Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  On the afternoon of 6th October he fell unconscious, and for a moment they all feared he was dead. But he regained his senses and vomited a great quantity of catarrh. Over the next few hours, against all expectations, he slept well and long. Meanwhile his son Rudolph had been summoned from Prague, with the task of attending the final conference of the diet in his father’s place.

  After a beneficial night’s sleep between 6th and 7th October, thanks also to the treatment of Giulio Alessandrino, Maximilian seemed restored to health. He received the Ambassador of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Ambassador of the Republic of Venice, who found him much improved. He spoke aloud the whole time, and was only disturbed by a slight difficulty in breathing and tachycardia. His cough had almost disappeared.

  This improvement seemed to stabilise. Plans were made for the patient to set forth on 20th October on his way back to Austria. On 10th October, however, Maximilian had a relapse, and so, on the night of the 11th, despite Alessandrino’s protests, Ilsung brought the charlatan back onto the case. The Emperor felt pains in his upper left abdomen; the woman diagnosed pleurisy and brought in a great number of remedies, the sad effect of which would be seen shortly after. Finally, Maximilian’s former personal doctor, Crato von Crafftheim – whose services had been dispensed with because he was old and sick, and above all Protestant – was also consulted. “A great deal has been done up to now,” whispered Crato, pointing at the woman from Ulm in front of the court, “but nothing right.”

  At one in the morning Rudolph and other dignitaries and court officials were summoned. Now it was clear that the end had arrived. The Empress, who had spent every hour close to her husband and had never left his bedside for the last three days, was awoken at five by the Duchess of Bavaria, Maximilian’s sister, who was relieving her. About to go to mass, she then she returned and tearfully embraced her husband, who had had another heart attack in the meantime. The Empress could not bear the distress and was carried away unconscious. Doctor Crato was once again admitted to visit Maximilian. He took his pulse in his fingers, but the Sovereign interrupted him: “Crato, there’s no more pulse.” The old doctor still pressed his fingertips, and found a feeble throb. He moved away and confided to those present: “This is the limit of human help. We can only hope in divine help.” The charlatan had disappeared in the meantime. No more would be heard of her.

  I interrupted him: “Are you telling me that Streicher poisoned him on Ilsung’s instructions?”

  “There was no poison. To kill a sick man you just need to get the treatment wrong,” answered Simonis with a slight smile.

  Death was imminent by now. One great question remained: would Maximilian the Mysterious, who had never made a clear choice between the Church of Rome and that of Luther, die as a Catholic or a Protestant?

  “Whichever choice he declared,” explained Simonis, “would be a deathblow for the unity he longed for among Christians.”

  In his final hours, relatives, priests and ambassadors gathered around his bed. They tormented him right up to the last moment, begging him to take the Catholic sacraments of confession and extreme unction. He surely did not want to declare himself a Protestant?

  Maximilian, weaker and weaker, held out and gave no answer. Finally the Bishop of Neustadt was brought to the bedside. The Bishop insisted and grew heated, raising his voice. “Not so loud, I can hear perfectly,” answered the dying man. But the Bishop went on, until he was almost yelling.

  “Not so loud,” repeated Maximilian for the last time. Then his head dropped and he breathed his last. It was a quarter to nine on the morning of 12th October, his saint’s name day.

  “He was dead, but he had won his last battle. Refusing the Catholic sacraments, but without proclaiming himself a Protestant, he had defeated those who wanted to take advantage of his final moments. Maximilian had rejected the corruption of the Church of Rome, but he had not given himself over to the Protestants, who supported the Turks and wanted the Empire to move away forever from the Catholic religion. His Lutheran enemies, backed by the traitors Ilsung, Hag and Ungnad – the same ones who had elected him and who were now killing him – were left empty-handed.”

  “But why had they decided to kill him just then?”

  “Because it was clear now that Maximilian would not become a puppet in their hands. He had not agreed to recant the Catholic faith, and he had fought against the Turks as long as he could. He was no longer of any use to them. Perhaps his successor would be more pliable. When Maximilian set off on his journey and arrived on Protestant soil, no moment could have been more suitable to make a clean end of things.”

  In the meantime we had begun our inspection and audit of the chimneys in the large rooms on the ground floor of the mansion. We had entered by the great front door, which Frosch had kept open for us. What we found was a large room with a ceiling of triple height, where our voices echoed as in the nave of a church. The floor had once been muddied by the boots of Maximilian the Mysterious; there his heart had rejoiced on seeing a column finally set in place, a moulding hoisted onto the wall, a wall plastered properly.

  A large window opened in the opposite wall, giving onto the northern gardens. In the walls to left and right two large doors led into other rooms. Everything in that enormous cubic space was bare: the walls, the floor, the ceiling. For those desolate walls Maximilian the Mysterious had desired impressive paintings, trophies, statues and tapestries.

  “You see, Signor Master? There’s nothing. Plans, hopes, desires: everything crushed in the coils of the conspiracy between Ilsung, Ungnad and Hag.”

  Turning around, we saw through the doorway the spires of the hexagonal towers rising above the wall that separated the courtyard of the mansion from the gardens. From the point where we were standing Maximilian must have had a sweeping view over his immense project, while the workers and craftsmen laboured away. The tale proceeded.

  While Maximilian was dying, his young son Rudolph was delivering the closing speech of the diet at the town hall of Regensburg. The text had been drawn up urgently by his moribund father: it was Maximilian’s final effort. In the previous years he had seen his son’s mind gradually yielding to the mental torments of the educators imposed by his enemies, so that now the heir to the imperial throne was a frail being in the hands of Ilsung and his acolytes.

  As he stood there before the princes of the Empire and the Pope’s legates, holding the pages in his hands, Rudolph was approached by a messenger, who whispered into his ear that Maximilian had passed away. He listened impassively, as if it were the blandest of news. Then the young Rudolph, who now knew he was Emperor, continued reading, and his voice never trembled. He knew that if he lost control of the session the princes who were his father’s enemies would take advantage of it to stir up trouble and sabotage his election to the Caesarean throne.

  The session finished in good order; Rudolph had won the battle fought in his throat. But the inner turmoil of these moments and the other momentous matters that awaited him were bound to have their effect.

  Rudolph asked the princes not to leave Regensburg and summoned them for the following day. He would have to inform them of his father’s death; till then the imperial court would keep its secret. An autopsy was carried out, and the innards were interred in a copper case in the cathedral of Regensburg.

  While David Ungnad set out again calmly for Constantinople, where he would remain for two more years, Maximilian’s final journey began: the saddest, darkest and most painful.

  At the moment of his death it had not been decided where he would be buried. He had chosen Vienna; instead they decided on Prague.

  “And why was that?” I asked in surprise.

  “Maximilian had twice kept the great Suleiman outside the sacred walls of Vienna, and with him the enemies of Christ: by way of revenge Maximilian himself was to be kept forever far from the dear land that he had saved from the insult of Mahomet.”

  “So it was actually a post mortem revenge?”
<
br />   “The hatred of certain people knows no end.”

  I shivered while the Greek proceeded with the tale. A funeral procession, led by Rudolph, would take the body from Regensburg to Prague, travelling for hundreds of miles over the lands of the Empire in the grip of winter. At every halt the coffin must be greeted solemnly by the local authorities. The procession would be grand and awe-inspiring. The imperial family, the courtiers, pages, footmen, trumpeters, organists, drummers, officers, cooks, quartermasters, councillors and chancellors, even the carriage-drivers and boatman who were to transport the cortège: everyone, their ashen faces framed by white ruffs, would be wrapped in dark cloaks and black vestments, urgently procured from the markets of Augsburg and Nuremberg, together with massive supplies of candles, cutlery, blankets, imperial insignia, banners, standards, horses, not forgetting a final stock of priests and choristers.

  But right from the outset fate was against them: the city council, made up of Protestants, refused to escort the procession out of the city, or to light their way with lanterns. Their enemy was dead: let him go to the devil by himself.

  Finally the cortège set off. The coffin was loaded onto a boat that headed down the Danube. The winter set in: rain, wind and snow made the roads impassable, causing injuries and wearing out the horses. The procession struggled onwards. In each city they reached, fewer and fewer subjects came from their homes to honour the corpse of this Emperor who had been too mysterious.

  The procession straggled and trudged through the winter landscape. Amid the howling gale, within the stone-cold coffin, dragged awkwardly by creaking carts, by hacks half-dead from exhaustion, by frostbitten hands, scorned by the welcoming committees, led hither and thither like a burden with no destination, Maximilian the Wise was an unloved, shelterless and peace-denied body: he was now the dead man with no homeland.

  It was January 1577. It had taken three months for the funeral cortège to arrive in Austria, at Linz. It was hoped that they would reach Prague in eight more days. But a fresh blizzard began to rage, blocking the road they had intended to take. They had to change their route, staying in isolated castles, continually losing their way and re-finding it with difficulty.

  When the funeral procession reached Bohemia, the few who turned out to greet it were not even sufficient to carry the coffin. They finally arrived in Prague on 6th February, almost four months after Maximilian’s death. But their misadventures were not over yet. The Castrum doloris, the funeral baldachin set up in the church of St Vitus, was not yet complete. The ceremony had to be postponed; many declared that they would not be able to attend, even including two archdukes of the House of Habsburg.

  The funeral rites were at last celebrated, and the procession made its way through the streets of Prague. Finally there was something of a crowd: it was led by the papal legate, the Ambassador of Spain, the Ambassador of the King of France, Hungarian magnates, the Ambassador of Ferdinand, the Archduke of the Tyrol and Maximilian’s brother. Then came the princes of the Empire, envoys from Austria, from Silesia, from Moravia, priests and laymen, in addition to numerous knights, bishops, abbots and Jesuits, who had come flocking from all around.

  The bier that held the sarcophagus was of dark, knotty wood. The shroud was crimson against a gold background, with six glittering imperial coats of arms. Behind the sarcophagus marched Rudolph, his sallow face hidden by a black, ankle-length cloak, his nervous hand clutching his sword hilt at his belt. He was followed by his brothers Matthias and Maximilian, who were also cloaked and armed with swords. Then came the papal legate in a broad-brimmed hat with green tassels, holding a large white candle in his joined hands, kept warm by pearl-studded gloves. More candles, enlivening the procession with shining points of light, were held by the princes of the Empire, who followed in the procession. Some of them were weeping, and the rain washed away their tears. In the grim multitude, groups of noblemen bore the holy imperial crown, the crown of Hungary and those of the other lands of the Empire, glittering tremulously like stars in the wintry night sky. After the procession of men came another: that of the horses. The first was Maximilian’s steed, sadly swathed in a dark cloth with the imperial coat of arms. Then came the horse of the Empire, which was the most richly adorned, surrounded by banners and standards. Finally there were the Barbary horses of Silesia, of Spain, of the Tyrol and of France, all with lowered eyes, drooping ears and unsteady gait, as if they too wished to pay their tribute of tears.

  The procession arrived in front of the church of St James, in old Prague, just beyond the town hall. The sarcophagus was crossing a road between two pharmacies, where the faithful have always gone to worship the relics of the body of St John Chrisostomos. Suddenly someone, to stir up trouble, threw coins among the common people observing the procession. The tactic proved entirely successful; with eager shouts the mob hurled themselves on the coins and fights broke out. The soldiers forming the armed escort ran down the side streets to reinforce the head of the procession; the scuffles and the clash of weapons raised the alarm: “Treachery! Treachery! It’s Antwerp again!” shouted the spectators, perched at the windows, on the gutters and ledges, alluding to the recent massacres of Catholics in Protestant lands.

  The pallbearers began to panic, the coffin lurched, Maximilian’s rotten bones were about to fall to the ground. Those who continued to resist witnessed grim omens; underneath the sarcophagus there inexplicably appeared an enormous and hideous sow. The pallbearers tried to drive it away with their lighted torches, but in vain, and so they fled in terror, convinced it must be a diabolic apparition, while the animal vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

  Rudolph, pale and trembling, was left on his own. While everyone abandoned him, the young man stayed beside his father’s sarcophagus and was about to draw his sword. But one of the courtiers, perhaps a ghost from who knows where, held his arm, preventing him from unsheathing the weapon. Rudolph turned round but saw no one. He was now expecting to be stabbed in the back, but at that moment mounted archers came to his assistance.

  The people from the procession were now fleeing in chaos down the back streets, through the mud and slush. Violence broke out. Madness had seized Prague, and the people’s hatred against the clergy was let loose; anyone wearing a cassock was hunted down like a dog. Everyone was fleeing. The fastest were the bishops, abbots and Jesuits: they leaped from the bridges into the freezing waters of the river, ran into homes, into cellars, were caught by the owners of the houses, knocked about and kicked out. The dean of Hradschin fell into a cellar breaking his leg, and a canon and two abbots came crashing down on top of him, and all of them were at once beaten out of the house by the women there. One of the three sought refuge in a nearby tavern, but was thrown out amid insults. In the fury people pushed aside their neighbours, fell or were knocked down and trampled into the mud, the horseshit, and finally killed.

  “The traitors had cast their net everywhere,” remarked Simonis. “The folly of those days in Prague was the poison they had injected into the body of the Empire. It was a dress rehearsal for what they could have done later. And it was a sign of the curse they had cast on Maximilian.”

  As they rushed through the streets of Prague, terrorised by the thought of the Protestants, the priests threw off their cassocks in order to run faster and were left half naked. The Father Superior of the convent of Our Lady Mother of God was struck down by a blow to the face with a halberd and a Viennese Jesuit was found with his skull smashed in. The Bishop of Olmütz, battered and tattered, slipped into a shop and begged the owner on his knees not to betray him; he even offered her a hundred florins but was kicked out all the same. A soldier attacked the Bishop of Vienna, stealing his precious crozier studded with pearls and gems, and beat his servant mercilessly, while the Bishop ran for his life, abandoning his holy ornaments. Even the Archbishop of Prague, who previously had walked with great difficulty, ran off like a hare.

  It was two hours before calm was restored. Slowly the fugitives reappeared and for
med a straggling train behind Maximilian’s bier. But the new procession was dirty, ragged, trembling and as grey as the leaden skies that hung over the city. The participants no longer had precious stoles and pearl-adorned gloves; the gold-and silver-embroidered caps were buried in the mud or in the pockets of the jackals. There was only half the number of priests, the singers had disappeared, and the procession moved forward in total silence. Some were limping, most were looking nervously over their shoulders and to their sides. No one dared to comment on the shameful behaviour of a few moments earlier. Everyone asked in vain what had sparked off this pandemonium, and why it had ended as quickly as it had begun. The sermon in the church of St Vitus at Hradschin lasted only half an hour. After the holy service the young Rudolph made his way to the altar to bestow his alms, with a great white candle held solemnly in his hands.

  Everyone’s eyes were fixed on him, and they were all seeking an answer from him. How had he been scarred by the events of Regensburg and Prague? The people observing him did not know it yet, but that nightmare had inflicted the final blow on his psyche, already so sorely tried by his father’s enemies: henceforth he would be Rudolph the Misanthrope, Rudolph the Indolent, Rudolph the Mad.