Murder in the Garden of God (9 page)

Having received reports of Father Montalto’s irascible nature, the Venetian Senate politely requested the Vatican to send them another inquisitor, but to no avail. On January 17, 1557, Father Felice Montalto arrived in the Grand Lagoon to take up his duties.

He was shocked at the physical differences between Rome and Venice. Rome was a city of somnambulant majesty, upon which history weighed heavily. Rome took itself very seriously; it was the center of two world empires – the ancient Roman, and the modern Catholic – and neither one was a laughing matter. The old empire was found in the huge monuments, heavy chunks of Roman baths, broken aqueducts, and tumbling temples; the new empire was manifested in solid churches and stately palaces. And in between the stones of the old and new empires, goats grazed, and sheep nibbled, and cows chewed their cud.

But Venice was as glittering and improbable as a mermaid splayed out on the crest of a wave. Its glories shocked first-time visitors. Thomas Coryat wrote that Venice, “yeeldeth the most glorious and heavenly shew upon the water that ever any mortal eye beheld, such a shew as did even ravish me both with delight and admiration.”
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He called Venice “that Diamond set in the ring of the Adriatique gulfe, and the most resplendent mirrour of Europe.”
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In the right light, Venice was almost youthful, though she was already a thousand years old when Father Montalto arrived. When the sun shone, the city sparkled beneath a turquoise sky, a lady of venerable age still possessed of splendid beauty and youthful humor despite a few cracks in her façade. She gloried in her antiquity, if only for the memories of her thousands of lovers. Kissed by a Byzantine breeze, Venice was a city of delicate pastel palaces with keyhole-shaped windows. But when the sky turned gray, she suddenly aged, her marble monuments reminiscent of the tomb. She hunkered down, crouched disconsolately on the lagoon, waiting breathlessly for another transparent sky.

For all its architectural grandeur, Venice was a city of merchants. Crime was frowned upon because it interfered with making money. When residents felt safe to wander the streets and canals, they invariably spent money, which was taxed. If they were too afraid to leave their houses, they wouldn’t spend money, and the Venetian economy and taxation would stagnate. Feeling safe in its shimmering embrace, traders and visitors from all over the world came in droves to the city and dropped huge sums purchasing merchandise.

One of the republic’s most profitable ventures was printing. Venice was the heart of Europe’s printing industry, hundreds of printers producing hundreds of thousands of books in a variety of languages, which were shipped throughout the world. And the Venetians, always good merchants at heart, sometimes printed heretical works – omitting the name of the printer, or using a false one – and smuggled them out to Protestant countries where they fetched high prices. Venetian printers couldn’t understand why religion should interfere with good business practices.

For many years after the printing press was invented in 1439, the upper classes had looked with disdain upon printed books. Any library worth its salt had the more expensive hand-written, illuminated manuscripts. The Milanese Dominican friar, Filippo Di Strata wrote with scorn, “The city was so full of books that it was hardly possible to walk down the street without finding armfuls of them thrust at you like cats in a bag for two or three coppers… Printing was a whore.”
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Federico da Montefaltro, the duke of Urbino (1422-1482), “would have been ashamed to own a printed book.”
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By the mid-sixteenth century, however, printed books were more esteemed. Purchasers often bought the loose pages and then designed a binding – anything from simple cardboard or vellum to finely tooled leather or velvet, engraved with intricate coats of arms, studded with gems, and adorned with silver clasps and corner protectors. As printed books increased in popularity, Venetian book sellers became rich.

Unfortunately for Venice, one of the new inquisitor’s main responsibilities was to enforce the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books. The index had been initiated in 1543 by Pope Paul III to stem the printing of heretical texts. Heresy was thought to be a kind of infection, spreading from one individual to the next, or one community to the next. Because of their wider audience, books were more dangerous than individuals. Bad books, Pope Paul said, were a pestilence which at a single blow could infect whole cities and provinces. They had certainly been the breeze which carried Martin Luther’s ideas around Europe, making him the world’s first international best-selling author.

Books with any hint of heresy were forbidden, as well as books not of a heretical nature, but written by heretical authors. No anonymous books on any subject whatsoever were to be printed, nor any pornographic books, or those that made fun of the Church. Since the most revered comedies in the Italian language had a corrupt monk or drunken priest somewhere in the story, almost all comedies were forbidden. There were so many books listed on the first index, among them well-read works on philosophy and history used in schools, that it seemed there was nothing left to read. While many Catholics quarreled with the decree, the Venetians merely shrugged and ignored it.

Venice was, therefore, horrified to learn that the new inquisitor brought with him a list of sixty-one condemned printers and editors, along with forty-eight banned editions of the Bible, and the condemnation of hundreds of other popular books. Father Montalto had his servants deliver orders for each book seller to hand over a list of his entire inventory in stores and warehouses. Those who refused to do so were excommunicated.

Montalto’s servant tacked up decrees of excommunication on the front of the bookstores; the Senate’s bailiff yanked them down, and Montalto’s servant nailed them up again. Montalto barged into bookstores and even private homes, pulling books off the shelves and throwing the forbidden ones on the floor. On Palm Sunday 1559, he burned 10,000 forbidden books in Saint Mark’s Square to the horror of the Venetian people and Senate; those books could have been sold for a lot of money.

Though the Venetians had no wish to insult the pope – who could prevail upon other Catholic nations to stop trading with them – the Senate seriously debated whether they should throw Father Montalto into a dungeon, or at least into the sewage-filled Grand Canal, where he and his list of forbidden books and briefs of excommunication could float serenely among the turds out to sea. It was a tempting thought, and only the frantic apologies of the Vatican nuncio – Rome’s ambassador to Venice – prevented the inquisitor from doing the breaststroke in the lagoon.

One of Montalto’s responsibilities was to instruct the Franciscans of Venice in Church doctrine. But the monks “complained of the rude and haughty manner in which he taught theology.”
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He enforced strict discipline, placing disobedient monks in prison on bread and water, or sending them to row the pope’s galleys. His fellow monks spied on him and slipped messages to the Senate of his bad behavior. When plague hit Venice, and monks were not allowed to leave the monastery for food, they hid their rations from Montalto in an effort to starve him to death.

When that didn’t work, in 1560, the Franciscan monks of Venice denounced him to the Senate as an enemy of the republic, and the Senate petitioned Rome for his recall. After three years fighting the Venetians, Montalto, too, had had enough. He wanted to return to Rome to advance his career. His mentor, Michele Ghislieri, who in the meantime had become Cardinal Alessandrino, granted his request.

But before he left, Father Montalto had one more statement to make. When the senators protected a certain renegade priest who had turned heretic, late one night Montalto tacked up a huge degree of excommunication against the entire Venetian Senate in Saint Mark’s Square. Then, knowing they would try to arrest him, he quickly paddled out of town with his baggage in a gondola. The Venetians and the Franciscan monks thanked God for Montalto’s departure, crying, “God guard us from the government of Montalto, God free us from his operations, and God protect us from his return.”
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Despite his disastrous tenure in Venice, Montalto’s cardinal friends in Rome were proud of his efforts to enforce Church laws and improve morals in the monastery. They appointed him a consultant to the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Back in Rome, he found exciting changes afoot to reform the Church. Though the new pope, Pius IV, had a wild past – twenty years earlier he had fathered three children and contracted syphilis – he had changed his ways by the time he became pontiff and realized that the Church, too, was in urgent need of reform. He reopened the Council of Trent, that belated Vatican response to Luther’s heresies, which had stalled years earlier without accomplishing anything. Despite immeasurable difficulties, the council succeeded in finishing its most pressing work by the end of 1563.

The council tightened rules on clerical behavior; prelates were forbidden to marry, despite pleas from numerous European rulers who thought that married clergy would be less likely to seduce other men’s wives and daughters, and the omnipresent altar boys. Nor could priests live openly with mistresses and enjoy gluttonous feasts and orgies with prostitutes. Monks designated to care for the sick in hospitals were no longer permitted to spend most of their time gambling in taverns.

But it wasn’t just churchmen who were blatantly misbehaving. The laity showed great disrespect during church services. Prostitutes held court during Mass, writing down appointments for the coming week. Beggars pestered the faithful, pulling on their cloaks and crying for mercy. Lawyers loudly interviewed clients and witnesses. Fistfights broke out. Threatening strict penalties, the council forbade bad behavior in church and provided a reinvigorated, clarified form of Catholicism in doctrine and behavior. Not everyone liked the new rules, but at least they were now clear.

The conclave of 1565 was a fortunate one for Father Montalto. His protector and best friend, Cardinal Alessandrino, was elected Pope Pius V. Montalto’s heart must have soared when he heard the exciting news. Alessandrino had often promised Montalto that if he ever became pope, he would make him a cardinal.

In 1566, Pius V made Montalto general of the Franciscan order, a position that required he visit monasteries to look over their finances, confirm good Catholic doctrine, and establish discipline. He initiated efficient new measures for putting the monasteries’ finances in order, saving a great deal of money. “During his administration never were the churches of his order better maintained, nor was there ever seen such an abundance of money, which was taken care of with great vigilance,” wrote the chronicler.
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As Felice Montalto rose in power and favor, many of his enemies feared he would seek revenge on them for ancient slights. Everyone knew he had the creepy habit of writing them down in that little book of his so that he would never forget. But Montalto realized that a man with a reputation for vendetta would never be elected cardinal, let alone pope. In the late 1560s, he completely changed his demeanor from angry and gruff to harmless and agreeable. He adopted a forgiving manner and even did favors for those who had slighted him. “Cardinal Montalto is a truly good man,” they said, “to have forgotten that we were previously his enemies.”
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Had he truly mellowed with age, or was it merely a stratagem to win Church advancement? Whatever it was, it worked. On May 17, 1570, Felice Montalto was made a cardinal along with thirteen others. In the presence of some forty cardinals, who must have been pea-green with envy, Pius V told him, “We have made you cardinal because of your merit, and your merit will lead to the papacy.”
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It was with the greatest joy that Cardinal Montalto suddenly found himself in the financial position to bring Camilla, now widowed, and her two children to Rome. Throughout the 1550s and 1560s, he had sent her fifteen scudi a month, which was barely enough to keep her family fed. Now, though he couldn’t offer them luxury, he could certainly provide food, as well as a decent dwelling with a few servants. In later years, it would be recalled with great mirth that Camilla had plodded into Rome astride a mangy ass, led by a ragged Francesco.

Pius V died on May 5, 1572. Cardinal Montalto stood by his side during his final illness, gave the dying pontiff extreme unction, and closed his eyes. He lost the best friend he would ever have. But the pope’s many kindnesses over the course of two decades had been recorded in the little book, and even years after Pius’s death Montalto would find a way to reward him.

It must have been with a heavy heart that Montalto prepared to elect a successor. But he used the opportunity to win friends in the Sacred College. According to his chronicler, “He showed no interest in any faction, and when someone tried to win him over to one, he pretended to be ignorant of any sort of intrigue, and replied with words full of simplicity, saying, ‘That never having been in a conclave, he did not want to make a mistake, and that those with experience should decide.’ The most that came out of his mouth was that in conscience he did not know whom to vote for, considering all capable, and he wished he had enough votes to give one to each cardinal.’”
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It was a bad stroke of luck for Cardinal Montalto when the Sacred College elected Ugo Boncompagni, who took the name Gregory XIII. An able churchman, Cardinal Boncompagni had led a mission to Spain several years earlier, with Father Montalto among his assistants. The cardinal had so disliked Montalto’s rude manners and blunt speech that he had placed him in the baggage cart, bouncing up and down for hundreds of miles each way in between leather trunks.

But “Montalto showed great happiness at this election, assuring everyone later in secret discussions that his preference had always been directed toward this individual, founding all this on the honor he had received from his kindness on the voyage to Spain.”
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Many marveled at these comments, having heard the baggage cart story. But Montalto took note that Gregory won the election not because he had been the most powerful, noble, or intelligent cardinal, but because he was a man without enemies, an affable soul whom everyone liked.