Murder in the Garden of God (20 page)

One of the visitors shocked at the sudden change was none other than Vittoria Accoramboni, the newly-minted duchess of Bracciano. She had ridden from her husband’s palace accompanied by three coaches stuffed with noble matrons. It must have been a strange feeling for Vittoria as she entered the old house she had so detested. The chickens and pigs in the courtyard were gone now, and the servants wore gorgeous livery. Looking around at the well-born visitors congratulating the new Princess Camilla, she must have sighed that this had taken place too late. Too late for Vittoria, too late for Francesco.

Too late for Camilla, too. Bewildered by the throngs of powerful well-wishers, uneasy in her heavy bejeweled gown, Camilla spotted Vittoria. Perhaps she had a fleeting image of her as the fresh-faced sixteen-year-old bride she had welcomed with open arms into the Peretti family for the love Francesco bore her. And perhaps Vittoria, standing there in the wedding finery of a duchess, remembered the cheerful, loving young husband and their hopes for the future, back in those days when everything had seemed possible. If Vittoria had only waited, on this day she would have been not a duchess, but a princess. It is likely that both women, staring at each other across the room as the crowd gaped in wonder at the sight, would have done anything to have moved back the hands of time.

It was a bittersweet moment for Camilla. She was a princess now, no more emptying chamber pots or plucking chickens for her. Her grandchildren would be cardinals and duchesses. But Francesco, that dearly beloved, happy-go-lucky son, was not there. In front of her, however, was the woman who had caused his death.

The space between them was ripe enough to burst as Vittoria, graceful and charming as ever, swished in her wide embroidered skirts up to Camilla and took her hand. According to Cardinal Santorio, who witnessed the scene, Vittoria said that “she wished great happiness from heaven for Camilla and the Peretti family, and that she wanted this for the love she had borne Francesco, for her prayers and her tears, and for the name of mother-in-law that Camilla had been to her, and hoped she would not forget her.”

This last was not likely. Camilla became red as a beet while listening, and then wordlessly accompanied Vittoria to the top of the steps, as etiquette required, to show her out. Returning to the crowded room, she howled, “Oh, pompous wickedness! This iniquitous woman has dared to show her impure and cruel face to me within these walls!”
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Then she dissolved into wretched sobs, crying, “Oh, my poor son!”
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Though Vittoria had not heard these remarks, she certainly must have noticed the chilly reception, and it is likely one of her women friends raced after her to repeat what Camilla had said. It certainly didn’t bode well for her happiness under the new papacy. She returned to the Orsini palace dismayed, only to find her husband terrified by his audience with the pope.

They both agreed with Cardinal de Medici’s advice that they should leave Rome immediately. Paolo Giordano ordered his servants to pack for a trip to Bracciano, taking along the most valuable silverware and furnishings. As their caravan rumbled out of town, they saw the head of the duke’s servant Bracciardini prominently placed on a pike so that anyone leaving Rome by the main gate would see it. This was, quite clearly, the pope’s response to the duke’s request for pardon.

Ambassadors and princes continued to line up to kiss the pope’s feet throughout that afternoon. But when they began to congratulate him, he cut them short. He had been waiting for the papacy for decades now and didn’t want to waste another moment in useless compliments. He had work to do. One of the few visitors the pope cheerfully chatted with was Francesco Filelfo, Lodovico Orsini’s private secretary. The pope mentioned three times Filelfo’s devoted service to him in the past and told him to let him know if he ever needed a favor. Before the year was up, Filelfo would need a favor indeed.

But the pope gave short shrift to other visitors and suddenly announced to the cardinals present that he didn’t want to plan an official coronation several days in the future. Prodded by the feeling that he would have a short pontificate, he wanted someone to crown him immediately so that he could start ruling. “We want to command and provide for the needs of our people this same evening,” he said, “and so bring the crown that we are crowned right now without further waiting.”
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The cardinals explained that he could start ruling right away, even before the coronation.

The custodians of the capital – those responsible for the law and order of Rome – presented themselves to the pope for the traditional request of bread and justice. The pope snickered that he would certainly provide bread better than his predecessor had, a remark that many thought was in bad form. “He recommended the dispensation of justice to them, that they could depend on his support if they did their duty, and on the severest reprisals if they failed to do so, as he was resolved if necessary to have them beheaded.” The custodians were stunned. They had come to render a traditional courtesy and been threatened with beheading.

The pope then issued a bull prohibiting the carrying of any kinds of weapons within the walls of Rome. Francesco had been shot first and then finished off with knives, and now his uncle, as if trying to undo a thing already done, forbade firearms, swords, and knives under pain of immediate execution. Many honest citizens carried guns to protect themselves from criminals and didn’t want to give them up. Moreover, men and women alike carried knives in their
cadenas
if they were going to a restaurant or a friend’s house to eat. But the pope wouldn’t listen to the protests of his ministers and insisted the bull be issued immediately.

On April 28, four young men of the same family – two brothers and two cousins – were arrested at the gate of Saint John for coming into Rome with firearms. Because they had not been in town when the decree was issued, most people believed they would receive an immediate pardon. Plus, the pope’s coronation was coming up on May 1, and it was unseemly for any pontiff to start off his reign with executions.

When the governor of Rome, Monsignor Sangorgio, asked the pope what to do with the young men, Sixtus dryly replied that the law must be observed. Many cardinals begged him for mercy. The men’s family prompted Camilla to throw herself on her knees before her brother and intercede, but the pope waved her away. Even the Japanese ambassadors came crying into the papal audience chamber, asking for clemency, to no avail. A group of cardinals raised 4,000 scudi they planned to donate to the papal treasury if the punishment was mitigated to life in the galleys.

But Sixtus decreed that all lawbreakers must hang. Contemporary documents differ on the characters of the condemned men; some said they were pure as the driven snow; others said they were four well-known thugs who deserved hanging for a variety of crimes unpunished under Gregory. Given Sixtus’s subsequent efforts to determine guilt or innocence, we can assume that the latter was true.

What disturbed the pope’s ministers most was the enjoyment Sixtus seemed to be getting out of planning their execution. It was as if in hanging these lawless young men, armed to the teeth with weapons and bravado, he were hanging the murderers of Francesco. The fact that they were different individuals didn’t seem to matter. The morning of April 29, the four youths were executed on the Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge. The pontiff rode by to see the bodies swinging stiffly from the gallows and seemed greatly pleased. A chill of terror ran through the city. Sixtus V was not a forgiving old fellow after all.

The pope informed the cardinals instrumental in his election – de Medici, Rusticucci, Farnese, d’Este, and Bonelli – that he would give them no power. Jesus had given the Church to Peter, he pointed out, and not to the other disciples. “Oh, how deep are the divine judgments,” Sixtus told them, “that to one boss and to one only he gave the authority of governing his sheep.
You are Peter, you alone are the pope, I will give you power to reign over heaven. To you I give the power to reign over and support the Church, to you, to you who are my vicar, and not to others who are simply ministers.”
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It was clear that Sixtus gripped the keys of Saint Peter in a tightly clenched fist and was not going to allow his cardinals to get anywhere near them.

In the days leading up to the coronation, the pope was seen browsing through the little book he always kept with him. According to the chronicler, he “spent the greater part of the hours and above all the night writing memorials in a little book that he always took with him for this purpose, without ever leaving it, fearing that someone might read what he had written, and he kept it in a little black velvet purse. In this book he noted all that he wanted to do, not only for the present day but for the rest of his life, and with such care that sometimes even while saying the holy office with his chaplain, remembering something he wanted to write down, or notes he had forgotten, he would take out his little purse and write in his little book.” The pope’s scribblings were to “put a brake on the insolent ways of the Romans, and their insufferable licentiousness and freedom of life.”
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During a conclave it was customary for criminals to turn themselves into prisons and confess their crimes. There they waited until a new pope was elected, and during the general pardon that preceded the coronation they were released. Having received a papal pardon, they could never be charged again for the same crimes. During the conclave after Gregory’s death, some 500 malefactors turned themselves in. When other criminals heard that the new pope was the merciful old Cardinal Montalto – who had even forgiven his own nephew’s murderer – long lines formed at the jails as dozens of murderers waited to confess their crimes.

According to a contemporary
relatione,
on April 30, the day before the coronation, Governor Sangiorgio and the vice castellan of Castel Sant’Angelo presented themselves to the pope with bundles of petitions for the release of prisoners. Bowing deeply, Sangiorgio said, “Most illustrious father, at the feet of your Holiness we have come seeking permission to give liberty to the prisoners, having brought the petitions so that your Holiness might deign to conform to the custom of pardoning the supplicants.”

Sixtus cast the two of them a fierce look and thundered, “What pardons, and prisons, and supplications are you talking about? We have often seen to our unspeakable pain the wickedness happening in Rome to universal scandal, in our own presence, with danger to our life, with the death of our nephew, and with the wounding of one of our servants, and of many other scandals, and most grave evils. These guilty ones are not worthy of pardon. God forbid that such a thought enters into our mind…. The city of Rome needs justice, and during our pontificate we are a judge with a sword in our hand.”

He continued, “We do not want the prisons to be opened, regardless of the nobility of the criminals. But more than this – listen carefully – we want them to be most strictly held and rigorously questioned until the end of their trials. We want to punish the guilty quickly to empty the prisons to make room for the new ones who must enter there. And they deserve to be punished so that all the world knows that God has placed us and elevated us to the See of Saint Peter to reward the good and punish the guilty. We want four of the guiltiest to be tried and executed tomorrow as a public spectacle for the eyes of the Roman people.”
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He ordered the executions to take place at the moment he was being crowned in Saint Peter’s.

Shocked, the governor and vice castellan bowed and shuffled backward out of the room, still clutching the petitions. “The poor governor, distraught in his very soul, gave the order to hold the trial of the four most guilty, but it displeased him because he had convinced many dependents of great cavaliers and cardinals, his friends and patrons, to turn themselves in to the prisons voluntarily for hope of pardon. Now, seeing so many poor souls deceived, he didn’t know what to do.”
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When he told the cardinals what the pope had said, they were equally horrified because “there was not a single cardinal or prelate or nobleman who did not have some relative, or servant, or dependent guilty of some grave crime.”
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Meanwhile, Cardinals Farnese, de Medici, Gonzaga, and Colonna raced to the pope, telling him that clemency should come naturally to the Vicar of Christ. It would be astonishing, they said, if the new pope closed his heart to pity, and above all on a day when Christendom rejoiced and the pope always pardoned criminals. The heretics would be scandalized, seeing that the pope loved bloodshed better than forgiveness. They begged him to continue the custom of granting clemency to prisoners on his coronation day, pointing out to him that the honor of the Holy See depended on it because Christ was the father of compassion.

The pope had grown visibly irritated during the cardinals’ lengthy diatribes. Now he cried, “Your remonstrances surprise me as much as they should mortify you and do you shame. When Jesus Christ confided the keys of his Church to Saint Peter, as we see in the gospels, he submitted him neither to the advice nor the lessons of the other apostles, and you are greatly mistaken if you believe you can have authority over us. Providence has raised me to the throne of his Church to reestablish all things in a better state… It is not the punishment of crimes but their impunity that scandalizes the heretics and God.”

He continued, “You come, however, to ask my pardon for many criminals, under the pretext of establishing my reputation by pardoning crimes with which the Papal States has been infected for many years. God give me the grace to purge this filth.”

He stormed out of the audience chamber into a private room as his servant scurried behind him and closed the doors. The cardinals stood looking at the doors with mouths agape. But almost immediately the trembling servant threw open the doors, revealing a white-robed, red-faced Sixtus, who said, “I forgot to warn you that in the trials of the guilty, I also want to act against those who protect them.” Then he slammed the doors shut.