Murder in the Garden of God (25 page)

The chronicler continued, “The governor knew that the pope wanted him to be hanged immediately. So while he was leaving the Vatican Palace he gave orders to build the gallows right in front of the windows where the pope lived, and while it was being built he examined the criminal with a brief trial. There were only four and a half hours from the murder to the execution, and Sixtus did nothing else but talk about it to his servants and keep looking out of his window.” Then the ambassador of Spain showed up with some cardinals, not to ask for pardon – they knew that to be impossible – but to ask that Sixtus not dishonor the Spanish nation with a hanging, but honor it with a beheading.

Sixtus replied angrily, “Such delinquents don’t deserve favors, and his excesses merit the gallows and not the block. But we will give you more than what you ask; we will make his death noble by watching it ourselves.”
¹⁰

Sixtus remained glued to the window. As the hangman was placing the rope around the Spaniard’s neck, the pope quoted a line from David’s Psalms: “I will make die, in one morning, all the sinners of the earth, to purge the city of God of all those who commit iniquity.”
¹¹

According to the chronicler, “When the man was dead, the pope said to his servants, ‘Bring us lunch, because we want to eat, serving this justice as a sauce to our appetite.’ And they brought him the meats to his table and he began to talk to his servants, as he often did during his meals, about the justice, esteeming it a great thing that he had immediately punished this crime. Having finished his lunch he rose to his feet and cried, ‘God be praised that this morning we have eaten with a good appetite.’”
¹²

The next day, Pasquino was seen holding a bucket full of ropes, cleavers, and chains, with a sign around his neck stating that he was taking sauce to Pope Sixtus to give him a good appetite.

According to the chronicler, “This pope got fat and ate with good appetite when some news was taken to him of rigorous justice in the city or in the Papal States against the bandits, and then he would take great pleasure in his food… And all foreigners in Rome were frightened that a Spaniard protected by the ambassador could be arrested, tried, and executed in four hours. All the ambassadors warned their servants to go about the city modestly and to make sure they did not fall into the hands of the pope because they would receive no compassion and only severity… And it is true that never did the courtiers of ambassadors and other princes walk about so soberly without committing any scandals or impertinences as in the time of Pope Sixtus V.”
¹³

The pope liked to ride slowly through the streets of Rome with his little book in hand, noting down dilapidated buildings, dirty markets, and the bad habits of his subjects. But he found it hard to examine their daily behavior when everyone was apprised of his coming down the street well before he arrived. “Long live the pope!” they cried, as they had for centuries whenever a pontiff came their way. If those along his path had been gambling, carousing, or drinking, they would suddenly stop and become as grave as saints. He wanted to come upon them unannounced and catch them red-handed. Sixtus issued an edict that no one was to shout as he passed by. Now when he rode, Romans either ignored him and went about their daily business, or they sank silently to their knees and bowed their heads, probably praying he wouldn’t notice them.

Mothers, concerned that young children would cry out and upset the pope, took to telling them to be quiet because Pope Sixtus was passing by. Over time, whenever children at home started to squawk, parents told them they had to settle down because Pope Sixtus was coming. Pretty soon, Pope Sixtus was going to get them if they didn’t behave, an admonition that lasted for decades after his death. Sixtus became the boogeyman who hid under the beds of Italian children at night.

In his unannounced rides through Rome, Sixtus, to his great disgust, noticed the piazzas were teeming with idlers and vagabonds. According to Gregorio Leti, the pope said, “Amongst the other terrible and detestable occupations is that of the idle … which consists in eating, drinking and enjoying oneself. They spend all their time passing through the piazza, and moving from the tavern to the fishmongers and from the palazzo to the loggia, doing little all day except wandering from here to there, looking at glassware, mirrors, and rattles that are displayed in the piazza. Now they move aimlessly through the market in the midst of the peasants, now they stop in some barber-shop to exchange songs and gossip, now they read the newspapers, and the bank news, which is simply for the ears of these lazy and negligent men.”
¹⁴

Michel de Montaigne had noticed the same thing during his 1581 visit to Rome. “The most ordinary exercise of the Romans,” he wrote, “is to promenade about the streets, and usually the effort of leaving the house is made solely to go from street to street without any fixed object; and there are streets more particularly designed for that use.”
¹⁵

One day, while the pope was riding through the city, he spotted a group of men lounging about. He sent his minister to find out what they were doing. They replied they were from the countryside and were waiting for times to get better before they went back to work. The pope ordered them to work in building Saint Peter’s Basilica, for which he paid them fairly. When they had fulfilled their obligations well, he then sent them to work on a farm outside of Rome.

Even those who lounged about the noble palaces were hauled off at the least infraction. “It was a marvel that all the wicked idlers who had hung around Rome in the time of Gregory were sent to the galleys,” the chronicler wrote, “and any ruffian who let drop a bad word was immediately taken into custody, especially those who stayed in the Palazzo Orsini.”
¹⁶

Romans had enjoyed playing ballgames in the piazzas and courtyards but now gave up such pastimes. Those who played early forms of soccer or rugby often got into loud arguments and fistfights; now they feared the pope would learn of it through his intricate web of spies in the city. Bowling in the piazzas had been popular, but even that gentle sport ceased as bowlers were afraid the pope, riding by, would accuse them of being idlers and send them to work on his building projects. “There had never been anything like it in any other pontificate,” reported the chronicler, “so that it was universally observed that when people met friends in the street and asked where they were going, the reply was to a sermon, or to church, or to whip themselves.”
¹⁷

In addition to idlers and loungers, Rome had countless beggars spry enough to chase the wealthy for alms and intelligent enough to beg in several foreign languages. The pope wrote, “These vagabonds swarm over all the streets and squares in the city in search of bread; they fill public places and private houses, and even the churches, with their groans and cries… They wander round like animals, and their one concern is the search for food.”
¹⁸

According to the chronicler, “The pope had all beggars rounded up and examined to see if they were healthy. Those who were truly sick were given a begging permit, and the healthy received one hundred lashes and were sent to clean up the dirt in the streets, being paid a giulio a day, or were sent to work in factories, and those who were good with arms were sent to war. Suddenly Rome was cleared of its masses of beggars and vagabonds; every one worked in the factories, in the docks, or in the trade of war.”
¹⁹

Even those who were not idlers or beggars were horrified at seeing the pope suddenly ride up to them and stare at them fiercely. According to the chronicler, “Those with bad consciences didn’t want to let themselves be seen because it seemed as if he could read their minds.”
²⁰

Chapter 18

Dance Macabre

A man tormented by the guilt of murder will be a fugitive
till death; let no one support him.

–
Proverbs 28:17

O
n June 28, Paolo Giordano, Vittoria, and their entourage reached Venice, where the duke had rented the Dandolo Palace on the Grand Canal. Strolling in Saint Mark’s Square, Vittoria must have been amazed by its size and elegance. One side of the square had been torn down to make way for new government buildings, the
procuratie nuove,
and construction was just getting started on a long three-story building over an arcade. But Saint Mark’s Church glittered in the sun just as it does today, with its domes, mosaics, and minarets. The church is a testament to Venice’s centuries of contact with the East, the spot where Roman Catholicism meets Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.

In the huge square itself, hundreds of people promenaded from six to eleven in the morning and from five to eight in the evening, local residents as well as visitors from across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. There was a babble of languages, a colorful palate of skin tones, and a multi-ethnic panoply of costumes. Scattered throughout the piazza, six or seven mountebanks performed on stages, entertaining with buffoons and jugglers, and selling “oyles, soveraigne waters, amorous songs printed, apothecary drugs, and a commonweale of other trifles.”
¹

Promenading with her husband, Vittoria must have been fascinated by the Venetian women. Over their jewel-colored gowns, aristocratic ladies wore a floor-length sheer black veil to enhance the beauty of their complexion. Compared to Roman dress, their gowns were shockingly immodest. “Almost all the wives, widowes and mayds,” wrote Coryat, “do walke abroad with their breastes all naked, and many of them have their backes also naked even almost to the middle.”
²
These shameless dresses were made of the richest materials from the Orient; their pearls, which came to Venice directly from the pearl fishing center of Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, were enormous. Since Venice imported these items into Italy, Venetians kept the best merchandise for themselves and sold the rest to their foreign customers.

“One cannot say,” wrote a visitor named Francesco Sansovino in 1581, “which to admire most, the richness of the stuff or the fineness of the embroidered linen, which is prepared and braided with infinite art. One sees nothing but silk or cloth of gold and silver, not to speak of lace, that wonder of the needle, which is unequalled by anything in other countries.”
³

Venetian ladies were forever drawing attention to themselves by fluttering their fans flirtatiously, a practice frowned upon by the more sober culture of Rome. They knew how to prepare hair bleach, turning dark locks golden, a recipe which was subsequently lost. On sunny days, they applied the mixture to their hair and sat on balconies, their tresses drawn through a hole in the middle of a wide straw hat. The hats not only spread out the locks evenly to absorb the bleaching rays of the sun, but also protected delicate complexions from the horrors of tanning. Vittoria must have found the Venetian coiffure extremely strange as well; the hair was coaxed into two peaks at the top of the head, like horns, a style that remained popular for decades.

Shoes were of an exaggerated height. While Roman women wore platform clogs to keep their slippers and hems out of mud and manure, in the streets the Venetian women wore extremely high clogs called chopines. Coryat described them as “a thing made of wood, and covered with leather of sundry colors, some with white, some redde, some yellow. It is called a chapiney, which they wear under their shoes. Many of them are curiously painted, some also I have seene fairely gilt: so uncomely a thing (in my opinion) it is a pitty they are not cleane banished and exterminated out of the city. There are many of these chapineys of a great height, even half a yard high, which maketh many of their women that are very short, seeme much taller then the tallest women we have in England.”
⁴

Staggering on such stilts, women would have routinely tumbled into the canals with a resounding splash if they had not taken the hand of a gentleman – usually a noble admirer who was honored to have the job. “Every one had at her side a young nobleman,” Sansovino explained, “pompously dressed as a foreigner who gave her his hand so that she avoided the danger of falling on the ground, which would be very easy due to the too great height of the shoes that are used in these times.”
⁵
Coryat actually “saw a woman fall a very dangerous fall as she was going down the staires of one of the little stony bridges with her high chapineys alone by her selfe, but I did nothing pitty her, because shee wore such frivolous and (as I may truely term them) ridiculous instruments, which were the occasion of her fall.”
⁶

Montaigne was amazed by Venice’s 150 rich prostitutes “spending money like princesses on dress and furniture, and yet having no other livelihood but that traffic; and many of the nobles of the place even keeping courtesans at their own expense, in sight of and to the knowledge of all.”
⁷

The courtesans were all registered with the police, paid taxes, and were periodically checked for disease. It was not considered at all scandalous for a Venetian politician to have a prostitute as his mistress, and many men had regular appointments each week with their favorite. Unlike other European cities, where men snuck around for this sort of business, when leaving their prostitutes, Venetians would walk unabashedly into the street adjusting their codpieces and greeting friends passing by. Coryat, for research purposes only, of course, visited “these places of evacuation,” and found that many women “are esteemed so loose, that they are said to open their quivers to every arrow.”
⁸
Coryat was alarmed to find that every Venetian prostitute, regardless of her frequent and profitable quiver-opening, had a picture of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus right next to her bed.

But prostitution was just one commodity that Venice traded in. Countless vessels from around the world bobbed in the harbor, loading and unloading luxury goods. Streets were lined with shops selling the merchandise – fine fabrics, rare jewels, porcelain, carpets, furniture, and Murano glass. Hundreds of inns and restaurants did a brisk business serving the nonstop onslaught of visitors. Venice was rich, bustling, ambitious, and despite this, law-abiding.

Perhaps the Dandolo palace didn’t please Paolo Giordano, or maybe one palace wasn’t good enough for a signor of his stature. Within a couple of days, he rented another palace in Murano, the nearby island that was known worldwide for its exquisite glassmaking factories. Though glass production brought wealth to the republic, the superheated kilns used in the process sometimes turned their neighborhoods into raging infernos. After a particularly bad blaze in 1291, the Venetian Senate exiled the glassmakers to their own island where, even if they burned the whole place to a cinder, it wouldn’t harm the main island of Venice itself.

Delighted that such a meritorious nobleman had moved to their territory, the Venetian Senate offered Paolo Giordano a military position. This was exactly what the duke had been hoping for only three months earlier, but now he replied that as a servant of the most Catholic king of Spain, it would not be appropriate for him to accept a commission from Venice, a nation usually at odds with the arrogant Philip II. The Senate was stung by this reply. It is likely that the duke was not feeling up to snuff, and now that Vittoria was indisputably his wife, he wanted to enjoy what little time remained to them as a married couple.

Lodovico Orsini had taken up his military commission in Venice a few months earlier, and now he welcomed Paolo Giordano to town. But almost immediately the old friction between the Orsini cousin and the Orsini bride started up again – the sarcastic comments, the sniping, the bitter complaints of both to the duke. Lodovico was painfully aware of Paolo Giordano’s precarious health and must have viewed Vittoria as a hovering vulture, ready to swoop in at the moment of death and devour whatever she could sink her talons into. Lodovico equally detested Marcello who, it seems, accompanied the duke and duchess to the Venetian Republic. Marcello had nudged Lodovico out of Paolo Giordano’s favor and grabbed it for himself.

It is possible that this antagonism was the cause of a bloody quarrel which erupted within days of the duke’s arrival. Paolo Giordano’s gang of bandits got into a sword fight with Lodovico’s gang of bandits, and Paolo Giordano felt it best to separate Vittoria and Marcello from Lodovico. On July 5, the duke moved to yet another rented palace, this one in Padua, twenty-five miles west of Venice.

Padua had been an independent city-state until 1405 when Venice conquered it. The watery republic, shimmering incandescently on wooden stilts, was proud to own some solid terra firma, which especially came in handy when it came to growing crops and riding horses. It was a gentle seven-hour journey from Venice to Padua; the entourage traveled five miles by boat to the mainland, where they kept their horses and carriages. These were then strapped to barges which were pulled by three horses on one side of a canal for twenty miles up the River Brenta.

Unlike the scintillating city of Venice, Byzantine in its excessive ornamentation, Padua was decidedly earthbound, with a solid, tidy look that Montaigne disliked. “The city is of vast extent,” he wrote. “The streets are narrow and ugly, very few people about, few handsome houses, its situation very pleasant, in an open plain extending to a far distance all around.”
⁹

Padua had been a university town since 1222, where young gentlemen from across Europe came to study, primarily medicine and law. In addition to academics, Padua offered special schools for fencing, riding, and dancing. Both Montaigne and Coryat admired the arched arcades under the downtown buildings where citizens could walk comfortably for many blocks in the heat of the day, and in the wind and rain.

Paduan courts had an unusual way of dealing with debtors. Those who were willing to sit with bare buttocks on a pillar in their assembly hall on three occasions would be forgiven small debts, perhaps in return for the sheer entertainment value of such a performance. Coryat described “the impudent behavior of some abject-minded varlet, who to acquit himself of his debt will most willingly expose his bare buttockes in that opprobrious and ignominious manner to the laughter of every spectator. Surely it is the strangest custome that ever I heard or read of, though that which I have related of it be the very naked truth.”
¹⁰

Coryat was glad that such a law did not exist in London, where hundreds of people would be running around with bare behinds to avoid paying creditors.

Though it would have been easy enough for Paolo Giordano to drop his pants to reduce his debts, the resulting horror of the sight might have been too much for Paduan authorities. Certainly, the dignity of his blue blood would not have permitted it. Indeed, instead of trying to reduce his debts, he racked up many more. In Padua, Paolo Giordano rented two palaces, in addition to the two he already had in Venice. Forever unsated, he was now doing the same thing with palaces that he had done with lamb chops and prostitutes.

The Zeni palace by the Brenta River had beautiful gardens for summer entertaining. But he and Vittoria spent most of their time in the Foscari Palace, a sumptuous U-shaped residence with a triumphal staircase and grand reception rooms, where “they held the most beautiful parties, balls, and dances, and he was always entertaining, going to all the castles in Paduan territory as it pleased him… being overall accepted with the greatest pleasure and favor,” according to a Venetian
relatione.
¹¹
It was a kind of dance macabre. With all the music, feasting, and dancing, no one noticed that one of the guests had not been invited and was carrying a sickle.

As if renting four palaces in his difficult financial situation was not enough, the duke went on a shopping expedition – on credit, of course – to stuff them with beautiful furnishings. Fearing the pope would confiscate his possessions, he had brought numerous wagonloads of furniture from Rome and Bracciano, but this was not enough to fill so many palaces. He stocked up on finely wrought items of ivory, gold, and silver.

One contemporary historian reported, “He had, among other things, two carriages, the roofs of which opened and closed, each pulled by six of the most beautiful steeds. In one of these went the most illustrious duchess his wife.”
¹²
Vittoria finally had her carriage.

Duchess Vittoria’s beauty was lauded, as were her wit and grace. Local noblewomen and the wives of top government officials vied for her friendship. She reveled in these few weeks of glory, as the sun relentlessly dropped toward the unforgiving horizon. Soon, it would burst into blood red fury before sinking into eternal night.