The Tigress of Forli (27 page)

Now the golden nugget of territory between Forlì and Imola shone like a prize, ready for the fastest conqueror to lay claim to it. Giovanni Bentivoglio immediately sent a force to subdue Faenza. Caterina made a show of solidarity with her sister-in-widowhood, discreetly ignoring the cause of death of Francesca's husband. She sent a sizable contingent under the leadership of Brambilla, the count of Bergamo, who had saved her own lands. At first, the people of Faenza seemed glad to see the Milanese and Bolognese armies and shouted "Duke! Duke!" in the streets, as if to cheer the duke of Milan. But then Lorenzo de' Medici set to work. The last thing the Florentine wanted was a solid block of Romagnol territory under the direct control of the duke of Milan. Lorenzo's agents riled up the citizens against the "murderers of Galeotto" and sent whispers through the countryside about a coup d'état. Even Antonio Maria Ordelaffi appeared in Faenza, perhaps to offer his hand in marriage to Francesca, as he had to Caterina. The temper of the town turned, and suddenly hostility rained down on the joint forces of Milan and Bologna. While dining in the main palace of Faenza, Brambilla and Giovanni Bentivoglio were attacked. Brambilla, the brave soldier and gallant captain who had fought in numerous battles, was killed at the table, while Giovanni Bentivoglio narrowly escaped by climbing out of a window and into the hands of the Florentines. Innocent VIII shot out a papal edict confirming three-year-old Astorre Manfredi as lord of Faenza, putting the boy under the tutelage of a delegation of leading citizens. Caterina received a double disappointment with the dispatch bearing news from Faenza. Her hopes for a unified state were dashed; Faenza would still be controlled by hostile forces. Furthermore, her new friend and protector, Brambilla, was dead. Her first sally as an independent ruler had ended in failure and loss.

 

J
ULY BROUGHT THE
long-awaited papal confirmation of Caterina's rule. The twelve-page document, dated July 18, 1488, was signed by Pope Innocent VIII and sixteen cardinals, who declared Ottaviano the lord of Forlì and Imola until the end of his family line.
⁹
Countess Caterina was officially named his regent until the boy came of age. The news was proclaimed to their subjects on July 30 amid tolling bells and banquets. The prominent presence of Cardinal Riario amid the celebrations strongly suggested that he was responsible for the pontiff's change of heart. Together Cardinal Riario and Caterina announced a benevolent change in policy, the first official one by the new rulers of Forlì. They lowered the hated grain
dazi
and decreased taxes on salt and military guards by one third.

When October 19 came and the cardinal took his leave, the citizens of both Forlì and Imola were sad to see him go. His generosity had helped revive the spirits of the tragedy-stricken countess and her subjects. Peace had been restored and the future promised prosperity. Little did Caterina know that the next trauma in her life would arrive soon, and would not be inflicted by troops or revolts, but by Cupid's arrow.

I
N
1489,
FORLÌ
gossiped about love. Antonio Maria Ordelaffi, the heir of the former ruling family of Forlì, was twenty-nine, four years older than Caterina. Handsome and unmarried, the stateless noble had knocked about Romagna; displaced from the land of his birth, he had nowhere to call home. Many Forlivesi remembered Ordelaffi with open fondness, while others kept their partisanship more secret. During the tumult following Girolamo's murder, Antonio thought he had found the ideal solution to Forlì's political struggles when he proposed to the newly widowed Caterina via two arrows shot over the ramparts of Ravaldino. Later that year, Caterina decided it was time to take a closer look at this tergiversate suitor. She sent him an invitation to Forlì, which he promptly accepted. The Forlivesi, kept well apprised of everything from the proposal to the invitation—most likely by agents of Antonio—began to speculate wildly in the fields, offices, and piazzas. The initial encounter took place in April, the first anniversary of the murder of Girolamo. As spring wore on into summer, Antonio became a regular visitor to the fortress. Caterina seemed very well disposed toward the young noble; they were close in age, and both were attractive. The Forlivesi began to indulge the hope that their political struggles would be resolved with a wedding. When Caterina took a villa four miles outside Imola for the summer and Antonio joined the family, the townspeople assumed that the deal had been worked out.
¹
A delegation of Forlivesi went so far as to visit the Ordelaffi family in Ravenna to offer their congratulations.

The chronicler Leone Cobelli delighted in Caterina's newfound romance. As the summer days passed, he noted that the countess had still not returned. He painted banners and standards with their coats of arms intertwined, a gift for the newlyweds, he thought, expecting effusive thanks for his efforts. He was mistaken.

The rumors of the Riario-Ordelaffi wedding escaped the city borders and raced to the ears of Ludovico the Moor, Cardinal Raffaello Riario, Lorenzo de' Medici, and even the pope himself. Irate letters poured into Forlì, criticizing Caterina for her conduct. All the parties were concerned about the consequences of such a marriage. What would happen to the Riario children? After she had fought to save them at Ravaldino, would she be willing to fritter away their inheritance for an Ordelaffi exile? Pope Innocent contemplated using "Caterina's disorderly life"
²
as an excuse to rescind his approval of her regency and turn her state over to his own son Francescetto. Cardinal Riario frantically prepared to ride to Forlì. As relatives of Caterina, Ludovico the Moor and Cardinal Riario were the most concerned by the rumors. They had thrown their weight behind Caterina to win her lands back, but not out of love for kin. Each of her powerful allies planned on controlling her territory through her, viewing Caterina as a pawn on the chessboard of Italian politics. While impressed by her determination to keep her states, they doubted her ability to rule. Each man, in fact, maintained a number of spies in her household to keep abreast of all that happened in Caterina's life. As the duke of Milan explained to his envoy Branda da Castiglione, "Now we shall have to govern Forlì, until the child comes of age."
³
Caterina, however, would prove to be anything but a docile political tool.

In any case, their fears were unfounded. While Caterina may have succumbed to the charms of Antonio Maria Ordelaffi during the summer months of 1489, marriage was not on her mind. Having just defended her state at great risk, she had no intention of handing it over to political rivals.

Caterina returned from her pleasant summer holiday to the pandemonium generated by the Forlivesi gossip mills. Far from pleased by Cobelli's romantic creations, she put the dumbfounded chronicler in prison. Firing off letters to her uncle and to Cardinal Riario, she assured them that there was no marriage in the works. Then she wrote a formal letter to Venice, the official protectors of Antonio, and complained about the inconvenience and embarrassment caused by the presence of Antonio Maria Ordelaffi and the worries of the duke of Milan. She was well aware that several Forlivesi had gone to Ravenna to congratulate the rest of the Ordelaffi clan. The ruling body of Venice, the Signoria, called Antonio back and gave him a military commission with handsome pay in Friuli, a mountainous region in northeast Italy, where he would be safely out of the way.

Caterina rounded up the principal scandalmongers and threw them into prison alongside the miserable Cobelli. The elegant dance teacher was crushed when confronted by the ire of his heroine. He stammered a weak defense, but Caterina knew Cobelli had consorted with the Orsis after her husband's murder, and though she had tolerated his prying for years, enough was enough. She intended to unleash further punishment on the hapless painter, but Tommaso Feo, her trusted castellan and the savior of Ravaldino, intervened.
⁴
Out of gratitude to Feo, Caterina let the crestfallen chronicler go. Bernardi, who would take over as the principal historian of Forlì, wrote that Cobelli tried to burn the hundreds of pages he had written about Caterina over the years, but his friends stopped him. The book survived, but Cobelli's pleasure in recounting the affairs and events in the life of the countess died in that instant. His accounts would grow more bitter and critical as the years went on.

After the scandal surrounding her purported marriage, Caterina directed her energies toward pious activities. Her own territory of Imola had recently been the scene of a popular miracle. In the spring of 1483, while Caterina and Girolamo had been in Rome attending Mass on Holy Thursday, the day of Christ's Last Supper, a solitary pilgrim named Stefano Manganelli from Cremona was making his way toward the Marian shrine in Loreto, hoping to arrive in time for Easter. The devout man stopped at every image of Mary gracing the Via Emilia, never failing to light a candle to the Madonna. It had been an unusually severe winter, and although the calendar had reached the spring equinox, the weather remained cold. That Thursday, Manganelli arrived three miles from Imola at a locality called Piratello. At the intersection of a small secondary road he saw a rough stone pillar with a niche carved into it. Nestled within this humble setting was a fresco of the Madonna and Child. The pilgrim retrieved a small candle from his sack and lit it, but when he reached to place his offering on the stone ledge of the niche his hand slipped and the candle went out. As Manganelli righted it, the flame returned as if lit by itself. At that moment, the startled pilgrim heard a sweet voice carried on the chilly Romagnol wind. It said, "I am the Immaculate Virgin Mary." Falling to his knees, he asked the Mother of God how he could serve her. She ordered him to go to the next town and tell the people to build her a shrine at Piratello. "If they don't believe you," the voice continued, "show them this." Stefano Manganelli's cape filled with roses, a flower unobtainable in the freezing Romagnol spring.
⁵

The bishop of Imola had been delighted by the news of a miracle on his turf, and Caterina and Girolamo had sent funds to arrange a little shrine around the fresco. People crowded the Via Emilia to see the image, while pottery artists kept their kilns filled with ceramic copies of the Madonna di Piratello. In a time when the hard realities of hunger, illness, and death struck early and often, these brushes with the divine reenergized the faithful and gave them hope that their prayers were heard.

In 1489, Caterina renewed her interest in the Madonna di Piratello. Undoubtedly performing a kind of public penance for the summer's scandal, Caterina sought and received permission from Pope Innocent to build a church on the site. Caterina paid for most of the construction, from the church walls to the bronze bell in the tower. The shrine of Piratello still exists and Caterina's bell tower stands over what is now the cemetery of Imola.

Soon after, Caterina returned to the affairs she had overseen before her husband's murder. During the cold winter of 1489, she sent to Mantua for a large quantity of down to replace the bedding lost when her palace was ransacked, in order to render her new home in the castle more comfortable. Always focused on the future of her children, Caterina also began negotiations to affiance her eight-year-old daughter, Bianca, to Astorre Manfredi, the new lord of Faenza, now age four. The marriage, which would ensure a friendly presence in Faenza, sandwiched as it was between the two Riario territories, was heartily supported by the Bentivoglios of Bologna. Lorenzo de' Medici of Florence, on the other hand, hesitated. Caterina had to send him several pointed letters, demanding a "simple yes or no,"
⁶
before he finally sent his approval. Given that Lorenzo had undone the Sforza-Bentivoglio plan to take Faenza in 1488, his acceptance of the match was considered necessary. Caterina also resumed her exchanges with the duke of Ferrara, still hoping to obtain compensation for her lost
cascina
and livestock, but to little avail. The powerful lord exchanged gifts and pleasantries but refused to take the countess seriously.

Caterina began to realize that even her own retainers were skeptical of her authority. In October, while checking on the work at Piratello, Caterina stopped to visit her fortress in Imola. She called the castellan, Giovanni Andrea de' Gerardi, and told him to let her enter. He refused. De' Gerardi, like many in Caterina's court, was from Savona, the home of the Riario family. Girolamo had brought many of his kinsmen to Romagna during his rule, and they remained loyal to him and his heirs. De' Gerardi claimed that he held the fortress for Lord Ottaviano and would open only to him.

Enraged and humiliated, Caterina stood outside her own fortress, shouting to be allowed in. At length, de' Gerardi allowed her to enter, accompanied by a few female servants. He had heard what happened to the last castellan who had refused entry to Caterina and was taking no chances.

Once inside, she discovered that like Zaccheo, this castellan had loaned money to Girolamo and now wanted the five thousand ducats he claimed to be owed before he would abandon the castle. He had not worked for the Riario family without learning a thing or two. De' Gerardi insisted that the money be deposited outside Caterina's territory and guaranteed by a letter of credit.

Caterina did not have such funds available, nor did she have an inclination to pay them. She wrote immediately to Cardinal Riario in Rome, outlining the problem. The cardinal instantly realized the danger, should open hostility develop between the castellan and the countess. The castellan would be easy prey for a wealthy Riario enemy to manipulate if the matter was left unsettled. On November 2, the cardinal arrived in Imola, having ridden from Rome in only six days. In contrast to his flamboyant earlier appearances, he brought only a small escort of forty men. Moments after his arrival, he accompanied Caterina to the fortress, where he was able to soothe the castellan and negotiate an armistice. They agreed that Caterina would find the money, and the castellan would allow the countess access to her fortress. To all appearances, peace was restored. But Caterina smoldered in resentment at the castellan's defiance.