In the castle of Bracciano on the morning of October 10, 1583, Paolo Giordano married Vittoria again, this time more officially, with a priest, a notary, and numerous witnesses. However, he had not had the banns read for three Sundays, so the wedding was not completely in compliance with the Council of Trent. And then there was that little matter of the pope’s written prohibition.
Vittoria brought as dowry the 5,000 scudi given by her father when she had married Francesco and later returned by Cardinal Montalto. But because her father and brothers could not give her a dowry “which was suitable to the quality and preeminence and dignity of the most illustrious and excellent signor duke, her future husband,” Paolo Giordano himself dowered her with 20,000 scudi in the form of various properties.
8
The duke was already thinking of Vittoria’s future widowhood and wanted her to live comfortably.
A few days later he returned to Rome and seemed to be fitting up his palace to receive his new duchess. An
avvisi
of October 22 reported, “There are great things going on in the house of Signor Paolo Giordano, with superb coaches, carriages, and the richest ornaments. His Excellency has come to Rome, and there is no doubt that his wife is not in Bracciano, and is embraced by him here as his legitimate wife.”
9
The
avvisi
of October 23 stated, “So one knows for certain that the pope is content that the duke of Bracciano take Signora Accorambona openly as his wife, so one can also believe what is being said now, that last Thursday his Excellency married her.”
10
Some thought that the pope had agreed to the wedding in order to upset the grand duke of Tuscany, who had irritated him on various diplomatic matters. Or perhaps, as Vicar of Christ, the pope realized he could not put asunder what God had joined together. But such speculation was absolutely false. Gregory had no idea that Paolo Giordano had married Vittoria again, and if he had, he would not have treated him so generously.
In the fall of 1583, the pope had other things on his mind than the duke of Bracciano’s love affair. He was occupied in putting together a long list of new cardinals. Numerous recent deaths had reduced the ranks of the Sacred College, and Gregory was searching for moral, educated churchmen who would be assets not only as cardinals, but as potential popes. While kings, princes, noblemen, and cardinals pushed hard for their own candidates, many of whom were not very good Christians, Gregory ignored them. Finally, on December 12, he announced the creation of nineteen new princes of the Church to the fury of many cardinals who thought they should have been consulted.
According to tradition, new cardinals visited every other member of the Sacred College resident in Rome, after which the older cardinals visited the new ones. Cardinal Montalto used this opportunity to showcase his age and infirmities. “After the pope created the cardinals,” wrote his chronicler, “there followed the visits to one another, which usually occurred quickly. Montalto tried to look older than he was, pretending to be ill, and almost moribund. He excused himself to these new cardinals for not being able to do more because he could only visit one a day, and sometimes only one every two days, and after three days another. He let everyone know how ill he was, saying that the weakness in his legs, occasioned by his age, did not permit him to undertake many tasks… And the funny thing was that when asked how old he was, as many old people ask each other, his age grew by seven years.”
11
He often invited the other cardinals to visit him but rarely went out himself, and when he did so, “pretended to lean on a stick, and now on the arm of another prelate or on a cardinal, whom he grabbed when he wanted to walk up or down stairs… When he coughed, people were afraid that he might crack his heart in his chest, and it took him a quarter of an hour to ascend every staircase… And they said to him, Good old fellow, you have run your course, God give you strength.”
12
Many of the new cardinals told him that he shouldn’t risk his health by visiting them because at his age it was excusable to stay home. One day while calling on Cardinal Michele della Torre, Montalto had great difficulty mounting the stairs, huffing and puffing asthmatically. The younger cardinal was alarmed, afraid his colleague might drop dead on his steps before his very eyes. “Monsignor,” he cautioned, “you are killing yourself in trying to be generous to others.”
13
Cardinal Andrew of Austria was less kind; he called Montalto
Lazarus,
as one who was alive but also in the grave.
Cardinals with papal aspirations were faced with the difficult decision of joining either the faction of France or Spain. Joining one party would ensure financial and political support from the king and like-minded cardinals, but it would also ensure the enmity of the other party, which would try to prevent the cardinal from becoming pope in the next conclave. Refusing to join either party often resulted in arousing the anger of both. But Cardinal Montalto used his excuse of poor health to avoid joining either faction. He straddled the two, nodding with good will in both directions. It was a clever move. Those who had hoped for his support were not angry at him, having “concluded that he was on his last legs and incapable of joining a party because from moment to moment his age was calling him to heaven.”
While Montalto was advertising his illnesses, Vittoria continued to live the good life at Bracciano. Many speculated whether the duke’s unending fascination with Vittoria had been caused by witchcraft. Perhaps the ambitious Vittoria had employed his Greek enchantress to concoct love potions, causing him to recklessly risk his reputation and standing. Society was always eager to blame women’s witchcraft for the uncontrollable yearnings of men’s private parts. Some Roman gossips began calling Paolo Giordano the duke of Accorambono.
Vittoria had only to snap her fingers to have the most exquisite jewelry, gowns, and furniture appear. It didn’t concern her that it wasn’t paid for, or that little Virginio would have to find the funds to pay for it after his father died. The lovely stuff was hers, and that was all that mattered.
Paolo Giordano took Vittoria on a tour of his extensive duchy, showing her all his lands, farms, villages, and castles, as far as the Tyrrhenian Sea. Peasants and villagers knelt before her, as if she was a queen. In warm weather she was rowed out on Lake Bracciano in a barge draped with a velvet awning, beneath which she sat on silken pillows.
It was good to be the duchess.
Chapter 11
Annulment
Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;
their heart is filled with destruction. Their throat is an open grave;
with their tongue they speak deceit.
–
Psalm 5:9
C
ardinal de Medici was confused to see Vittoria living openly with Paolo Giordano as his wife. He hoped the two had come to an agreement whereby Vittoria agreed to be the duke’s mistress. There was nothing wrong with a man having a mistress – the cardinal had had several himself as well as children by them – and having a noble, beautiful mistress burnished a man’s image. But there would be great disgrace if the duke had married her. He candidly asked his brother-in-law if the rumors of marriage were true.
On January 31, 1584, the duke replied from Bracciano:
Most Illustrious and Reverend Signor In-Law and Most Respected
Padrone,Having learned that many are talking and trying to make the world believe that I have married Signora
Vittoria, I know that your Reverence, as one who has heard the truth, will not let himself be persuaded by this. Nonetheless, for the greater repose of your soul, I don’t want you to believe such vanity, and give you my pledge that the lady is not my wife, and I could not ignore the wish of his Holiness, who has prohibited a marriage between her and me.
I remember very clearly the declaration and promise that I made in writing to his Majesty the Catholic king, to his Highness the grand duke, and to your most illustrious self, not to marry her. Therefore I assure you with every certainty that these are false and malign voices and, knowing your Reverence quite well, I will not say more, except that I am your most sincere and affectionate servant, and I kiss your hands with great reverence.
1
Cardinal de Medici couldn’t imagine that the duke would put such a blatant lie in writing. He concluded that Paolo Giordano and Vittoria had worked out an agreement for a mistress position and not a wife position. He accepted Paolo Giordano’s word. Perhaps the situation had, indeed, been resolved.
Though the duke was finally enjoying Vittoria as his wife, his health took a turn for the worse. The old arrow wound on his thigh from the battle of Lepanto became infected. Some doctors thought it was gangrenous, others cancerous, and yet others believed it was leprous. The wound spread to his knee, and the flesh swelled with pus and stank like rancid meat. At Bracciano, the church bells pealed out urgently to signal people to pray for the duke.
Though Vittoria nursed him devotedly, his illness worsened. On the night of July 3, 1584, Cardinal de Medici sent his own doctor to Bracciano and Cardinal d’Este his surgeon, though they held out little hope. The duke agreed to amputation if there was no other way to save his life. The doctors decided to wait a while and, over the course of the next few days, the wound began to heal.
Having been banished from the Papal States for murdering Vincenzo Vitelli the previous September, Paolo Giordano’s young cousin Lodovico Orsini had been bouncing around Italy. He landed first in Tuscany, but Grand Duke Francesco ordered him to leave. He ricocheted up to Venice where he wrote the grand duke a letter justifying his murder of Vitelli who, he said, had been plotting to murder
him.
The deed had been done merely in self-defense.
Lodovico also explained why he had ambushed Vitelli rather than challenging him to a duel. Most people considered a duel to be a better moral choice than an ambush. Calling someone out, allowing him to defend himself with a weapon, was surely more honorable than jumping out of a bush in the dark and stabbing him in the back. But the Council of Trent had outlawed duels and so Lodovico, as a good Christian, had to resort to ambush.
The pope would have gladly forgotten the entire unfortunate episode. Whenever anyone complained to him of the brutality of the crime, Gregory replied that, after all, Lodovico was a good boy and had been justified to protect himself against his enemy, Vitelli. But the pope found it harder to believe that Lodovico was a good boy when, low on cash, he illegally entered the Papal States and joined forces with the bandit Prospero Colonna. Together they commanded hundreds of hardened criminals, who terrorized the countryside.
Paolo Giordano pulled some strings and in April 1584 obtained for Lodovico a Venetian military commission. But cash-strapped Lodovico didn’t have enough money to travel there in a befitting state. The duke convinced Gregory to return Lodovico’s lands and revoke the sentence of banishment from the Papal States, though the pope refused to allow him to enter Rome. But Lodovico still had no cash, and he went to Bracciano to see whether Paolo Giordano could raise some for his voyage.
Lodovico brought with him his usual entourage of ruffians and outlaws, as well as his secretary, Francesco Filelfo, whose gripping account of the family tragedy will be detailed later. In sixteenth-century Italy, secretaries were refined gentlemen – often better educated than their employers. Many secretaries were the younger sons of noble families with no prospects of inheritance; they used their excellent manners and thorough education to support themselves. Secretaries were required to be fluent in several languages, ancient and modern. Their penmanship had to be exquisite.
Secretaries stood in as ambassadors for their employers, visiting cardinals, popes, princes, and kings, dining and negotiating with them. As the personal representative of their masters, they needed to know the latest court dances and excel at riding and fencing. They wore gorgeous doublets and traveled around town in their employers’ gilded carriages. Discretion was an important requirement; secretary does have the word
secret
in it, after all. Secretaries knew everything about their masters – from hemorrhoids to sexual escapades to embezzlement and murder. But the most important quality of a secretary was loyalty until death, a quality that Filelfo, as we shall see, possessed.
Oddly, Lodovico’s secretary had been in the employ of Cardinal Felice Montalto in the 1570s and passed into the service of Vittoria’s brother, Ottavio, bishop of Fossombrone. It is possible that Paolo Giordano hired him away from Ottavio to work for Lodovico; it is not known how long he had been working for Lodovico when the family congregated at Bracciano in the spring of 1584.
Filelfo later wrote of that meeting, “I visited Signora Vittoria at Bracciano and received many courtesies from her.” He didn’t seem to care much for Marcello, however. “Between Signor Marcello and me at Bracciano, if there was not much closeness, there passed between us courteous words and compliments.”
2
Few people liked Marcello.
There, in the castle, Lodovico and Vittoria had the opportunity to size each other up. They didn’t like what they saw. An avid defender of Orsini family honor – amply demonstrated by his brutal murder of Vitelli – Lodovico saw Vittoria as a cunning, social-climbing, money-hungry slut. She had bewitched Paolo Giordano into marrying her and was now perched to swoop in the moment he breathed his last and take as much money as possible from his beleaguered estate, leaving his young heir a pauper. The duke’s besotted love for her had already besmirched the family name, dragging it through the mud with the pope, the grand duke of Tuscany, and the king of Spain. And now his second marriage, though still secret, would surely get out and dishonor the Orsinis all over again.
According to one contemporary historian, Lodovico was “no friend of Accoramboni. He had always cursed the marriage Paolo had contracted with her due to his love, a love which, in truth, would have been pardonable at any other age than his, as he was nearing fifty. Lodovico went from cursing this deed of Paolo’s, to contempt for her who occasioned it, with the heated bitterness of youth, and ridiculing and vituperating the person of Vittoria and her brothers.”
3
Lodovico made his feelings clear to Vittoria by treating her with little respect, and Vittoria complained to the duke. Paolo Giordano, in turn, argued openly with Lodovico about his treatment of the new duchess. Vittoria “was very spiteful to Lodovico,” according to another
relatione,
and “for a long time he wanted to revenge himself for the private hatred that he nourished towards the Accorambona from the first day that Paolo talked of marrying her, because he had always cursed this marriage as unequal and shameful, with words of contumacy and scorn. Having found little favor from Signor Paolo afterward, he attributed the alienation of that lord to the arts of the Accoramboni, who shortly after marrying, openly avenged herself by speaking poorly of him to her husband.”
4
Clearly, it was necessary for the duke to separate the two of them. Fortunately, the duchess of Parma agreed to settle a property dispute with Paolo Giordano for the sum of 16,000 scudi. The duke gave a portion of the proceeds to Lodovico and promised him an annual stipend. Armed with cash, in the winter of 1584-85, Lodovico set out for Venice in princely state with thirty bandits riding beside him. Hearing of his plans, the Vitelli family laid in wait on the main road to ambush him, but Lodovico had taken another route.
* * *
In late December 1584, Paolo Giordano came to Rome with Vittoria to test the waters. He decided he would tell people he wanted to marry her and then sit back and gage the reaction. If it was really bad, he would drop the subject. If it weren’t too bad, he could let them know he had already married her.
Like criminals returning to the scene of their crime, the duke and Vittoria had the audacity to call on Cardinal Montalto, who welcomed them with open arms, according to an
avvisi
of January 12, 1585. “This lord and lady were admitted the other day to visit Cardinal Montalto, who showed much exterior joy at seeing them and enjoying them together. When they arrived in his presence, he kissed and embraced them with fraternal tenderness, showing them with his hand on his heart that he ardently believed their innocence in his nephew’s murder, despite the fact that many evil people believed the contrary.”
5
It is likely that during this visit, Paolo Giordano studied the cardinal carefully. Despite Montalto’s kindness, the duke still did not trust him. He knew how much the old man had loved his nephew. And he knew the cardinal was aware that the murder had been committed to enable him to marry Vittoria. Was there such forgiveness in any man’s heart, even the holiest saint? Paolo Giordano, a liar himself, must have debated how much of a liar Felice Montalto was.
Despite the cardinal’s joyous welcome, Paolo Giordano lost his nerve when it came to announcing plans to marry Vittoria. Members of the extended Orsini family were murmuring about the rumors of his already having married her again. The Spanish ambassador was shifting uneasily, and the grand duke of Tuscany kept asking questions. Nor would the pope be very happy that the duke had ignored his edict. In early February 1585, he took Vittoria back to Bracciano.
But the unfortunate visit had awakened the pope’s suspicions. He talked of issuing another edict prohibiting their marriage and annulling all previous marriages. To avoid the scandal, Cardinal de Medici advised the duke to send Vittoria back to her parent’s house yet again. The duke replied heatedly that de Medici should liberate him from this travail “because living in such an unsettled manner afflicts me enough, and is the cause of many of my disorders.”
6
Unwilling to separate from Vittoria again, Paolo Giordano decided to throw himself on the mercy of the pope and reveal his marriage. On February 26, he commissioned Orazio Morone, bishop of Sutri and Nepi, whose diocese included Bracciano, to visit the pope and read him a letter. In the papal audience chamber, with the white-robed pontiff sitting stiffly on his throne, the poor bishop must have gulped nervously before starting to read:
Most blessed Father,
Signor Paolo, fearing that your Holiness might have a bad opinion of him, believing that he did not live in marriage as a good Christian, has sent me to notify your Holiness that since October of the year 1583, after the orders of your Holiness had removed the impediments placed by you and your ministers, he married Signora Vittoria Corramboni according to the solemnities of the Holy Church.
This marriage he has kept secret until now to avoid various disturbances, and now he makes it known for the great zeal he holds for the favor of your Holiness, to whom he wants to be the most obsequious and to serve you perpetually in his profession, living as a good Christian.
7
The duke then made known his intention to build a monastery outside Bracciano for the brothers of Saints John and Paul and a hospital for the poor. Gaping in shock, the pope asked Bishop Morone if Cardinal de Medici had been informed of the marriage. The bishop replied that Paolo Giordano did not wish the cardinal to be informed as yet, and we can assume that the duke didn’t have the heart to admit to his brother-in-law that he had told him so many bold-faced lies.
Gregory ordered Bishop Morone to tell the cardinal immediately about the duke’s new marriage. On the same day, February 26, Morone wrote Cardinal de Medici a full account. And finally the cardinal realized that Paolo Giordano had played him for a fool. His favor and protection were gone forever, something which would weigh heavily in the next conclave.
Gregory also told Morone that he would create a papal commission of three or four learned theologians to examine all pertaining documents – his edict against the first marriage, the letter of Pirro Taro mentioning the removal of all impediments, Vittoria’s written promise to obey the pope, the documents from the second marriage, and the decisions of Paolo Giordano’s theologians supporting the marriage. The commission would then render a verdict. In the meantime, Morone should return to Bracciano and inform the couple that the pope had serious doubts about the legality of their union.
On March 15, Paolo Giordano sent his secretary Fiorello to give Cardinal de Medici the theologians’ document supporting his marriage: