On this date in 472, one of the last “twilight emperors” of the western Roman Empire — and the last of any conspicuous ability — was beheaded by his rebellious general Ricimer.
Here in Rome’s dying days, the dangerous, centuries-old game for the purple was played with the twist of political triangulation with barbarian kings who had set up permanent shop within the old empire’s borders.
Maybe it was his closet paganism, or his Greek patrician breeding, or the way he slung his toga — whatever it was, Anthemius didn’t have the knack for winning them over.
Born and reared in Constantinople, Anthemius was being groomed for succession in the relatively less treacherous eastern empire when his royal patron (and father-in-law) suddenly got gangrene and died.
The Alan commander who held military power in the east wasn’t into Anthemius, so he got the Al Gore treatment and Leo I got the laurels. Interestingly, although barbarian tribes were establishing themselves as the power behind the throne — and this was even more true in the west — they were not yet prepared to assert the imperial majesty in their own names. That last feeble cultural bulwark, however, would not hold out much longer.
Leo “rewarded” Anthemius for taking it all in stride by appointing him emperor of the perilous west. (He also rewarded the kingmaking barbarian chieftain by having him murdered. “Leo the Butcher,” he’s called.)
That pissed off legendary Vandal king Genseric (or Gaiseric, or Geiseric), who had sacked Rome in 455 and settled into a long career lucratively plundering the Mediterranean. And with good reason: Leo’s idea was for the two emperors jump Genseric.
Now, before this time Leo had already appointed and sent Anthemius as emperor of the west, a man of the senate of great wealth and high birth, in order that he might assist him in the Vandalic war. And yet Gaiseric kept asking and earnestly entreating that the imperial power be given to Olybrius, who was married to Placidia, the daughter of Valentinian, and on account of his relationship well-disposed toward him, and when he failed in this he was still more angry and kept plundering the whole land of the emperor. (Procopius)
That war was a debacle and left Genseric merrily raiding Italy, but Anthemius’ real problem was domestic: his new realm had its own Germanic commander who also preferred to pick his own emperors, and he took an instant dislike to the foreign ponce. Anthemius and Ricimer managed a brief detente, during which the new guy tried to take Gaul back from the Visigoths (no dice), but the two fell to fighting in 472. After a brief siege, Ricimer overran Rome and set up in Anthemius’ place that Genseric-favored Olybrius (who would last all of 39 days).
Anthemius took refuge in one of Rome’s churches — either St. Peter’s or Santa Maria in Trastevere — where he was betrayed, and beheaded by (naturally) Ricimer’s Burgundian nephew.
On this date, Antonio della Pagliara was hanged across the Tiber from the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome for heresy.
The present-day view from the square where Paleario is thought to have been put to death, over the Ponte Sant’Angelo’s span across the Tiber to the Vatican’s imposing citadel.
Better known as Aonio Paleario (English Wikipedia entry | the considerably deeper Italian), the humanist scholar grew into his intellectual career just as Martin Luther’s doctrine was shaking Christendom.
Paleario’s positions were dangerously — and at length, fatally — close to Protestantism. He counted himself a humanist, a great admirer of Erasmus, who from the Low Countries managed to hold his critical positions without running afoul of the Catholic Church.
This would prove an increasingly difficult trick as the century unfolded … especially in the pope’s back yard.
Paleario’s most particular offenses were to take what amounts to the Lutheran side on the primacy of scriptural text over ecclesiastical tradition, and of salvation through Christ alone without the Church’s intermediation. (He also denied Purgatory.)
Since the Italian academic also cottoned to the Protestant-humanist critique of clerical corruption, he pitched Martin Luther and John Calvin on the notion of convening a Christendom-wide ecclesiastical council to reconcile competing sects. He seems to have wanted to reconcile the reformist current of humanism still within the Catholic tradition, and that of those critics who had broken, perhaps not yet irrevocably, with Rome.
The effort ultimately foundered. Instead, the curia-approved Council of Trent formulated a Roman Catholic doctrine that insured the permanent schism with Protestantism.
The Counter-Reformation was on. Still, with contending theologies — and contending polities — afoot in the Italian quiltwork plus his own towering reputation as the greatest orator in Italy, Paleario was able to find protectors and carry on. He taught in Siena, Lucca and Milan for more than three decades, surviving two bouts with the Inquisition before a Rome in crackdown mode finally pinned a heresy rap on him.
By that time, the septuagenarian didn’t much bother to fight it.
If your Eminences have so many credible witnesses against me, there is no need to give yourselves or me any further trouble … Judge, therefore, and condemn Aonio; satisfy my adversaries, and fulfil your office.
The office was fulfilled consuming the old man in flames, but they did extend the favor of hanging him (and apparently exposing the corpse for several days) first.
A book uncertainly attributed to Paleario, Beneficio di Criso (The Benefit of Christ’s Death) is available free at Google Books.
He makes a complex character, with a streak of flawed greatness even his contemporary enemies recognized; his anti-Renaissance theology was severe but not dour, fired as it was by a genuine spiritual passion that spoke to real needs of his audience and a real crisis growing in the Church. And he did not disdain the revolutionary real-world implications of his faith.
Savonarola instituted Republican government with a touch of the Taliban — a vice squad of young hooligans to rough up rouged ladies and card-players;* a famous Bonfire of the Vanities in which Botticelli incinerated some of his own work — but also a populist economic touch.
For reasons both internal (the killjoy factor of busting up dice games wore out its welcome) and external (his French ally Charles VIII was driven from Italy, and Savonarola made a dire enemy of the corrupt Borgia pontiff Alexander VI), the priest’s grip on Florence weakened. In April 1498, he was arrested with two other clerics; all three were tortured into signing confessions, then executed in the Piazza della Signoria.
The doomed Savonarola anguished that he had not been strong enough to resist the tortures of the rack, and penned in contrition the Latin meditation Infelix ego:
Alas wretch that I am, destitute of all help, who have offended heaven and earth — where shall I go? Whither shall I turn myself? To whom shall I fly? Who will take pity on me? To heaven I dare not lift up my eyes, for I have deeply sinned against it; on earth I find no refuge, for I have been an offence to it…
Like Savonarola’s memory and teachings, it spread — often illicitly — in a Europe ready for religious reform. Infelix ego has been frequently set to devotional music, like this version by Orlande de Lassus:
Savonarola might have been in himself a dead end, an unsuccessful prophet quickly rolled back, but he nonetheless possesses a recognizable essence that distills both the Zeitgeist of his time and the immemorial hunger for simplicity and virtue that coexists with the equally human celebration of pleasure and beauty. He left complex legacies to both the Church and the city his reforms sought (and ultimately failed) to scourge.
In religion, his castigation of the vice and sin of the Church (a position of which he was an outstanding but hardly a lonely advocate) prefigured the coming Reformation. But Savonarola also never left off the most devout affiliation to Catholicism, nor sought institutional schism even when he had been excommunicated.** What to make of such a man? He is both depicted (at the base of a Martin Luther statue) at the Worms Reformation Monument, and proposed for present-day Catholic canonization.
So too his secular legacy — the theocrat who burned books and expelled the Medici and was reduced to ashes for his reactionary principles — merits a respectful recollection in Florence, even if few would actually want to live in his republic. He repelled Machiavelli, but perhaps fascinated him as well, a prince with a precisely backward grasp of his own power.
This stone marking the site of the execution stands at a crossroads of tourist traffic in a thicket of statuary, mostly nude and/or classically inspired, outside the entrance to one of Europe’s principle collections of Renaissance art.
One wonders what the old Dominican would have made of it.
Books about Savonarola’s Florence
* Savonarola also made sodomy punishable by death.
** Alexander VI tried first to get him (in Lyndon Johnson’s fragrant phrase) inside the tent pissing out by making him a cardinal, which Savonarola spurned.
On this date in 1425, the Marquess of Ferrara had his wife and son beheaded for an incestuous affair, along with a courtier who had kept their secret.
The “incest” was social rather than sanguinary: the lovers were not related. Like many a Renaissance despot, Niccolò III d’Este produced a multitudinous assortment of illegitimate children and underaged dynastic wives. Small wonder, one might think, that the 14-year-old (at her marriage) Parisina Malatesta (the link is to her Italian Wikipedia page) should come to prefer the attentions of the Duke’s eldest bastard Ugo (one year her junior) to those of a spouse more than twenty years older.
Awww.
Still, the affair has its curious aspect, apart from the obvious. The Duke was on that timeless monarchical quest for legitimate male issue; Parisina Malatesta would bear him two surviving daughters and a son who died in infancy during her teenage years.
One can hardly fail to think of that more renowned decapitated queen of the next century Anne Boleyn. Like Anne, Parisina lost her head to an incest allegation after a few years’ failure to give her husband an heir.
The need for specifically legitimate succession, however, was somewhat less pressing in tightly run Ferrara than early Tudor England. As the oldest illegitimate son, Ugo himself had a chance to succeed by his father’s appointment — in fact, the second illegitimate son Leonello ultimately did just that. For this reason, Ugo and Parisina — the latter threatening to supplant the former with a legitimate child of her own — might have been natural rivals, and there is some hint of initial enmity between the two. One wonders if there might not have been a twist of obscured courtly skullduggery about this day’s bloody climax.
In any event, interlocutors have preferred the personal aspect, and little wonder. The Marquess played his part by being stricken with anguish and remorse for his ruthless treatment of a favored son, possibly aided by a general reaction of horror among most contemporaries.*
Retold in later years as scandal (though never with much sympathy for the marquess**) its Byronic potential as tragic love story was eventually seized by, well, Lord Byron. His “Parisina” gives us two true hearts in the flower of youth crushed by the cruel weight of their unjust world … although he found it more apt to conclude with only the boy losing his head while the wail of his lover signals a more ambiguous fate.
With all the consciousness that he
Had only passed a just decree;
That they had wrought their doom of ill;
Yet Azo’s† age was wretched still.
The tainted branches of the tree,
If lopped with care, a strength may give,
By which the rest shall bloom and live
All greenly fresh and wildly free:
But if the lightning, in its wrath,
The waving boughs with fury scathe,
The massy trunk the ruin feels,
And never more a leaf reveals.
* The Marquess was less troubled about his wife, and promulgated a decree imposing like punishment for any other wife guilty of such a crime. The sentence was actually carried out upon a magistrate’s wife.
** Gibbon tut-tutted the affair, simultaneously helping circulate it anew:
Under the reign of Nicholas III, Ferrara was polluted with a domestic tragedy. By the testimony of a maid, and his own observation, the Marquis of Este discovered the incestuous loves of his wife Parisina, and Hugo his bastard son, a beautiful and valiant youth. They were beheaded in the castle by the sentence of a father and husband, who published his shame, and survived their execution. He was unfortunate, if they were guilty: if they were innocent, he was still more unfortunate; nor is there any possible situation in which I can sincerely approve the last act of the justice of a parent.
† Niccolo is “Azo” in the poem, for metric convenience.
On this date in 1945, Communist partisans shot Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci near Lake Como, along with fifteen or so additional fascist aides and officials.
It was an inglorious end for the flamboyant onetime socialist turned violent rightist, the man who had founded (and named) fascism; whose had inspired Hitler when the latter was still a streetcorner rabble-rouser, and then wandered suicidally into Germany’s orbit.
The next day, the victims’ bodies were hung up in Milan — the heart of Mussolini’s own power and still a stronghold of neo-fascist parties today — at Piazza Loreto for public abuse. The deposed Duce still had it in his power to stir the imagination of his Teutonic partner: news of the Italian dictator’s fate made it to the Fuhrer’s bunker and was said to have steeled Hitler’s resolve to take his own life with the dread vision of what should befall him if he should be taken alive.
On this date in 1478, a coup d’etat against the Medici family in Florence was attempted during Easter mass — and by day’s end, its leading perpetrators had been hanged.
The Pazzi conspiracy implicates, even more than the municipal political rivalries of the Pazzi and Medici families, the peninsular geopolitics pitting Florence against the Pope, each side with its own constellations of allied lords and city-states.
The arrangement of players and their assorted interests is amply covered elsewhere; we shall suffice for this space to say that the Pazzi were a family of wealth and lineage (another death-sentenced Florentine, Dante, had dropped a couple of their ancestors into his infernal tableau), and proceed to the aftermath.
When one strikes a king, one must strike to kill. In this case, the co-ruling Medici brothers, Giuliano and Lorenzo were both attacked — but Lorenzo survived, and visited a terrible vengeance upon the assailants.
An enraged mob — the Pazzi had misjudged the city’s mood to begin with, and committing murder in church was ill-calculated to win sympathy — and a star chamber of Medici loyalists immediately began rounding up the numerous conspirators, many of whom were summarily hanged from the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio.
Along with a number of obscure foot soldiers and family retainers who suffered such indignities as being thrown from high windows onto cobblestones and torn apart by the mob, the most prominent victims this day were Francesco de Pazzi (the link is to his Italian wikipedia page) and Archbishop Francesco Salviati, a papal loyalist whose grievance against Florence for delaying his seat as archbishop of Pisa had done much to instigate the conspiracy.
They were far from the only victims: fugitives who had escaped the city were hunted for weeks and months thereafter, although Lorenzo “the Great” — who cuts the very model of the enlightened prince to posterity, rightly or not — was disposed in several cases to grant mercy to innocents against the dictates of political expediency.
However, the culpable after this day had every reason to fear. Perhaps the most affecting story is that of elderly Pazzi patriarch Jacopo de Pazzi (Italian again), caught in flight by Tuscan villagers whom he tried desperately (and unavailingly) to bribe for the privilege of suicide rather than a return to the fate of his kinsmen. Florentine communal pride celebrated popular participation in vengeance against the papal plot. Botticelli was commissioned to paint the executed conspirators hanging in their death throes on the very facade of the palace where they had in fact been put to death.
The Pazzi family wasn’t quite blotted out literally — later, it would even be restored to the city — but a comprehensive sentence of civic damnatio memoriae followed in the weeks after the immediate danger was checked. The family property was confiscated, its name and coat of arms banished, even the public festival its Crusader forebear had inspired was (unsuccessfully) renamed. For a time, merely to marry a Pazzi was to exclude oneself from public office.
Niccolo Machiavelli was a boy of eight at the time the Pazzi conspiracy was attempted. As a political theorist in later years, the event would liberally illustrate his writings. In Machiavelli’s Discourses (available free from Project Gutenberg), for instance, the Pazzi conspiracy is a lesson in the danger of conspiring against two princes at once, the risk inherent in having any great number of people aware of the plot, and the unpredictable small turns of fortune and minor slips in execution upon which a great matter may succeed or fail.
[I]n these grave undertakings, no one who is without such experience, however bold and resolute, is to be trusted.
The confusion of which I speak may either cause you to drop your weapon from your hand, or to use words which will have the same results. Quintianus being commanded by Lucilla, sister of Commodus, to slay him, lay in wait for him at the entrance of the amphitheatre, and rushing upon him with a drawn dagger, cried out, “The senate sends you this;” which words caused him to be seized before his blow descended. In like manner Messer Antonio of Volterra, who as we have elsewhere seen was told off to kill Lorenzo de’ Medici, exclaimed as he approached him, “Ah traitor!” and this exclamation proved the salvation of Lorenzo and the ruin of that conspiracy.
As dawn broke over the Piazzetta San Marco in Venice, the body of a man hung from the gallows between the columns. There were no witnesses to this execution — it was a quiet affair carried out under the veil of night. The citizens of the Serenissima were understandably worried. This man was not common criminal — he was a man from a distinguished noble family.
What events had led to a man of such stature becoming victim of such a fate?
Antonio the Ambassador
Antonio Foscarini was the third son of Nicolo di Alvise de ramo di S.Polo and Maria Barbarigo di Antonio.
Antonio began his diplomatic career as one of the representatives of the Republic of Venice to the Court of King Henri IV of France (1601) and was there, at Paris, in this capacity to celebrate Henri’s wedding to Marie de Medici. Despite being elected as Ambassador to France — “Ambasciatore ordinario in Francia” — (26th May 1607), he did not actually take up his position until February of the following year.
When he was elected Ambassador to England — “Ambasciatore ordinario in Inghilterra” — (July 1610), he again did not take up his position until the following year (4th May 1611). Unfortunately, Foscarini’s position came under question in Venice. One of Foscarini’s secretaries denounced his to the Council of Ten, accusing him of selling state secrets to Venice’s mortal enemy at the time — Spain.
Foscarini was summoned to return to Venice immediately. Upon his arrival he was imprisoned, where he remained for three years whilst in inquiry into the allegations took place. Foscarini was duly released upon being found “not guilty” (30th July 1618) — there was no blemish on his service record. Two years later he was elected Senator (1620).
The Council of Ten
The Council of Ten was formed in 1310 “to preserve the liberty and peace of the subjects of the republic and to protect them form the abuses of personal power”. In effect, the Council of Ten was actually made up of 17:
the Doge - who presided over all and was elected ruler for a specific term.
the Prime Minster - elected chairman of the government
the Signoria - comprised of three Capi (three chiefs of the Great Council); six Savii Grandi (modern-day Cabinet); three Savii da Terra Firma and three Savii agli Ordini or da Mar (Ministers of War, Finance and Marine).
These men, for there were no women, were elected for a specific term, depending upon their position. In effect, this ensured that any attempt on the part of one person or a family or a group to gain sole power was neutralized. Even the Church was excluded from taking any part in the government of the Republic.
The Countess of Arundel
At the age of 35, this formidable woman arrived in Venice in 1621.
Alatheia Talbot was the granddaughter of the infamous Bess of Hardwick (goddaughter of Queen Elizabeth I of England) and the wife of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, and a leading figure at the court of King James I of England. Both Alatheia and Thomas were passionate art lovers, and used their boundless wealth to amass the first great private art collection in England. And this was the reason for Alatheia’s journey to Venice - that and the education of their sons. Alatheia left her children at the villa in Dolo whilst she continued onto Venice and settled in Palazzo Mocegnigo on Grand Canal.
The Senator & the Countess
It was whilst situated in the Palazzo Mocegnigo, that the Senator possibly renewed his acquaintance with the Countess. In his position as Ambassador to England, Foscarini would have come into contact with both the Countess and her husband, who was, we must remember, a prominent official of the royal Court. As to the true nature of this acquaintance, it has been suggested that the two were not particularly close.
Whatever the suggestion, on the evening of 8th April 1622 as Foscarini was departing the Senate, he was arrested on the orders of the Consiglio dei Dieci and charged with:
… having secretly and frequently been in the company of ministers of foreign powers, by day and by night, in their houses and elsewhere, in this city and outside it, in disguise and in normal dress, and having divulged to them, both orally and in writing, the most intimate secrets of the Republic, and having received money from them in return …
Less than a fortnight later, Foscarini was strangled in prison and the following morning found hung between the two columns in Piazzetta San Marco.
Aftermath
The news of Foscarini’s execution spread like wildfire throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Many rulers, upon hearing the news, were shocked.
Countess Alatheia was perturbed for her name had been linked with that of Foscarini. It was in her house that Foscarini had been accused of passing state secrets to Venice’s enemies — notably Spain (via the Secretary of Emperor Ferdinand) and the Church (via the Papal Nuncio).
Sir Henry Wotton, England’s Ambassador to Venice, notified Alatheia by letter that the Council of Ten would be passing a sentence of banishment upon her, and that it would be in her best interests to leave immediately.
But Sir Henry had greatly underestimated this woman — for she was aggressive adversary (they had crossed swords many times). Instead, Alatheia went immediately in person to Sir Henry, vigorously denying the charges and informing him of her intentions to seek an audience with the Doge, Antonio Priuli. Alatheia laid the blame for Foscarini’s death firmly at his doorstep, and let him know in no uncertain circumstances that she intended to bring about his dismissal.
Alatheia was granted her audience with the Doge. She was warmly received and assured that there was never any question of neither her banishment not implication in the recent tragic events. She generously accepted his assurances, but requested a public exoneration in writing in both Venice and London; this duly occurred. She was given lavish gifts by the Doge and with her wagons heavily laden with, left Venice six months later.
In January of 1623, a unique event occurred in Venice: Antonio Foscarini was posthumously exonerated by the Council of Ten. Ten months previously, it had unanimously found him guilty of treason and had him executed. King James I’s ambassador to the Serenissima, Sir Henry Wotton, characterized the event: “…surely in 312 years that the Council of Ten hath stood, there was never cast a greater blemish upon it.”
And so, after much investigation, Antonio Foscarini was officially exonerated of all charges (16th January 1623).
Throughout the summer, proof of Foscarini’s innocence gathered momentum, and was such that none could ignore it. Those who had accused Foscarini of the act of treason were brought before both the Inquisitors of the State and the Council of Ten themselves to answer certain questions. It was determined, during the course of events, that both accused had perjured themselves by making false accusations against Foscarini. Why they did so is not known, but Murray Brown presents a number of credible scenarios in his “The Myth of Antonio Foscarini’s Exoneration”.
The Council of Ten publicly confessed its error — copies were given to Foscarini’s family and were also distributed throughout Europe. Foscarini’s body was exhumed and he was given a state funeral. A statue of Foscarini is in Foscarini Chapel of the Church of S.Stae.
On this date in 1944, Nazi troops occupying Italy avenged a partisan attack by executing 335 Italian hostages in the Ardeatine caves outside Rome.
Part of the cave complex where the massacres took place, barred by a decorative gate.
It was six months since Germany had invaded her onetime ally, eliminating those fascists who had deposed Mussolini. Now an occupied country — an increasingly tenuous occupation as the Allied war effort bore down on Germany — Italy’s partisans multiplied.
On March 23, some of them bombed a German army column, killing 33.
The Germans ordered an immediate reprisal, although there were administrative debates over how many hostages to shoot for each casualty. Hitler initially ordered a staggering 100:1 ratio, the sort of boundary-pushing command that makes 10:1 look like the choice of moderate, reasonable mass-murderers.
A motley collection was hastily assembled to fill the quota: regular prisoners, captured partisans, men from the neighborhood and from the Jewish community rounded up randomly,* even a young Italian diplomat (the link is in Italian) being held as a political suspect. So hastily was it done, the killers miscounted the harvest — as one later explained in a deposition:
Q. It was discovered that the number of people killed was more than intended, five extra. Can you explain that to us?
A. [At the Ardeatine,] Priebke was there with the copy of the list. He got the people down [off the trucks] and canceled out their names. At a certain point, one of the prisoners was not on Priebke’s list. At the end, in fact, there were five extra men. That was when Kappler said, “What do I do with these five? They’ve seen it all.”
For much of this day, in groups of five in these manmade caves that form part of the ancient catacomb network, German soldiers went about their sanguinary business. The bodies were stacked; some of the caves dynamited — as surely many Germans realized it would not be many months before the less that was known of such crimes, the better.
But publicity is the point of reprisals, after all, and the five extra men were far from the only ones who had seen the awful business. The butchery was known from the very next morning.
Intended to alienate leftist partisans from the general populace, the massacre instead united Italians of every stripe in disgust. Even the Italian fascists were horrified; according to Richard Lamb’s War in Italy 1943-1945, Mussolini ordered all political prisoners released to safeguard them from a repeat performance.
Like many wounds of the Second World War, this infamous war crime is far from healed over.
For one thing, the Pope was notably — outrageously — silent about a crime in his own back yard and directed largely against his own flock, feeding charges of Vatican collaboration.
For another thing, there was far from a complete accounting for its authors after Italy’s liberation. An American investigative series famously caught one of the massacre’s perpetrators, onetime Gestapo officer (and little apologetic about it) Erich Priebke, living in Argentina — in 1990.
And finally, the affair, or more particularly the partisan bombing that precipitated the massacre, has been the subject of postwar critique and revisionism, especially given the years of terrorist tit-for-tat between far-right and far-left factions that followed the war. Just last year, an Italian court intervened in the historical dispute, ruling against a Berlusconi newspaper’s campaign to smear the resistance with responsibility for this day’s executions.
* Notorious informer Celeste di Porto, “the black panther,” reputedly helped fill up the rolls by fingering Jews. A childhood friend of hers, Lazzaro Anticoli, scribbled before his execution, “If I never see my family again, it is the fault of that sellout Celeste di Porto. Avenge me.” According to Susan Zuccotti, the informer had had Anticoli’s name added at the last minute to bump her own brother off the list; di Porto’s Italian Wikipedia page charges her with responsibility for 26 of the Ardeatine victims. She was almost lynched at one point after the war for collaborating; she spent seven years in jail.
A Catholic man with the name Giovanni Battiste (”John the Baptist”) Bugatti could hardly have had a more ironic role in church history than the man who, on this date in 1796, dispatched his first victim as official executioner of the Papal State. Nicholas Gentilucci was hanged for killing a clergyman and his coachman, then robbing two friars while on the lam; Gentilucci’s corpse was subsequently quartered.
Little is known about Gentilucci, but much is known of his then-17-year-old executioner, for Bugatti, who would become known simply as Mastro Titta, turned out to be the most individually prolific taker of life in turn-of-the-19th century Rome.
Bugatti was born in Rome in 1779 and, even while putting criminals of the state to death, lived and worked on the west side of the Tiber River as an umbrella painter. Executions were a side job, and these ghastly deeds were recognized as such by the church, which compensated him a paltry three cents of a Roman lira for each body.
“Minister of Justice”
Mastro Titta brandishes an executed woman’s head.
The original Mastro Titta — the titular corruption of the “Minister of Justice” — took responsibility for each of his “patients” (as he called them, and as they were notoriously referred to by others), dutifully noting each of the 516 in his memoir. He stood for 69 years as the primary administrator of the death penalty in papal Rome, killing variously by beheading, hanging, and use of the mallet. Some were charged with murder, others with conspiracy, others with more petty crimes, but all were found guilty by the court of judges chosen by the Church’s bishops and cardinals.
The Minister’s performances were not without an (increasingly practiced) flair, heavy on the religious symbolism. Bugatti’s residence on the west side of the river meant that, when he was to carry out a punishment, he had first to cross the river.
Initially, the executions were carried out in the Piazza del Popolo, but that location was retired in the 1820’s; it’s not clear how consistent the location was after this, but at least one later execution occurred near San Giovanni decollato, home to the group of monks dedicated to comforting the condemned even when the final blow didn’t occur at its doorstep. Regardless of the locale, a spectacle soon arose surrounding that crossing and the parade which followed, as documented by Italian dialect poet G.G. Belli in 1835 (presumably for the execution of Giovanni Orioli di Lugo on July 11 of that year):
The Dilettante at the Bridge
They approach: Attention: the ceremony is brief.
Behold the condemned, neck bare and stretched.
He is the first man of the opera, the Patient,
The Ace of Spades, lord of the fesitval.
And behold the professor that will soon be
The surgeon acting for the people
For three pence, the community,
He will cure the ills of their pained head!
But not the man on the left: the other, to the right.
He in the second place is the Assistant.
The proceedings wait for Mastro Titta.
Do you want the usual from me, who takes the head?
I who never miss it: I am consistent;
And I know him as well as I know the Pope.
The translation is largely mine, with help on some difficult sections from a well-written and complete description of Mastro Titta’s life and work here and here.
Just a Job
A pinch of snuff before I snuff you?
Bugatti was known for playing the role of executioner in a manner which left no doubt as to his feelings towards the act: it was his job, his service to the Church itself, undisturbed by any personal animus towards the condemned — particularly early in his career.
He often offered snuff to his victims and spoke briefly and quietly with them prior to the execution, likely ploys to ease the victim into his role in the spectacle. Dickens viewed one of Mastro Titta’s beheadings on 8 March 1845*, and, in his Pictures From Italy, he remarked on the callousness of the event.
In keeping with this attitude, most of the entries in Mastro Titta’s memoir are fewer than 20 words. They reflect a man who seeks to distance himself from the crowd’s bloodlust. A selection:
“Pecorari Angel, of Poli, aged 29. Peasant guilty of premeditated homicide of one woman, condemned to «death as an example» in Poland on 21 January 1847.” (There were a number of prisoners sentenced in other Catholic parts of Europe sent to Rome for Titta’s ministrations.)
“Sabbatino Proietti, aged 25, «decapitated» in Rieti for petty theft and highway robbery and murder on 20 August 1853, died converted, executed through administration of justice at the public square at the Bridge.”
“Angelo Lisi di Alatri, found guilty of premeditated highway robbery and murder in Frosinone, «dead» on 30 April 1862.”
An Anomalous Man
Bugatti was born just seven years prior to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany becoming the first of the Italian states to abolish the death penalty. There, Leopold II barred torture and punishment of death, a decision heavily influenced by Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments and a desire to distance his nation from Rome.
In the neighboring Papal State, however, the practice continued, the embodiment of the church’s power over its people in matters earthly and spiritual. Executions of the time performed for various reasons, but with a handful of exceptions, they were almost exclusively performed on persons in the lower class. Many relied on the use of torture or testimony from confessionals. Papal executions were carried out until the 1870s and only declared unnecessary (though not banned by the Church) by Pope John Paul II in the 1990s.
A complete discussion of the role of executions in the Catholic Church is too much for this space,** but a man like Bugatti serves usefully to exemplify the absurdity endowed in these killings by the Catholic Church. Where the half-dozen popes who served over Bugatti thought such executions to be necessary for the control of the masses, they had no such ideas about nobles who committed crimes.
The execution itself consisted of a parade with masked priests, banners, scriptural readings, and sermonizing, culminating in the death of the condemned. John L Allen of the National Catholic Reporter described the treatment of these executions in that day as “a liturgy”, and descriptions from writers such as Lord Byron show a scene which could only be described as a mix of Catholic Mass and town festival.
Such ritualized killing came to contrast starkly with the Italian celebration of an anti-death penalty position, and the two stood at odds for over a century. In 1909, the topic was hot enough that a plaque glorifying two Italians executed by Bugatti in 1825 was erected; a dozen years later, its contents were concealed out of deference to Rome until after the Second Vatican Council. The commemorated, Angiolo Targhini and Leonida Montanari, were convicted essentially of riling the people, and they were summarily beheaded; their story was the inspiration for Luigi Magni’s 1969 classic Nell’anno del Signore:
“So ends the long list of Bugatti.”
Mastro Titta was given an official residence, and at the end of his term, he was handsomely rewarded with a pension for his service — 30 scudi per year. His final executions were carried out on 17 August 1864, wearing his traditional red cloak (now on display at the Criminology Museum of Rome): Antonio Olietti of Rome and Domenico Antonio Demartini were beheaded for homicide.
The Minister of Justice was 85, four and some years from the end of his life, and the final line in his memoir reads, “So ends the long list of Bugatti. May that of his successor be shorter.”
Indeed it was.
The final executions in Rome occurred on 24 November 1868 at the hands of Antonio Balducci, Bugatti’s long-time apprentice; the event was marked by Pope Pius IX famously intoning in response to calls for a stay, “I can’t, and I don’t want to.” The last execution in the Papal State was of Agatino Bellomo on 9 July 1870, in Palestrina, shortly before the nascent unified Italy absorbed Rome.
Mastro Titta is still known in Italy,† but, adrift amid a particularly violent period of revolution, his legacy as papal executioner is largely lost to the rest of the world.
* The day’s guillotinee was Giovanni Vagnarelli, 26, from Augustine; he killed Bavarian Anna Cotten and robbed her, and her wife’s statement at confessional was used to convict Vagnarelli. Such confessional convictions were not uncommon, as Bugatti’s own memoir confirms.
** There’s surprisingly little reading out there about this topic, though it would seem ripe for a book or two. Here’s what I can find:
“Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome: The Papal Police in Perspective”, Steven Hughes, Journal of Social History, 1987.
“Capital Punishment: The Curious History of its Privileged Place in Christendom”, James J. Megivern, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 2003.
† A half dozen kilometers from the bridge that Mastro Titta crossed on his way to carry out Papal justice now stands the Mastro Titta Pub. It is reportedly “tastefully done” and serves mostly Belgian beers.
(Thanks to Jeff at BrainMortgage for the guest post -ed.)
On this day in 1302, the governing commune of the city of Florence condemned to death Dante Alighieri, statesman, philosopher, and above all, poet. Arguably the greatest mind of his generation, Dante is most famous for his authorship of the Divine Comedy, relating his journeys through, successively, hell, purgatory, and heaven.
Born in 1265 to a noble family of Florence that, while not the city’s most prominent family, had already seen several of his ancestors banished as a result of political turmoil, Dante could hardly have avoided becoming embroiled in public life had he even wanted to. In brief, a long-running struggle between pro-imperial (the so-called Holy Roman Empire) and pro-papal factions was finally won by the pro-papal forces, known as the Guelphs. Two decisive battles in 1289 established both Florence’s independence (particularly from their old nemesis, Pisa) and the rule of the Guelphs, Dante’s own party.
Dante is likely to have taken part in those battles and was active in city politics in the following decade, culminating in a turn in 1300 as prior (one of six key counsellors to the city, serving a two-month term). Florence prided itself on a tradition of democratic rule going back to the death of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1250.
Persona Non Grata
Giotto painted Dante prior to his exile — the oldest portrait of Dante known.
Unfortunately, by the time Dante took on the priorate, the old rivalries had reshaped themselves into new factions eerily parallel to their predecessors: the so-called “Black” Guelphs, who aligned themselves with the Pope (as of 1294, Boniface VIII), and “White” Guelphs, who took a more moderate political stance and saw themselves as defending an independent Florence from the Pope and his allies (namely, the Blacks).
Things got so bad that, at the time of Dante’s priorate, the city’s ruling body banished leaders of both sides in an effort to stabilize the city. The pope took the opportunity to send emissaries to Florence on the pretext of negotiating a peace. After more than a year of this maneuvering, the commune sent Dante and two others to have words with Boniface in Rome in 1301.
The Pope “invited” Dante to stay in Rome while his companions returned to Florence to try to bring the commune around. In the meantime, the Pope’s key man had got himself into Florence and helped the Blacks take power, whereupon they confiscated properties and levied fines.
Dante was ordered to appear before a tribunal to answer for his alleged crimes. When he did not show up, he was banished to two years of exile, permanently banned from holding city office, and ordered to pay a further fine of some five thousand florins–a staggering sum–within three days. When that did not happen, either (Dante was apparently in Siena, a short ways from Florence, when he heard this news), the commune confiscated all of his goods and condemned him to death by burning should he ever return.
Fortunately, there were others in Italy at the time who had more sense, but Dante spent the rest of his life–almost another twenty years–wandering from city to city with his sons. He was excluded from an amnesty in 1311, and when he refused the terms of another in 1315, his death sentence was not only reaffirmed, but extended to include his sons. Despite all this, he still held out hope of returning to Florence to be crowned as poet, declining to be so crowned in Bologna as little as a year or two before he died.
Art in Exile
It was over the course of that time in exile that Dante composed his political and philosophical works, together with what must be considered his single greatest contribution to letters, the three-volume Divina Commedia.
There is no way to do justice to any of these works, much less all of them, but in the present context it is worth noting that in three key works — the Commedia (Dante’s title is this simple), Il Convivio (or The Banquet), and De Monarchia (On Monarchy) — Dante develops a serious, even strikingly modern, religious political philosophy.
In contrast to many of his religious contemporaries, taking issue with the great St. Augustine even as he espouses positions derived from Thomas Aquinas, Dante argues in favor of a strong central secular authority, specifically an emperor, and even more particularly, that this authority should be understood by Christians as co-equal with, not subordinate to, the spiritual authority of the Church: “two suns,” he says, rather than the sun and the moon (which merely reflects the light of the sun).
Indeed, he held out an almost messianic hope for the return of an emperor who would restore peace and order. He even wrote public letters to the Emperor Henry VII requesting that he restore justice in Florence (and this is surely a factor in the commune’s treatment of him with respect to amnesty). When Henry died before accomplishing these things, much of Dante’s hope for imperial cohesion died along with him.
He Knew Beatrice All Along
It would be nothing short of travesty to write anything of this length about Dante and not mention Beatrice, the love of his life from the age of nine, when he first laid eyes on her, to the day he died in exile. Beatrice, who only spoke to Dante once and who died an early death, directly inspired his poetic-explicatory work, the Vita Nuova (New Life), an exemplar of the dolce stil nuovo (”sweet new style”) movement in poetry. As a character in the Commedia, Beatrice sends Virgil to rescue Dante from a dark forest in the Inferno, and guides him through the spheres of Heaven in Paradiso.
“Dante and Beatrice in the Constellation of Gemini and the Sphere of Flame”, one of William Blake’s (uncompleted) series of watercolors illustrating Dante’s magnum opus.
Despite two decades of exile, Dante never gave up hope of returning to Florence in his lifetime, and clearly hoped (perhaps “expected” is more accurate) to be united with his other true love in the next. His body remains in Ravenna, where he died and was buried in 1321.
Antonio Foscarini was the third son of Nicolo di Alvise de ramo di S.Polo and Maria Barbarigo di Antonio. 
Mastro Titta was given an official residence, and at the end of his term, he was handsomely rewarded with a pension for his service — 30 scudi per year. His final executions were carried out on 17 August 1864, wearing his traditional red cloak (now on display at the 
