a centre for this nefarious trade. The most notorious of these criminals whose name has been left on record is the woman named Toffana, who, there is little doubt, was responsible indirectly for the deaths of hundreds of people. About 1650, when she was little more than a girl, she began her evil career in Palermo, but in 1659, during the pontificate of Alexander VII, she removed to Naples and made it the centre of her operations. Whether she herself devised the poison which is associated with her name, or whether she obtained the knowledge from a confederate, is not known, but her method was to prepare the solution and bottle it in special phials bearing the representation of some saint, generally Saint Nicholas of Bari, who was connected with a medicinal spring, the water of which had a reputation for healing. Sometimes she used other names for her poisonous solution, such as “Aquetta di Napoli,” “Manna of St. Nicholas di Bari,” or gave her own name to it, “Aqua Toffana.” These bottles of poison were freely sold, especially to women, reputedly as a cosmetic for application to the skin to improve the complexion, for which purpose, owing to its active constituent being arsenic, it probably proved effective. Anyone in the secret could buy the poison for its supposed external application, and Toffana took care only to deal with individuals after due safeguards had been built up. She changed her abode so frequently, and adopted so many disguises, that even when suspicion actually fell upon her after many mysterious deaths, detection was rendered very difficult. She cunningly worked on the minds of her clients who were susceptible to religious or superstitious influences, and those who were unaware of the origin of her deadly solution were told it was a certain miraculous fluid supposed to ooze from the tomb of St. Nicholas, a saint of healing.

[_Copyright._

A BOTTLE WITH REPRESENTATION OF ST. NICHOLAS OF BARI SAID TO HAVE BEEN
USED FOR AQUA TOFFANA.
]

Her preparations were doubtless bought by many in good faith in the belief that the liquid had miraculous properties, but those who knew the secret, especially women, often used it for criminal purposes, and it is estimated that over six hundred persons were poisoned by her preparations in Naples and Rome. Two Popes and other Church dignitaries are said to have fallen victims to the poison, and it was not until after a long career, and when Toffana had reached the age of seventy, that she was found to be the originator of these wholesale crimes. In a letter addressed to Hoffman[7] by Garcelli, physician to the Emperor Charles VI of Austria, he informed him that being Governor of Naples at the time, he knew that the Aquetta di Napoli was the dread of every noble family in the city, and that the subject was investigated legally. He thus had the opportunity of examining all the documents, and found the poison to consist of a solution of arsenic, which was of such strength that from four to six drops in water or wine was said to kill an adult, and that it was colourless, transparent and tasteless.

Footnote 7:

_Medicinia Rationalis Systematica_, i. 198.

When the manufacture and sale of the poison was at last traced to Toffana, she took refuge in a convent, where, under the privileges of the place, she bade defiance for some time to the officers of justice, and continued to vend her solution from the very bosom of the Church until the scandal became at length too great to be tolerated. She was then dragged from her refuge and thrown into prison. A great outcry was raised by the clergy at this violation of their privileges, and the people, unwilling to be defrauded of their right to use the poison, joined in the clamour of the priests. It was only by circulating a report that she had poisoned the wells in the city, that the current of public sentiment could be turned against her. Being put to the rack she confessed her crimes, and named those who had afforded her protection. They were immediately arrested in various churches and monasteries. It was stated that the day before her last flight from justice, she had sent two boxes of her “manna” to Rome. They were found in the custom-house in that city. The archbishop still murmured at her being torn from a privileged asylum and accordingly the authorities contrived to have her strangled and thrown into the courtyard of the convent from which she had been taken in 1709. Her practices, however, did not cease at her death, and, according to Keysler, who travelled in Southern Italy in the early part of the eighteenth century, the _aquetta_ continued to be prepared in great quantities for some time afterwards.

There was naturally much mystery at the time as to the composition of Aqua Toffana and the most extraordinary properties were attributed to it. Its alleged effects are described by Behrens, a contemporary writer, who states that on taking it,

“a certain indescribable change is felt in the whole body, which leads the person to complain to his physician. The physician examines and reflects, but finds no symptoms either external or internal, no vomiting, no inflammation, no fever. In short, he can only advise patience, strict regimen, and laxatives. The malady, however, creeps on, and the physician is again sent for. Still he cannot detect any symptoms of note. Meanwhile the poison takes firmer hold of the system; languor, wearisomeness, and loathing of food continue; the nobler organs gradually become torpid, and the lungs in particular at length begin to suffer. In a word, the malady, from the first is incurable; the unhappy victim pines away insensibly even in the hands of the physician, and thus he is brought to a miserable end through months or years, according to his enemy’s desire.”

Father Labat, in his _Travels in Italy_, observes that the association of the name of St. Nicholas of Bari with Aqua Toffana was a great advantage to her, as there was such a preparation in reality, a sacred water, and Toffana’s solution, under the name “Manna of St. Nicholas di Bari,” was able to pass the Custom-house with little scrutiny.

Toffana had many imitators, who continued to practise for some time after her death. A similar scheme was attempted with a poisonous preparation which was sold for cosmetic purposes, called “Aquetta di Perugia.” It is said to have been prepared by killing a hog, disjointing it, and strewing the pieces with white arsenic, which was well rubbed in, and finally collecting the juice which dropped from the meat itself.

This preparation was supposed to be a much stronger and powerful poison than arsenic, and was more rapid in its action.

Some idea of the extent to which criminal poisoning was carried in Italy may be gathered from an account of a secret society of women that was formed in Rome in 1659. Many of the members were young married women belonging to some of the best and wealthiest families of that city. They apparently met together with the chief object of plotting to destroy the lives of their husbands or members of families connected with them. They gathered at regular intervals at the house of a woman called Hieronyma Spara, who was reputed to be a sorceress. She provided the members of the Society with the poison necessary for their purposes, and planned and instructed them how to use it.

Operations had been carried on for some time before the existence of the Society was discovered, “and,” says a contemporary writer, “the hardened old hag passed the ordeal of the rack without confession, but another woman divulged the secrets of the sisterhood, and La Spara, together with twelve other women implicated, were hanged.” Many others were publicly whipped through the streets of the city.

A curious story is told of D’Annunzio, the Italian poet, who became prominent in 1921 in the seizure of Fiume, which he held as dictator for some time. It is stated that when serving in the Italian Air Force, which he did with distinction during the war, it was his custom to carry a small bottle of a very powerful poison in his pocket which he used to allude to invariably as “My Pharmic Liberator.” This poison he is said to have had concocted for him in Venice, and it was made from a mediæval recipe only known to the Venetian poisoners. It is said that when he was performing his memorable raid over Vienna the engines of his aeroplane stopped and restarted thrice over, and feeling certain that a descent over enemy territory was inevitable, he got his phial ready in order that the Austrians should not capture him alive. At that very moment he is said to have seen an apparition of his mother, who had died two years beforehand, who bade him cast away all fears and he would get through. He is said also to have kept his phial of poison close at his hand during the bombardment of Fiume, and his friends had to keep perpetual watch upon him during those critical hours.