Benedetti must in fact have had ties with all the Melani family, seeing that Atto's other brothers were beneficiaries of his will. To Filippo, he left "two little perspectives by the late Salvucci, in arabesque-decorated black and gold frames". To Alessandro Melani went objects which suggest convivial relations: besides "four little heads of cherubs, rather well made", there is also a precious set of utensils to keep wine cold, as well as "glasses and cups for chocolate".
Atto and Buvat, too, really were friends and collaborators. In his memoirs, Buvat confirms that Atto tried to convince his superiors to raise his meagre salary. The attempt, as we learn from Buvat's plaintive handwritten annotations, unfortunately came to nothing ("Memoire- Journal de Jean Buvat", in Revue des bibliotheques, October-December 1900, pp. 235-36).
The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris also has (mss. Fr. n.a. 11220- 11222) a collection of Nouvelles a la main from 1700 to 1721: notices on domestic and foreign policy collected by Atto (but also by others, seeing that he died in 1714) and largely copied, as the catalogue of the library informs us, by the hand of Jean Buvat.
Finally, Jean Buvat is among the protagonists of Dumas Pere's novel Le Chevalier d'Hartnental
Sfasciamonti, too, was a flesh-and-blood character. The eighteenth-century Roman diarist Francesco Valesio (Diario di Roma, Milan 1977, II (1702-1703), pp. 272-73) notes the presence of the catchpoll a couple of years after the events in the book, while engaged in an action worthy of him: the seizing of a prostitute's clothes. The operation was not successful: Sfasciamonti and another sergeant were put to flight by a guard of Count Lamberg, who enjoyed the right of immunity (and consequently, the right to refuse police entry) in the place where the seizure was to be effected. Atto's little pistol must have hit some nerve in the old guardian of the law, for according to Valesio, Sfasciamonti walked with a limp.
The reform of the pontifical police proposed by a certain Monsignor Retti, as whispered by the two prelates spied on by the narrator, first when chocolate was served and later during the game of blind-man's- buff, was in fact considered at the time of Innocent XI (cf. G. Pisano, "I 'birri' a Roma nel '600 ed un progetto di riforma del loro ordinamento sotto il pontificato d'Innocenzo XI", in Roma - Rivista di studi e di vita romana, X (1932), pp. 543-56).
Like so many otherwise reforms, it was never implemented.
Il Ghiavarino, whose baptismal name was Giuseppe Perti, was also an historical figure (cf. Valesio, I, 434). His brief and eventful life ended at 2 p.m. on the 8th July 1701: found guilty of thefts and homicides, he was hanged at the Ponte Sant'Angelo. In the face of death, he acted piously: in his last moments, he repented and did an act of contrition. Mounting the scaffold, he begged the people around him to say a Salve Regina for his soul. He was twenty-two years old.
True (both in the physical and moral sense of the word) were persons like Corelli, Nicola Zabaglia and Lamberg. (The latter's fervent and ingenuous nature emerges clearly from his already-mentioned Re/azione, as from his manuscript reflections concerning the Roman Curia preserved in Vienna at the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Botschaft Rom-Vatikan I, Nachlass Gallas; cf. also Rill, G., Die Staatsrason der Kurie im Urteil eines Neustoizisten (1106), in Mitteilungen des Osterreichischen Staatsarchivs, XIV (1961), pp. 317 et seq.)
Arcangelo Corelli published his folia in Opus V in the very year 1700.
The Flying Dutchman of the Vessel, Giovanni Enrico Albicastro, must have had a special love for Italy, seeing that he chose to be known by an Italian pseudonym (in reality, he was called Johann Heinrich von Weissenberg). His bizarre status as a violinist, composer and soldier, although closely studied by Professor Rudolf Rasch of the University of Utrecht (whom the authors thank for the information which he supplied them), remains largely wrapped in mystery. He lived between about 1660 and 1730. Of Bavarian origin (which may explain his excellent knowledge of Sebastian Brant), it is known only that he arrived in Leiden as an adolescent and fought in the War of the Spanish Succession, as he himself announces at the end of the book. He left many compositions (trio sonatas for strings, violin sonatas, concertos and cantatas) which have only in the past few decades received the attention they deserve.
The Ship of Fools by Sebastian Brant is perhaps the German book that has enjoyed the greatest success over the centuries. Published in Basel in 1494 on the occasion of the Carnival, it is illustrated with woodcuts by Albrecht Diirer.
The staff of Villa Spada (Don Paschatio, Don Tibaldutio, stewards, horsemen, scullions, etc.) may all be found, complete with names and surnames, among the family papers kept in the fondo Spada-Veralli of the Rome State Archives.
Atto tells that Cardinal Spada was always at pains to avoid making enemies. This psychological detail is not untrue. It is borne out by many letters addressed to his relatives and kept in the fondo Spada-Veralli of the Rome State Archives.
Atto's arm, the women ofAuxerre and the secrets of the conclave
When Atto says that he hurt his arm eleven years earlier, in Paris in 1689, it is quite true. In the Florence State Archives (Mediceo del Principato, filza 4802) there is, among other things, a letter from Atto to Gondi, secretary to Prince Cosimo III de' Medici, written on 12th September 1689:
Although my quarantine will come to an end in six days' time, I am still troubled by my arm and my shoulder, and without the continual visits I have received, I should have died of melancholy and desperation, because if it were not for this accident, I should have gone to Rome with the Due de Scionnes. However, God's Will be done, and if no other disasters befall me in this my Climacteric year, 1 shall have every reason to give thanks to His Divine Majesty because, by all rights I should have died in that ditch.
That the arm in question was the right one may be deduced from the fact that the previous letters are not in Atto's hand: a sign that the accident prevented him from taking up his pen (Abbot Melani was not left-handed) and compelled him to have recourse to a scribe.
The episode on the court's passing through Auxerre, as told by Atto on Day the Sixth, is also true. It is to be found in a letter from Melani to Gondi, again in the Florence State Archives (Mediceo del Principato, filza 4802), dated 5th July 1683:
The Court cannot wait to get back to Versailles, having suffered considerably during this voyage: Monsieur de Louvois suffered greatly from stomach ache, but after three bleedings he was better. It is said that the King has lost much weight and that all the ladies have been spoiled by the sun. They say that, when they were passing through Auxerre, where the women are rather good-looking, all the people came to look at the Royal Persons and at the Ladies who were in the carriage with the Queen and, when the latter put their heads out of their carriage to see the people in the streets and at the windows, the people of Auxerre began to say 'a qu'elle son laide, et qu'elle son laide' [sic!]: whereupon the King laughed long and loud and went on talking about it for the rest of that day.
The treatise which Atto wrote for the Sun King, and which was stolen by the cerretani, really does exist. The authors found the manuscript in a Parisian archive and intend soon to have it published. The title is Memoires secrets contenant les evenements plus notables des quatre derniers conclaves, avec plusieurs remarques sur la cour de Rome. It is an enjoyable manual, rich in anecdotes and notes on the court of Rome, on the art of influencing the election of popes by more or less licit means, with a view to obtaining the success of the candidate most favourable to France and the Most Christian King.
The meetings between Albani, Spada and Spinola really did take place at the Villa del Torre, today the Villa Abamalek, the residence of the Russian Ambassador (cf. Valesio's Roman diary, I, 26).
Cerretani, pilgrims, midwives
The records of the interrogations of the two cerretani by Sfasciamonti, using less than orthodox means, are both real. The two researchers who had the good fortune to see them had them published. (For II Roscio's statement, cf. Massoni, A., "Gli accattoni in Londra nel secolo XIX e in Roma nel secolo XVT', in La Rassegna italia
na, Roma 1882, p. 20 et seq.; for both statements, that of II Roscio and Geronimo, cf. Lopelmann, M., "II dilettevole esamine de' Guidoni, Furfanti o Calchi, altramente detti Guitti, nelle carceri di Ponte Sisto di Roma nel 1598. Con la cognitione della lingua furbesca o zerga comune a tutti loro. Ein Beitrag zur Kennt- nis der italienischen Gaunersprache im 16. Jahrhundert", in Romanische Forschungen, XXXIV (1913), pp. 653-64).
The first statement, according to Massoni, was in the Secret Archives of the Vatican where, however, it is impossible to locate, since the author failed to provide the archive references. According to Lopelmann, a copy of both is to be found in the Royal Library at Berlin under the reference ital. fol. 11.fo. 646r-659v. (This was no doubt the case until the city was flattened by Allied bombardment in 1945).
Thieves' cant - known in Italian as furbesco or lingua zerga and in English as gibberish or Saint Giles' Greek - not only existed, but has a long tradition in all European languages. Even the elementary Roman "tre- ese" obtained by alternating "tre" with other syllables (translated using the intercalated syllable "tee" in English, as in the word "teeyooteelie" which the narrator hears before falling into the manure) is still commonly spoken at the great market of Porta Portese in Rome by vendors who want to communicate with one another without being understood by their customers. The anonymous glossary consulted by Buvat is Modo nuovo d'intendere la lingim zerga, Ferrara 1545.
The final speech of the Maggiorengo General of the cerretani was written down and is today to be found in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan (manuscript A 13 inf. attributed to Jacopo Bonfadio).
Right down to this day, the origins of the cerretani and their links with the ecclesiastical authorities have remained enveloped in a curious fog of mystery. As Don Tibaldutio reveals to the narrator, at the end of the fourteenth century, the cerretani had a regular permit to beg for alms in the city of Cerreto, on behalf of the hospitals of the Order of the Blessed Anthony. This permit from the Church authorities tends to confirm their active tolerance ab origine for the cerretano movement.
If the information were true, it should be possible to find a trace of it in the charter of the city of Cerreto, which was drawn up in 1380. Unfortunately, this has been lost. There does exist a sixteenth-century copy of it, but, as Don Tibaldutio mentioned, the part concerning begging for alms was torn out by hands unknown: one can still go to the communal archives of Cerreto to see this for oneself.
All the traditions, ceremonies, customs and vices of the cerretani and other groups of mendicants, as cited in the book, are authentic down to the smallest details (cf. inter aim the essay by P. Camporesi which can never be praised enough, 1l libro dei vagabond!, Turin 1973). For the Company of Saint Elizabeth cf. Ribton-Turner, C.J., A History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, and Beggars and Begging, [repr.] Montclair, New Jersey 1972.
The tricks with camphor used by Ugonio and the corpisantari to scare whoever ventured into their lair, like the theory of the corpuscles which Atto uses to explain the apparitions at the Vessel, are to be found in De Vallemont, M.L.L., Laphisique occulte, Paris 1693, mentioned by Melani. The authors confess that they did not, however, have the courage personally to verify whether the experiments with camphor really do work.
All the accounts of the Jubilee are entirely true, including the cases of pilgrims abducted and forced to labour in the country. The same goes for Don Tibaldutio's disquisitions on the validity of the Jubilee indulgence (cf. for example Zaccaria, F.A., Dell'Anno Santo. Trattato storico, cerimoniale e polemico, Rome 1824).
In her discourses on obstetrics and paediatrics, Cloridia demonstrates a profound knowledge of the famous treatise La commare by Scipione Mercuri (Venice 1676), in which is to be found, inter alia, the legend of King Gerion of Spain, with his three heads. The cases of monsters like the Tetrachion, prodigies and deformities are all authentic and are to be found in Aldrovandi, U., Monstrorum historia cum para lipo menis historiae omnium animalium, Bologna 1642 and Pare, A., Deux livres de chirurgie (book II, Desmonstrestantterrestresquemarinsavecleurportraits), Paris 1573.
The mystery of the Vessel
By now, the reader will not even need to ask whether the Vessel really existed. The ruins of Villa Benedetti (as its founder called it) erected by Elpidio Benedetti from 1663 onwards, are still visible on the Janiculum Hill, not far from Porta San Pancrazio. The entire description of the villa and its gardens during the visits of Atto and his friend, including the walls covered with maxims and the distorting mirrors in the penthouse where Atto and his friend see (or imagine they see) the Tetrachion, faithfully follows historical testimony, starting with the book of descriptions of the Vessel and the detailed list of the sayings which Benedetti had published anonymously under cover of a pseudonym (Villa Benedetto descritta da Matteo Mayer, published in Rome by Mascardi, 1677; second edition with a few small additions by P Erico, Augusta 1694). All other details concerning the Vessel and Benedetti can be examined in the extremely well-documented study by Carla Benocci, Villa Vascello, Rome 2003.
Benedetti really did leave the villa, as Atto tells, to Philippe Jules Mancini, Due de Nevers, Maria's brother and nephew to Mazarin.
However, the latter never lived there; indeed he never even saw it as he was never to return to Rome. It is not known whether there were tenants in the villa or whether it was uninhabited in 1700. The relevant parish records (Statidelleanime) for those years, those of Sant'Angelo alle Fornaci, have disappeared.
In the history of the building (cf. A. Chiarle's interview with Garla Benocci, "Villa del Vascello", in Hiram 3/2002), the existence was noted of "anomalies" and "disconcerting details", including the ship's form dear to Christian symbolism, which, in Benedetti's creation has its prow pointing towards the Vatican. Moreover, the superabundance of symbolic references to the French court "does not ring true, almost as though it were a cover for an innovative and profoundly ethical world-view". The distorting mirrors in the penthouse "are a disquieting element, designed to elicit wonder, but also to suggest that tangible reality is really something deceptive, concealing a very different reality".
The sayings and maxims so avidly read by Atto and his younger friend come from texts of various origins. Among these, one is particularly important: 1l Principe Buono, ovvero le obbligazioni del Principato (Rome 1661), the Italian version of a work by Armand de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, translated and published in Rome by Benedetti himself. This stresses the religious basis of all the Prince's actions and the need for him to observe all the Christian theological and cardinal virtues: an innovative vision, even radically so, but never straying from the guiding principles of Christian morality.
The Vessel was, then, a complex of extraordinary originality, a bulwark expressing profound moral precepts. This was, moreover, the impression which the villa made on many visitors to Rome throughout the eighteenth century, and it was mentioned in the tourist guides of the time as a pure jewel, on a par with the most sumptuous patrician dwellings.
But all things come to an end. In June 1849, during the troubles of the Roman Republic, Giuseppe Garibaldi and his troops were quartered at the Vessel, opposite the Casino Corsini ai Quattro Venti, the base of the French militia which had come to besiege Rome and restore it to the Pope. In the Villa Benedetti, all the great names of the Italian Risorgi- mento were to be found: Bixio, Mazzini, Saffi and Armellini, to mention only a few, as well as Garibaldi himself. Many died, not without the religious comforts of Friar Ugo Bassi. These included the 23-year-old Goffredo Mameli, author of the national anthem of the future united Italy, who died in the arms of the famous and most patriotic Princess of Belgioioso. The cannonades went on for twenty-seven days and the whole area of the Janiculum Hill was devastated, including the Villa del Torre and Villa Spada. The worst damage was, of course, suffered by the two villas which had the ill-fortune to have been chosen as headquarters: the Vessel was almost completely destroyed.
The ruins looked quite remarkable in the immediate aftermath of the bombardments. The ground floo
r was still standing, including the semicircular projection from the building and the imposing east wing, which survived up to the second floor. The heights on which Benedetti's villa stood out so majestically now displayed sharp, towering ruins, visible for miles around. From every corner of the hill shone the coloured remains of frescos and wall decorations. The ruins became one of the favourite subjects of the landscape painters of the time.
Once the French had driven off the Italian Risorgimentali and returned Rome to the Pope, they made an estimate of the damage: they acknowledged that the soldiers' raiding and plundering had destroyed what survived the cannonades. The total cost of reconstruction was reckoned at twenty thousand scudi, of which the French themselves properly agreed to shoulder two-thirds as being their due. Then, for mysterious reasons, no one did anything. Although various owners succeeded one another, the policy remained the same and the villa was kept as a simple vineyard.
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