JACOPO BONFADIO.
Bonfadio executed in prison and his body burned--Errors in regard to
the year of his death--The causes of his arrest and punishment--He was
not guilty of the vices ascribed to him--The true cause of his ruin
was his Annals--The pretence for his condemnation was his Protestant
opinions.
A PAINFUL episode of literary history is closely connected with the
Fieschi conspiracy, and it has not yet been fully described. If
that Bonfadio, with whose name the reader of these pages has grown
familiar, the Bonfadio who was condemned for infamous crimes to an
infamous punishment, was indeed an innocent man, the fact is one of
great importance. We are able to add something to the history of this
foreign[50] writer of Ligurian story whose fate illustrates that maxim
which affirms:--The causes of great events are always imperfectly
known; because those who are close at hand know only so much as persons
whose interests require concealment of the truth choose to tell; and
those who are distant interpret facts by passion, interest, caprice or
previously formed opinions.
Genoa was the first Italian commune in which history was written by
persons whom the government appointed for that purpose. As early as
1157, the great Caffaro wrote the annals of his country for that
period in which he had been a witness of her acts, and read them to
the elders, who ordered that his writings should be deposited in the
archives of the city and commissioned the chancellor of the commune
to continue the history. This was done down to 1264, and special
additions were subsequently made embracing a period of thirty years.
The increasing rudeness of the times, civil commotions in the city and
frequent changes in the form and personnel of the government, arrested
the progress of the annals near the close of the thirteenth century.
Paolo Partenopeo revived the work in 1528. The senate appointed him
to read rhetoric, especially the works of Aristotle on government,
“because,” says Partenopeo, “politics should be publicly taught in a
free city.” He wrote the annals of Genoa, and Bonfadio succeeded him in
the same office.
Bonfadio was born in Gorzano, near Brescia, and led a life of
vicissitudes and suffering. He was secretary to Cardinal Bari in Rome
and afterwards served Cardinal Ghinucci. Beset with many misfortunes,
which are unconnected with our subject, he wandered to Naples, Venice
and elsewhere, and finally through Count Martinengo was invited to
Genoa as a public reader of Aristotle. In Genoa his fate seemed to
change, and he wrote cheerfully of his pleasant sojourn and especially
of the gentle dames of our city. “It seems to me,” he says, “that even
the Turkish female slaves entitle Genoa to be called the city of love.”
He lived long with Stefano Pinelli and was on terms of intimacy with
Azzolino Sauli. G. B. Grimaldi, Domenico Grillo, Cipriano Pallavicini
and other young men of high birth and studious tastes. His reputation
in all branches of learning induced the senate to give him the
coveted office of public annalist from the year 1528. He entered
on it with pleasure and completed his task in a brief period; and
though he laments that the eagerness of the senate to see the work
did not give him time to clothe his narration with such a diction
as becomes history, yet in beauty of style and skill in arrangement
few Italian[51] histories can be compared with it. We must regret
that the work only comes down to the year 1550, in which he met his
unfortunate death. In that year he was torn from his studies and his
friends and condemned to the flames; and though many gentlemen laboured
with the greatest earnestness to save him, on the 19th of July he was
beheaded in prison (this his friends secured as a favour) and his body
was committed to the flames. We find the record in the books of the
condemned kept by the _Compagnia della Misericordia_.
Casoni erred, therefore, in stating that he was executed in 1582, as
also Tuano who fixes it in 1560, in which he is followed by Konning
and Bayle. Nor less inaccurate are Pagano Paganini, Cesare Caporale,
Chevalier Marini, Scipione Ammirato and Crescimbeni who tell us that he
died by fire, since his body was only burned after death.
We know that the _Biblioteca Civica_ of Genoa contains some rhymes of
an ascetic character which are usually attributed to Bonfadio, at the
end of which a marginal note says that he died in prison July 20th,
1561. This raised doubts about the year of his death and some have
argued that he was not beheaded at all but died a natural death. A
little experience in reading ancient manuscripts will enable any one
to see at a glance that this note belongs to a period much later than
the sixteenth century. Nor can that record by an unknown amanuensis be
compared for authenticity with the catalogue of the condemned kept by
the _Compagnia della Misericordia_. We pass over the rhymes. Except a
few sprightly lines, they show the devoted ardour of a monk rather than
the philosophic penetration and chaste diction of Jacopo.
The cause of his severe punishment was from the beginning involved in
obscurity, and the lapse of centuries has seemed to increase rather
than dissipate the darkness. He has been accused of dishonourable and
illicit love and of having disclosed state secrets. Others tell us that
powerful rivals in love caused his ruin, and still others that he had
incurred the enmity of powerful families who instigated his arrest and
condemnation. His biographers give us no light; rather they increase
the confusion. But the opinion has prevailed that he was executed for
illicit amours. The writers who maintained this opinion were of no
great weight, and it is time to show the inconclusiveness of their
judgment.
The statutes of Genoa attached the penalty of death to the crimes of
Attic venery, heresy and witchcraft, for one of which Bonfadio must
have been punished. No one accuses him of the last two. Tuano, who is
quoted among those who charge him with lustful crimes, says nothing
clearly but only that “Bonfadio was punished for an offence which it is
prudent to conceal” (_ob rem tacendam_). But, besides that many things
are better concealed, it is important to remember that Tuano, who did
not even know the year in which Bonfadio was executed is a suspected
authority in Italian affairs. Paolo Manuzio leaves us in equal
uncertainty; in his golden Latin song he says that Bonfadio perished
for a crime over which the sword of justice could not slumber, but
he does not define the singular offence which he also says would not
tarnish the glory of his name. The only one of his contemporaries who
openly accuses him is the base Marini, whose verses, worshipped both
by princes and the populace, invested falsehood with the appearance of
truth. Cardano took up the tale and no one has yet destroyed the basis
of the calumny. The judicious and impartial critic knows how little
value is to be attached to any statement by Cardano; nor can a verse
of the author of the Adonis be accepted as a guide for the opinions of
posterity, especially since Garuffi has so severely criticized him for
traducing the memory of so great a writer as Bonfadio.
One must know little of the low morals of an age which put a price upon
sin and absolved offences before they were committed, to doubt that
the vice with which Bonfadio is charged prevailed to a fearful extent.
Genoa, though she had the forms of a Republic, was no better than
the rest of Italy. Let us admit then, for a moment, that Bonfadio
fell into the common sin. It was neither so new nor scandalous to
the senate as to have led to his death by fire. Such a charge was in
the sixteenth century little less than ridiculous. We have gone over
many volumes of the criminal _Ruota_ of the time, and, though we have
studied diligently, we find not a single case of severe punishment for
that crime. Whether no cases are found because proofs of such beastly
crimes are difficult to find, or because the vice was universal, is
hard to decide. We find that a Francesco Spinola called the _Caboga_,
who was brutally addicted to the vice was, not burned, but sent to the
frontiers a few years after the death of Bonfadio. Though in 1479,
a master workman in coral, who had violated a girl in Albaro was
quartered with red hot irons, the severe sentence was not for the rape,
but because he had afterwards killed his victim. It is not probable
then that the government was severe against so common a crime, or would
have condemned to the flames for it a man of such talent and position
as Bonfadio. Had this been his only offence, his numerous friends in
the senate would have encountered little difficulty in saving his life.
Andrea Doria so lauded in Bonfadio’s immortal pages, who controlled all
the affairs of the Republic, whose will was mightier than law, would
have saved him from death. We must therefore believe that the blow
which felled him came from a higher hand than Genoese law, from a hand
with which it was idle to contend. This conclusion will help us to find
elsewhere the true cause of his condemnation.
The most credible authorities of the time tell us that he was innocent
of these vices, and they add that he suffered for secret reasons of
state. Some even among these writers seem to have been borne down by
current opinion and doubt if he were not guilty, but they add that
it was only the pretext for his punishment. Such is the opinion of
Giammatteo Toscano who wrote indignant verses against the Genoese for
the murder of Jacopo. Caporali declared Bonfadio innocent. Ottavio
Cossi and Ghilini tell us that having offended in his writings some
very exalted persons, he was accused of infamous ardours. It is
probably true that he incurred the enmity of illustrious families whose
names were blackened in his history; Zilioli confirms this theory when
he says that Bonfadio’s history was _mortal_ to its author. Boccalini
states the case with much greater clearness, blaming the pen of
Bonfadio for having impeached the honour of great houses, adding that
an historian should imitate vine-dressers and gardeners: that is to
say, should speak only in the full maturity of events, when the great
who had done evil are dead and their children incapable of vengeance.
He enforces his theory by the example of Tacitus who preferred
violating the laws of history to running risk of personal danger. In
expressing these cowardly sentiments (an historian ought to tell the
truth and to throw down his pen when that becomes impossible) Boccalini
did not express his true opinions, and he was afterwards run through by
the Spanish ambassador in Venice for writing freely against Spain.
Laying aside as untenable the opinion of Marini and Cardano, we agree
with those who deny that Bonfadio had fallen so low, and we find
support in the testimony of Ortensio Landi, a contemporary of our
author and a man of great talents, who fell into disgrace at Rome for
evangelical opinions. He tells us that Bonfadio was condemned on false
testimony; and this was the belief of the learned of that period.
There is in fact nothing to support the theory that he was guilty
except the assertions of writers of little reputation for truth in
other matters, who were, indeed, only servile retailers of calumnies
which their authors wished perpetuated beyond the tomb. The nature of
the penalty, the secrecy of the trial and the position of the accused
were calculated to impress the popular mind with the belief in a crime
against nature--a crime which famous examples, especially that of
Brunetto Latini, showed to be the vice of _literary men and public
teachers of youth_. There is, besides, in man an instinct which finds
guilt where the axe falls. The public and the historians forgot one
fact, Bonfadio read his lectures in a church and his auditors were not
young boys. He says that he had “many aged listeners and more merchants
than Students.”
The true cause of his condemnation must be sought in his _Annals_. He
probably blamed pretty freely some persons who expected great praise.
This opinion is adopted by Teissier among foreign writers, and in Italy
by Fontanini and Mazzucchelli besides those already mentioned.
A careful reading of Scipione Ammirato will show that he really does
not differ from these writers. “He was punished,” says Ammirato, “for
teaching political principles contrary to those of his time and place,”
although Bonfadio supported the Doria and Spanish party and opposed
those who fought for more liberal government.
We must now enquire what persons offended by the bias of Bonfadio were
sufficiently powerful to satiate their vengeance in his blood?
The times were unpropitious to literary freedom. Offences of the
pen were punished by the dagger or by banishment. Boccalini was
assassinated in Venice; Sarpi fell under a stiletto aimed by Rome.
Oberto Foglietta was banished from Genoa, and if the government could
have put hands on him he might have gone to the scaffold. Every
independent writer was the target of powerful malevolence. So fell
Bonfadio. In describing the conspiracy of Gianluigi Fieschi, he used
unmeasured terms of reproach against that noble family and praised
beyond all limit the Dorias and the Spanish government. His treatment
of the Fieschi, whose fate nearly all lamented and who still had
powerful friends in the Senate, provoked the vengeance of the partisans
of Gianluigi and popular liberty and also of those nobles who were
hostile to Doria and Spain. All other attempts to avenge the dead had
failed, and they turned fiercely upon the historian who had outraged
the memory of the vanquished. They charged him with a crime which must
be punished by fire and secured his condemnation.
Nor did the rage of his enemies cease with his death; for they made
every exertion to prevent the publication of his _Annals_; and,
though the times were quiet and the Doria interest clamoured for the
publication, their enemies kept the work locked up in the public
archives. It was not published until 1586, (in Pavia by Gerolamo
Bartoli) that is thirty-six years after the death of its author. Though
Bayle and Papadopoli assert that Bonfadio himself published it, this
statement must be put down among the numerous errors of his biographers.
We have seen what was the probable reason for the attack of Bonfadio’s
enemies; it remains to investigate the pretext which they put forth,
since the charge of Attic venery cannot be entertained. Two other
crimes were punished among us by fire; and as there is no ground
for supposing him accused of witchcraft or magic, we are forced to
conclude that he was charged with holding the new religious doctrines
which were then striking root in Italy. This opinion, so diverse from
that hitherto held, may seem bold and we will briefly consider its
probability.
It is well known that the revival of letters paved the way for
religious reform. It is known, too, that Italy, seeing herself
deprived of political liberty, turned her attention to religious
freedom as the foundation of free institutions. In fact, the reformers
among us sought mainly to restore democracy to the church. The first
accents of religious liberty were heard on the banks of the Verbano
and the teachers were Bernardino Ochino da Siena and Pietro Martire.
Lucca, Pisa, Vicenza and Modena embraced the new doctrines, and Ferrara
received as a guest in 1535, Calvin, the friend of Renata.
In the court of this duchess, were found the most distinguished of the
reformers, among whom were Celio Secondo Curione and the beautiful
Olimpia Morato, a miracle of virtue and wisdom. The religious community
of Naples contained no less illustrious disciples all of whom belonged
to the highest families of the land. Some maintain that Vittoria
Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, was of the number; Giulia Gonzaga and
Isabella Manriquez certainly were; the latter found an asylum among
the Lutherans. It is believed that Princess Lavinia della Rovere, of
the house of Urbino, and Margaret of Savoy, wife of Emanuel Filiberto,
embraced the new doctrines.
In those days the most cultivated Italians professed the boldest
doctrines. Vasari tells us that Leonardo da Vinci had formed such
heretical opinions that he accepted no religion whatever. Castelvetro,
accused of heresy, with great difficulty escaped the grasp of the
inquisition. Bishop Pietro Paolo Vergerio and his brother Giovanni
Battista, whose condemnation was written by the same pen which drew
the fatal capitulation of Forno; Guglielmo Grattarolo, Gerolamo Zanchi
a canon of the Lateran, Giovanni Montalcino, the Sozzini of Siena,
the brothers Scipio and Alberico Gentile and many other distinguished
literary men held the views of the reformers. Paul III., appalled by
the rapid progress of the new ideas, with his bull of April 1543,
established the tribunal of the Inquisition in every city, Venice
did not wish to suffer it; but Rome strangled Giulio Ghirlanda and
Francesco di Rovigo, and all the reformers (among them are mentioned
Trissino, Flaminio, Soranzo and Bembo) were forced to flee into exile.
Many noble men fell in Rome; Fannio Aonio Paleario and the Venitian
Algieri. The church was saved by sword and fire; and the ecclesiastical
writers agree with us in this:--It was the Inquisition that extirpated
the new doctrines in Italy; without this intervention of force, the
intellectual character of the Italians, the well-known licentiousness
of the Popes, the habit of our poets to sport at friars and nuns, and
the denial by our republics of infallibility to the Apostolic See, must
have combined to promote the complete triumph of the religious reform.
The church always had great power in Genoa. As early as 1253, the
friars of San Domenico executed a Master Luco as a heresiarch and
confiscated his goods. The church grew so arrogant that three years
later, Fra Anselmo, chief inquisitor, demanded that certain rules of
his should be incorporated among the statutes of the Republic. The
consuls refused to gratify him and the inquisitor excommunicated the
city and its district. The government sent ambassadors to the Pope
without success; it was forced to humble itself and register on its
statute books laws dictated by a priest. In 1459, a decree of the
Republic granted every facility and privilege to the father inquisitors.
The bull of Paul III. inflamed our inquisitors with extraordinary
zeal. The partisans of the new creed were increasing rapidly, and the
fathers resolved to convert or exterminate them. Among the heretics,
to say nothing of laics, was Cardinal Federico Fregoso whose books
on the psalms had been entered in the index. The prior of San Matteo
was accused of heresy in Bonfadio’s time and cited to appear before
the inquisition in Rome, in spite of the friendship and protection
of Doria and the government. It has never been clearly proved that
Bonfadio shared the views of the reformers, but everything conspires
to the support of that theory. However that may be, his opinions were
certainly such as to afford his enemies a pretext for the accusation.
He hated the priests and spoke and wrote bitterly against them. His
letters, which give him the first place in that branch of Italian
literature, show that he was opposed to all religious orders and
particularly the regular clergy called _Theatine_, who reciprocated the
sentiment and spoke of his death as a judgment of God. His annals and
the freedom of his speech made him many other enemies in Genoa, but
though they were powerful he despised them. Carnesecchi warned him
that one of them had established himself near his person and exhorted
him to be cautious. Bonfadio replied:--“The man of whom you write to
me from the Roman court always disliked me.... His eyebrows are shorn,
and he never laughs; wherefore I doubt that He who can do all things
is able to make the man good. He has done an evil work, but it was his
own proper work, and if he has poisoned the fruits of my labours that
was inevitable, because he bears a serpent in his bosom.” The serpent
uncoiled himself and Bonfadio was undone. It was not difficult for his
enemies to fasten upon him the charge of heresy, adducing as proofs his
intimacy with wicked or heretical men whom Rome had already doomed.
Among the first-class was Nicolò Franco, of Benevento, who perished
on the scaffold in Rome, prophesying the same fate for Pietro Aretina
whom that age, after loading him with honours and riches, blasphemously
called divine. Among the second class, that is those whom the church
accused of heresy, were the Martinengo, who all belonged to the party
of reform. We may mention Ortensia Martinengo, countess of Barco; Celso
Martinengo, whose letters to Angelo Castiglione carmelite of Genoa
(written for the purpose of converting Angelo to the new party) are
extant; Count Ulisse Martinengo who went to Antwerp as the minister of
the Italian church there when Gerolamo Zanchi declined the appointment.
Bonfadio was even more intimate with Lord Bishop Carnesecchi who
embraced the views of Luther in the school of Vermiglio and Ochino in
Italy and of Melancthon in France. Carnesecchi was executed in Rome in
precisely the same mode as Bonfadio in Genoa.
Bonfadio writing to Carnesecchi praises his divine talents and
adds:--“As the Romans preserve the statue which fell from heaven, so
may God preserve you for the edification of many and put off to a
distant day the fading of one of the first lights of Tuscan virtue.
May God enable you to be happy and live with that cheerfulness which
characterized you when we were together in Naples.”
He was also very intimate with Giovanni Valdes a Catalan, who was among
the first advocates of Luther’s opinions. After the death of Valdes,
he wrote:--“Whither shall we turn, now that Valdes is no more? This is
a great loss for us and for Europe; for Valdes was one of the rarest
men in Europe. His writings on the epistles of St. Paul and the psalms
of David are abundant proof of his ability. He was without controversy
a complete man in deed, word and counsel. His little spark of soul
kept alive his weak and emaciated body; his great part, that pure
intellect, as if outside of his frame, was continually uplifted to the
contemplation of truth and divine things.”
These words make it highly probable that Bonfadio held the doctrines
of the man he so highly esteemed, and show us that this friendship for
the enemies of Rome afforded sufficient ground for a charge of heresy.
This will seem very credible, when we remember that a canon of the
inquisition declared that the smallest evidences were sufficient for
conviction of heresy; a nod, suspicion or common report, especially
in the case of a man of letters, of whom Paleario wrote that the
inquisition was _sicam districtam in literatos_ (a dagger drawn against
literary men.)
We conclude then that the religious views of Bonfadio and his
friendship with the reformers gave his enemies the arms with which
they slew him. The court of Rome had its hands in the business, and by
the same act avenged its political friends, the Fieschi, and punished
a friend of the reformation. The records of Bonfadio’s trial were
never seen, and there is no proof that the criminal _Ruota_ of Genoa
condemned him. This is a new proof that the whole transaction was the
secret work of the agents of the inquisition. The records of such a
trial were not required to be filed in the archives of the state.
Nor is this all; the agents of Rome had the right to conduct the
trial without the participation of the civil power, whose duty was to
render a blind obedience to the orders of the religious tribunal. This
explains why the Dorias who had unlimited power over the government,
were powerless to save Bonfadio, when he was charged with holding the
opinions of the reformers, among whom we are disposed to number him,
accepting the authority of Gerdesio a contemporary whose statement to
that effect was not contradicted in his time.
Whatever views our readers may entertain of the merits of the contest
between the Fieschi and Doria, it is certain that the cruelties of the
latter provoked reprisals by the friends of the former, and Bonfadio
the illustrious but partial historian of the conspiracy, was one of
the most conspicuous victims. As Bonfadio succeeded Partenopeo in the
office of public instruction, Giammatteo followed Bonfadio. The Jesuits
enticed him, two years after his election, into their fraternity and
they intrigued with such success that the instructors of our youth were
chosen from their number, and men of genius were no longer employed by
the Republic.
It is true that Tasso was invited to Genoa with the offer of a liberal
salary; but it was the work of private citizens not of the government.
Torquato received the call with pleasure but he did not accept the
office. In 1614, Lucilio Vanini, the Italian Spinosa, opened public
schools among us. He pursued the system of Bonfadio with such success
that many young men were affected with heretical views and the teacher
was forced to seek his personal safety in exile. He took refuge in
France; but he was discovered and perished in the flames. Unfortunately
his doctrines had taken root among us. To omit many, the painter
Cesare Conte, the friend of Cambiaso, Chiabrera and Paolo Foglietta,
was arrested in 1632, by the sacred office and ended his days in the
dungeon of the ducal palace.