Imprimatur

Imprimatur

Monaldi & Sorti

Translated from the Italian by Peter Burnett

First published in Italy in 2002

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House 10 Newington Road Edinburgh EFI9 1QS

98765432 1

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright © 2002, Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti

Translation copyright © 2008, Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 84697 076 4

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Typeset by SJC

Printed and bound by ScandBook AB, Falun, Sweden

INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR
IMPRIMATUR:

"Nothing less than the fate of Europe is at stake in this thriller, whose success has provoked a reaction from the Vatican. What should be more admired: the keenness, great narrative talent, and knowledge of philologist Rita Monaldi and musicologist Francesco Sorti, or the masterful style and superior quality of language of a captivating literary creation?"
—Le Monde
, France

"Fascinating historical developments against the backdrop of state secrets... We follow Monaldi & Sorti step by step in their breathless search for a truth that tears away all the veils of deception."
—Le Figaro
, France

"The successors to Umberto Eco... A plethora of fantastic, unexpected twists and turns set against a background of international intrigue."

—L’Express,
France

"The applause that Eco once enjoyed will now be heard by Monaldi

& Sorti."
—Handelsblad
, the Netherlands

"Imprimatur
is a satisfying and suspense-filled literary game loaded with riddles and with allusions to the likes of Dante, Agatha Christie, Dumas, and Conan Doyle."

—El Pais
, Spain

"Not only has
Imprimatur
climbed the bestseller list and been enthusiastically received by the critics; it is also an assault on the well-guarded secrets of history."

—El Mundo,
Spain

"Two Italians have revolutionised the historical novel."
—La Gaceta de los Negocios,
Spain "A historical page-turner, imparting knowledge as it is read."
—Hamburger Morgenpost,
Germany

"A fantastic story of espionage from the Baroque era."
—La Stampa,
Italy

Divinatory interpretations of the Arcana of the Judgement

Resurrection of the past

Reparation of past wrongs

Wise judgement of posterity.

Nothing is lost; the past lives on

in what pertains to the future.

Oswald Wirth,
The Tarot

Contents

Como, 14th February, 2040

To His Excellency Msgr Alessio Tanari

Secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints Vatican City

In nomine Domini

Ego, Lorenzo Dell'Agio, Episcopus Comi, in processu canonizationis beati Innocentii Papae XI, iuro me fideliter diligenterque impleturum munus mihi commissum, atque secretum servaturum in iis ex quorum revelatione preiudicium causae vel infamiam beato afferre posset. Sic me Deus adiuvet.

Dearest Alessio,

Be so good as to pardon me if I open my letter to you with the rit­ual oath: to maintain secrecy concerning anything I may have learned that might defame the reputation of a blessed soul.

I know that you will excuse your former tutor at the seminary for adopting an epistolary style less orthodox than that to which you are accustomed.

You wrote to me three years ago, on the instruction of the Holy Father, inviting me to throw light on a presumed case of miraculous healing which took place in my diocese over forty years ago, through the action of the Blessed Pope Innocent XI: that Benedetto Odescalchi from Como of whom you, as a boy, first perhaps heard tell from none other than myself. As you will surely remember, the case of
mira sanatio
concerned a child, a little orphan from the country near Como whose finger was bitten off by a dog. The poor bleeding digit, immediately recovered by the little one's grandmother, who held Pope Innocent in special devotion, was wrapped by her in the holy image of the Pontiff and handed over to the doctors in casualty. After an operation to graft it back, the child instantly recovered feeling in his finger and was able to use it perfectly; both the surgeon and his assistants were utterly amazed.

In accordance with your indications and with the desire expressed by His Holiness, I have instructed the cause
super mira sanatione,
which my predecessor did not in his time see fit to initiate. I shall not expatiate any further on the inquiry, which I have just concluded, despite the fact that most of the witnesses to the event have since died, the records of the clinic were destroyed after ten years and the child, now in his fifties, resides in the United States. The acts will be sent to you under separate cover. As required by the procedure, you will, I know, submit these to the Congregation for its judgement, following which you will draft a report for the Holy Father. I am in­deed aware of how eager our beloved Pontiff is to reopen the inquiry into the cause of canonisation of Pope Innocent XI so that, almost a century after his beatification, he may at last be proclaimed a saint. And it is precisely because I too care greatly about His Holiness's intention that I must now come to the point.

You will have noticed the considerable bulk of the folder which I have attached to my own letter; it is the typescript of a book that has never been published.

It will be hard to explain to you in detail how this came about, since the two authors, after sending me a copy, vanished completely. I fully trust that Our Lord will inspire the Holy Father and your­self, after reading this work, as to the best solution of the dilemma:
secretum servire aut non?
To pass over the text in silence or to publish? Whatever the decision arrived at, it will, for me, remain sacrosanct.

I beg to excuse myself at once if my pen—now that my spirit is free after three years of wearisome research—runs sometimes too freely.

I made the acquaintance of the two authors of the typescript, a young engaged couple, some forty-three years ago. I had just been ap­pointed as a parish priest in Rome, where I had recently arrived from my dear Como, to which Our Lord was to accord me the grace to re­turn as Bishop. The two young people, Rita and Francesco, were both journalists. They lived quite close to my parish church and so it was to me that they turned for instruction in preparation for matrimony.

The dialogue with the young couple soon developed beyond a simple teaching relationship and, with time, grew closer and more confidential. As chance would have it, the priest who was to conduct the ceremony suffered a serious indisposition only two weeks before the wedding. So it was quite natural that Rita and Francesco should ask me to perform the rite.

I married them on a sunny afternoon in mid-June, in the pure, proud light of the Church of San Giorgio in Velabro, a short distance from the glorious ruins of the Roman Forum and the Capitoline Arch. It was an intense ceremony, brimming over with emotion. I prayed ardently to the Most High that the young couple should be granted a long and serene life.

After the wedding, we continued to frequent one another for a few years. I learned thus that, despite the scant free time remaining to them after work, Rita and Francesco had never completely abandoned their studies. Although both of them, after obtaining their degrees in Literature, opted for the dynamic and cynical world of the written press, they still had not lost touch with their former interests. On the contrary, in their free moments, they continued to read good books and to visit museums and libraries.

Once a month, they would invite me to dinner or for afternoon cof­fee. Often, they would at the very last moment clear a chair heaped high with photocopies, microfilms, reproductions of antique prints and books, so that I could sit down; and these piles of paper seemed to grow higher with my every visit. I became curious and inquired what they were studying so enthusiastically.

They then told me how, some time previously, they had traced in the private collection of an aristocratic Roman book-lover a collection of eight manuscript volumes, dating back to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Thanks to the fact that they had friends in com­mon, the owner, Marchese *** ***, had given the couple permission to study these antique volumes.

The find was a veritable gem for students of history. The eight volumes were the collected letters of Abbot Atto Melani, a member of an ancient and noble Tuscan family of diplomats and musicians.

Yet the real discovery came later: bound in one of the eight vol­umes, a substantial set of manuscript memoirs had come to light. It was dated 1699 and written in minute letters, by a hand manifestly different from that of the remainder of the volume.

The anonymous author of the manuscript affirmed that he had been an apprentice in a Roman inn and told in the first person of surprising events which had taken place between Paris, Rome and Vienna in 1683. The memoirs were preceded by a brief letter of pres­entation, undated and naming neither sender nor addressee, the con­tent of which was somewhat obscure.

For the time being, it was not given to me to know more. The young couple maintained the strictest reserve about their discov­ery. I understood only that, ever since they had found them, these memoirs had become the object and the cause of their animated research.

However, since both had left the academic world for good, and were thus no longer in a position to lend scientific dignity to their studies, the two young people had begun to hatch out the idea of writing a novel.

At first, they spoke of this as though in jest: they were going to remodel the apprentice's memoirs in the form and the prose of a novel. Initially, I was rather disappointed by the idea, which—prid­ing myself on my passion for scholarship—I found faint-hearted and superficial.

Then, between one visit and another, I understood that the mat­ter was becoming serious. A year had not passed since their marriage, and now they were dedicating all their free time to it. Later, they confessed to me that they had spent almost their entire honeymoon in the archives and libraries of Vienna. I asked no more questions, resolving that I would be only the silent and discreet confidant of their labours.

At the time I did not, alas, follow attentively what the couple told me about the progress of their work. Meanwhile—spurred on by the birth of a beautiful little girl, and tired of building on the quicksands of our poor country—at the beginning of the new century, the couple suddenly decided to move to Vienna, a city to which they had grown attached, perhaps also because it held fond memories for them of their first days as man and wife.

They invited me for a brief leave-taking shortly before their de­parture from Rome. They promised to write to me and to call on me whenever they visited Italy.

They did none of those things, nor did I ever hear from them again. Until, one day, months later, I received a parcel from Vienna. It contained the typescript which I am now sending you: it was the long-awaited novel.

I was happy to know that they had at least succeeded in complet­ing it and wanted to reply and thank them. But I was surprised to find that they had not sent me their address, nor was there any covering message. As a frontispiece, a meagre dedication: "To the defeated". And on the back of the folder, just a scribble with a felt-tipped pen: "Rita and Francesco".