The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories (35 page)
Read The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories Online
Authors: Reggie Oliver
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In reading this account I became convinced that the
Responsoriae Foscarinenses
which had been translated and presented to Rochester by Thomas Wythorne were the ‘Homily and Responses’ referred to by Fra Benedetto. The version handed down to us is obviously inexact and tainted by later accretions but it gives us some understanding of the mind of the Ignotists, or Foscarines whom I take to be one and the same sect. It also, in an oblique way, offers us an insight into the mind of Cardinal Vittorini, because this text must have struck some answering chord in his mind to have preyed upon it so.
The text begins with a rather muddled account of a ritual, much of it childishly unpleasant and sadistic. This short extract is quite sufficient to give some idea of it:
Then shall the black dogge be brought forth and after he be made to eat of his turds and drink of his pisse, he shall be beheaded and put upon the crosse that all may adore him.
Shortly after this occur the words: ‘Then shall the homily be spoken’. I quote in full what follows:
THE HOMILY UPON NOTHING
He that hath ears to heare, let him heare. Last night I lay with a whore. I was very eager for her. I entered her lustily and strove to carry my heart up to the place where her soul had been if she had one. I thought to have found out some great secret by her and so went to it with a will. But having spent everything and got nothing in return but a weak spasme of pleasure, rank shame and doubtless some disease, I lay back and it came to passe that, as I slept in the harlott’s bed, behold I saw a vision and I dreamed a dreame. Lo, methought I was dead and passed out of my fleshly habiliments and was a spirit free from the torment of the body and the pleasures thereof. And it came to passe that I was carried out beyond this world which seemed as I looked back to be a very mean thing, no more than a flake of ashe turning in a sunbeam. And I was carried out beyond the sunne and the planets and the crystall sphere of starres. And I stood on the edge of a great abysme into which on a sudden I was throwne with a great rushing and roaring of a mighty wind. And it came to passe presently that I seemed to enter a great temple. And, behold, the floor was of jet and the great columnes were of ebonie which reached into a vaulte hung with shadow. And I came up to a Great Throne which was of the blackest ebonie and canopied with the cloudes of night, and upon this throne in fantastick triumph sate—
All replye: NOTHING.
And behold, he had on him a crowne of black iron, studded with jet, and around him he had on an inky cloake of everlasting darknesse, and his eyes were twin pools of vacancy. And lo, I saw that in one hand he held a shadowy sphere in which flickered fitfully a few rebellious lights. And then I saw that the sphere was the Universe which I had left with its starres and the sunne and all the wheeling planets. And it came to passe that, as I looked, the Great Nothing who held the shadowy sphere did breathe on it with his dusky lips and, of a sudden, the fitful lights were all extinguished for ever, eternally, and, behold there was nothing left but onlie—
All replye: NOTHING.
And it came to passe that I heard a mightie voice like unto the great silence which filles the void. And the voice said: What art thou? And I said: I am a man an’t please you. What art thou? And the voice replyed—
All replye: NOTHING.
Then the voice said: Lo, I have called you out of Nothing and into Nothing shalt thou go everlastingly. And I said: What is Life? And the voice replyed—
All replye: NOTHING.
Verily, it is a greate emptinesse which some have thought to be something, but that is a delusion. For it is but a dreame. Nay not even that, but the dreame of a dreame. Thy life, mortall man, and the life of all things is but a frail candle in my hand. The light shines in darknesse, but the darknesse comprehendeth it. It is squeezed between my black thumb and forefinger and then is out for ever. Think not, o man, that even within the pale confines of thy world I am not ever there. For in the midst of light, you are in darknesse. You will find me under the cassocks of priests, and the gownes of scholars, and in the heads of grave politicians there am I also. Show me the promise of a King and I shall be there. Show me the truth of a Frenchman, Spaniard’s dispatch, Dane’s wit, whore’s vowes: I am in them all. Then what of me? I said. And the voice replyed: Lo, you are my sonne, my onlie sonne in whom I am well pleased. And the Great Nothing that sate upon the throne of ebonie stretched out his black hand to grasp me. But I cried out a great crye and started awake. And the whore who laid beside me said: What ails you, chuck? And I said: It was a dreame. Then the drab did aske: What did you dreame of? And I answered—
All replye: NOTHING.
For the final episode in the story of Cardinal Vittorini, we rely again on the narrative of Brother Benedetto:
I am now compelled by my vow of obedience to say something about the Cardinal’s last days on earth. That the end came suddenly, swiftly and mysteriously is well known, but there have been many stories told about it which are quite untrue and a monstrous insult to my master’s memory. This is the whole truth of what happened.
One exceedingly hot day in the June of 1573 His Eminence was travelling by carriage to visit the Convent of Barnabite nuns in Trastevere. He frequently visited them to give them wise spiritual counsel, and to be refreshed by the simple humility of their holy lives. It was, he once said to me, so much the pleasantest of his sacred duties that he wondered whether he should forego it for the good of his soul.
As his carriage entered the Piazza dei Miracoli a little black dog ran straight across his path in front of the carriage horses who took fright. They reared up, upsetting the carriage and throwing His Eminence violently onto the stone pavement. He sustained some bad cuts and bruises to his left leg because the paving stones where he fell were uneven and badly set. Nevertheless he was helped back into the carriage which had sustained no irrevocable damage and went on his way. At the Barnabite Convent the nuns tenderly washed and bound up his wounds.
He gave no further thought to his injuries until the following morning when he found that the pain they gave him had not diminished but greatly increased. When the bandages were taken off, his leg was seen to be covered with black pustules. The wounds gaped and gave off a nauseous stench. Physicians were sent for. Some prescribed hot poultices, some cold compresses, some leeches and some fumigatories. All were applied, but though they added much to His Eminence’s agony they did nothing to aid his recovery. Throughout this ordeal he showed the most exemplary fortitude, but when night came the poisons in his leg began to affect his brain. He suffered the most extraordinary delusions. At one moment he believed that his room was filled with small black dogs, the size of rats, at another that he was being embraced by a great black snail. His delusions were many and various, but the colour black was a constant feature.
The following morning his left leg had turned a dark purple colour and the wounds constantly oozed a malodorous yellow liquid. A surgeon came and declared that the leg must be immediately amputated to prevent the infection spreading further. This operation was then performed with the greatest possible speed and skill. His Eminence again showed great courage and only cried out once. Even this cry was in the form of a prayer to God that he might have mercy on his soul.
Though the amputation was performed quickly and the stump immediately cauterised, the Cardinal had been greatly weakened by the loss of blood. Moreover the poison which had entered his system from the leg still affected his mind. He now suffered from the most curious delusion that we who stood about him were all creatures of his imagination, that even his physical surroundings were an hallucination, and that he was the only sentient, living being in the universe.
I thought it was right at this point to send for a priest to bring him Extreme Unction. I asked for Father Mattei of St John Lateran, an old friend of the Cardinal’s and a most pious and holy man. When I told the Cardinal that Father Mattei was coming he was suddenly seized with a furious terror. Why had I summoned Father Mattei? He was an old man and his mind wandered. He would forget to bring the holy oil for extreme unction. His ciborium would be empty and there would be no sacrament for him to receive. He kept asking the time; he seemed possessed by the idea that time was slipping away from him, like, as he said, ‘water from a man’s hand’. With great difficulty we calmed his mind on these matters, but with each hour that passed he was becoming weaker.
When Father Mattei arrived, His Eminence was at first convinced that this was not his old friend but Count Foscari in disguise. We convinced him that it was not so; or, at least, the Cardinal professed to us that he no longer believed Father Mattei to be an impostor. So we left the Cardinal’s room. Then Father Mattei went in to administer the last rites to His Eminence and to hear his confession alone. When he came out from the Cardinal’s room he went away quickly without a word. Within a week he too was dead.
Then came the last death agony of Cardinal Vittorini. He seemed at first calmer. He said to me that he regretted having mistaken Father Mattei for Foscari because he was now convinced that Count Foscari did not exist. He said that Foscari had been invented by the Ignotists and that they, having imagined him so fervently, succeeded in persuading others and then finally themselves that he existed. All this the Cardinal explained to us so smoothly and rationally, so like his old self, that I had to force myself to remember that he was not in his right mind.
Then he gathered his servants and associates about him to give them his final blessing. Having done so he gave a long sigh and uttered these words: ‘Where he is, I shall be also. Where he is not, I also shall not be.’ To whom he referred is not certain. Many who heard him believe that he was talking of his Blessed Saviour, and I will not disagree with them. But he said these words with such anguish in his voice that my heart troubles me.
After this he said only one thing more. At about three in the morning he sat up in bed, rigid and with open eyes suffused with blood. Then he cried out so loudly that it could be heard in the antechamber and beyond: ‘
Deus, Deus, ut quid derelequisti me?
’ [‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Vulgate translation.] Having said this he at once lay back on the bed and, after he had made a convulsion so violent that the bed shook with it, he sighed a last long rattling breath and gave up his spirit.
To those who would contend that my most revered and pious master died in an agony of unholy despair, I would say this: his last words were those of Our Blessed Saviour himself upon the cross. I cannot tell in what state His Eminence Cardinal Annibale Vittorini went to meet his maker, I can only say that I, Brother Benedetto of the Capuchin Order, pray daily for the repose of his soul.
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There is only one thing to add which may shed some light on the Cardinal’s strange behaviour. In his book
The Means and Might of Spiritual Orison
, a work which, but for Cardinal Vittorini’s unassailable reputation for orthodoxy, might not have escaped censure for Quietism in the century after his, the following passage occurs (I am using Benet of Canfield’s translation):
As we ascend to the highest sphere of Spiritual Orison we enter into a Divine Darkness which is the very darkness in which God stands, he being the source of all light and so not lit by any Thing. And there we may know Nothing and see Nothing, for any image that we may see and any sound that we may hear is false, for Nothing can represent that which is Infinite. By this means we may dwell in the Abyss of the Divine Essence and the nothingness of things, by annihilation only. For only by unknowing may we approach the Unknown, and only by not seeing may we perceive the Truth which cannot be spoken. And of what cannot be spoken, let no man speak.
