upon one worthy of the Inquisitors of State. The simple plan consisted
in giving a free pardon for all his crimes to any bravo who would kill
another. We even find that a patrician of the great house of Quirini,
who had been exiled for killing one of Titian’s servants, obtained leave
to come back and live peacefully in Venice by assassinating a
[Illustration: THE RIALTO AT NIGHT]
bravo. It is easy to imagine what crimes could be committed under this
law, and the government soon recognised the mistake and repealed it in
[Sidenote: _Pinelli, Raccolta di Leggi Crim._]
1549, in order to protect ‘the dignity of the Republic, and the goods
and lives of its subjects.’
Thereafter the bravi and the bandits led more quiet lives, and returned
to their former occupations.
There existed at that time a statue of a hunchback modelled by the
sculptor Pietro di Salò, which had been used to support a ladder, or
short staircase, by which the public criers ascended the column of the
Rialto, in order to proclaim banns of marriage and other matters
[Illustration: FROM THE BALCONY OF THE DUCAL PALACE]
which were to be made public. From 1541 to 1545 thieves were usually
sentenced to be flogged through the city from Saint Mark’s to the
Rialto, where the ceremony ended by their being obliged to kiss the
statue of the hunchback. In order to get rid of this degrading absurdity
a small column was set up near by, surmounted by a cross, in order that
‘sinners might undergo their sentence in a Christian spirit.’
On the sixteenth of December 1560, the Council of Ten met to discuss the
question of the bravi. It was now admitted that the government no longer
had isolated criminals to deal with, but regular bands of ruffians
continually
[Illustration: THE COLUMNS, PIAZZETTA]
on the look-out for adventures. The Ten published an edict by which all
bandits were formally warned that any one who exercised the profession
of a bravo, whether a subject of the Republic or not, would be taken and
led in irons to the place between the columns of the Piazzetta, where
his nose and ears would be carved off. He would then be further
sentenced to five years at the oar on board one of the State galleys,
unless some physical defect made this impossible for him, in which case
he was to have one hand chopped off and to be imprisoned for ten years.
In passing, I call
[Sidenote: _Horatio Brown, Venetian Studies._]
attention to the fact that life between decks on a State galley cannot
have been pleasant, since five years of it were considered equivalent to
the loss of a hand and ten years of imprisonment.
These terrific penalties inspired little or no fear, for the bravi were
infinitely quicker and cleverer than the sbirri of the government, and
were very rarely caught. Besides, they had powerful supporters and
secure refuges from which they could defy justice, for they were
sheltered and protected in the foreign embassies, where they knew how to
make themselves useful as spies, and occasionally as professional
assassins, and it was not an uncommon thing to see a sbirro standing
before the French or the Spanish embassy and looking up at a window
whence some well-known bravo smiled down on him, waved his hat, and
addressed him with ironical politeness. The picture vividly recalls
visions of a cat on top of a garden wall, calmly grinning at the frantic
terrier below.
Then, too, the bravi were patronised by the ‘signorotti’ of the
mainland, a set of rich, turbulent, and licentious land-owners, who
could not call themselves Venetian nobles and would not submit to be
burghers, but set themselves up as knights, and lived in more or less
fortified manors from which they could set the police at defiance. They
employed the bravi in all sorts of nefarious adventures, which chiefly
tended to the satisfaction of their brutal tastes.
It was a second period of transition, as Molmenti very justly says, and
in the beginning of the decadence the knight had already ceased to be
knightly. Those rough lordlings were neither without fear nor without
reproach, says the learned Italian writer, but were altogether without
remorse, and if they were ever bold it was only in breaking the law.
From time
[Sidenote: _Tassini, Condanne Capitali._]
to time one of them was caught perpetrating some outrageous crime, and
was dragged barefooted, in a long black shirt and black cap, to the
scaffold, as an awful example, there to be flogged, hanged, and
quartered. Such horrors had long ceased to have any effect in an age
that saw blood run in rivers. By way of increasing the disgrace of a
shameful death, a gibbet was set up which was so high that the victim
had to mount thirty-two steps, and it was painted scarlet. The first
miscreant who adorned it was one of the chiefs of the sbirri himself,
who had used his position to protect a whole gang of thieves with whom
he divided the plunder.
I abridge from Signor Molmenti’s work the following story, in which more
than one type of
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Banditi e Bravi._]
the sixteenth-century criminal makes his appearance.
The village of Illasi is situated in a rich valley in the territory of
Verona. At the end of the sixteenth century its castle was inhabited by
a certain Count Geronimo and his beautiful lady, Ginevra. From time to
time the couple introduced a little variety into their solitude by
receiving Virginio Orsini who, though a Roman noble, was in the service
of Venice as Governor of Verona. He was, I believe, a first cousin of
that Paolo Giordano Orsini who murdered his wife Isabella de’ Medici in
order to marry Vittoria Accoramboni. I have told the story at length in
another work.
Virginio, the Governor, fell in love with the Countess Ginevra before
long; but she, though strongly attracted to him, tried hard to resist
him, would not read his letters, and turned a deaf ear to his pleadings.
On a certain Saturday night, when Count Geronimo was away from home and
Ginevra sat by the fire in her own chamber, having already supped and
said her prayers, the curtain of the door was raised and two men came
in. The one was Grifo, the man-at-arms whom the Count trusted and had
left to guard her; the other was Orsini. Ginevra sprang to her feet,
asking how the Governor dared to cross her threshold.
‘Madam,’ he said, coming near, ‘as you would not answer my letters, I
determined to tell you face to face that if you will not hear me you
will be my ruin.’
‘Sir,’ answered the Countess, ‘that is not the way to address a lady of
my condition. You are basely betraying my noble husband, who entertains
for you both friendship and esteem.’
Here Grifo joined in the conversation and began to persuade the Countess
that every noble lady of the time had her ‘confederate knight.’ No doubt
he knew that she loved Orsini in spite of herself, and when he had done
speaking he went away, and the two were alone together in the night.
An hour later Virginio took his leave of her, and now he told her with
words of comfort that he would presently send her poison by the hand of
Grifo, that she might do away with her husband; for otherwise he must
soon learn the truth and avenge himself on them all three. But Ginevra
was already stung by remorse.
‘I have dishonoured my husband for you,’ she answered. ‘But I will not
do the deed you ask of me. It is better that I should myself die than
that I should do murder.’
‘In that case,’ answered Orsini, ‘I myself must put him beyond the
possibility of harming you.’
Thereupon he left her; but she was tormented by remorse, until at last
she went to her husband and told him all, and entreated him to kill her.
He would not believe her, but thought she had gone mad, though she
repeated her story again and again; and at last he rose and went and
found Grifo, the traitor, and dragged him to her room.
‘Is it true,’ she asked, ‘that you brought the Governor here to my
chamber unawares?’
The man denied it with an oath. Then Ginevra snatched up a dagger and
set the point at Grifo’s breast. He saw that he was lost, and told the
truth, and then and there the woman whose ruin he had wrought did
justice on him and was avenged, and stabbed him again and again, that he
died.
There ends the story, for that is all we know. After that the chronicle
is silent, ominously silent; and when the castle of Illasi was
dismantled a walled niche was found in one of the towers, and within the
niche there was a woman’s skeleton. That is known, surely; but that the
bones were those of the Countess Ginevra there is no proof to show.
I should say that Grifo belonged to the type of the bravi, so that the
crimes of passion which his betrayal
[Sidenote: _Molmenti, Vecchie Storie._]
caused were connected, through him, with those of the professional type.
But others were committed, then as now, in passion, quick or slow. As an
example of them, here is a story from another of Signor Molmenti’s
exhaustive works.
It is first mentioned by the Bishop Pietro Bollani in a letter addressed
to his noble friend Vincenzo Dandolo, in the month of July 1602:--
‘A certain Sanudo, who lives in the Rio della Croce, in the Giudecca,
made his wife go to confession day before yesterday evening; and she was
a Cappello by birth. During the following night, at about the fifth hour
(one o’clock in the morning at that season according to the old Italian
sun-time), he killed her with a dagger-thrust in the throat. He says
that she was unfaithful, but every one believes that she was a saint.’
We learn that the poor woman was thirty-six, and that Giovanni Sanudo
had been married to her eighteen years. The Council of Ten ordered his
arrest, but he had already escaped beyond the frontier, and he was
condemned to death in default and a prize of two thousand ducats was
offered for his head.
[Illustration: THE SALUTE FROM THE GIUDECCA]
He had left five children in Venice, three boys and two girls; and the
oldest, a daughter christened Sanuda, addressed a petition to the Ten
which is worth translating:--
Most Serene Prince (the Doge), Most Illustrious Sirs (the Ten), and
most merciful my Masters (the Counsellors, the High Chancellor, and
the Avogadors):
Never did unfortunate petitioners come to the feet of your Serenity
and of your most excellent and most clement Council, more worthy of
pity than we, Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino and Livio second,
the children of Messer Giovanni Sanudo; misfortune has fallen upon
our house because our father having been accused of taking our
mother’s life, the justice of your Serenity and of your most
excellent Council has condemned him to death; wherefore we, poor
innocent children, have lost at once our father and our mother, and
all our possessions; and we assure you with tears that we should
have to beg our bread unless certain charitable souls helped us.
Therefore I, the unhappy Sanuda, who have reached the age of
eighteen years, and my brothers and sisters who are younger than I,
shall all be given over to the most abject poverty and exposed to
the greatest dangers unless your Serenity and your most excellent
Council will consent to help us for the love of religion and
justice. And so, in order to prevent five poor and honest children
of noble blood from perishing thus miserably, we prostrate
ourselves at the feet of your Serenity and of your most Illustrious
Lordships, imploring you, by the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to allow our unhappy father to come back to Venice for two years,
that he may provide for the safety of his family and especially of
his daughters, whose honour is exposed to such grave peril in that
state of neglect in which they are now living. We pray that the
good God may grant your Serenity and your Lordships long and happy
life.
The Council of Ten was apparently moved by the appeal. It answered the
petition by the following resolution:--
‘The case of Sanuda, Livio, Aloïse, Franceschino, and Livio second,
brothers and sisters, the children of Giovanni Sanudo, condemned to
death by this Council on July twenty-ninth, is so serious; the petition
of these poor children is so humble, so honest and so reasonable, that
it behooves the piety and clemency of our Council to grant the said
Giovanni Sanudo a safe-conduct, good for two years, in order that during
this period he may provide for the future of his family.’
Sanudo came back, and before the two years had expired he obtained a
prolongation of the grace for two years more, at the end of which time
he presented another petition worded in the same manner, which was also
granted; and so on from two years to two years until 1621, nineteen
years after the crime, he being still technically under sentence of
death.
Now, however, he obtained a formal pardon from his wife’s family, the
Cappello. This curious document reads as follows:--
In the name of God and of the Holy Trinity, March thirtieth, 1621.
I, Carlo Cappello, son of the late Pietro Cappello, considering the
weakness and the lamentable vicissitudes to which humanity is
subject, and desirous of forgiving the shortcomings and misdeeds of
others, in order that the Lord our God may protect me also, and
desiring, too, the full pardon of every sin: do forgive my
brother-in-law, Giovanni Sanudo, the offences he may have
committed against me, promising henceforth to bear him neither
hatred nor malice, and I pray God to grant us both a good Easter
and the pardon of every sin.
(Signed) CARLO CAPPELLO.
PIETRO CAPPELLO.
LIVIO CAPPELLO.
Having obtained forgiveness of his wife’s family, Giovanni Sanudo now
looked about for a means of extorting a final pardon from the Council of
Ten. There existed in the Venetian states a small town, called Sant’
Omobono, which had received, as the reward of some ancient service
rendered to the Republic, the privilege of setting at liberty every year
two outlaws or two bravi. Sanudo succeeded in winning the good graces of
the municipality, and was then presented by the mayor and aldermen to
the Signory as one of the yearly candidates for a free pardon. The
Council of Ten then permanently ratified its decree of immunity, and
Giovanni Sanudo was once more a free man. Considering the usual
character of the Council, it is hard not to surmise that it had found
some cause for regretting the sentence it had passed. The poor murdered
woman had confessed and received absolution before death: may we not
reasonably suppose that, after all, there had been something to confess?
There is ground for believing it possible that Shakespeare may have used
the original murder as part of the groundwork of his _Othello_. If we
compare the dates and glance at the history of Italian literature, we
may reasonably conclude that Shakespeare, after perhaps planning his
tragedy on a tale of Giraldi’s, was much struck by the details of
Sanudo’s crime, and especially by the murderer’s wish that his wife
should confess before dying.
Mr. Rawdon Brown supposed the poet to have used another incident,
related by Marin Sanudo in his voluminous journal, but the hypothesis
involves an anachronism. _Othello_ is thought by good authorities to
have been first played in London in the autumn of 1602, only a few
months after the crime in the Giudecca; whereas Mr. Rawdon Brown’s
heroine was not murdered until thirteen years later.
The legend of the Fornaretto belongs to the beginning of the sixteenth
century, a hundred years earlier. Travellers will remember being told by
their guides how a poor little baker’s boy, who was carrying bread to a
customer on a January morning in 1507, stumbled over the body of a noble
who had been stabbed by an unknown hand. The sheath of the dagger lay on
the pavement, and the boy was imprudent enough to pick it up and put it
into his pocket, for it was richly damascened and very handsome. The
police found it upon him, it was considered to be conducive
circumstantial evidence, the poor boy confessed under torture that he
had committed the crime, and he was hanged on his own confession.
A few days later the real murderer was arrested and convicted; and
thereafter, in recollection of the tragic injustice that had been done,
whenever the magistrates were about to pass a sentence of death, they
were admonished to remember the poor Fornaretto.
By way of making the story more complete, the guide usually adds that
the little lamp which always burns before an image of the Blessed Virgin
on one side of the Basilica was lighted as an offering in expiation of
the judicial murder, and that it is for the same reason that a bell is
rung during twenty minutes on the anniversary of the baker boy’s
execution.
Strangely enough, there is hardly a word of truth in this story. The
only record in the archives of the Ten which faintly suggests it is the
trial and execution of a baker named Pietro Fusiol, who had murdered a
man of the people in January 1507, and there is no reference to any
mistake on the part of the court. The ringing of the bell and the little
lamp which burns day and night before the image, are a sort of _ex voto_
offerings left by certain seamen in recollection of a terrible storm
from which they escaped.
I pass on to speak of the political prisoners of the Republic, who were
not by any means all treated alike, since some of them were confined in
places of tolerable comfort, whereas others were treated little better
than common criminals.
[Sidenote: _Dr. Heinrich Thode, Der Ring des Frangipane._]
The story of Cristoforo Frangipane shows that political delinquents were
not judged according to any particular code, and that each case was
examined as being entirely independent from any other.
I must recall to the reader that during the league of Cambrai the
Emperor Maximilian was commissioned to win back Friuli, Istria, and
other provinces annexed by the Republic. Though the league had been
formed in great haste, Venice was not taken by surprise, for it had long
been apparent that the European powers desired her destruction and
dismemberment.
[Sidenote: _Venice defying Europe, Palma Giovane; Sala dei Pregadi,
ducal palace._]
During the war which followed the Venetian army was at one time under
the orders of Bartolomeo d’ Alviano, and that of the Emperor was
commanded by Cristoforo Frangipane. Now the Frangipane family held lands
in fee from Venice as well as from the Emperor, and owed feudal service
to both; so that the Republic was justified in considering Cristoforo as
a traitor according to feudal law, since he was in command of a hostile
army.
A learned German student, Doctor Heinrich Thode, has discovered and told
with great charm the following story concerning the imperial general. In
1892, Doctor Thode being then in Venice, certain peasants of the village
of Osopo, near Pordenone, showed him a gold ring of marvellous
workmanship and in the style of the sixteenth century, which they had
found in a field. The ring consisted of two spirals, one within the
other, which could be taken apart, so that a lock of hair or a relic
could be placed between them. On the outer spiral of the ring were
engraved the words, ‘Myt Wyllen deyn eygen,’ which may be translated,
‘By mine own will thine own.’ Doctor Thode bought the ring, but for a
long time could make nothing of it. At last, however, his industry was
rewarded by the discovery of an interesting passage in the almost
inexhaustible diary of Marin Sanudo, of which I shall abridge the
substance as much as possible.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Emperor Maximilian met in
Augsburg a very beautiful girl named Apollonia von Lange, with whom he
fell deeply in love. He caused her to come to the Court of Vienna, where
she behaved so admirably that, according to the chronicler, all the
Austrian nobles wished to marry her. As a matter of fact she was married
in 1503 to the Count of Lodron, who happens to be the very person whom
the Cappelletti of Verona wished to marry to their Juliet in spite of
her promise to Romeo Montecchi.
The Count of Lodron died soon after his marriage, leaving no children.
The Emperor continued to extend to the young widow his honourable
protection, and in 1514 he married her to his favourite general
Cristoforo Frangipane. It was no doubt on this occasion that the warrior
received from her the ring of which the motto answered a question that
had often been on his lips. He might, indeed, reasonably have supposed
that she was marrying him in deference to the Emperor’s wishes; he must
have asked her if this were true, and no doubt more than once she
answered, ‘Of my own will I am thine own.’ The marriage had scarcely
taken place when Frangipane was obliged to take command of the imperial
army and to leave his wife. The first battle of the campaign was fought
near Pordenone in the Venetian territory. Marin Sanudo narrates that on
that day Frangipane lost a precious
[Illustration: A GARDEN WALL]
relic, a fact which he considered to be of bad augury for the future.
Only a few days later, when reconnoitring the position of the enemy, he
was climbing over a boulder which overlooked the valley. It either gave
way with him, or else some large piece of stone rolled against him and
threw him down. The accident was seen from a distance, and it was at
once reported to Venice that he was dead. But he was only wounded, and
was carried in a litter to Goritz, whither his wife hastened at once.
Under her loving care he soon recovered, but before he was able to ride
again the Venetians took the town and made him prisoner. He was conveyed
to Venice, and was confined in the tower of the ducal palace which
overlooked the Ponte della Paglia. In his confinement he kept up a
constant correspondence with his wife, which, it is needless to say, was
carefully examined by the government; every letter which came or went
was read aloud before the Senate, so that Marin Sanudo had ample
opportunity to copy the documents for his journal, as he frequently did.
The beautiful Apollonia was in a state bordering on despair, the grief
of the separation preyed upon her mind, and she fell into a state of
terrible languor and depression. Amongst many tender messages she makes
mention of the ring.
‘As for the ring,’ she wrote, ‘most gracious and beloved husband, let me
tell you that the one ordered of John Stephen Maze should be a little
smaller than the old one, and on it must be engraved the words with
which I answered the question you asked me, and which is graved on the
ring I always wear on my finger. I wish you to wear the ring in memory
and for love of me, but as we have no good jewellers here, I entreat you
to order it yourself.’
In the face of such evidence it is hardly possible to doubt that the
ring found at Osopo is the identical one given to Frangipane by his
bride, and is the ‘relic’ which he lost in his first engagement with the
Venetians.
The correspondence of the loving couple, passionate and sad, continued
during six months, at the end of which time Apollonia wrote to the
Signory imploring permission to share her husband’s prison; but this was
refused her, though her request was supported by the warmest
recommendations from the Emperor himself. Exasperated, Frangipane
attempted to escape from prison, but his plan was discovered, and he was
only the more closely watched. Apollonia now requested the favour of a
safe-conduct that she might, at least, come to Venice as a traveller and
visit her husband; this also was refused, not once only, but again when
she wrote a second time.