Murder in the Garden of God (17 page)

I have commissioned Fiorello to give a document to your most illustrious Holiness so that you can see my reasons and understand how this was done for my conscience. I pray your Holiness to quiet down this business because everything was done by me out of pure conscience and to be worthy of the favor of his Holiness the pope. There was no reason why we couldn’t contract marriage, and the sacraments were performed with all convenience, and the only thought is to live a Christian life… Now that it is done, and done merely to live as a Christian, your Illustrious Reverence must beg his Holiness to give his most holy blessing, and if there was any error in it, that we do not pay, but that we be esteemed by his Holiness. We beg it most humbly, and for the trouble of his Holiness we ask pardon.”
⁸

Paolo Giordano let Cardinal de Medici know he would be coming to Rome on March 17 to discuss the matter, but his brother-in-law instructed him to wait a while at Bracciano. Given Gregory’s anger, it would be a terrible mistake if the duke barged into the papal audience chamber and started yelling about his good Christian life.

Paolo Giordano was outraged to hear Cardinal de Medici’s advice. He peppered his cardinal friends with letters, lamenting that his honor was ruined when he was forbidden to enter the city. Such a situation was intolerable. He begged Cardinal de Medici “to work so that this business be calmed, because going further it is bound to cause my ruin, and I don’t believe that my ruin would be useful or good to your most illustrious Holiness.”
⁹

On March 30, Cardinal de Medici responded resentfully:

I was always of the opinion that this business of your Excellency’s would calm down, and I am displeased to see you roused up and peeved and exasperated… As I have done in the past, I can once again try to accomplish your desires, but it is good to remember that I can ask but not command him who rules.

Don’t deceive yourself at all by believing that your ruin weighs on me… Your remedy will be found in proceeding prudently, and postponing so much ardor, telling yourself that you must not be so impatient. You almost want to be thanked for the trouble you have made for everyone. A large part of the remedy can be found in waiting, and I don’t think that my work will be enough unless combined with time. I cannot be entirely certain of success in what you have asked of me because your haste has ruined much of what I have done. I am doing and will do a great deal to help you out of this… At any rate I am content that I have done my duty, and I remind you of yours.
¹⁰

According to an
avvisi,
the desperate duke wrote the pope a letter begging him to be allowed “to enjoy in peace his dear wife destined for him by heaven as his eternal companion” and closed by adding, “At the end, it is better to disappoint men than God.”
¹¹

Finally, the theologians’ response arrived declaring the duke’s second marriage to Vittoria invalid. It proved that the decrees prohibiting the two from marrying were still in effect as the pope had never officially revoked them. It listed impediments to the marriage – the suspicion of adultery between Paolo Giordano and Vittoria when Francesco was still alive, the daily contact the duke had had with Vittoria as soon as her husband was dead, the scandalous elopement to Magnanapoli within days of the murder, and finally, the very grave suspicion that Vittoria had been mixed up in her husband’s death, or at least had promised the duke she would marry him if Francesco died. The theologians also took very seriously Vittoria’s written promise to the pope “assuring him that I will obey or pay with my life.”
¹²

When the duke heard that his marriage had been declared invalid, he wanted to race to Rome to fight the judgment himself. His cardinal friends advised him against such a rash step. Paolo Giordano then sent the pope ten notorious bandits in chains whom he had captured in his duchy. The pope sent his thanks, but that was all. Unwilling to have yet another decree issued against him, the duke declared that he was ready to separate from Vittoria.

But this, of course, was another lie. Paolo Giordano was playing for time until Lodovico could obtain for him a paid position as governor general of Venice; the former governor, Sforza Pallavicino, had recently died. Lodovico wrote the duke on April 6, “All these lords of office confess that in the person of your Excellency they recognize all the qualities that they would want in their governor general, but they are very slow to make a resolution…. Your Excellency will be made governor without doubt because no one is above you.”
¹³

But Lodovico’s influence on the Venetian Senate was doubtful. Due to his money problems, he had arrived nine months late to take up his position, which the Venetians found insulting. Shortly after his arrival, he and his gangsters presented themselves in the Senate hall – where no weapons of any kind were allowed – bristling with guns, swords, and daggers. It was a sign of things to come.

Two days after Lodovico’s arrival, his meat carver got into a fight with his silverware polisher, and friends of the two joined the fracas, wounding one another. He and his men had numerous scuffles with the law and were warned not to attack Venetian citizens. Venice, the Senate informed him, was not Rome. Fights, duels, and murders did not take place routinely on Venetian streets. The republic prided itself on its tidy, law-abiding citizens and was not going to put up with Lodovico Orsini’s gang attacking good Venetians.

The Council of Ten, in particular, was not amused. This was a feared and secretive committee responsible for upholding law and order in the republic. The powerful council investigated written denunciations of citizens, which were thrown into drop-boxes throughout the city, and now and then one of those denounced disappeared. Sometimes as the sun rose over the glittering-pink Grand Lagoon, the body was discovered dangling grotesquely between the two pillars of justice in Saint Mark’s Square.

Lodovico’s secretary, Filelfo, wrote, “Many senators of the Council of Ten advised me to warn the signor that his servants went around all night armed with guns and pistols, being insolent, and they did not want to accept these quarrels despite the great respect they had for the signor. I always offered excuses and said that it wasn’t true, that these men had to be others who used his name. At home I repeated to the signor everything these lords had told me; otherwise, I would have been a very bad person.”
¹⁴

For a while, the gang obeyed the admonition and returned to attacking one another instead of the locals, sometimes fatally. But one day, three of Lodovico’s men tried to enter a prostitute’s house in Murano. When a glazier friend of hers tried to keep them out at her request, the men forced their way in and killed him. His friends and neighbors chased the murderers into a walled cemetery but did not enter for fear of desecrating a holy place. Instead, they waited outside, weapons at the ready. Lodovico went to the Senate and told them what had transpired. Guards were sent to rescue the men, who were exiled from the city of Venice.

The secretary of the Venetian Senate, Patavino, said to Filelfo, “Tell the most illustrious Lord Lodovico that this city is governed by laws and by religion, and he must hold back his servants because this country does not want these things, and will correct the crimes and punish the criminals by pulling their houses down around them.”
¹⁵
In was a prescient comment.

Back in Rome, public fascination with the unraveling of the duke’s second marriage to Vittoria was distracted by the arrival of the Japanese ambassadors on March 23, 1585. For decades many Italians had doubted the existence of Japan, scoffing at voyagers’ tales of people with yellow skin and strange eyes who ate raw fish and bathed every day. Such tales, they said, belonged on the heap of myths that included mermaids, Cyclops, unicorns, and sea monsters. But now, here was living proof, and all Rome closed up shop to gawk at the sight.

The three young Japanese noblemen wore wide-sleeved, white silk coats, embroidered with birds and flowers in various colors. They rode in a great procession from the main gate of Rome to the Vatican, on palfreys with black trappings richly embroidered in gold. These envoys had been carefully chosen by their princes for their youth and good health; only men in top physical condition could be expected to survive a voyage lasting three years each way, slowed down by cyclones, ship repairs, pirates, and the months’ long wait for favorable trade winds. But the ambassadors put that time to good use, learning Latin, Portuguese, Italian, and Spanish.

The Jesuit Francis Xavier had founded the first Catholic mission to Japan in 1549, and the new religion soon took off. In 1579, though there were only fifty-nine missionaries in the islands, they had converted some 150,000 Japanese to Catholicism. Many in Japan disdained their Buddhist and Shinto priests as luxury-loving and corrupt, while the Catholic priests were willing to give their lives to help the sick and were happy to live in poverty, sustained by the joys of their faith.

The purpose of the trip to Rome was to show the Japanese the superiority of Christian culture to their own. The young ambassadors were mostly silent during their visit, and we can only wonder if they found rowdy, filthy Rome at all superior to Japan, where cleanliness and courtesy were virtues. We might also speculate on whether they were shocked at the luxury-loving, corrupt Catholic prelates of Rome, a far cry from the ascetic missionaries who had converted them. The envoys were extremely learned and polite and drank no alcohol, which was a great relief to the Romans; in 1582 when representatives of Czar Ivan the Terrible of Russia had visited, they thought the Papal States and the republic of Venice were the same country, spoke only Russian and had brought no translator, drank the city dry, and beat one another up during a solemn papal audience.

When Gregory XIII received the Japanese delegation at the Vatican, the good old pope, with tears in his eyes, imagined that Japan had become Catholic, and the rest of the world would soon follow. Little did he know that by the time the ambassadors returned home three years later, the feudal warlord Hideyoshi would have reversed his policy of cordiality towards the Church. Jesuits would be exiled, monasteries and churches razed to the ground, and many Christians forced to give up their faith. He had done this, it was said, because married women and girls, the moment they converted, refused to have sex with him again.

Without such foreknowledge, it was a beautiful moment for the pope. “Now let Thy servant depart in peace,” Gregory said, as if he knew his end was fast approaching.
¹⁶

At that moment, the pope still seemed to be going strong at eighty-three, and it was reported that Cardinal Montalto was gravely ill. One cardinal said, “We will soon have a vacant post in the Sacred College because Montalto is certainly going to the next world.”
¹⁷

With guilt and the fear of revenge weighing heavily upon him, Paolo Giordano Orsini, if he heard the news, must have been glad.

Chapter 12

The Wedding Banquet

He hath put down the mighty from their seat
and exalted them of low degree.

– Luke 1:52

T
here was an old Vatican saying,
The pope is not sick until dead,
which meant that it was unseemly to discuss a pontiff’s illness until death had ended it. Yet in the case of Gregory XIII, the saying was almost literally true. On April 5, 1585, he caught a cold, and on April 10 he was dead from a throat so swollen that it asphyxiated him. Finally, the moment Vittoria had waited for so long had arrived but four years too late to save Francesco.

Still, it was welcome news. Paolo Giordano believed that the pope’s decree against their marriage had died with him. To weigh in on this theory, even before Gregory’s illness he had hired several theologians whom he paid generously to render the desired verdict. There was no canonical impediment, they agreed, and the prohibition had existed only at the wishes of Pope Gregory. Such decrees died with the pope, unless they were renewed by his successor.

Having heard these heartening conclusions, Paolo Giordano decided he would marry Vittoria again. He would patiently wait out the ten days of mourning rituals for the dead pope. But the moment the cardinals were locked inside the womb of the Vatican in conclave, he would have the banns read.

Officially, cardinals in conclave were incommunicado from the outside world, and Cardinal de Medici shouldn’t hear about the marriage until after a new pope was elected. Conclaves, however, leaked like sieves, and many electors received news hidden inside the food platters brought to them twice a day by their servants. Yet even if de Medici received the news, trapped in conclave he would be in no position to stop the wedding.

Immediately after Gregory’s death, the cardinals met to enforce law and order during the Vacant See – a time of rampant crime and anarchy. Traditionally, those who harbored grudges waited years for the pope to die before seeking revenge. During the chaos that followed, police were hard put to investigate murders, spending all their time trying to prevent new ones. Decapitated bodies were found daily in the streets, the heads bobbing up and down like buoys in the Tiber River.

But this Vacant See was particularly frightening due to the advent of the bandits during Gregory’s weak reign. Fearing that hordes of them might invade the city for plunder and rapine, the cardinals ordered six of the sixteen city gates closed. The ten open gates were guarded by 2,000 infantry and four companies of cavalry raised from the militia. Another 1,200 infantry guarded the neighborhood of the Vatican. Cardinals and noblemen surrounded their palaces with armed men.

Before the conclave convened, the major Roman barons appeared one at a time in the Vatican council chamber to promise the cardinals their help in maintaining law and order during the voting. Etiquette required that they kneel before the Sacred College, but when it was Paolo Giordano’ s turn, he refused to kneel, saying his stomach was so fat that he might not be able to rise. Touting his personal army, he said that he was placing his brave armed men at the service of the holy Roman Church to maintain civil order so that the conclave could operate in peace.

The cardinals knew that Paolo Giordano was a liar and a murderer, and despite his pretty promises, they did not want his hundreds of criminals riding roughshod through the streets of Rome waving swords, firing pistols, and fomenting disturbances. As dean of the Sacred College, Cardinal Farnese thanked him for his good intentions but requested that he take his bandits to Bracciano, especially Marcello Accoramboni, a known murderer who had been exiled from Rome. If Marcello were found inside the city, Farnese said, he would be arrested, imprisoned, and heavily fined.

To general surprise, the duke swore his obedience. Not only did he send his bandits back to Bracciano, but he rode through the streets of Rome with several upstanding soldiers to quell disturbances caused by others. He threatened anyone breaking the law with his personal anger, as he had sworn to uphold law and order. There was, of course, an ulterior motive for the duke’s submissiveness. He wanted to show the Sacred College and whichever cardinal became the next pope that he would do whatever they asked of him, as long as they allowed him to marry Vittoria.

Back at Bracciano, Marcello followed Paolo Giordano’s orders and wrote him on April 17:

Most illustrious and excellent lord and eternal patron,

… As soon as I arrived I sent to various places for bandits as your Excellency commanded me. This morning I found Tasso, Acitello, and Luchitto with ten companions… I said to them in your Excellency’s name that I wanted them to stay here in the state [Bracciano] for their own benefit where they will remain safe.”
¹

It was four years to the day since Marcello had drawn Francesco Peretti out of bed at midnight to be brutally murdered in a garden. Perhaps the date meant nothing to him as he closed the letter with his new seal, a mingling of the arms of the Accoramboni and Orsini families. The murder had, no doubt, been worth it to him. Marcello was now the right-hand man of his brother-in-law, the duke of Bracciano, and a kind of prime minister of his extensive territories. Paolo Giordano, in Rome busily making preparations for his upcoming wedding, probably never thought about the date, either. But it is certain that Cardinal Montalto, preparing for the conclave, was painfully aware of it.

Marcello was not the only one of Paolo Giordano’s bandit friends that the Sacred College wanted at all costs to keep outside Rome during the conclave. Soon after Gregory died, Cardinal Farnese met with the Venetian ambassador who sent the doge this letter, “The Most Illustrious Farnese, whom I visited yesterday, asked me in his name and in the name of the entire Illustrious College to ask your Serenity that for the peace of the Papal States you be content to prevent Signor Lodovico Orsini from coming here at this time, by finding means of keeping him in some place, foreseeing that from his arrival there would arise great scandal.”
²

The Vitelli family, expecting Lodovico to arrive in Rome, had been busy hiring assassins. The cardinals feared the Vitellis would ambush Lodovico on his way into Rome, creating an uproar inside the city as the two factions faced off in the streets, which “would force the Sacred College to great expense,” the ambassador continued, “and he [Cardinal Farnese] asked me also to send a courier today that you will send back tomorrow with diligence so that I may give satisfaction to these most illustrious lords.”
³

But as soon as Lodovico had heard of Gregory’s death, he had gone to the Venetian Senate and obtained permission to return to Rome. Now, having given permission, the Senate did not want to withdraw it and look like Vatican puppets. Lodovico sent his secretary Filelfo ahead of him on a fast horse “to make known his good intentions to the Sacred College, the Roman people, and his family, assuring them that he did not come to make trouble.”
⁴
The cardinals were horrified to hear of his imminent arrival. Only the Vitellis were happy, gleefully sharpening their knives as they hid in bushes outside Rome.

Before the conclave convened, the cardinals attended daily Masses for the pope’s soul and met with foreign ambassadors and one another to discuss papal candidates. The Mantuan envoy, Camillo Capilupi, reported only two days after Gregory’s death that Cardinal Montalto “has every prospect of success; he is behaving with the greatest prudence and circumspection; not even the Spaniards reject him.”
⁵
Philip II had sent a message that he would approve of Montalto “due to the inclination he had for repose and tranquility.”
⁶

While many cardinals canvassed for themselves or their friends, Cardinal Montalto adopted a different strategy. He declared himself incapable of being pope and praised all the other cardinals as being well suited for the difficult job. According to his chronicler, “Before entering into conclave he made many visits, as was customary, to the other cardinals, and it was pleasing to see him going on his cane, spitting, and at every step breathing heavily because of the pains, that he said were bad, and every two steps resting for weariness.”
⁷

The most important cardinal to win over was Farnese. Since the death of his grandfather, Paul III, in 1549, Farnese had witnessed the election, reign, and death of six popes. Like a perennial spinster bridesmaid, Farnese was always the pope-maker but never the pope. Now, aged sixty-five, he knew this might be his last chance to win the papal tiara. A highly intelligent and capable statesman, he was beloved by the people of Rome for his magnificent lifestyle and his charity. It was not generally held against him that he had fathered several children in his younger years. The stricter regulations of the Council of Trent and his own advancing age had helped him morph into a sober churchman, suitable to be pope.

The cardinal had never liked Montalto for two reasons. First of all, he came from a disgracefully poor family, unlike the noble family of Farnese. Secondly, Montalto had had little to do with Church business the past thirteen years. Instead of wheeling and dealing with foreign diplomats, he had spent most of his time planting vines and harvesting olives, spreading manure and toting water buckets, actions beneath the dignity of a cardinal. Farnese’s disdain was a problem for Montalto’s papal aspirations. But if Montalto couldn’t make his colleague admire him, at least he could show Farnese that he was not to be feared.

The chronicler reported that Montalto “visited Cardinal Farnese the second time … praising the merits of his family … and showing nicely the imperfection of his health. Cardinal Farnese showed compassion for his illness, saying, ‘You don’t have to go into a conclave that might last a long time. Because of your age and indispositions, you would not live to see the election of a new pope.’ And while Cardinal Farnese was saying this, he was looking at Montalto, who coughed even harder… He replied, ‘The hope that I have of aiding your Reverence with my vote gives me the spirit to place myself voluntarily against death itself’”

When Cardinal Farnese mumbled that he had no papal aspirations, Montalto said, “All the cardinals would be willing to raise to the papacy such a person of merit and experience, and to give it to one who is incapable of unworthiness.” He added that since he was not possessed of the requisite qualities to be pope, he could at least show good will by serving his friends. His protestations of affection seemed to soften Cardinal Farnese, who upon his visitor’s departure said, “Monsignore, I will not lack to reciprocate all good efforts for the attention you have shown me, and for the good will that you hold for my family.”
⁸

Cardinal Montalto, wheezing and limping, visited most of the other cardinals in Rome, especially the pope-makers d’Este, de Medici, and Altemps. He assured them of his support in the conclave and his eternal gratitude and devotion for their friendship over the years. By the time the conclave started, every cardinal thought that if Montalto became pope,
he
would be his favorite cardinal, and would be richly rewarded with large pensions and important positions.

“To de Medici he made the most humble demonstrations and the greatest promises of perpetual service and devotion towards him and his dependents,” one early conclave historian wrote. “To Altemps, the morning before he entered conclave, he went to visit him in his room and made a very open declaration of the best possible good will and of the eternal obligations that he had for him and for the marchese his son, and of the singular benefits he would receive from his hands, so that Altemps agreed much sooner to favor him. He did the same with Cardinal Madruccio when he entered conclave, to whom the Catholic king had given his secret choices for pope … Sirleto, Montalto, Castagna, and Mondovi.”
⁹

For several days preceding the opening of the conclave, the Sistine Chapel and its neighboring halls were abuzz with the sound of carpenters sawing boards to cover the windows. The conclave was supposed to be sealed off from the outside world, a dark womb, lit only by candles and the glow of the Holy Spirit, which was thought to direct the voting.

In the hall next to the Sistine Chapel, carpenters were also busy constructing the cardinals’ cells, flimsily built chambers ranging from about fifteen feet to twenty-two feet square. Living in a cell was much like camping. Each cardinal had a bed, table, chamber pot chair, wash basin, and a little stove to reheat cold food. He generally had two servants, called
conclavistas,
to look after his needs and, if necessary, spy on the other cardinals to ferret out what they were plotting.

While the cardinals were getting ready for the conclave, Paolo Giordano was gleefully preparing for his wedding. The Council of Trent had decreed that the banns be read on three successive Sundays. But Paolo Giordano feared the conclave wouldn’t last the requisite two weeks. When the conclave opened, the new pope, whoever he was, might hear about the banns and, caving into the protests of the grand duke, the king of Spain, Cardinal de Medici, and the Orsini family, prohibit the marriage with a new decree. So Paolo Giordano had the banns read on three successive
days.

He wanted his marriage to be a fait accompli by the time the conclave was over, reasoning that the new pope would be loath to annul this one. For Paolo Giordano would be marrying Vittoria with Gregory’s decree no longer in effect, as he believed, and would have had the banns read as required by the Council of Trent, sort of.

The cardinals would be locked up on the morning of Sunday, April 21. The banns would be read immediately afterward and on the next two days. The wedding would take place on the morning of Wednesday, April 24, followed by a resplendent feast.

In the sixteenth century, a host did not invite guests to such an expensive event with the sole purpose of feeding them. There was a script hidden behind every feast. The servants were actors, the food and vessels props, the host the director, and the guests the spectators. The theme of the play might be piety, and a clergyman might offer simple dishes as evidence of his restrained sobriety.