Chapter V: Social and Domestic Morals: Part I (3)

It was the custom of Italians in the 16th and 17th centuries to compose and circulate narratives of tragic or pathetic incidents in real life. They were intended to satisfy curiosity in an age when newspapers and law reports did not exist, and also to suit the taste of ladies and gentlemen versed in Boccaccio and Bandello. Resembling the London letters of our ancestors, they passed from hand to hand, rarely found their way into the printing office, and when they had performed their task were left to moulder in the dust of bookcases. The private archives of noble families abound in volumes of such tales, and some may still be found upon the shelves of public libraries. These MS. collections furnish a mine of inexhaustible riches to the student of manners. When checked by legal documents, they frequently reveal carelessness, inaccuracy, or even willful distortion of facts. The genius of the Novella, so paramount in popular Italian literature of that epoch, presided over their composition, adding _intreccio_ to disconnected facts, heightening sympathy by the suggestion of romantic motives, turning the heroes or the heroines of their adventures into saints, and blackening the faces of the villains. Yet these stories, pretending to be veracious and aiming at information no less than entertainment, present us with even a more vivid picture of customs than the Novelle. By their truthful touches of landscape and incident painting, by their unconscious revelation of contemporary sentiment in dialogue and ethical analysis of motives, they enable us to give form and substance to the drier details of the law-courts. One of these narratives I propose to condense from the transcript made by Henri Beyle, for the sake of the light it throws upon the tragedy of the Caraffa family.[207] It opens with an account of Paul IV.'s ascent to power and a description of his nephews. Don Giovanni, the eldest son of the Count of Montorio, was married to Violante de Cardona, sister of the Count Aliffe. Paul invested him with the Duchy of Palliano, which he wrested from Marc Antonio Colonna. Don Carlo, the second son, who had passed his life as a soldier, entered the Sacred College; and Don Antonio, the third, was created Marquis of Montebello. The cardinal, as prime minister, assumed the reins of government in Rome. The Duke of Palliano disposed of the Papal soldiery. The Marquis of Montebello, commanding the guard of the palace, excluded or admitted persons at his pleasure. Surrounded by these nephews, Paul saw only with their eyes, heard only what they whispered to him, and unwittingly lent his authority to their lawlessness. They exercised an unlimited tyranny in Rome, laying hands on property and abusing their position to gratify their lusts. No woman who had the misfortune to please them was safe; and the cells of convents were as little respected as the palaces of gentlefolk. To arrive at justice was impossible; for the three brothers commanded all avenues, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, by which the Pope could be approached.

Violante, Duchess of Palliano, was a young woman distinguished for her beauty no less than for her Spanish pride. She had received a thoroughly Italian education; could recite the sonnets of Petrarch and the stanzas of Ariosto by heart, and repeated the tales of Ser Giovanni and other novelists with an originality that lent new charm to their style.[208] Her court was a splendid one, frequented by noble youths and gentlewomen of the best blood in Naples. Two of these require particular notice: Diana Brancaccio, a relative of the Marchioness of Montebello; and Marcello Capecce, a young man of exceptional beauty. Diana was a woman of thirty years, hot-tempered, tawny-haired, devotedly in love with Domiziano Fornari, a squire of the Marchese di Montebello's household. Marcello had conceived one of those bizarre passions for the Duchess, in which an almost religious adoration was mingled with audacity, persistence, and aptitude for any crime. The character of his mistress gave him but little hope. Though profoundly wounded by her husband's infidelities, insulted in her pride by the presence of his wanton favorites under her own roof, and assailed by the importunities of the most brilliant profligates in Rome, she held a haughty course, above suspicion, free from taint or stain, Marcello could do nothing but sigh at a distance and watch his opportunity.

[Footnote 207: 'La Duchesse de Palliano,' in _Chroniques et Nouvelles_, De Stendhal (Henri Beyle).]

[Footnote 208: This touch shows what were then considered the accomplishments of a noble woman.]

At this point, the narrator seems to sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of combining his chief characters in one intrigue.[209]

[Footnote 209: It was a street-brawl, in which the Cardinal Monte played an indecent part, that finally aroused the anger of Paul IV. De Stendhal's MS. shifts the chief blame on to the shoulders of Cardinal Caraffa, who indeed appears to have been in the habit of keeping bad company.]

Though he assumes the tone of a novelist rather than a chronicler, there has hitherto been nothing but what corresponds to fact in his description of the Caraffa Cabal. He now explains their downfall; and opens the subject after this fashion. At the beginning of the year 1559, the Pope's confessor ventured to bring before his notice the scandalous behavior of the Papal nephews. Paul at first refused to credit this report. But an incident happened which convinced him of its truth. On the feast of the Circumcision--a circumstance which aggravated matters in the eyes of a strictly pious Pontiff--Andrea Lanfranchi, secretary to the Duke of Palliano, invited the Cardinal Caraffa to a banquet. One of the loveliest and most notorious courtesans of Rome, Martuccia, was also present; and it so happened that Marcello Capecce at this epoch believed he had more right to her favors than any other man in the capital. That night he sought her in her lodgings, pursued her up and down, and learned at last that she was supping with Lanfranchi and the Cardinal. Attended by armed men, he made his way to Lanfranchi's house, entered the banquet room, and ordered Martuccia to come away with him at once. The Cardinal, who was dressed in secular habit, rose, and, drawing his sword, protested against this high-handed proceeding. Martuccia, by favor of their host, was his partner that evening. Upon this, Marcello called his men; but when they recognized the Cardinal nephew, they refused to employ violence. In the course of the quarrel, Martuccia made her escape, followed by Marcello, Caraffa, and the company. There ensued a street-brawl between the young man and the Cardinal; but no blood was spilt, and the incident need have had but slight importance, if the Duke of Palliano had not thought it necessary to place Lanfranchi and Marcello under arrest. They were soon released, because it became evident that the chief scandal would fall upon the Cardinal, who had clearly been scuffling and crossing swords in a dispute about a common prostitute. The three Caraffa brothers resolved on hushing the affair up. But it was too late. The Pope heard something, which sufficed to confirm his confessor's warnings; and on January 27, he pronounced the famous sentence on his nephews. The Cardinal was banished to Civita Lavinia, the Duke to Soriano, the Marquis to Montebello. The Duchess took up her abode with her court in the little village of Gallese. It was here that the episode of her love and tragic end ensued.

Violante found herself almost alone in a simple village among mountains, half-way between Rome and Orvieto, surrounded indeed by lovely forest scenery, but deprived of all the luxuries and entertainments to which she was accustomed. Marcello and Diana were at her side, the one eager to pursue his hitherto hopeless suit, and the other to further it for her own profit. One day Marcello committed the apparent imprudence of avowing his passion. The Duchess rejected him with scorn, but disclosed the fact to Diana, who calculated that if she could contrive to compromise her mistress, she might herself be able to secure the end she had in view of marrying Domiziano. In the solitude of those long days of exile the waiting-woman returned again and again to the subject of Marcello's devotion, his beauty, his noble blood and his manifold good qualities. She arranged meetings in the woods between the Duchess and her lover, and played her cards so well that during the course of the fine summer weeks Violante yielded to Marcello. Diana now judged it wise to press her own suit forward with Domiziano. But this cold-blooded fellow knew that he was no fit match for a relative of the Marchioness of Montebello. He felt, besides, but little sentiment for his fiery _innamorata_. Dreading the poignard of the Caraffas, if he should presume to marry her, he took the prudent course of slipping away in disguise from the port of Nettuno. Diana maddened by disappointment, flew to the conclusion that the Duchess had planned her lover's removal, and resolved to take a cruel revenge. The Duke of Palliano was residing at Soriano, only a few miles from Gallese. To bring him secret information of his wife's intrigue was a matter of no difficulty. At first he refused to believe her report. Had not Violante resisted the seductions of all Rome, and repelled the advances even of the Duke of Guise? At last she contrived to introduce him into the bedroom of the Duchess at a moment when Marcello was also there. The circumstances were not precisely indicative of guilt. The sun had only just gone down behind the hills; a maid was in attendance; and the Duchess lay in bed, penciling some memoranda. Yet they were sufficient to arouse the Duke's anger. He disarmed Marcello and removed him to the prisons of Soriano, leaving Violante under strict guard at Gallese.

The Duke of Palliano had no intention of proclaiming his jealousy or of suggesting his dishonor, until he had extracted complete proof. He therefore pretended to have arrested Marcello on the suspicion of an attempt to poison him. Some large toads, bought by the young man at a high price two or three months earlier, lent color to this accusation. Meanwhile the investigation was conducted as secretly as possible by the Duke in person, his brother-in-law Count Aliffe, and a certain Antonio Torando, with the sanction of the Podesta of Soriano. After examining several witnesses, they became convinced of Violante's guilt. Marcello was put to the torture, and eventually confessed. The Duke stabbed him to death with his own hands, and afterwards cut Diana's throat for her share in the business. Both bodies were thrown into the prison-sewer. Meanwhile Paul IV. had retained the young Cardinal, Alfonso Caraffa, son of the Marquis of Montebello, near his person. This prelate thought it right to inform his grand-uncle of the occurrences at Soriano. The Pope only answered: 'And the Duchess? What have they done with her?' Paul IV. died in August, and the Conclave, which ended in the election of Pius IV., was opened. During the important intrigues of that moment, Cardinal Alfonso found time to write to the Duke, imploring him not to leave so dark a stain upon his honor, but to exercise justice on a guilty wife. On August 28, 1559, the Duke sent the Count Aliffe, and Don Leonardo del Cardine, with a company of soldiers to Gallese. They told Violante that they had arrived to kill her, and offered her the offices of two Franciscan monks. Before her death, the Duchess repeatedly insisted on her innocence, and received the Sacrament from the hands of Friar Antonio of Pavia. The Count, her brother, then proceeded to her execution. She covered her eyes with a handkerchief, which she, with perfect _sang froid_, drew somewhat lower in order to shut his sight out. Then he adjusted the cord to her neck; but, finding that it would not exactly fit, he removed it and walked away. The Duchess raised the bandage from her face, and said: "Well! what are we about then?" He answered: "The cord was not quite right, and I am going to get another, in order that you may not suffer." When he returned to the room, he arranged the handkerchief again, fixed the cord, turned the wand in the knot behind her neck, and strangled her. The whole incident, on the part of the Duchess, passed in the tone of ordinary conversation. She died like a good Christian, frequently repeating the words _Credo, Credo_.

Contrary to the usual custom and opinion of the age, this murder of an erring wife and sister formed part of the accusations brought against the Duke of Palliano and Count Aliffe. It will be remembered that they were executed in Rome, together with the elder Cardinal Caraffa, during the pontificate of Pius IV.

_Wife-Murders._

It would be difficult to give any adequate notion of the frequency of wife-murders at this epoch in the higher ranks of society. I will, however, mention a few, noticed by me in the course of study. Donna Pellegrina, daughter of Bianca Capello before her marriage with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was killed at Bologna in 1598 by four masked assassins at the order of her husband, Count Ulisse Bentivoglio. She had been suspected or convicted of adultery; and the Court of Florence sent word to the Count, 'che essendo vero quanto scriveva, facesse quello che conveniva a cavaliere di honore.' In the light of open day, together with two of her gentlewomen and her coachman, she was cut to pieces and left on the road.[210] In 1690 at Naples Don Carlo Gesualdo, son of the Prince of Venosta, assassinated his wife and cousin Donna Maria d'Avalos, together with her lover, Fabricio Caraffa, Duke of Andri. This crime was committed in his palace by the husband, attended by a band of cut-throats.[211] In 1577, at Milan, Count Giovanni Borromeo, cousin of the Cardinal Federigo, stabbed his wife, the Countess Giulia Sanseverina, sister of the Contessa di Sala, at table, with three mortal wounds. A mere domestic squabble gave rise to this tragedy.[212] In 1598, in his villa of Zenzalino at Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, with the assistance of a bravo called Jacopo Lazzarini, killed his wife Anna, daughter of the poet Guarini. Her own brother Girolamo connived at the act and helped to facilitate its execution. She was accused--falsely, as it afterwards appeared from Girolamo's confession--of an improper intimacy with the Count Ercole Bevilacqua. I may add that Count Ercole Trotti's father, Alfonso, had murdered his own wife, Michela Granzena, in the same villa.[213]

[Footnote 210: Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. p. 64.]

[Footnote 211: _Ib._ vol. ii. p. 162.]

[Footnote 212: _Ib._ vol. i. p. 343.]

_The Medici_.

The history of the Medicean family during the sixteenth century epitomizes the chief features of social morality upon which I have been dwelling in this chapter. It will be remembered that Alessandro de' Medici, the first Duke of Florence, poisoned his cousin Ippolito, and was himself assassinated by his cousin Lorenzino. To the second of these crimes Cosimo, afterwards Grand Duke of Tuscany, owed the throne of Florence, on which, however, he was not secure until he had removed Lorenzino from this world by the poignard of a bravo. Cosimo maintained his authority by a system of espionage, remorseless persecution, and assassination, which gave color even to the most improbable of legends.[214]

[Footnote 213: _I Guarini, Famiglia Nobile Ferrarese_ (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1870), pp. 83-87.]

[Footnote 214: In addition to the victims of his vengeance who perished by the poignard, he publicly executed in Florence forty-two political offenders.]

But it is not of him so much as of his children that I have to speak. Francesco, who reigned from 1564 till 1587, brought disgrace upon his line by marrying the infamous Bianca Capello, after authorizing the murder of her previous husband. Bianca, though incapable of bearing children, flattered her besotted paramour before this marriage by pretending to have borne a son. In reality, she had secured the co-operation of three women on the point of child-birth; and when one of these was delivered of a boy, she presented this infant to Francesco, who christened him Antonio de'Medici. Of the three mothers who served in this nefarious transaction, Bianca contrived to assassinate two, but not before one of the victims to her dread of exposure made full confession at the point of death. The third escaped. Another woman who had superintended the affair was shot between Florence and Bologna in the valleys of the Apennines. Yet after the manifestation of Bianca's imposture, the Duke continued to recognize Antonio as belonging to the Medicean family; and his successor was obliged to compel this young man to assume the Cross of Malta, in order to exclude his posterity from the line of princes.[215]

[Footnote 215: See Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. pp.54-56, for Antonio's reception into the Order.]

The legend of Francesco's and Bianca's mysterious death is well known. The Duchess had engaged in fresh intrigues for palming off a spurious child upon her husband. These roused the suspicions of his brother Cardinal Ferdinando de'Medici, heir presumptive to the crown. An angry correspondence followed, ending in a reconciliation between the three princes. They met in the autumn of 1587 at the villa of Poggio a Cajano. Then the world was startled by the announcement that the Grand Duke had died of fever after a few days' illness, and that Bianca had almost immediately afterwards followed him to the grave. Ferdinand, on succeeding to the throne, refused her the interment suited to her rank, defaced her arms on public edifices, and for her name and titles in official documents substituted the words, 'la pessima Bianca.' What passed at Poggio a Cajano is not known. It was commonly believed in Italy that Bianca, meaning to poison the Cardinal at supper, had been frustrated in her designs by a blunder which made her husband the victim of this plot, and that she ended her own life in despair or fell a victim to the Cardinal's vengeance. This story is rejected both by Botta and Galluzzi; but Litta has given it a partial credence.[216] Two of Cosimo's sons died previously, in the year 1562, under circumstances which gave rise to similar malignant rumors. Don Garzia and the Cardinal Giovanni were hunting together in the Pisan marshes, when the latter expired after a short illness, and the former in a few days met with a like fate. Report ran that Don Garzia had stabbed his brother, and that Cosimo, in a fit of rage, ran him through the body with his own sword. In this case, although Litta attaches weight to the legend, the balance of evidence is strongly in favor of both brothers having been carried off by a pernicious fever contracted simultaneously during their hunting expedition.[217] Each instance serves however, to show in what an atmosphere of guilt the Medicean princes were enveloped. No one believed that they could die except by fraternal or paternal hands. And the authentic crimes of the family certainly justified this popular belief. I have already alluded to the murders of Ippolito, Alessandro, and Lorenzino. I have told how the Court of Florence sanctioned the assassination of Bianca's daughter by her husband at Bologna.[218] I must now proceed to relate the tragic tales of the princesses of the house.

Pietro de'Medici, a fifth of Cosimo's sons, had rendered himself notorious in Spain and Italy by forming a secret society for the most revolting debaucheries.[219] Yet he married the noble lady Eleonora di Toledo, related by blood to Cosimo's first wife. Neglected and outraged by her husband, she proved unfaithful, and Pietro hewed her in pieces with his own hands at Caffaggiolo. Isabella de'Medici, daughter of Cosimo, was married to the Duke of Bracciano. Educated in the empoisoned atmosphere of Florence, she, like Eleonora di Toledo, yielded herself to fashionable profligacy, and was strangled by her husband at Cerretto.[220]

[Footnote 216: I refer, of course, to Galluzzi's _Storia del Gran Ducato_, vol. iv. pp. 241-244. Botta's _Storia d'Italia_, Book xiv., and Litta's _Famiglie Celebri_ under the pedigree of Medici.]

[Footnote 217: See Galluzzi, _op. cit._ vol. iii. p, 25, and Botta, _op. cit._ Book xii.]

[Footnote 218: See above, p. 381.]

[Footnote 219: Litta may be consulted for details; also Galluzzi, _op. cit._ vol. v. p. 174.]

[Footnote 220: It maybe worth mentioning that Virginio Orsini, Bracciano's son and heir, married Donna Flavia, grand niece of Sixtus V., and consequently related to the man his father murdered in order to possess Vittoria Accoramboni. See Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. p. 72.]

Both of these murders took place in 1576. Isabella's death, as I have elsewhere related, opened the way for the Duke of Bracciano's marriage with Vittoria Accoramboni, which had been prepared by the assassination of her first husband, and which led to her own murder at Padua.[221] Another of Cosimo's daughters, Lucrezia de'Medici, became Duchess of Ferrara, fell under a suspicion of infidelity, and was possibly removed by poison in 1561.[222] The last of his sons whom I have to mention, Don Giovanni, married a dissolute woman of low birth called Livia, and disgraced the name of Medici by the unprincely follies of his life. Eleonora de'Medici, third of his daughters, introduces a comic element into these funereal records. She was affianced to Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir of the Duchy of Mantua. But suspicions, arising out of the circumstances of his divorce from a former wife, obliged him to prove his marital capacity before the completion of the contract. This he did at Venice, before a witness, upon the person of a virgin selected for the experiment.[223] Maria de'Medici, the only child of Duke Francesco, became Queen of France.

[Footnote 221: See above, pp. 361-369.]

[Footnote 222: Galluzzi, vol. iii. p. 5, says that she died of a putrid fever. Litta again inclines to the probability of poison. But this must counted among the doubtful cases.]

[Footnote 223: See Galluzzi, _op. cit._ vol. iv. pp. 195-197, for the account of a transaction which throws curious light upon the customs of the age. It was only stipulated that the trial should not take place upon a Friday. Otherwise, the highest ecclesiastics gave it their full approval.] The history of her amours with Concini forms an episode in French annals.

If now we eliminate the deaths of Don Garcia, Cardinal Giovanni, Duke Francesco, Bianca Capello, and Lucrezia de'Medici, as doubtful, there will still remain the murders of Cardinal Ippolito, Duke Alessandro, Lorenzino de'Medici, Pietro Bonaventuri (Bianca's husband), Pellegrina Bentivoglio (Bianca's daughter), Eleonora di Toledo, Francesco Casi (Eleonora's lover), the Duchess of Bracciano, Troilo Orsini (lover of this Duchess), Felice Peretti (husband of Vittoria Accoramboni), and Vittoria Accoramboni--eleven murders, all occurring between 1535 and 1585, an exact half century, in a single princely family and its immediate connections. The majority of these crimes, that is to say seven, had their origin in lawless passion.[224]

[Footnote 224: I have told the stories in this chapter as dryly as I could. Yet it would be interesting to analyze the fascination they exercised over our Elizabethan playwrights, some of whose Italian tragedies handle the material with penetrative imagination. For the English mode of interpreting southern passions see my _Italian Byways_, pp. 142 _et seq._, and a brilliant essay in Vernon Lee's _Euphorion_.]