This, however, was as nothing compared with the hostility evoked by their unscrupulous application of these principles in practice. There was hardly a plot against established rule in Protestant countries with which they were not known or believed to be connected. The invasion of Ireland in 1579, the murder of the Regent Morton in Scotland, and Babington's conspiracy against Elizabeth, emanated from their councils. They were held responsible for the attempted murder of the Prince of Orange in 1580, and for his actual murder in 1584. They loudly applauded Jacques Clément, the assassin of Henri III. in 1589, as 'the eternal glory of France.'[175] Numerous unsuccessful attacks upon the life of Henri IV., culminating in that of Jean Chastel in 1594, caused their expulsion from France. When they returned in 1603, they set to work again;[176] and the assassin Ravaillac, who succeeded in removing the obnoxious champion of European independence in 1610, was probably inspired by their doctrine.[177] They had a hand in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and were thought by some to have instigated the Massa ere of S. Bartholomew. They fomented the League of the Guises, which had for its object a change in the French dynasty. They organized the Thirty Years' War, and they procured the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. If it is not possible to connect them immediately with all and each of the criminal acts laid to their charge, the fact that a Jesuit in every case was lurking in the background, counts by the force of cumulative evidence heavily against them, and explains the universal suspicion with which they came to be regarded as factious intermeddlers in the concerns of nations. Moreover, their written words accused them; for the tyrannicide of heretics was plainly advocated in their treatises on government. So profound was the conviction of their guilt, that the death of Sixtus V. in 1590, predicted by Bellarmino, the sudden death of Urban VII. in the same year, and the death of Clement VIII. in 1805, also predicted by Bellarmino—these three Popes being ill-affected toward the order—were popularly ascribed to their agency. But of their practical intervention there is no proof. Old age and fever must be credited, in these as in other cases, with the decease of Roman Pontiffs supposed to have been poisoned.

It is not, however, to be wondered that sooner, or later the Jesuits made themselves insupportable by their intrigues in all the countries where they were established.[178] Even to the Papacy itself they proved too irksome to be borne. The Company showed plainly that what they meant by obedience to Rome was obedience to a Rome controlled and fashioned by themselves. It was their ambition to stand in the same relation to the Pope as the Shogûn to the Mikado of Japan. Nor does the analysis of their opinions fail to justify the condemnation passed upon them by the Parlement of Paris in 1762. 'These doctrines tend to destroy the natural law, that rule of manners which God Himself has imprinted on the hearts of men, and in consequence to sever all the bonds of civil society, by the authorization of theft, falsehood, perjury, the most culpable impurity, and in a word each passion and each crime of human weakness; to obliterate all sentiments of humanity by favoring homicide and parricide; and to annihilate the authority of sovereigns in the State.'

Great psychological and pathological interest, attaches to the study of the Jesuit order. To withhold our admiration from the zeal, energy, self-devotion and constructive ability of its founders, would be impossible. Equally futile would it be to affect indifference before the sinister spectacle of so world- embracing an organism, persistently maintained in action for an anti-social end. There is something Roman in the colossal proportions of Loyola's idea, something Roman in the durability of the structure which perpetuates it. Yet the philosopher cannot but agree with the vulgar in his final judgment on the odiousness of these sacerdotal despots, these unflinching foes not merely to the heroes of the human intellect, and to the champions of right conduct, but also to the very angels of Christianity. That the Jesuits should claim to have been founded by Him who preached the Sermon on the Mount, that they should flaunt their motto, A.M.D.G., in the sight of Him who spake from Sinai, is one of those practical paradoxes in which the history of decrepit religions abounds.

CHAPTER V

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS: PART I

We are naturally led to inquire what discernible effect the Catholic Revival and the Counter-Reformation had upon the manners and morals of the Italians as a nation. Much has been said about the contrast between intellectual refinement and almost savage license which marked the Renaissance. Yet it can with justice be maintained that, while ferocity and brutal sensuality survived from the Middle Ages, humanism, by means of the new ideal it introduced, tended to civilize and educate the race. Now, however, the Church was stifling culture and attempting to restore that ecclesiastical conception of human life which the Renaissance had superseded. Did then her resuscitated Catholicism succeed in permeating the Italians with the spirit of Christ and of the Gospel? Were the nobles more quiet in their demeanor, less quarrelsome and haughty, more law- abiding and less given to acts of violence, than they had been in the previous period? Were the people more contented and less torn by factions, happier in their homes, less abandoned to the insanities of baleful superstitions?

It is obviously difficult to answer these questions with either completeness or accuracy. In the first place, we have no right to expect that the religious revival, signalized by the Tridentine Council, should have made itself immediately felt in the sphere of national conduct. In the second place, it was not, like the German Reformation, a renewal of Christianity at its sources, but a resuscitation of mediaeval Catholicity, in direct antagonism to the intellectual tendencies of the age. The new learning among northern races disintegrated that system of ideas upon which mediaeval society rested; but it also introduced religious and moral conceptions more vital than those ideas in their decadence. In Italy the disintegrating process had been no less thorough, nay far more subtle and pervasive. Yet the new learning had not led the nation to attempt a reconstruction of primitive Christianity. The Catholic Revival gave nothing vital or enthusiastic to the conscience of the race. It brought the old creeds, old cult, old superstitions, old abuses back, with stricter discipline and under a régime of terror. Meanwhile, it resolutely ranged its forces in opposition to what had been salutary and life-giving in the mental movement of the Renaissance. It compelled people who had watched the dawning of a new light, to shut their eyes upon that dayspring. It extinguished the studies of the Classical Revival; bade philosophers return to Thomas of Aquino; threatened thinkers with the dungeon or the stake who should presume to pass the Pillars of Hercules, when a whole Atlantic of knowledge had been opened to their curiosity. Under these circumstances it was impossible that a revolution, so retrograde in its nature, checking the tide of national energy in full flow, should have exercised a healthy influence over the Italian temperament at large. We have a right to expect, what in fact we find, the advent of hypocrisy and ceremonial observances, but little actual amendment in manners. In the third place, the question is still further complicated by the Catholic Revival having been effected concurrently with the establishment of the Spanish Hegemony. At the end of the first chapter of this volume I pointed out the evils brought on Italy by her servitude to a foreign and unsympathetic despot: the decline of commercial activity, the multiplication of slothful lordlings, the depression of industry, the diminution of wealth, and the suffering of the lower classes from pirates, bandits and tax-gatherers. These conditions were sufficient to demoralize a people. And mediaeval Catholicism, restored by edict, enforced by the Inquisition, propagated by Jesuits, was not of the fine enthusiastic quality to counteract them. Servile in its conception, it sufficed to bridle and benumb a race of serfs, but not to soften or to purify their brutal instincts.[179]

In this chapter I shall not attempt a general survey of Italian society.[180] I shall content myself with supplying materials for the formation of a judgment by narrating some of the most remarkable domestic tragedies of the second half of the sixteenth century, choosing those only which rest upon well-sifted documentary evidence, and which bring the social conditions of the country into strong relief. Before engaging in these historical romances, it will be well to preface them with a few general remarks upon the state of manners they will illustrate.

The first thing which strikes a student of Italy between 1530 and 1600 is that crimes of violence, committed by private individuals for personal ends, continued steadily upon the increase.[181]

Compared with the later Middle Ages, compared with the Renaissance, this period is distinguished by extraordinary ferocity of temper and by an almost unparalleled facility of bloodshed.[182]

The broad political and religious contests which had torn the country in the first years of the sixteenth century, were pacified. Foreign armies had ceased to dispute the provinces of Italy. The victorious powers of Spain, the Church, and the protected principalities, seemed secure in the possession of their gains. But those international quarrels which kept the nation in unrest through a long period of municipal wars, ending in the horrors of successive invasions, were now succeeded by an almost universal discord between families and persons. Each province, each city, each village became the theater of private feuds and assassinations. Each household was the scene of homicide and empoisonment. Italy presented the spectacle of a nation armed against itself, not to decide the issue of antagonistic political principles by civil strife, but to gratify lawless passions—cupidity, revenge, resentment—by deeds of personal high-handedness. Among the common people of the country and the towns, crimes of brutality and bloodshed were of daily occurrence; every man bore weapons for self-defence, and for attack upon his neighbor. The aristocracy and the upper classes of the bourgeoisie lived in a perpetual state of mutual mistrust, ready upon the slightest occasion of fancied affront to blaze forth into murder. Much of this savagery was due to the false ideas of honor and punctilio which the Spaniards introduced. Quarrels arose concerning a salute, a title, a question of precedence, a seat in church, a place in the prince's ante-chamber, a meeting in the public streets. Noblemen were ushered on their way by servants, who measured distances, and took the height of daïs or of bench, before their master committed his dignity by advancing a step beyond the minimum that was due. Love-affairs and the code of honor with regard to women opened endless sources of implacable jealousies, irreconcilable hatreds, and offenses that could only be wiped out with blood. On each and all of these occasions, the sword was ready to the right hand; and where this generous weapon would not reach, the harquebuss and knife of paid assassins were employed without compunction.[183] We must not, however, ascribe this condition of society wholly or chiefly to Spanish influences.

It was in fact a survival of mediaeval habits under altered circumstances. During the municipal wars of the thirteenth century, and afterwards during the struggle of the despots for ascendency, the nation had become accustomed to internecine contests which set party against party, household against household, man against man. These humors in the cities, as Italian historians were wont to call them, had been partially suppressed by the confederation of the five great Powers at the close of the fifteenth century, and also by a prevalent urbanity of manners. At that epoch, moreover, they were systematized and controlled by the methods of condottiere warfare, which offered a legitimate outlet to the passions of turbulent young men. But when Italy sank into the sloth of pacification after the settlement of Charles V. at Bologna in 1530, when there were no longer condottieri to levy troops in rival armies, when political parties ceased in the cities, the old humors broke out again under the aspect of private and personal feuds. Though the names of Guelf and Ghibelline had lost their meaning, these factions reappeared, and divided Milan, the towns of Romagna, the villages of the Campagna. In the place of condottieri arose brigand chiefs, who, like Piccolomini and Sciarra, placed themselves at the head of regiments, and swept the country on marauding expeditions. Instead of exiles, driven by victorious parties in the state to seek precarious living on a foreign soil, bandits, proscribed for acts of violence, abounded. Thus the habits which had been created through centuries of political ferment, subsisted when the nation was at rest in servitude, assuming baser and more selfish forms of ferocity. The end of the sixteenth century witnessed the final degeneration and corruption of a mediaeval state of warfare, which the Renaissance had checked, but which the miseries of foreign invasions had resuscitated by brutalizing the population, and which now threatened to disintegrate society in aimless anarchy and private lawlessness.

It must not be imagined that governments and magistracies were slack in their pursuit of criminals. Repressive statutes, proclamations of outlawry, and elaborate prosecutions succeeded one another with unwearied conscientiousness. The revenues of states were taxed to furnish blood-money and to support spies. Large sums were invariably offered for the capture or assassination of escaped delinquents; and woe to the wretches who became involved in criminal proceedings! Witnesses were tortured with infernal cruelty. Convicted culprits suffered horrible agonies before their death, or were condemned to languish out a miserable life in pestilential dungeons. But the very inhumanity of this judicial method, without mercy for the innocent, from whom evidence could be extorted, and frequently inequitable in the punishments assigned to criminals of varying degrees of guilt, taught the people to defy justice, and encouraged them in brutality. They found it more tolerable to join the bands of brigands who preyed upon their fields and villages, than to assist rulers who governed so unequally and cruelly. We know, for instance, that a robber chief, Marianazzo, refused the Pope's pardon, alleging that the profession of brigandage was more lucrative and offered greater security of life than any trade within the walls of Rome. Thus the bandits of that generation occupied the specious attitude of opposition to oppressive governments. There were, moreover, many favorable chances for a homicide. The Church was jealous of her rights of sanctuary. Whatever may have been her zeal for orthodoxy, she showed herself an indulgent mother to culprits who demanded an asylum. Feudal nobles prided themselves on protecting refugees within their fiefs and castles. There were innumerable petty domains left, which carried privileges of signorial courts and local justice. Cardinals, ambassadors, and powerful princes claimed immunity from common jurisdiction in their palaces, the courts and basements of which soon became the resort of escaped criminals. No extradition treaties subsisted between the several and numerous states into which Italy was then divided, so that it was only necessary to cross a frontier in order to gain safety from the law. The position of an outlaw in that case was tolerably secure, except against private vengeance or the cupidity of professional cut-throats, who gained an honest livelihood by murdering bandits with a good price on their heads. Condemned for the most part in their absence, these homicides entered a recognized and not dishonorable class. They were tolerated, received, and even favored by neighboring princes, who generally had some grudge against the state from which the outlaws fled. After obtaining letters of safe-conduct and protection, they enrolled themselves in the militia of their adopted country, while the worst of them became spies or secret agents of police. No government seems to have regarded crimes of violence with severity, provided these had been committed on a foreign soil. Murders for the sake of robbery or rape were indeed esteemed ignoble. But a man who had killed an avowed enemy, or had shed blood in the heat of a quarrel, or had avenged his honor by the assassination of a sister convicted of light love, only established a reputation for bravery, which stood him in good stead. He was likely to make a stout soldier, and he had done nothing socially discreditable. On the contrary, if he had been useful in ridding the world of an outlaw some prince wished to kill, this murder made him a hero. In addition to the blood-money, he not unfrequently received lucrative office, or a pension for life.

A very curious state of things resulted from these customs. States depended, in large measure, for the execution of their judicial sentences in cases of manslaughter and treason, upon foreign murderers and traitors. Towns were full of outlaws, each with a price upon his head, mutually suspicious, individually desirous of killing some fellow-criminal and thereby enriching his own treasury. If he were successful, he received a fair sum of money, with privileges and immunities from the state which had advertised the outlaw; and not unfrequently he obtained the further right of releasing one or more bandits from penalties of death or prison. It may be imagined at what cross-purposes the outlaws dwelt together, with crimes in many states accumulated on their shoulders; and what peril might ensue to society should they combine together, as indeed they tried to do in Bedmar's conspiracy against Venice. Meanwhile, the states kept this floating population of criminals in check by various political and social contrivances, which grew up from the exigencies and the habits of the moment. Instead of recruiting soldiers from the stationary population, it became usual, when a war was imminent, to enroll outlaws. Thus, when Lucca had to make an inroad into Garfagnana in 1613, the Republic issued a proclamation promising pardon and pay to those of its own bandits who should join its standard. Men to the number of 591 answered this call, and the little war which followed was conducted with more than customary fierceness.[184]

Even the ordinary police and guards of cities were composed of fugitives from other states, care being taken to select by preference those who came stained only with honorable bloodshed. In 1593 the guard of the palace of Lucca was reinforced by the addition of forty-three men, among whom four were bandits for wounds inflicted upon enemies in open fight; twelve for homicide in duel, sword to sword; five for the murder of more than one person in similar encounters; one for the murder of a sister, and the wounding of her seducer; two for mutilating an enemy in the face; one for unlawful recruiting; one for wounding; one for countenancing bandits; and sixteen simple refugees.[185] The phrases employed to describe these men in the official report are sufficiently illustrative of contemporary moral standards. Thus we read 'Banditi per omicidi semplici da buono a buono, a sangue caldo, da spada a spada, o di nemici.' 'Per omicidio d'una sorella per causa d'onore.' To murder an enemy, or a sister who had misbehaved herself, was accounted excusable.

The prevalence of lawlessness encouraged a domestic custom which soon grew into a system. This was the maintenance of so-called bravi by nobles and folk rich enough to afford so expensive a luxury. The outlaws found their advantage in the bargain which they drew with their employers; for besides being lodged, fed, clothed and armed, they obtained a certain protection from the spies and professional murderers who were always on the watch to kill them. Their masters used them to defend their persons when a feud was being carried on, or directed them against private enemies whom they wished to injure.

It is not uncommon in the annals of these times to read: 'Messer So-and-so, having received an affront from the Count of V., employed the services of three bravi, valiant fellows up to any mischief, with whom he retired to his country house.' Or again: 'The Marquis, perceiving that his neighbor had a grudge against him on account of the Signora Lucrezia, thought it prudent to increase his bodyguard, and therefore added Pepi and Lo Scarabone, bandits from Tuscany for murders of a priest and a citizen, to his household.' Or again: 'During the vacation of the Holy See the Baron X had, as usual, engaged men-at-arms for the protection of his palace.'

In course of time it became the mark of birth and wealth to lodge a rabble of such rascals. They lived on terms of familiarity with their employer, shared his secrets, served him in his amours, and executed any devil's job he chose to command. Apartments in the basement of the palace were assigned to them, so that a nobleman's house continued to resemble the castle of a mediaeval baron. But the bravi, unlike soldiery, were rarely employed in honorable business. They formed a permanent element of treachery and violence within the social organism. Not a little singular were the relations thus established. The community of crime, involving common interests and common perils, established a peculiar bond between the noble and his bravo. This was complexioned by a certain sense of 'honor rooted in dishonor,' and by a faint reflection from elder retainership. The compact struck between landowner and bandit parodied that which drew feudal lord and wandering squire together. There was something ignobly noble in it, corresponding to the confused conscience and perilous conditions of the epoch.

While studying this organized and half-tolerated system of social violence, we are surprised to observe how largely it was countenanced and how frequently it was set in motion by the Church. In a previous chapter on the Jesuits, I have adverted to their encouragement of assassination for ends which they considered sacred. In a coming chapter upon Sarpi, I shall show to what extent the Roman prelacy was implicated in more than one attempt to take away his life. The chiefs of the Church, then, instead of protesting against this vice of corrupt civilization in Italy, lent the weight of their encouragement to what strikes us now, not only as eminently unchristian, but also as pernicious to healthy national conditions of existence. We may draw two conclusions from these observations: first, that religions, except in the first fervor of their growth and forward progress, recognize the moral conventions of the society which they pretend to regulate: secondly, that it is well-nigh impossible for men of one century to sympathize with the ethics of a past and different epoch. We cannot comprehend the regicidal theories of the Jesuits, or the murderous intrigues of a Borghese Pontiff's Court, without admitting that priests, specially dedicated to the service of Christ and to the propagation of his gospel, felt themselves justified in employing the immoral and unchristian means which social custom placed at their disposal for ridding themselves of inconvenient enemies. This is at the same time their defense as human beings in the sixteenth century, and their indictment as self-styled and professed successors of the Founder who rebuked Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane.

To make general remarks upon the state of sexual morality at this epoch, is hardly needful. Yet there are some peculiar circumstances which deserve to be noticed, in order to render the typical stories which I mean to relate intelligible. We have already seen that society condoned the murder of a sister by a brother, if she brought dishonor on her family; and the same privilege was extended to a husband in the case of a notoriously faithless wife. Such homicides did not escape judicial sentence, but they shared in the conventional toleration which was extended to murders in hot blood or in the prosecution of a feud. The state of the Italian convents at this period gave occasion to crimes in which women played a prominent part. After the Council of Trent reforms were instituted in religious houses. But they could not be immediately carried out; and, meanwhile, the economical changes which were taking place in the commercial aristocracy, filled nunneries with girls who had no vocation for a secluded life. Less money was yearly made in trade; merchants became nobles, investing their capital in land, and securing their estates on their eldest sons by entails. It followed that they could not afford to marry all their daughters with dowries befitting the station they aspired to assume. A large percentage of well-born women, accustomed to luxury, and vitiated by bad examples in their homes, were thus thrown on a monastic life. Signor Bonghi reckons that at the end of the sixteenth century, more than five hundred girls, who had become superfluous in noble families, crowded the convents in the single little town of Lucca. At a later epoch there would have been no special peril in this circumstance. But at the time with which we are now occupied, an objectionable license still survived from earlier ages. The nunneries obtained evil notoriety as houses of licentious pleasure, to which soldiers and youths of dissolute habits resorted by preference.[186] There appears to have been a specific profligate fanaticism, a well-marked morbid partiality for these amours with cloistered virgins. The young men who prosecuted them, obtained a nickname indicative of their absorbing passion.[187] The attraction of mystery and danger had something, no doubt, to do with this infatuation; and the fascination that sacrilege has for depraved natures, may also be reckoned into the account. To enjoy a lawless amour was not enough; but to possess a woman who alternated between transports of passion and torments of remorse, added zest to guilty pleasure. For men who habitually tampered with magic arts and believed firmly in the devil, this raised romance to rapture. It was a common thing for debauchees to seek what they called peripetezie di nuova idea, or novel and exciting adventures stimulative of a jaded appetite, in consecrated places. At any rate, as will appear in the sequel of this chapter, convent intrigues occupied a large space in the criminal annals of the day.

The Lady of Monza

Virginia Maria de Leyva was a descendant of Charles V.'s general, Antonio de Leyva, who through many years administered the Duchy of Milan, and died loaded with wealth and honors.[188]

For his military service he was rewarded with the principality of Ascoli, the federal lordship of the town of Monza, and the life-tenure of the city of Pavia. Virginia's father was named Martino, and upon his death her cousin succeeded to the titles of the house. She, for family reasons, entered the convent of S. Margherita at Monza, about the year 1595. Here she occupied a place of considerable importance, being the daughter of the Lord of Monza, of princely blood, wealthy, and allied to the great houses of the Milanese. S. Margherita was a convent of the Umiliate, dedicated to the education of noble girls, in which, therefore, considerable laxity of discipline prevailed.[189]

Sister Virginia dwelt at ease within its walls, holding a kind of little court, and exercising an undefined authority in petty affairs which was conceded to her rank. Among her favorite companions at the time of the events I am about to narrate, were numbered the Sisters Ottavia Ricci, Benedetta Homata, Candida Brancolina, and Silvia Casata; she was waited on by a converse sister, Caterina da Meda. Adjoining the convent stood the house and garden of a certain Gianpaolo Osio, who plays the principal part in Virginia's tragedy. He must have been a young man of distinguished appearance; for when Virginia first set eyes upon him from a window overlooking his grounds, she exclaimed: 'Is it possible that one could ever gaze on anything more beautiful?' He attracted her notice as early as the year 1599 or 1600, under circumstances not very favorable to the plan he had in view. His hands were red with the blood of Virginia's bailiff, Giuseppe Molteno, whom he had murdered for some cause unknown to us. During their first interview (Virginia leaning from the window of her friend Candida's cell, and Osio standing on his garden-plot beneath), the young man courteously excused himself for this act of violence, adding that he would serve her even more devotedly than the dead Molteno, and begging to be allowed to write her a letter. When the letter came, it was couched in terms expressive of a lawless passion. Virginia's noble blood rebelled against the insult, and she sent an answer back, rebuffing her audacious suitor. The go-betweens in the correspondence which ensued were the two nuns, Ottavia and Benedetta, and a certain Giuseppe Pesen, who served as letter-carrier. Osio did not allow himself to be discouraged by a first refusal, but took the hazardous step of opening his mind to the confessor of the convent, Paolo Arrigone, a priest of San Maurizio in Milan. Arrigone at once lent himself to the intrigue, and taught Osio what kind of letters he should write Virginia. They were to be courteous, respectful, blending pious rhetoric with mystical suggestions of romantic pas sion. It seems that the confessor composed these documents himself, and advised his fair penitent that there was no sin in perusing them. From correspondence, Osio next passed to interviews. By the aid of Arrigone he gained access to the parlor of the convent, where he conversed with Virginia through the bars. In their earlier meetings the lover did not venture beyond compliments and modest protestations of devotion. But as time went on, he advanced to kisses and caresses, and once he made Virginia take a little jewel into her mouth. This was a white loadstone, blessed by Arrigone, and intended to operate like a love-charm. The girl, in fact, began to feel the influence of her seducer. In the final confession which she made, she relates how she fought against temptation. 'Some diabolical force compelled me to go to the window overlooking his garden; and one day when Sister Ottavia told me that Osio was standing there, I fainted from the effort to restrain myself. This happened several times. At one moment I flew into a rage, and prayed to God to help me; at another I felt lifted from the ground, and forced to go and gaze on him. Sometimes when the fit was on me, I tore my hair; I even thought of killing myself.' Virginia was surrounded by persons who had an interest in helping Osio. Not only the confessor, who was a man of infamous character, but her friends among the nuns, themselves accustomed to intrigue of a like nature, led her down the path to ruin. False keys were made, and one or other of the faithless sisters introduced the young man into the convent at night. When Virginia resisted, and enlarged upon the sacrilege of breaking cloister, Arrigone supplied her with a printed book of casuistry, in which it was written that though it might be sinful for a nun to leave her convent, there was no sin in a man entering it. At last she fell; and for seven years she lived in close intimacy with her lover, passing the nights with him, either in his own house or in one of the cells of S. Margherita. On one occasion, when he had to fly from justice, the girls concealed him in their rooms for fifteen days. The first fruit of this amour was a stillborn child; after giving birth to which, Virginia sold all the silver she possessed, and sent a votive tablet to Our Lady of Loreto, on which she had portrayed a nun and baby, kneeling and weeping. 'Twice again I sent the same memorial to our Lady, imploring the grace of liberation from this passion. But the sorceries with which I was surrounded, prevailed. In my bed were found the bones of the dead, hooks of iron, and many other things, of which the nuns were well informed. Nay, I would fain have given up my life to save my soul; and so great were my afflictions, that in despair I went to throw myself into the well, but was restrained by the image of the Virgin at the bottom of the garden, for which I had a special devotion.' In course of time she gave birth to a little girl, named Francesca, who frequented the convent, and whom Osio legitimated as his child.

It was impossible that a connection of long standing, known to several accomplices, and corroborated by the presence of the child Francesca, should remain hidden from the world. People began to speak about the fact in Monza. A druggist, named Reinaro Soncini, gossiped somewhat too openly. Osio had him shot one night by a servant in his pay.

And now the lovers were engaged in a career of crime, which brought them finally to justice. Virginia's waiting-woman Caterina fell into disgrace with her mistress, and was shut up in a kind of prison by her orders. The girl declared that she would bring the whole bad affair before the superior authorities, and would do so immediately, seeing that Monsignor Barca, the Visitor of S. Margherita, was about to make one of his official tours of inspection.

This threat cost Caterina her life. About midnight, while a thunder-storm was raging, Virginia, accompanied by her usual associates, Ottavia, Benedetta, Silvia, and Candida, entered the room where the girl was confined. They were followed by Osio, holding in his hand a heavy instrument of wood and iron, called piede di bicocca, which he had snatched up in the convent outhouse. He found Caterina lying face downward on the bed, and smashed her skull with a single blow. The body was conveyed by him and the nuns into the fowl-house of the sisters, whence he removed it on the following night by the aid of Benedetta into his own dwelling. From evidence which afterwards transpired, Osio decapitated the corpse, concealed the body in a sort of cellar, and flung the head into an empty well at Velate.

The disappearance of Caterina just before the visitation of Monsignor Barca, roused suspicion; and, though a murder was not immediately apprehended, the guilty associates felt that the cord of fate was being drawn around them. In the autumn of 1607 the tempest broke upon their heads. Virginia was removed from Monza to the convent called Del Bocchetto at Milan; and on November 27 the depositions of the abbess, prioress, and other members of S. Margherita were taken regarding Osio's intrigues, the assassination of Soncini, and the disappearance of Caterina.

Among the nuns who had abetted Osio, the two most criminally implicated were Ottavia and Benedetta. Their evidence, if closely scrutinized, must reveal each secret of the past. It was much to Osio's interest, therefore, that they should not fall into the hands of justice; nor had he any difficulty in persuading them to rely on his assistance for contriving their escape to some convent in the Bergamasque territory. We may wonder, by the way, what sort of discipline was then maintained in nunneries, if two so guilty sisters counted upon safe entrance into an asylum, provided only they could leave the diocese of Milan for another.[190] On the night of Thursday, November 30, 1607, Osio came to the wall of the convent garden, and began to break a hole in it, through which Ottavia and Benedetta crept. The three then prowled along the city wall of Monza, till they found a breach wide enough for exit. Afterwards they took a path beside the river Lambro, and stopped for awhile at the church of the Madonna delle Grazie. Here the sisters prayed for assistance from our Lady in their journey, and recited the Salve Regina seven times. Then they resumed their walk along the Lambro, and at a certain point Ottavia fell into the river. In her dying depositions she accused Osio of having pushed her in; and there seems little doubt that he did so; for while she was struggling in the water, he disengaged his harquebuss from his mantle and struck her several blows upon the head and hands.

She pretended to be dead, and was carried down the stream to a place where she contrived to crawl to land. Some peasants came by, whose assistance she implored. But they, observing that she was a nun of S. Margherita by her dress, refused to house her for the rest of the night. They gave her a staff to lean on, and after a painful journey she regained the church of the Grazie at early dawn. Ottavia's wounds upon the head, face, and right hand, inflicted by the stock of Osio's gun, were so serious that after making a clean breast to her judges, she died of them upon December 26, 1607.

When Osio had pushed Ottavia into the Lambro, and had tried to smash her brains out with his harquebuss, he resumed his midnight journey with Sister Benedetta. They reached an uninhabited house in the country about five or six miles distant from Monza. Here Osio shut Benedetta up in an empty room with a stone bench running along the wall. She remained there all Friday, visited once by her dreaded companion, who brought her bread, cheese, and wine. She abstained from touching any of this food, in fear of poison. About nine in the evening he returned, and bade her prepare to march. They set out again, together, in the dark; and after walking about three miles they came to a well, down which Osio threw her. The well was deep, and had no water in it. Benedetta injured her left side in the fall; and when she had reached the bottom, her would-be murderer flung a big stone on her which broke her right leg. She contrived to protect her head by gathering stones around it, and lay without moaning or moving, in the fear that Osio would attempt fresh violence unless he thought her dead. From the middle of Friday night, until Sunday morning, she remained thus, exploring with her eyes the surface of her dungeon. It was dry and strewn with bones. In one corner lay a round black object which bore the aspect of a human skull. As it eventually turned out, this was the head of Caterina, whom Benedetta herself had helped to murder, and which Osio had thrown there. On Sunday, during Mass, the men of the village of Velate were in church, when they heard a voice from outside calling out, 'Help, help! I am at the bottom of this well!' The well, as it happened, was distant some dozen paces from the church door, and Benedetta had timed her call for assistance at a lucky moment. The villagers ran to the spot, and drew her out by means of a man who went down with a rope. She was then taken to the house of a gentleman, Signor Alberico degli Alberici, who, when no one else was charitable enough to receive her, opened his doors to the exhausted victim of that murderous outrage. It may be remarked that the same surgeon who had been employed to report on Ottavia's wounds, now appeared to examine Benedetta. His name was Ambrogio Vimercati. Benedetta was taken to the convent of S. Orsola, where her friend Ottavia lay dying; and after making a full confession, she eventually recovered her health, and suffered life-long incarceration in her old convent.

Osio was still at large. On December 20, he addressed a long letter to the Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, in which he vainly attempted to defend himself, and throw the blame on his associates. It is a loathsome document, blending fulsome protestations and fawning phrases, with brutal denouncements of his victims, and treacherous insinuations. One passage deserves notice. 'Who was it,' he says, 'who suggested my correspondence with Virginia? The priest Paolo Arrigone, that ruin of the monastery! The Canon Pisnato, who is now confessor to the nuns of Meda; in his house you will find what will never be discovered in mine, presents from nuns, incitements to amours, and other such things. The priest Giacomo Bertola, confessor of the nuns of S. Margherita; who was his devotee? Sacha!—and he stayed there all the day through. These men, being priests, are not prosecuted; they are protected by their cloth, forsooth! It is only of poor Osio that folk talk. Only he is persecuted, only he is a malefactor, only he is the traitor!' Arrigone, as a matter of fact, was tried, and condemned to two years' labor at the galleys, after the expiration of which term he was not to return to Monza or its territory. This seems a slight sentence; for the judges found him guilty, not only of promoting Osio's intrigue with Virginia, by conducting the correspondence, and watching the door during their interviews in the parlor, but also of pursuing the Signora himself with infamous proposals.

In his absence Osio was condemned to death on the gibbet. His goods were confiscated to the State. His house in Monza was destroyed, and a pillar of infamy recording his crimes, was erected on its site. A proclamation of outlawry was issued on April 5, 1608, under the seal of Don Pietro de Acevedo, Count of Fuentes, and governor of the State of Milan, which offered 'to any person not himself an outlaw, or to any commune, that shall consign Gianpaolo Osio to the hands of justice, the reward of a thousand scudi from the royal ducal treasury, together with the right to free four bandits condemned for similar or less offenses; and in case of his being delivered dead, even though he shall be slain in foreign parts, then the half of the aforesaid sum of money, and the freedom of two bandits as above. And if the person who shall consign him alive be himself an outlaw for similar or less offenses, he shall receive, beside the freedom of himself and two other bandits, the half of the aforesaid sum of money; and in the case of his consignment after death, the freedom of himself and of two other bandits as aforesaid.' I have recited this Bando, because it is a good instance of the procedure in use under like conditions. Justice preferred to obtain the culprit alive, and desired to receive him at honest hands. But there was an expectation of getting hold of him through less reputable agents. Therefore they offered free pardon to a bandit and a couple of accomplices, who might undertake the capture or the murder of the proscribed outlaw in concert, and in the event of his being produced alive, a sum of money down. Osio, apparently, spent some years in exile, changing place, and name, and dress, living as he could from hand to mouth, until the rumor spread abroad that he was dead. He then returned to his country, and begged for sanctuary from an old friend. That friend betrayed him, had his throat cut in a cellar, and exposed his head upon the public market place.

Virginia was sentenced to perpetual incarceration in the convent of S. Valeria at Milan. She was to be 'inclosed within a little dungeon, the door of which shall be walled up with stones and mortar, so that the said Virginia Maria shall abide there for the term of her natural life, immured both day and night, never to issue thence, but shall receive food and other necessaries through a small hole in the wall of the said chamber, and light and air through an aperture or other opening.' This sentence was carried into effect. But at the expiration of many years, her behavior justified some mitigation of the penalty. She was set at large, and allowed to occupy a more wholesome apartment, where the charity of Cardinal Borromeo supplied her with comforts befitting her station, and the reputation she acquired for sanctity. Her own family cherished implacable sentiments of resentment against the woman who had brought disgrace upon them. Ripamonte, the historian of Milan, says that in his own time she was still alive: 'a bent old woman, tall of stature, dried and fleshless, but venerable in her aspect, whom no one could believe to have been once a charming and immodest beauty.' Her associates in guilt, the nuns of S. Margherita, were consigned to punishments resembling hers. Sisters Benedetta, Silvia and Candida suffered the same close incarceration.

Lucrezia Buonvisi

The tale of Lucrezia Buonvisi presents some points of similarity to that of the Signora di Monza.[191]

Her father was a Lucchese gentleman, named Vincenzo Malpigli, who passed the better portion of his life at Ferrara, as treasurer to Duke Afonsono II. He had four children; one son, Giovan Lorenzo, and three daughters, of whom Lucrezia, born at Lucca in 1572, was probably the youngest. Vincenzo's wife sprang from the noble Lucchese family of Buonvisi, at that time by their wealth and alliances the most powerful house of the Republic. Lucrezia spent some years of her girlhood at Ferrara, where she formed a romantic friendship for a nobleman of Lucca named Massimiliano Arnolfini. This early attachment was not countenanced by her parents. They destined her to be the wife of one of Paolo Buonvisi's numerous sons, her relatives upon the mother's side. In consequence of this determination, she was first affianced to an heir of that house, who died; again to another, who also died; and in the third place to their brother, called Lelio, whom she eventually married in the year 1591. Lelio was then twenty-five years of age, and Lucrezia nineteen. Her beauty was so distinguished, that in poems written on the ladies of Lucca it received this celebration in a madrigal:—