Murder in the Garden of God (6 page)

Shortly after his conversation with Francesco, Paolo Giordano took his wife to the villa of Correto outside Florence on the pretext of going hunting. On July 16, 1576, it was reported that poor Isabella had died. While washing her hair, the thirty-three-year-old had evidently had a heart attack, according to the story, and with soap bubbles still in her long golden-brown tresses fell stone dead into the arms of a waiting woman.

But Ambassador Cortile heard differently. On July 29, he wrote his master a heart-wrenching account. “The Lady Isabella was strangled,” he explained, “having been called by Lord Paolo when she, the poor woman, was in bed. She arose immediately, and as she was in a nightgown, drew a robe about her, and went to his room, passing through a room in which the priest known as Elicona was with several other servants. They say that her face and the set of her shoulders told that she may have known what was in store for her. Morgante [a servant] and his wife were in his chamber, and Lord Paolo hunted them out and bolted the door with great fury.

“Hidden under the bed was a Roman Knight of Malta, Massimo, who helped to kill the lady. He did not remain more than a quarter of an hour locked in the room before Paolo called for a woman, Donna Lucrezia Frescobaldi, telling her to bring vinegar because the lady had fainted. Once she had entered, followed immediately by Morgante, she saw the poor lady on the ground propped against the bed and, overcome by her love for her, said, ‘Oh, you have killed her! What need have you of vinegar or anything else?’ Lord Paolo threatened her and urged her to hold her tongue or he would kill her.”
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Isabella had reacted with contempt for everything her husband was, everything he possessed. His blood was not as good as hers; his power was nothing compared to her family’s; his debts were humiliating, his appearance grotesque. After sixteen years of her put-downs and encouraged by her brother, it must have been with great joy that Paolo Giordano could finally spring upon her and squeeze the life out of her. That mouth would now be silenced forever. Looking at her blackened face, tongue hanging out, dead eyes bulging, he must have asked,
Where is your superiority now?

Paolo Giordano had considerately prepared a coffin for his wife, which he whipped out after the job was done. He flung the body inside, threw the lid on it, and tossed the coffin upside down in a cart which took it to a church in Florence. There, in the ultimate insult to the vain Isabella, the dreadful cadaver was exposed to the curious who wanted to see what a woman looked like who had died while washing her hair. Even worse, they were permitted to touch the corpse and lift the skirts.

According to Cortile, “It is said that there was never seen a more ugly monster. Her head was swollen beyond measure, the lips thickened and black like two sausages, the eyes open and bulging like two wounds, the breasts swollen and one completely split, it is said because of the weight of Lord Paolo who threw himself on her to kill her as quickly as possible. And the stench was so great that no one could go close.” Sheer morbid fascination, however, propelled people to go close, holding their noses.

Because her body had been thrown upside down in the cart, the blood had rushed to her upper half. Cortile continued, “She was black from the middle up and completely white below, according to what Niccolo of Ferrara told me, who lifted the covers, as others had done to see her. She was buried the following night in San Lorenzo.”
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Then Paolo Giordano, who bought anything and everything he wanted despite his debts, regretfully announced he couldn’t afford a proper tomb for her.

Adulterous strangled women disappeared from family records. Portraits that had proudly displayed their names had those names painted over and were sold as anonymous subjects in the flea markets. Family members weren’t supposed to mention their dead dishonored relatives. And so Isabella, the fairest star of the de Medicis, disappeared. Her lover, the gallant Troilo, was assassinated soon after by the same assassin Paolo Giordano has used to kill Isabella.

Little Virginio Orsini was four years old when his father killed his mother. After the murder, Paolo Giordano allowed his children to continue residing in Florence at the court of their uncle, Grand Duke Francesco. He rarely visited and had to be badgered to send them money. “It has been said that Signor Paolo does not want them,” the ambassador of Ferrara reported, “claiming that they are not his children.”
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The grand duke fumed “about their father’s irreparable shamelessness.”
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A perennial fixture in the stews of Rome, for over four years the Orsini duke had no inclination to remarry. His first marriage hadn’t gone so well, after all, and he must have enjoyed his freedom. When the de Medicis offered to arrange his marriage to one of several illustrious noblewomen with large dowries in tow, he turned them all down. The main reason for his single state seems to have been that he hadn’t met a woman who had captured his heart. Until he saw Vittoria.

The elite of any cosmopolitan city is always limited in number. Rome had its great ancient families – the Orsinis, Colonnas, Savellis, and others – who had been at the pinnacle of society for centuries. These in-bred clans were periodically rejuvenated by marrying into the new families of cardinals and popes. Whenever Rome had a papal event, a noble ball, or a grand feast, it was the same two or three hundred individuals who attended. Paolo Giordano, the most powerful Roman baron, and Vittoria Accoramboni, the niece of a cardinal with papal aspirations, must have come in contact at various festivities. Moreover, one of the duke’s palaces was on the Piazza Navona, and its rear entrance faced Camilla Peretti’s corner house on the Via Leutari. Perhaps the duke and Vittoria had spotted each other in the street.

Paolo Giordano had always been captivated by female beauty – except, of course, by that of his wife. He must have been entranced by Vittoria. We can assume he flattered her, and she flirted with him, and, given the fact that she was married to Cardinal Montalto’s nephew, that might have been the end of it, if it hadn’t been for Vittoria’s brother Marcello.

When, in the summer of 1580, Marcello had stabbed the brother of Cardinal Pallavicino, he had fled to Bracciano Castle to enroll in Paolo Giordano’s personal army of ruffians. He became friendly with the duke and, perhaps already aware of his attraction for Vittoria, began to interest him more and more in his lovely sister. His loyalty to Accoramboni family ambition proved far stronger than his loyalty to his brother-in-law Francesco, who was devoted to him.

Marcello explained to the duke that Vittoria was living a wretched existence among country bumpkins. Her nobility, delicacy, and beauty deserved more. She was terribly unhappy in Camilla’s household, with her low-class laundress of a mother-in-law, her useless husband, and all of his noisy nieces and nephews.

Cardinal Montalto was tight as a tick, and the Accorambonis had to fight him for every dime. His oft-promised gift of a carriage failed to materialize. Moreover, his health had become so bad there was no chance of him ever becoming pope. For the rest of her life, Vittoria would hardly be able to afford a decent dress, let alone the palatial luxury she wanted. Vittoria, he pointed out, was worthy of being a duchess. And the duke agreed.

We don’t know the details of the courtship, but we do know that the duke introduced into Vittoria’s service one Caterina of Bologna, loyal to him and not to the Peretti family. It is likely that Caterina smuggled letters between the duke and Vittoria, or that she and her mistress pretended to go shopping but secretly met the duke somewhere in Rome.

Here, finally, was a woman who truly needed him, unlike the annoyingly independent Isabella. Here was a woman who stood in awe of him, instead of scorning him. Vittoria was a noble damsel in distress, and Paolo Giordano could play the part of valiant knight come to the rescue. We can picture her walking with him in a garden, gazing at him reverently with shining dark eyes, her every move, gesture, and expression tinged with just a touch of tragedy. Yes, her life was unbearable. She would rather die than continue her dreary existence. But she must try to bear it. It was, after all, God’s will.

Paolo Giordano knew that he could hasten Vittoria’s widowhood easily, if he were so inclined, and he would almost certainly never be punished for it. He was a powerful duke, and such men were rarely hauled before the law to render justice for misdeeds. The pope might chat with them about mending their ways, and the malefactor might build an altar as penance before he went out to commit crimes afresh.

But Paolo Giordano’s power did not rest solely on his awe-inspiring ancestry or his numerous palaces. His personal army provided him with prestige, protection, and revenge. Such gangs were vestiges of the Middle Ages, when the lord of a castle commanded hundreds of men-at-arms necessary to protect his land from invasion. But Paolo Giordano’s men were not courtly knights prepared to defend their lord’s territories; they were violent gangsters ready to murder if their boss commanded it.

Assassinations and duels occurred almost daily in Rome, and in most cases the murderers’ names were known immediately. Yet when it came to arresting them, the pope’s hands were tied. Barons such as Paolo Giordano Orsini claimed legal immunity for their men. Tradition decreed that the pope could not arrest anyone protected by a powerful lord, not even the most notorious murderer. Authorities were not permitted to set foot on a nobleman’s property, unless invited, and if they captured one of his men on the street, the baron would command the bailiff to set him free.

The popes allowed this claim of immunity because in earlier centuries Roman barons had kidnapped and murdered the Vicars of Christ to aid their own political aspirations. In 1303, members of the Colonna family severely beat Pope Boniface VIII, who died several days later. They probably poisoned his successor, Benedict XI, a year later. It comes as no surprise that the next pope, Clement X, packed his bags and moved the papal court to France. First in Avignon, then in various Italian towns, for nearly 140 years pontiffs enjoyed peace and quiet without being threatened daily by their own violent noblemen. Only in 1443 did the popes return to Rome for good, and though none had been harmed by a baron since then, the fear remained, a fear the barons continued to exploit with their bandit gangs.

European judicial systems helped swell the number of bandits because they were loath to execute young men. Indeed, the word
bandit
comes from the Italian
bandito –
banished – as most of them were, instead of hanged, as they should have been. Though we think of historical justice as merciless, involving torture, disemboweling, and beheading for the slightest offenses, in many cases the courts were shockingly lenient. Burgundian law preferred to shame robbers instead of incarcerating them – they were required to kneel and kiss a dog’s anus in front of their fellow citizens. This person was doomed forevermore to be the butt, pardon the pun, of jokes.

Italians, loving melodrama, turned their courtrooms into stages for high theater. The young criminal, prostrate on the floor, begged the judge, the pope, and God on high to forgive him, vowing never to do it again. His aged mother, in sack cloth and ashes, wailed as she prayed the rosary. His lovely wife ripped her dress at the breast – just enough to let the judge see a nipple – tore her hair, and displayed her caterwauling infants who would starve without a father. Such performances usually ended happily as Italians far prefer comedy to tragedy. The malefactor was exiled, the family saved, the nipple discreetly tucked away until needed again. The problem with such gratifying performances was that the criminal was now wandering the countryside, likely to join a gang of bandits and commit new crimes.

Many bandits were foolish noble youths such as Marcello who had killed someone in an ambush or drunken argument. As Thomas Coryat put it, “These bandits are banished men, who for some notorious villany that they have committed in their owne countries, doe voluntarily flie away for feare of punishment, and being afterward very poore and destitute of maintenance, they live by rifling and spoyling of travellers.”
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Others were poor men seeking employment or mercenary soldiers temporarily without a war to fight. Italian nations had very small standing armies and required an onrush of volunteers or mercenaries when war loomed. After the war, these soldiers, often far from home, discovered that the easiest way to earn a living was to rob travelers and pillage villages. As long as the robberies were kept within acceptable limits, the government didn’t pursue the bandits with much diligence. These violent criminals made fearless soldiers; as such, they were priceless assets to the state in time of war.

Even when bandits went beyond the bounds of good taste – murdering families, burning entire villages, raping girls – Pope Gregory XIII, who hated harsh justice, was still reluctant to execute them. He invited them to Rome to publicly confess their sins, promise never to murder anybody again, and perform a penance – such as giving alms to the poor or making a pilgrimage to a holy site. The pope would issue a bull of absolution, proof on parchment that God had forgiven the assassin’s sins. It was a very Catholic way of dealing with the problem.

Naturally, such leniency encouraged crime. One bandit priest, known as Father Guercini, asked the pope for a brief absolving him of the forty-four murders he had committed. Gregory agreed, but a few days later received word from Guercini to write out the absolution for forty-eight murders, as he had just killed four more people. The pope obediently issued the dispensation for forty-eight murders.

Some of the worst bandits were in the retinues of the most highly respected cardinals. Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici, brother of Grand Duke Francesco and brother-in-law of Paolo Giordano, had a troop of bodyguards who should have been adorning the gallows rather than serving a prince of the Church. In early June 1580, Cardinal Luigi d’Este’s men assaulted police officers but could not be arrested because of the cardinal’s immunity. On June 15, the pope held a meeting with the entire Sacred College and complained bitterly that his cardinals were sheltering the most hardened criminals. But the pope’s lecture did no good. A few days later, Cardinal Mark Altemps’s men engaged the police in a violent fight.