Imprimatur

by Rita Monaldi;Francesco Sorti

  The obsession with money consumed even his flesh.

  ***

  Dear Alessio, now I know. Under my eyes, day after day, the memoirs of the apprentice of the Donzello have become reality. The secrets which, in the end, Pompeo Dulcibeni revealed to the young man, and which motivated his attempt on the life of Innocent XI, are all true.

  The Blessed Innocent was an accomplice of Protestant heretics, thus gravely damaging Catholic interests: he allowed England to be invaded by William of Orange for the sole purpose of obtaining repay­ment of a monetary debt.

  Pope Innocent was also a financier of the slave trade, nor did he renounce the personal possession of slaves; and he treated those who were old and dying with sanguinary cruelty.

  He was a niggardly and avaricious man, incapable of raising him­self above material concerns, obsessed by the thought of lucre.

  The figure and the work of Innocent XI were thus unjustly celebrat­ed and elevated, using false, devious and partial arguments. Evidence was concealed: the inventory of the will of Carlo Odescalchi, the let­ters and commercial receipts of the Odescalchi archives from 1650 until 1680, the correspondence of Secretary of State Casoni, the contracts concerning the redemption of slaves cited by Bertolotti, together with other papers of which I shall have to report the, at best, inexplicable disappearance in my final documents.

  Thus the lie triumphed in the end. The financier of heretics was pronounced the Saviour of Christendom. The greedy merchant be­came a wise administrator; the stubborn politician, a capable states­man. Revenge was dressed up as pride, the miser was called frugal, the ignorant man became simple and plain-living, evil stole the clothing of goodness; and goodness, abandoned by all, became earth, dust, smoke, shadow, nothing.

  Now, perhaps, I understand the dedication chosen by my two friends: "To the defeated". Fouquet was defeated: to Colbert, glory; to him, ignominy. Defeated, too, was Pompeo Dulcibeni, who could not obtain justice: his leeches failed. Defeated, likewise, was Atto Melani: he was constrained by the Sun King to kill his friend Fou­quet. And, despite a thousand vicissitudes, he failed to extract from Dulcibeni his closely guarded secret. Defeated was the apprentice-boy who, faced with the vision of evil, lost his faith and his inno­cence: from aspirant gazetteer, he descended to taking refuge in the hard and simple life of a son of the soil. Defeated, too, was his very memory which, although composed with so much care and labour, lay forgotten for centuries.

  All the agitation of these personages was in vain. Against the ma­lign forces of injustice which dominate the history of the world, they were powerless. Their strivings were, perhaps, useful only to them­selves, to discover and to understand what—for a long, long time— none would be privileged to know. Those strivings served perhaps above all to augment their sufferings.

  If this should be a novel, it is the novel of labour lost.

  ***

  I hope that you will, dear Alessio, pardon me for the outburst to which I abandoned myself in these last lines. For my part, I have done what I could. It will be for historians one day to complete the labour of selection from the archives, the scrupulous verification of sources, of circumstances, of details.

  First, however, it will be for His Holiness, and for Him alone, to judge whether the opus of my two friends should be published or kept secret. The implications of its dissemination would be mani­fold, nor would they concern only the Church of Rome. How, in­deed, will the British Orangemen be able stubbornly and arrogantly to parade through the streets of Derry and Belfast when, on the 12 th of July each year they celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, the victory in which William of Orange finally crushed the Catholic forces? What meaning will be left to their celebration of Protestant extremism when they know that they owe that victory to a pope?

  The ancient vaticinations do not lie; the Holy Father will now take the right, the inspired, decision. According to the prophecy of Saint Malachy, as evoked by Padre Robleda, our well-beloved (and rather long-lived) Pontiff will be the last, and the holiest Pope: De Gloria Olivae, as he is called in the prophecy.

  I am aware that the list of popes attributed to Malachy has long been recognised as a forgery dating from the sixteenth century, and not the Middle Ages. Yet no scholar has succeeded in explaining how it correctly foresaw the names of modern popes right down to the present day.

  That list tells us that time has now run out: Fides intrepida (Pius XI), Pastor angelicus (Pius XII), Pastor et nauta (John XXIII), Flos florum (Paul VI), De Medietate Lunae (John Paul I), De labore Solis (John Paul II) and last of all De Gloria Olivae: all the 111 Pontiffs. The Holy Father is, then, perhaps he who will prepare the return of Peter to this earth, when each shall be judged and every wrong set right.

  Cloridia told the apprentice that she had come to Rome following the way of numbers and the oracle of the Tarot: the Arcana of Judge­ment called for "the reparation of past wrongs" and the "equitable judgement of posterity". If the prophecy of Malachy is true, then, that time has come.

  All too often, history has been insulted, betrayed, distorted. If, now, we do not intervene, if we do not proclaim the truth out loud, if the writings of my two friends are not published, it is possible that evidence will continue to disappear: that the letters of Monsieur de Beaucastel and Monsignor Cenci will be lost, placed by mistake in the wrong folder, or that the ledgers of Carlo Odescalchi will vanish inexplicably, as have so many documents.

  I know, dear Alessio, that you are concerned to respect the sched­ules which your office lays down. For that very reason, I trust that you will transmit these papers to His Holiness with all diligence, so that he may weigh up whether to order a late, yet still timely, imprimatur.

  Notes

  The Donzello

  The Locanda del Donzello all'Orso ("The Squire with the Bear") really did exist. I was able to find its precise location thanks to the Status Animarum (the census carried out each year at Easter by the parishes of Rome) of the former parish of Santa Maria in Posterula, the little church which was once near the inn. In the nineteenth century, the church and the piazzetta in which it stood were demolished to make way for the construction of the new embankments of the Tiber. Yet the yearly censuses have been preserved and may be consulted in the historical archives of the Vicariate of Rome.

  The former inn was situated exactly where the apprentice said: in a sixteenth-century house at the beginning of Via dell'Orso, where numbers 87 and 88 now stand. The main entrance is a fine studded portone; nearby, one can see the broad doorway with an oblong arch which in 1683 led to the dining room of the inn, and which today is the entrance to an antique shop. The building was acquired a few decades ago and renovated by a family which still lives there and lets out a number of apartments for rent.

  By means of a series of searches through the cadastral records, I was able to verify that the building has undergone a number of changes between 1683 and the present day; without, however, radically altering its original appear­ance. The ground-floor and first-floor windows, for example, no longer have grilles; the attic has become the third floor, above which there is now a ter­race. The order of windows facing onto the alleyway at the corner of the Via dell'Orso has been completely bricked up but is still visible. The little tower which was supposed to house the courtesan Cloridia has been extended and now forms an extra storey. Of the other storeys there remain only the struc­tural walls, all partition walls having been changed several times over the centuries. Not even the little closet which hid the secret stairway giving ac­cess to the underground galleries has survived; in the place where that stair­way was, a series of apartments have been added on in more recent times.

  In other words, the inn is still there, as though time had stopped. With a little imagination, one could hear the voice of Pellegrino or the mutterings of Padre Robleda behind those ancient windows.

  Time has mercifully spared other documents, which have proved decisive for my research. In the Orsini section of the Capitoli
ne historical archives,

  I found a precious register of the guests at the Donzello up until the end of the year 1682. The volume, in a rough parchment binding, was entitled, in a shaky hand: Book in which are noted all of those who came to lodge at the Cammera Locanda of Sigra Luigia de Grandis Bonetti, at the Bear. A manuscript note within confirms that the inn was known as the Donzello.

  From the register of guests, surprising coincidences emerge. According to the apprentice, the proprietor of the Donzello, Signora Luigia, died a violent death caused by an attack by two gypsies.

  Well, the register of the inn breaks off suddenly on 20th October, 1682. It seems that, around that date, the innkeeper Luigia Bonetti met with a serious accident; we hear nothing of her until the date of her death on 29th November of the same year (I was able to verify this in the register of deaths of the parish of Santa Maria in Posterula).

  But that is not all. I could not believe my eyes when, in the register of guests at the Donzello, I found a number of familiar names: Eduardus Bedfordi, twenty-eight years of age, Englishman; Angelo Brenozzi, twenty-three years of age, Venetian; and lastly, Domenico Stilone Priaso, thirty years of age, Neapolitan; all had lodged at the inn between 1680 and 1681. The three young men were, in other words, people of flesh and blood, and had really stayed at the Donzello at the time when it was kept by Signora Luigia, before the arrival of the apprentice.

  I therefore searched also for traces of the apprentice himself, who unfor­tunately never reveals his name in his memoir, and for information concern­ing his master, Pellegrino de Grandis.

  The boy said he was taken into service by Pellegrino in the spring of 1683, while Pellegrino had, on his arrival from Bologna with his wife and two daughters, taken up temporary lodgings near the Donzello, "waiting for the few passing guests to vacate the premises".

  So, all that is borne out. In the Status Animarum I discovered that the palazzetto of the Donzello housed several families of tenants that spring: a few pages further on, I first found mention of a certain Pellegrino de Grandis, from Bologna, a cook by trade, along with his wife Bona Candiotti and two daughters. They were accompanied by a twenty-year-old apprentice called Francesco. Was he, perhaps, the young dwarf at the inn?

  In the following year, new lodgers were again to be found at the Donzello: a sign that the damage described by the apprentice at the end of his account had been repaired, but Pellegrino did not continue his activity as innkeeper. Nor are there any further traces of him or his young helper.

  Personages and documents

  The physician from Le Marche—the Marches—Giovanni Tiracorda, was born in the village of Alteta in the province of Fermo and was one of the most noted Archiaters (or physicians to the Pope) of his time, caring for Innocent XI on several occasions. As I have been able to ascertain (again through the Status Animarum of the church of Santa Maria in Posterula), he really did live in the Via dell'Orso, near to the inn, with his wife Paradisa and three servant girls. His plump and jovial figure, just as the boy described him, corresponds exactly to a caricature by Pier Leone Ghezzi preserved in the Vatican Li­brary. The books, the furniture, the ornaments and the plan of the interior of Tiracorda's house, as described by the apprentice, all correspond down to the last detail to the inventory of goods attached to the physician's last Will and Testament, which may be consulted in the State Archives of Rome.

  Even the capricious character of the doctor's wife Paradisa seems to cor­respond to the truth. In the Archives of the Pio Sodalizio dei Piceni (Pious Association of Citizens of Ascoli Piceno) in Rome, there are to be found the few documents of Tiracorda's which escaped the ravages of the Napoleonic troops stationed in the Holy City. Amongst the remaining papers, I consulted a series of legal cases brought against Paradisa after her husband's death. From a number of expert opinions, it emerged that the lady was no longer in possession of her mental faculties.

  I have found no few mentions of the surname Dulcibeni in the city of Fermo, in the Marches, during the course of the two visits which I made there; unfortunately, I did not find anyone who in the seventeenth century answered to the name Pompeo. I did, however, find confirmation of the ex­istence in Naples of an important circle of Jansenists: probably that to which Dulcibeni belonged.

  In the Medici Archives in Florence, I was able to verify almost in its entirety the story of Feroni and Huygens; upon his return to Tuscany from Holland, Francesco Feroni wished to contract an aristocratic marriage for his daughter Caterina. The girl was, however, completely besotted with her father's right-hand man, Antonius Huygens, from Cologne; so much so that she had fallen ill of "continuall Fever, which has since become a tertian Fe­ver". Despite that, Huygens continued to work for Feroni, even managing the subsidiary of his business in Livorno. Here, too, the apprentice's memoir spoke the truth.

  Concerning the Sienese physician Cristofano, I have traced only infor­mation concerning his father, who bore the same name, the well-known Su­perintendent for Health Cristofano Ceffini, who was indeed active during the plague epidemic at Prato in 1630. He also left a Libro di Sanita—a book of health—listing the rules which health officials were to observe in the event of a plague outbreak.

  Luigi Rossi, the master of Atto Melani, lived in Rome and Paris, where he was young Atto's friend and mentor. All the verses which Abbot Melani sings are taken from his songs. Le Seigneur Luigi (as he is referred to in original scores scattered throughout the libraries of Europe) never took the trouble during his lifetime to have his operas printed; yet these were highly success­ful, and the monarchs of the time competed to have them performed. Thus, Luigi Rossi, while being regarded in the seventeenth century as the greatest of all European composers, had already fallen into oblivion by the dawn of the new century.

  I have succeeded in finding only two recordings of his love songs, but I was lucky. I actually found the two passages sung by Atto and was thus able to listen to them, enchanted by their wonderful melodies.

  The astrological almanack of Stilone Priaso, which so troubled the ap­prentice of the Donzello, was published in December 1682 and may be con­sulted at the Biblioteca Casanatense, in Rome. It was, I confess, with some disquiet that I discovered that the author really had predicted that the bat­tle of Vienna would take place in September 1683. That is a mystery and, I think, destined to remain so.

  At the Biblioteca Casanatense, thanks to the professionalism and ex­treme courtesy of the librarians, I was also able to trace the astrological manual from which was drawn the horoscope of Aries that Ugonio recited to Atto and the boy during their underground peregrinations. This little trea­tise was published in Lyons in the year 1625, just a year before the birth of Abbot Melani: Livre d'Arcandam Docteur et Astrologue traictant despredictions d'Astrologie. Well, in the case of Atto, Arcandam's vaticinations seem to have been remarkably accurate, including even his life span: eighty-seven years, as foretold by the astrologer.

  Atto Melani

  All the circumstances of the life of Atto Melani contained in the appren­tice's account are authentic. Castrato singer, diplomat and spy, Atto served, first the Medici, then Mazarin, and finally the Roi Soleil, but also Fouquet and an indefinite number of cardinals and noble families. His career as a castrato was long and glorious, and his singing was celebrated—as he himself boasted to the apprentice-boy—by Jean de la Fontaine and Francesco Redi. Besides being mentioned in all the principal musical dictionaries, the name of Atto Melani appears in the correspondence of Mazarin and in the mem­oirs of several French writers.

  Atto Melani was also accurately described by the apprentice-boy, both in regard to his appearance and his character; to appreciate this, one has but to stop and look at the funerary monument erected in his memory in the church of San Domenico in Pistoia. Looking up, one meets the abbot's sharp eyes and can recognise the mocking fold of his lips and the impertinent dimple on his chin. The Marquis de Grammont describes the young Atto Melani in his memoirs as "amusing, and far from stupid". And one ha
s only to read one of Atto's many letters, scattered like disjecta membra throughout all the libraries of Italy, to marvel at his gay and ironic, gossipy and exceed­ingly acute style.

  In his correspondence, one finds many of the teachings which Atto im­parted to the young apprentice, beginning with his learned (and eminently debatable) reasoning as to why it was absolutely licit for a Christian King to ally himself with the Turks.

  Even the guide to the architectural marvels of Rome, which Abbot Mel­ani was writing in his room at the Donzello, between one adventure and another, seems to have been anything but an invention. Atto's guide is in fact extraordinarily similar to an anonymous manuscript which was first pub­lished by a small Roman publishing house in 1996, under the title Lo Specchio di Roma Barocca (The Mirror of Baroque Rome). The anonymous writer of the manuscript was a cultivated, well-to-do abbot, well informed about all things political and with good connections at the papal court, a misogynist and a Francophile. That sounds like a portrait of Abbot Melani.