The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories (33 page)

I find there are some additional costs still outstanding. Yours was an unusual request and mine an unusual talent to execute it. I also have a talent for silence, but silence comes at a price. J.W.

Upon investigation, 12 Dock Street turned out to be a deserted warehouse, and nobody in the district had ever heard of Mr Jabez Wheeler, Superior Wig Maker.

For our last week at Darlington I myself took the role of Roger Tremaine, but my heart was not in it. That third act curtain fell to only muted applause. When it was over I returned to London and was happy to accept the small role of an art student in a revival of
Trilby
with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.

THE DREAMS OF CARDINAL VITTORINI

In the library of Wadham College, Oxford there is a small collection of manuscripts relating to one of its most famous alumni, the poet and rake, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Perhaps the strangest of these papers is a single sheet of foolscap covered in dense, crabbed writing. Along the top in a rather larger hand is written:
This rendering of the
Responsoriae Foscarinenses
made for W of R by his Ldshp’s humble svt Thom Wythorne, Anno 1678
. Wythorne was a fellow of Wadham, a secret Catholic and, it was alleged, both a Jesuit priest and a spy. He had known Rochester since they were both Commoners at Wadham. The main body of the text details a kind of ritual, with a homily and responses, religious in form, but far from religious in character. Some of its language and ideas are strikingly similar to Rochester’s poem ‘Upon Nothing’ which it undoubtedly influenced. As for the word ‘Foscarinenses’, I was intrigued because it seemed to throw light on a mysterious sentence to be found in John Aubrey’s
Brief Lives
:
In his last sicknesse My Lord of Rochester was exceedingly paenitent and did confesse to Dr Burnet that before his paines drove him to repentance he had been Foscarine
. Some weeks of patient research yielded only a few bare facts about the Foscarines: that they were members of a heretical sect or secret society who first made their appearance at Rome towards the end of the sixteenth century and were all but wiped out there. A compulsive curiosity drove me to investigate further and took me to Rome which was where and how I uncovered the story of Cardinal Vittorini.

**

The Spanish Inquisition is notorious, but the activities of the Inquisition in Rome during the 1560s and 1570s were no less bloody and far more secret. Its history is dominated by the strange and terrible figure of Cardinal Vittorini. There were those who said he was a saint. Moves were made soon after his death to have him beatified, then canonised, and his cause has recently been revived. His famous mystical work
The Means and Might of Spiritual Orison
(Benet of Canfield’s translation of the title) is said to be a favourite with His Holiness. I have read it, and it certainly has a curious power: more a poem than a treatise.

He wrote a number of theological works, said to be models of their kind, and he was also a man of wide classical learning. His translation into ottava rima of Silius’s
Punica
(an epic poem in seventeen books on Hannibal’s invasion of Italy) is said to be better than the original though this could hardly be described as much of an achievement considering Silius’s defects as a poet. Perhaps the Cardinal was attracted to the work because he had been christened Annibale. This may also explain why the present process of his beatification has been slowed down. A twenty-first-century Catholic Church can do without a Saint Hannibal.

The Cardinal was a great prince of the church. He had been born into the powerful Vittorini family which had sired, and, it was said, been sired by, many eminent churchmen. He became a bishop at the age of eighteen and a cardinal at twenty-eight. His palazzo in Rome was the centre of an enlightened and brilliant cultural circle of artists, poets and musicians. The finest painters decorated his reception chambers with frescoes, though his own private apartments were plain and Spartan. The finest food and wine was served at his banquets, but he himself touched little of it. Even on feast days he ate and drank modestly. He slept on bare boards for four hours a night and he was known to wear a hair shirt. His piety and asceticism were a byword.

In appearance he was spare and tall, with a stoop even in his thirties. The famous Titian portrait shows him seated, slightly hunched, head craning forward. He has a gaunt, melancholy face, not unlike some pictures you see of Dante, with a hooked nose and deep-set eyes. He seems to be looking intently at something in the far distance. But what is most arresting about the portrait is the hands. The eighty-year old Titian must have been fascinated by them because they are very carefully and brilliantly represented. One clutches the arm of his chair; the other rests pretentiously on a pile of books, presumably his own works. They are large, yet delicate with abnormally long fingers. The bones and sinews show vividly through the dry, almost transparent skin. These hands seem to be enjoying a separate and independent life, as if they were a grotesque pair of pet spiders that had just emerged from the Cardinal’s sleeves.

Contemporary accounts of Cardinal Vittorini describe his voice as being low and his manner unfailingly courteous and gentle, if it is possible to be gentle without warmth. This was the only complaint that was regularly recorded of him. There was always a distance and detachment in his manner, and he had no intimate friendships.

In 1568 he was appointed by Pope Pius V to oversee the operation of the Holy Inquisition in Rome. Though the Cardinal was only thirty-three, this was generally regarded as an excellent appointment. His devotion to the True Faith was unquestioned, as were his piety and integrity. There were some who thought that he might be over-zealous, but they were few. Besides, in those days, when heresy was spreading through the Holy See of Rome itself, it was thought best to err on the side of rigour. It was the time of the Counter-Reformation when the church was beginning to wake from its corrupt, complacent slumbers. A new spirit was abroad and Cardinal Vittorini was its incarnate symbol.

The Cardinal soon found that the task which he had been set was not a congenial one; but being an ascetic, he found this very lack of congeniality to be an additional spur to his zeal. He had to oversee the interrogation of countless people, most of them as incapable of heresy as they were of orthodoxy. A life of privilege and culture had prepared him for almost everything except an encounter with the uneducated mind. He found such meetings profoundly disturbing: he was fully equipped to fight heresy, but not ignorance. Ignorance was the foe without a face; and it was everywhere.

But then His Eminence the Cardinal began to be beset by another and far more troubling threat to his spiritual life. There are a number of documents in the Vatican archives relating to this crisis which can be found among the papers collected for his original beatification process. It was only with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded the Director of the Vatican Archive, the very charming and courteous Monsignor Dossi, to let me see these papers. I am fully aware that my releasing some of them to the general public will be seen in some quarters as a breach of trust, but I believe that my action is justified for reasons which I hope will become clear.

The most important of the papers was written by Brother Benedetto, a Capuchin Friar who was the Cardinal’s chaplain and secretary. He was one of the few men who could possibly have been described as being close to the Cardinal, and for this reason alone his story carries conviction. There is another reason, though. It is clear from other documents in the Vittorini file that Fra Benedetto wrote what he did under duress, in compliance with his vow of obedience. Orders had come from the Pope himself that a narrative of the Cardinal’s last days should be given and that no detail should be spared. Fra Benedetto, therefore, felt bound to tell the truth in spite of the fact that he was devoted to the Cardinal and anxious to put the best possible construction on his words and actions. What follows is his story, and it will be interspersed with other documents where relevant.

**

My memorial must begin in the Autumn of the year 1572. One night in, I think, late September, His Eminence was sitting at dinner with a select company. I myself was present. The hour was late and much excellent wine had been drunk, though not, I must add, by my master, who kept to his rule of extreme moderation. Among the company was the eminent poet Alessandro Andrei whose immortal
Somnum Iamblichi
is, I suppose, admired by all men of taste and learning. Signor Andrei was discussing the works of Porphyry, a favourite subject of his, when he happened to mention that there was a group of men and women in Rome—he called them a sect—who were devoted to the teachings of Porphyry and Plotinus. They called themselves Ignotists, and taking as their premise the idea of Plotinus that God was unknowable, they worshipped Ignorance as a god and indulged in all kinds of curious practices. At this His Eminence stiffened. It was normal at these banquets for the Cardinal to be at his most carefree, and to allow conversation to wander where it would without consideration for the strictest propriety; but Signor Andrei had entered a sphere in which His Eminence’s most sacred obligations were engaged. Andrei himself immediately became aware of this and fell silent. Soon afterwards His Eminence retired for the night and the party was dismissed.

The following morning Signor Andrei was summoned to the Palazzo Vittorini and was there questioned by the Cardinal in private, I being the only other person present. His Eminence first satisfied himself that Andrei was in no way a party to the doings of these Ignotists. This was a relief to the Cardinal, for he was a great admirer of the poet’s incomparable verses. He then asked Andrei to tell him everything he knew about the Ignotists and Andrei was very willing to oblige.

Several times during the interview Signor Andrei was seen to tremble violently. On one of these occasions my master the Cardinal stopped his interrogation and asked gently if he was suffering from the ague. Signor Andrei replied no, that it was merely anxiety. I find it hard to believe that it was fear of the Cardinal that made him tremble because His Eminence never once raised his voice to him or showed the slightest sign of anger. He was, as usual, earnest and persistent, but he was always softly spoken.

The facts about this sect which Signor Andrei revealed to us were as follows. The Ignotists were led by a man named Ascanio Foscari, a Venetian by birth, who sometimes styled himself ‘Count Foscari’. He was a notorious libertine and lived in a most extravagant style without any known source of money. Around him he had gathered a number of bravos, all equally dissolute, but distinguished, so it was said, by some wit. Women too, from all classes, were among his associates. Foscari himself was reckoned to be a man of learning and had spent several years in a seminary before being expelled for licentious behaviour. The practices of the Ignotists were both vile and curious. They would assemble in a cellar or ruined church where they would offer worship to the god they called Agnoia, which means unknowing or ignorance; but sometimes they changed the name of their god and called it Outis, No-one, or even Ouden, Nothing. According to them God created the world out of Nothing and that therefore nothing, or Chaos, preceded God and deserved to be worshipped before him. Many of their ceremonies were plainly blasphemous and in mockery of those of Holy Mother Church. Sometimes they bowed low to a casket which on being opened was seen to contain nothing, or ‘Divine Darkness’, as they called it. Clearly this ritual mocked the reverence due to the ciborium which holds the blessed sacrament. On one occasion, Andrei told us, they dressed an ape as the Virgin Mary and carried it about in procession; on another they crucified a small black dog. They did this, they said, to show that all forms and ceremonies were vain and meaningless, and that they had no regard for the common forms of decency. They also have no belief in the immortality of the soul and as a hymn sing those verses from the chorus of Seneca’s
Troades
which begin:

After death nothing is, and death itself is nothing...

They also had secret signs and passwords by which they recognised each other. One, I must repeat because it became a strange source of torment to my master, the Cardinal. When one Ignotist met another he would often greet him with the words:

‘Of what cannot be spoken . . .’

To which the other would reply:

‘Of that let no man speak.’

Signor Andrei’s descriptions were so clear that I thought he must have been more closely connected with the sect than he made out, but I held my tongue. His Eminence had undertaken to trust his word that he had not taken part in any of their rites, and there was an end of it. When Andrei had finished his account, the Cardinal dismissed him and, immediately summoning his officers, told them to find out these Ignotists with all speed, and especially their leader, Foscari.

The sect was discovered to be more widespread than Signor Andrei had implied and there were as many women as men to be found in its ranks. Indeed, women were regarded as in all respects equal to men within the cult. A large number of both sexes were taken to the dungeons of the Castel Sant Angelo and there put to the question [i.e. tortured].

His Eminence himself conducted many of the interrogations. The results were unsatisfactory because whenever any Ignotist was put to the question he or she would admit to anything simply to stop the pain. Their stories were fantastic and contradicted one another. When asked to reveal their confederates they often gave many names of people who were plainly above suspicion. This made His Eminence the Cardinal very angry. It has been said that in his wrath he had several Ignotists summarily put to death, but I do not believe this to be the case. It is true that some died from their wounds after being put to the question; but none of them departed this life without the ministrations of a priest. I myself attended several of them
in extremis
. They declared themselves penitent before me, but, alas, so carelessly that I was compelled to doubt their sincerity.