Veritas (Atto Melani)

by Monaldi, Rita

  And you, how do you find your new position as missionary in Romania? How does one feel after laying aside the robes of monsignor and donning those of a simple priest again? It may have struck you as a demotion, but is it not wholesome for the spirit to consider things as they appear? Don’t you agree?

  The Holy Father (who no sooner emerged from the conclave than he took the decision to transfer you and, with equal swiftness, summon me back) told me the other day that he remembers you very clearly, when you were my pupil at the seminary. A mission to Costantia for an undefined period is, in His opinion, what is required by the powerful ambitions you already nurtured as a young man. I mean spiritual ambitions, of course.

  But let me return to the work I enclose here, and to my two old friends Rita and Francesco. His Holiness has already read it and, as he is originally from the Teutonic lands where the events narrated take place, he greatly enjoyed the narrative waltz between history and literature, which interweaves quotations from archival sources with allusions to Shakespeare, Proust and Karl Kraus, finally winking at the reader with burlesque anachronisms transposed from the most famous Viennese operettas, such as Franz Lehár’s Merry Widow (from which the imaginary little state of Pontevedro and much else are taken), Johann Strauss Jr’s Die Fledermaus (where Frosch is the jailer), Countess Mariza by Emmerich Kalmann and, of course, the Bettelstudent by Karl Millöcker.

  In the parcel I am also sending you a recording of a chorus: the medieval motif of Quem queritis. I was listening to it in the very days when I was reading my friends’ third book. Before explaining the reason for this dispatch, I must make some preliminary remarks.

  Imprimatur Secretum Veritas Mysterium: this, according to my friends’ work, is the message carved by Archangel Michael on the spire of St Stephen’s. Or is it just a harebrained invention of the corpisantaro Ugonio? As soon as I read it, I suspected that it came from some Flos sententiarum, those collections of famous Latin mottoes, like in vino veritas or est modus in rebus.

  As the “narrating I” justly observes, the inscription followed the epigraphic custom of omitting verbs and adverbs, and the entire sentence was Imprimatur et secretum, veritas mysteriumst, where mysteriumst obviously stands for mysterium est.

  The use of the conjunction et in the sense of “even”, and the verb est, “is”, understood in the second part of the saying, were in keeping with the tradition. But the whole thing did not lead towards Seneca or Martial, nor to Cicero or Pliny. The use of the term imprimatur, “let it be printed”, which among other things designates the nulla osta given by the ecclesiastic authorities for the publication of a book, provided a clear reference to the printing of a text, and therefore indicated a date well outside the classical period. They were not the words of a Roman writer, nor even of one from the late or Christian empire, but of one from modern times.

  I looked it up in various anthologies of Latin sayings, including the dated but excellent one by De Mauri published by Hoepli. I found nothing, not even a vague resemblance.

  But I repeated that motto over and over again, in private, like a secret, heretical rosary, or those words of mysterious power that Tibetan monks are said to mutter monotonously for an entire life in the silence of their monasteries.

  And then that Unicum . . ., that truncated conclusion which alludes to something that is left: what remains in the wilderness of uncertainties to which we are condemned by the unknowableness of truth? The answer, as I had not realised, was already dancing in the air. The song of the nuns, the music that came constantly from the stereo not far from my desk: the Quem queritis, from the medieval liturgical repertoire with Russian performers, a memory of my exile in Tomi – Mitbringsel, as the Holy Father would say.

  The title, Quem queristi, is not an affirmation. It is a question. The Latin text, a dialogue, goes:

  – Quem queritis in sepulchro, christicole?

  – JESVM Nazarenum crucifixum, o celicole.

  – Non est hic, resurrexit sicut predixerat, ite nunciate quia surrexit de sepulchro.

  Quem queritis? JESVM. Jesum, Jesus, that sweet name whispered something to me. Something I already knew, but that was not clear to me. But what? After hours of vain concentration, on impulse, I tried writing it down: JESVM, in the Latin form, with V instead of U.

  The next step suggested itself. Underneath, I transcribed the words of the mysterious message:

  Imprimatur

  Et

  Secretum

  Veritas

  Mysterium

  It was an acrostic. And this acrostic revealed the name of Jesus, IESVM. In the accusative: it was the answer to my questions. IESVM unicum. “Only Jesus”; Jesus is the only certainty.

  That was what the Quem queritis wanted to tell me. It is one of the final scenes in the Gospels, which in the Middle Ages was simplified for the people to sing and recite. The images are very simple, almost primitive. Mary Magdalen and Mary go to the sepulchre of Jesus. An angel, of dazzling appearance and in snow-white robes, announces himself with a tremendous commotion and the guards of the sepulchre fall down as if dead. Then the angel (or the angels, depending on the version) reveals to the women that they will not find Jesus there, because He has risen again as he had predicted, and he invites the women to spread the word among His disciples.

  In medieval musical performances the Gospel passage (Matthew 28: 1–6; Mark 16: 1–8; Luke 24: 1–7; John 20: 1–18) is reduced to a few basic lines:

  – Whom are you seeking?

  – Jesus of Nazareth crucified, O angels.

  – He is not here, he has risen again as he foretold, go and announce that he has left the sepulchre.

  IESVM is accusative, because it is the object of something, it answers the question: whom are you seeking? We are seeking Jesus. It therefore answers the question, the only real question for those who have faith. Whom are we really seeking, whom must we seek, if not Jesus? Who remains if not He?

  Quem queritis? The answer is Jesum, which in certain paleo-Christian epigraphs on tombs (recalling the episode of the angel announcing Christ’s resurrection) was written ISVM, with V to indicate U, and omitting “e” or in certain cases writing it as IeSVM, with the “e” in superscript. Alongside it, on the same tomb, one would find the symbol ATTΩ, which means that the alpha and omega of life, its beginning and end, are under the temple of God, represented by the double “T”. But it can also be read “Atto”.

  We are all Atto, or rather, ATTΩ: whether we like it or not, we are all under the great roof of the Lord.

  I know that two words are missing of the seven that form the message: let us hope the whole thing is not simply the fruit of Ugonio’s frightful imagination . . .

  Go in peace

  Card. Lorenzo dell’Agio

  NOTES

  Emperor Joseph the First’s smallpox – The Flying Ship and its inventor – Ciezeber-Palatine – The Place with No Name and its enemies – Eugene of Savoy – Joseph the Victorious – The censored biography and the secrets of Charles – Atto Melani – Camilla de’ Rossi – Ottoman customs, embassies and legends – Ilsung, Hag, Ungnad, Marsili – Bettelstudenten and chimney-sweeps – Free time, taverns, feasts and other details – The Viennese and their history

  Emperor Joseph the First’s Smallpox

  Emperor Joseph I died at 10.15 on Friday 17th April 1711. He was not yet thirty-three years old. The official diagnosis was smallpox.

  A preliminary observation: smallpox, a horrific disease which has now (almost completely) disappeared, has never been overcome by any treatment. In short, there is no cure for smallpox.

  If you consult the famous Harrison’s Manual (Dennis L. Kasper, Harrison’s Manual of Medicine, 16th edition, New York 2005), a basic study text for every medical student, you will read that smallpox is, along with anthrax, one of the ten class-A (the most dangerous), “special surveillance” viruses in the struggle against bio-terrorism.

  In 1996, delegates from 190 nations passed a resolution: on 30th June 1
999 all smallpox samples still existing in the world would be destroyed. This did not happen. At the CDC in Atlanta, USA (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), they still exist.

  When Joseph fell ill on 7th April 1711, no one at court was sick with smallpox. Later studies (see, e.g., C. Ingrao, Joseph I. der “vergessene Kaiser”, Graz-Vienna-Cologne, 1982) report that at that time a smallpox epidemic was raging throughout Vienna. This is not true.

  The historian Hermann Joseph Fenger, in his report on all the epidemics that affected Vienna from 1224 (Historiam Pestilentiarum Vindobonensis, Vienna 1817), makes no mention of a smallpox epidemic in 1711. Neither does Erich Zöllner (Geschichte Österreichs, pp. 275–278).

  But we wished to check this for ourselves. At the Vienna City Archives we consulted the Totenbeschauprotokolle, the reports compiled by the city’s medical authorities for every death. We examined the reports for the months of March, April and May 1711 thoroughly: there was no smallpox epidemic. What is more, the number of deaths remained average for the period.

  Until ten days before he died, Joseph I was a young man at the height of his powers and in a state of perfect health, an active sportsman and a great hunter.

  The medical report describes the corpse’s face as covered by copious pustules. However, no mention is made of them in the printed gazette of the day, which described the Emperor’s death and his body as put on display (Umständliche Beschreibung von Weyland Ihrer Mayestät / JOSEPH / Dieses Namens des Ersten / Römischen Kayser / Auch zu Ungarn und Böheim Könih / u. Erz-Herzogen zu Oesterreich / u. u. Glorwürdigsten Angedenckens Ausgestandener Kranckheit / Höchst-seeligstem Ableiben / Und dann erfolgter Prächtigsten Leich-Begängnuß / zusammengetragen / und verlegt durch Johann Baptist Schönwetter, Vienna 1711). Besides, a face disfigured by blisters would certainly not have been shown to his subjects. Could this have been the work of the embalmers?

  According to the medical diary kept in Latin by Doctor Franz Holler von Doblhof (Vienna State Archive, Haus-Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Familienakten, Karton 67), with the onset of the earliest symptoms the Emperor was vomiting mucus and blood. As soon as he died, the diary reads, “from both nostrils and from the mouth blood dripped for a long while.” The neck was swollen and “atro livore soffuso”: dark blue from an internal haemorrhage. At the autopsy, carried out by the same doctor, the liver and lungs are described as “blue and gangrenous, lacking natural colour” (“amisso colore naturali, lividum et gangrenosum”): another haemorrhage, it would seem. On account of the unbearable smell, the autopsy was concluded without opening the skull.

  This medical description is catalogued today as “haemorrhagic smallpox”, a particularly virulent and deadly variant. The strange thing, however, is that this type of smallpox has not always existed.

  Before Joseph’s death, no medical treatise refers to smallpox having a haemorrhagic tendency.

  The first to talk of smallpox was Galen, followed by the doctors of the tenth century, the Persian Rhazes, Alì Ben el Abbas and Avicenna, and then, in the eleventh century, Costantine the African, secretary to Robert Guiscard. All of them engage in lengthy and detailed descriptions of smallpox and the possible complications and progressions, but none of them mentions the possibility of a haemorrhage. Quite the reverse: the progress of smallpox is described as usually benign; only in a few cases where the patients are already weak does it lead to death. This remains true right up to the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Ambroise Paré, Niccolò Massa, Girolamo Fracastoro, l’Alpinus, Ochi Rizetti, Scipione Mercuri and Sydenham, to mention just some of the best-known names, all devote long chapters of their works to smallpox, but there is no trace of haemorrhagic smallpox. They, too, describe the illness as very common and benign: it was fatal only in the huge pandemics unleashed by wars and famines. Smallpox is usually described in the chapters dealing with infant diseases, and is often lumped together with chickenpox and measles. Rhazes, in his Treatise on Smallpox and Measles, makes a very detailed distinction between the two illnesses: “restlessness, nausea and anxiety are more frequent in measles than in smallpox; pain in the back is more characteristic of smallpox.” Ambroise Paré (Oeuvres, Lyon 1664, livre XX, chap. 1–2) devotes no more than a chapter to smallpox along with measles, expostulating on the details in order to distinguish between the two illnesses. Such clarifications seem totally incomprehensible to modern readers: today smallpox is, unfortunately, completely different from the almost always harmless measles. The horrible pustules of smallpox and the terrible syndrome as a whole are totally unrelated to the little red spots of measles and the accompanying discomforts. Sydenham, too, drew a differential diagnosis between smallpox and measles: a sign that from the tenth to the sixteenth century smallpox remained the same, a contagious disease that could be confused with measles. Joseph’s own daughter, Maria Josepha, had contracted it in January 1711, three months before her father, and recovered from it: on this occasion, too, there was no sign of any haemorrhages.

  The first testimony that we have of haemorrhagic smallpox is, in fact, the medical report on Joseph I.

  Two years later, in 1713, the Greek doctor (some say he was from Bologna), Emanuele Timoni, in his treatise entitled Historia Variolarum quae per insitionem excitantur, refers for the first time to a new practice adopted in Constantinople: subcutaneous inoculation.

  A preliminary remark: inoculation is simply the term to indicate the ancient means of immunising, before the English doctor, Edward Jenner, at the end of the eighteenth century, established the method of vaccination that is still in use today. Inoculation consisted in taking a serum from smallpox pustules where the course of the illness was milder and more benign, and by means of a cutaneous incision injecting it into a healthy patient, with the aim of provoking a form of smallpox that would also be mild. The patient treated in this manner should fall slightly ill for a short time, thus protecting himself or herself permanently from the risk of contracting smallpox in a serious form. It was universally known that smallpox never struck the same individual twice.

  Obviously subcutaneous inoculation can also be carried out with intentions that are not preventive but criminal – using a more lethal form of the virus.

  Timoni reports the presence in Constantinople of two old female fortune-tellers of Greek origin, known as the Thessalian and the Philippoupolis, who had been carrying out inoculations in the Ottoman capital on the “Frankish” – which is to say, non-Muslim – population since the end of the seventeenth century. The Muslims refused to be inoculated. In 1701 and 1709, a few years after this practice had begun to spread in the city, Constantinople suffered the first mass outbreaks of death from smallpox. However, the two fortune-tellers were not lynched but acclaimed. Certain well-known doctors had arrived declaring that without the intervention of the two Greek women the epidemic would have been even worse. And very soon this notion was endorsed by the local clergy, which opened the way for inoculation en masse.

  The year after the events reported by Timoni, in 1714, the Venetian ambassador in Constantinople reported the practice of inoculation in his work Nova et tuta variolas excitandi per transplantationem methodus nuper inventa et in usum tracta.

  Subcutaneous inoculation spread throughout Europe two years later, between 1716 and 1718, when the wife of the English ambassador in Constantinpole, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, officially imported it from Turkey into England. On her travels she promoted inoculation in all the European courts with great enthusiasm, even having her own children inoculated. In 1716 she passed through Vienna, where, as her diary informs us, she met Joseph’s widow and daughters. In 1720 in England she persuaded the King to have some prisoners inoculated. From 1723 inoculation became widespread.

  However, in those same years, smallpox, rather than getting weaker, ceased to be a “benign illness” and became mortal in almost all cases. It was no longer considered an infant disease. The symptoms were much more serious than those described in the preceding centuries and above all were unmistakeably
hideous: there was no longer any likelihood of confusing the horrible smallpox pustules with those of chickenpox or, even less likely, with the little red spots of measles.

  Marco Cesare Nannini’s essay, La storia del vaiolo (Modena 1963), provides some terrifying statistics. In the twenty-five years following upon the introduction of inoculation, 10 per cent of the world’s population died. There were numerous cases of haemorrhagic smallpox. Inoculation soon proved to be an excellent instrument of colonial conquest: the Indians of America were decimated in this fashion, from the Redskins to the Indios. E. Bertarelli (Jenner e la scoperta della vaccinazione, Milan 1932) reports that in Santo Domingo alone, for example, 60 per cent of the population died in the space of a few months. In Haiti, smallpox, imported in 1767, rapidly killed two-thirds of the inhabitants; in Greenland it exterminated three-quarters of the population in 1733.

  In Europe, between the introduction of subcutaneous inoculation and the end of the eighteenth century, sixty million people died of smallpox (H.J. Parish, A History of Immunization, London 1965, p. 21). At the end of the eighteenth century very similar estimates were formulated (D. Faust, Communication au congrès de Rastadt sur l’extirpation de la petite vérole, 1798, Archives Nationaux de France, F8 124). In 1716 smallpox caused 14,000 deaths in Paris, and another 20,000 in 1723; in 1756 mass deaths occurred in Russia, as they had done in 1730 in England, where in little more than four decades 80,505 deaths were recorded from smallpox; in Naples, in 1768, in a few weeks, there were 6,000 deaths; in Rome, in 1762, another 6,000; in Modena, in 1778, following upon a single instance of subcutaneous inoculation, an epidemic was unleashed that decimated the city in the space of eight months; in Amsterdam, in 1784, there were 2,000 deaths; in Germany in 1798, 42,379; in Berlin alone, in 1766, 1,077 deaths; in London, in 1763, 3,528. England did great business with inoculation: Daniel Sutton had founded a flourishing inoculation business, with branches that spread to the remote western territories of New England and Jamaica during the second half of the century.