The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi (95 page)

BOOK: The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

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With his mother’s portrait strapped tightly to his chest and her book, which he was enjoined from reading until he crossed the threshold of manhood, safely tucked under his arm, he fell in beside his fellow prisoners.
Carpe diem
, he repeated to himself as he began the deep descent down the gangway and into a new life. Seize the day.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The real heroine of this novel is a young woman of the Renaissance who lived out her life in obscurity and emerged from the shadows of history only once, as a footnote in Shlomo Simonsohn’s
History of the Jews of Mantua
. There I found her name, Pacienza Pontremoli, and the provocative suggestion of a forbidden romance between the young Jewess and a Christian gallant at Isabella d’Este’s court in Mantova.

The Simonsohn citation sent me on what I was certain would be a fruitless quest: to find a pair of letters printed in Bologna in 1923 in a journal, the
Rivista Israelitica
, which expired after the first two issues. But I live less than forty blocks from the New York Public Library and it seemed worth a walk.

Bingo! There in the card catalog was listed the
Rivista Israelitica
, preserved on microfilm. A dash upstairs to the microfiche room brought me face-to-face with two letters, one from Isabella d’Este to Pacienza Pontremoli, the other Pacienza’s reply; and a third from a man named Pardo Rocque who claimed to have found them in his attic during a recent housecleaning.

It was no less than thrilling to read, in her own words, Isabella’s plea to Pacienza to give up her foolish attachment to the synagogue and enter into a proper Christian marriage with the young man who was dying of love for her. Then came Pacienza’s reply, the words of a young girl terrified to offend the great lady yet unwilling to stand at the baptismal font and renounce forever her family and her God.

At that point the curtain descends and Pacienza disappears into the mists of history. But, for me, she had just begun to live. As her story took shape in my mind, she was transformed into Grazia dei Rossi; she acquired forebears and descendants, a famous husband, and personal distinction as private secretary to Isabella d’Este. She also acquired letters of her own, some real, some invented. But Grazia’s heart remains the heart of Pacienza, suspended between the court and the synagogue, torn between love and duty.

Those who wish to read the original Pacienza/Isabella letters in full will find an English translation at the end of these notes. An edited version of Isabella’s letter appears at the end of Chapter 16. In adapting this letter — in fact, all the documentary material — for the purposes of the story, every effort has been made to maintain the style of the original. In the same spirit of respect for the historical integrity of the story, no date or place has been falsified to satisfy the demands of the plot. If a certain battle or death or party or feast is described as happening on a certain date, that date is historically accurate. When Francesco Gonzaga threatens to cut his wife’s vocal cords if she does not obey him, those are his own words as reported by a reliable bystander. When Benvenuto Cellini, the sculptor, takes a weapon in hand and hits the Imperial commander during the sack of Rome, I have given the scene as Cellini describes it in his autobiography.

For those who have seen Raphael’s magnificent tapestry, “Saint Paul Preaching at Athens,” hanging in the Vatican Museum in recent years and are led to question the authenticity of the episode in this book in which that tapestry is captured by pirates, rest easy. John Shearman, the eminent art historian, reports in his study of Raphael’s Sistine tapestries that this and one other of the set did fall into Isabella’s hands during the sack; were seized by pirates in transit; were sold, resold, and finally acquired by Constable Anne de Montmorency. It was he who bought them in Constantinople in the year 1554 and, being a man of honor, restored them to their rightful owner, the Pope.

So the gorgeous tapestry that you may have seen hanging in the Vatican Museum is the very one that was spirited out of Rome in Isabella’s baggage train and then taken as booty by pirates. All I did to alter history was to put Grazia aboard the ship.

A complete listing of the source material for this book would, I think, be of limited interest. But, for anyone who wishes to venture a little farther into Grazia’s world, Ludwig Freiherr von Pastor’s
The History of the Popes, from the Close of the Middle Ages
was recommended to me early on by Professor James Ackerman as the seminal work on this period of history and I have leaned on it heavily throughout. (Incidentally, Professor Ackerman’s short film,
Looking for Renaissance Rome
, is required viewing for anyone seeking to find what remains of the Renaissance in Rome.)

Julia Cartwright’s two-volume biography of Isabella is fusty and Victorian but it is firmly based on documents from the Gonzaga archives. That family saved everything including shopping lists, and Mrs. Cartwright (a.k.a. Celia Ady) dispenses generous portions of the archive translated into English.

For an overall Jewish perspective, Cecil Roth’s books on the Jews in the Renaissance are a good place to start. As with Mrs. Ady, modern scholarship has overtaken Professor Roth’s research. But he was the pioneer and his work still has the power to lead you on to other books and articles which, in their turn, will point you in the direction of yet others and others and others . . . as they did me.

THE ISABELLA/
PACIENZA LETTERS

FROM ISABELLA GONZAGA

TO PACIENZA PONTREMOLI, THE MANTUAN JEW

OCTOBER 20TH.

The fame that resounds all around about your virtue and goodness prompts me to write you and exhort you to convert to Christianity so that as virtuous a soul as yours should not remain deprived of heavenly consolations. By now the blindness of the Hebrew faith should be clear to you; so what are you waiting for? Doesn’t your prophet Rhau say that the hour that your Messiah was supposed to come has already passed? Haven’t you read this more than once in the book entitled
Sanidrin?
Are the seventy weeks of Daniel not already over? Has the spectre of the house of Judah not been lifted? I myself have read many times in that same
Sanidrin
that the Messiah was born on the same day that the Temple was destroyed: what are you waiting for then, to acknowledge Jesus Christ as the true Lord and the true Savior of the world?

Oh! Please, think it over; please, cleanse yourself now in the fountain which will be the stairway that will enable you to climb to heaven and to eternally enjoy the resplendent face of the Eternal Father, Don’t let yourself be deceived any longer by your doomed Rabbis ignorant of both human and divine doctrine: listen to my advice, because I’m advising you faithfully with perfect (Christian) zeal! Convert to Christianity. If you do so, for the one flesh-and-blood mother that you renounce, you will find ten more through the love of Jesus Christ! The Madonna of Mantova, mirror of pure sanctity, will be a Mother to you; my sister, both of my sisters-in-law, myself and many others will be mothers to you; nor will you lack a gracious husband because Marco Antonio Sidonio longs for you so much that the wretched man has been at risk of losing his head for love of you. The poor little thing is pining away and falling apart like a snowflake that the sun has discovered. And I am certain that you will find excellent companionship in him; and his being grateful to you will bring you honor and a fine reputation.

You will enjoy a husband who is wise and not fraudulent, courageous and not fearful of clear and flowing speech, not importunate or wearisome. Every time I hear his witty narrations accompanied by more well-executed actions than Roscio ever had, I’m afraid I’ll die laughing just as Philomene the poet or Philistione the actor did. No melancholy humor will ever reside in your house; sad thoughts will keep far away from you. You will never suffer any discomfort for anything at all; on the contrary, it will seem to you that under your roof the goddess Amaltheia (Copia) is residing with her horn and whenever the whole world lets you down the generosity of your most revered Padrone will supply your needs because he feels an infinite lightening of his heavy thoughts due to his jokes.

I assure you even further, on my faith, that you will be even more loved by him than Euridice was by Orpheo, than Aspasia was by Pericle, than Orestia was by M. Plautio, or than Lisidica was by the poet Antimaco. Oh, don’t delay, then, to make yourself a friend of Christ and to thus make our church happy and to render tearful the evil synagogue. Please, do not put off your sacred conversion any longer, do not put off increasing the number of the Elect in Heaven; and finally do not put off making happy poor Marco Antonio, who loves you fervently and has withstood for you as many hardships as Hercules did in his own time. Nor will I go on anymore now about his good qualities. Think, and examine well what I’ve told you; pray to God that He might illuminate you with the living rays of the Holy Spirit so that you will do the right thing. Beautiful and pleasant thoughts to you. May God guide you.

FROM PACIENZA PONTREMOLI, THE MANTUAN JEW

TO THE ILLUSTRIOUS SIGNORA ISABELLA GONZAGA

OCTOBER 23RD.

Yesterday I got the letter that it pleased you to send me, which has very much troubled my thoughts. Your reasoning seemed to me full of vigour and spirit and your persuasions were made in such a way that they almost did violence to my intellect. Your offers did not displease me; on the contrary, they made me blush, because I realized I was unworthy of such a husband as you proposed for me. On the other hand, I’m in doubt about offending the Divine King by converting to Christianity. If I confess Christ to be the true Messiah, I live in the anguish of turning against me the disdain of Moses and the curse of all the synagogue. I don’t know (poor me!) where to turn for help and advice. Your letters have moved me infinitely; and if certain difficult steps had not held me back, I would have gone straight to church and importunately asked for baptism. But I am considering, my lady, the sacred scripture’s promise that when the Messiah comes, Israel will be recovered. I read in the book entitled
Badra
that in his coming, Jerusalem and the temple of precious stones will be rebuilt — which, however, has not yet happened. Furthermore, I see that our law was publicly given by God through the hand of Moses on Mount Sinai in the presence of frightening thunder and lightning — which you Christians confess to be true without any reservations, there where your {law} is given secretly by the hand and the confession of twelve poor barefoot men. So I cannot help believing our Rabbis, who have a very different opinion about your Redeemer than you do. Let it not seem too strange to you, then, if I do not give in so quickly and if I seem somewhat stubborn. As for the husband that you speak to me about, I think — no, I clearly know — that he is even more worthy than you say; I know without a doubt that for his rare witness he would deserve to have a woman more beautiful than Deiopeia, than Amarilli, or than the fugitive Galathea. May God inspire me to do that which does him honor and glory; and meanwhile I beg you to pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal to me what I should do. I reverently kiss the beautiful and generous hand of your Excellency that had written me a most inspiring letter and beg you to pity the indecision of a weak and confused girl. Pray for me.