When the Roman public learned that pardons would not be given and all confessed murderers would be immediately executed, their family members banged on the doors of the papal audience chamber. A certain Sebastiano Ciacci had turned himself in to obtain pardon for murder and now learned that he would lose his head. His young wife, mother of his five children, threw herself at the pope’s feet and begged for his life.
The pope looked on her with pity. “I am greatly touched, my poor woman,” he said, “by the state to which I see you and your children reduced… But I am engaged in calling Justice back to Rome, from which she has been chased away, and I am dedicated to doing so.”
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And Ciacci was beheaded the next day.
In the days that followed, whenever anyone asked him for a pardon, Sixtus sneered, “The city has enough rogues without adding those from the prisons to them.”
Sixtus sent for the governor of Rome, the jailers, and the judges of the criminal courts. He informed the jailers that if any prisoner escaped, the jailer would have to give up his own life as compensation. Then he ordered all of them to see that justice was done. “As long as I live,” he thundered, “every criminal will die.”
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Before he dismissed them he stood and cried out in the words of Jesus, “I am come not to bring peace, but a sword.”
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Chapter 15
The Sword of God
Every morning I will put to silence all the wicked in the land;
I will cut off every evildoer from the city of the Lord.
– Psalm 101:8
M
ost popes came from noble or at least well-to-do families, and their relatives were well-versed in proper social behavior. But Sixtus’s family, though they had lived in Rome for fifteen years, could potentially humiliate themselves
and
the pope if he wasn’t careful. Because a pope didn’t have a wife or daughter – at least, he wasn’t supposed to – it was his sister or sister-in-law who became the first lady of Rome, playing hostess to noblewomen, the sisters and nieces of cardinals, and the wives and daughters of ambassadors and visiting royalty.
Though Sixtus delighted in Camilla’s simplicity, earthy good sense, and piety, he also knew she wasn’t exactly princess material. How could she hold court with Europe’s most refined men and women without making a fool of herself? It was his job to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, and fast.
Sixtus called Camilla to the papal palace and told her he was giving her the Villa Montalto, which he would have beautifully furnished and decorated. He realized it would be impractical for his sister to throw lavish banquets and balls, and admonished her to host only small gatherings, and those few and far between. “Close yourself in with modesty,” he advised, “and live a life that is modest, retired, and private. To this end you will be provided with a decent court, but without grandeur, comfortable but without pride, and which will serve rather for edification than as a subject for gossip of the people.”
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And she should never, ever, forget her humble origins.
Camilla received an allowance of 1,000 scudi a month for her maintenance, and four coaches, along with mules and horses. The pope carefully selected men of good character for her staff, and hired a lady-in-waiting, a major domo, a chaplain, secretary, butlers, valets, grooms, and cooks. Her servants wore livery of pear green (from the name Peretti, which meant
little pears)
and leaf green. One man’s job was to instruct Camilla in courtly ceremonies. Sixtus debated whether or not to hire a matron of honor to tutor Camilla in the etiquette required in dealing with Roman noblewomen. But Camilla “learned so quickly to compliment the ladies and succeeded in the necessary politeness and graciousness,” that he didn’t have to.
2
Pasquino, as usual, had his say. One day, he was seen wearing a filthy shirt, with a sign around his neck that he couldn’t get clean shirts anymore since “my laundress has become a princess and sister of the pope.”
3
They could laugh all they wanted to. Overnight, the laundress became one of the richest ladies in Rome. But true to her frugal upbringing, Camilla didn’t squander her money on vanities. She bought land in Rome, built shops on it, and rented them out at high prices.
The coronation was held on Wednesday, May 1. As the first wave of criminals was being executed, Cardinal de Medici was crowning Sixtus in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Then, according to tradition, the papal master of ceremonies stood in front of him with a twist of flax burning on the head of a cane. “Holy father,” he intoned, “so passes the glory of the world.” It was a warning to each new pope that he, too, was mortal, and one day his power would disappear.
For six hundred years, other popes had smiled benignly and let the ceremonies continue. But Sixtus replied in a loud voice, “Our glory will never pass away because we have no other glory than providing justice for all.” Then, turning to the ambassadors, he said, “Tell your princes, our sons, the content of this notable ceremony.”
4
On May 2, the pope announced that he would make his fourteen-year-old grandnephew Alessandro his cardinal nephew. It was not unusual, making young nephews cardinals, and Sixtus would turn the boy’s education over to the most experienced instructors. During his great-uncle’s audiences, the youth sat quietly and observed. Later, he would discuss the meeting with his teachers and the pope.
The Venetian ambassador wrote, “The nephew speaks little but has a good head, and every day becomes more pleasing to the Pope.”
5
In the course of time Cardinal Montalto, as he was known, would become one of the most distinguished cardinals of the Sacred College. His brother, eight-year-old Michele, would be the secular son, groomed to marry and sire a dynasty. He was named captain general of the pontifical guard and governor of the Borgo section of Rome, both positions with large salaries.
On May 5, the pope had his
possesso,
a ceremony in which he took possession of his titular church, Saint John Lateran. Many Romans who had not crammed into Saint Peter’s Square for the election and coronation now had an opportunity to see their new pontiff as the procession wound through the main streets of Rome. They were shocked to see a man, who for years had been reputed near death’s door, “all spunky on a horse,” as one
avvisi
put it.
6
The pope had forbade the traditional flinging of coins to the crowd, saying that the neediest people – the weak, crippled, and hungry – rarely got a penny. It was the strong and healthy who scrambled for it, knocking over the disadvantaged in the process. He asked parish priests to find the poorest families in Rome and give them alms directly.
Tradition decreed that after a pope took possession of the Lateran, the solemn ceremony was concluded with a lavish banquet. But Sixtus, knowing Gregory had left the Church finances in dire straits, canceled the banquet. He returned to Villa Montalto and partook of a simple meal with his servants. The rest of the day he spent in walking about the gardens examining his plants.
On May 10, Sixtus held his first consistory in which he declared to the entire Sacred College that he would devote his attention as sovereign to two things – the rigorous enforcement of justice, and the plentiful provision of food for his subjects. Regarding justice, he issued an edict that took away immunity from cardinals, noblemen, and even ambassadors. No one had the right to deny law enforcement officers entrance to their palaces. Anyone harboring criminals would be punished as harshly as the criminals themselves.
Though Paolo Giordano had fled Rome two weeks earlier, many servants still lived in his palace. The pope “took five men, esteemed to be wild, from the Orsini house,” according to the chronicler, “and to avoid the pope’s capture, the palace was closed up and the rest left Rome.”
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The pope further decreed that barons in their country estates must turn over all bandits to the pope’s guards immediately.
If any known bandits approached palaces or towns, those who recognized them were to ring church bells as a sign to request armed assistance. All those who heard the bells were required to stop what they were doing and try to capture the bandits. Anyone who did not ring the bells when they saw bandits, or who heard them but did not respond, would be executed.
Any law-abiding citizen who captured a bandit alive would receive a 400-scudi reward, and he would receive 300 scudi for each head he sent to Rome. In addition, all those who turned in bandits or heads would receive a full pardon for the bandit of their choice. If they had any relatives sitting on death row, their sentences would be commuted to two years. If they were in the galleys, they would be immediately freed.
Sixtus issued an edict that saved his soldiers a lot of work – any bandit vowing to reform his life and turn in another bandit for execution would receive a full pardon, a 500-scudi reward, and an honest job. The last was a clever move. Since many joined bandit gangs because they didn’t know how else to support themselves, the pope offered them good wages on his various building projects in and around Rome, with a chance to advance. Hard labor and a moral life would be well rewarded. Since there is little honor among thieves, the roads to Rome were jammed with reformed bandits holding their colleagues in chains.
Sixtus commissioned five hundred soldiers under three strict generals to ride throughout the Papal States to round up criminals and those protecting them – even dukes, cardinals, and princes. There would be absolutely no privilege for those of noble status. If found guilty, they would be executed, just like the poor. In August, the governor of Rome, Sangiorgio, resigned after only four months in office, disgusted by the pope’s brutality. Sixtus appointed Mariano Pierbenedetti to the post, an old friend with a strict sense of justice.
Gallows and scaffolds were erected in the main squares of Rome, and every day there were executions. The Romans suddenly acted like the most devout, law-abiding Christians in the world, but the pope wasn’t fooled. In fact, he was in a hurry. “I know that under the next pontificate, the Romans will corrupt themselves again,” he said, “which is why I want to hang all the bad ones during my pontificate.”
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In Rome, the criminal going to execution was conveyed on a cart, surrounded by the Brothers of Compassion, a charitable organization whose members accompanied the condemned on their last journey. These men wore linen hoods over their heads and long robes. While most of the brothers walked beside the cart, a few stood next to the condemned man, exhorting him to pray to Jesus. One of them held up a painting of Jesus which the criminal was to kiss continually. They walked with the painting up the steps to the gallows, and held it before him as the noose was placed around his neck so that the face of Jesus would be the last thing he ever saw.
In the mid-nineteenth century, gallows were first fitted with trap doors through which the condemned person fell to a speedy death by a snapped neck. Before then, hanging was a slow and painful process. The condemned person, noose tightly about his neck, was pushed off a ledge, or had a stool kicked out from under him, or the horse he was sitting on was given a good slap on the rear end. In Rome, he was hoisted up by the executioner so that his feet didn’t touch the ground. Dangling there, he slowly choked.
After death, the body was decapitated and hacked into four pieces. The head was stuck on a pike, and the body parts nailed on the outside of the city gates and walls. When Montaigne was in Rome in April 1581, he wrote of an execution he witnessed, “The people here, who had shown no feeling at seeing him strangled, at every blow that was given to hew him in pieces burst out into piteous cries. As soon as they are dead, one or several Jesuits, or others, mount upon some raised place and shout at the people, one in this direction, another in that, and preach to them to make them relish that example.”
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To more efficiently conduct the hangings, Sixtus had a specially-designed fifteen-man gallows built, where one day he executed thirty men in two quick shifts. After the bodies were taken down, the heads were cut off, affixed to pikes, and placed on city gates, public buildings, and bridges. The Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge displayed a veritable forest of heads on pikes.
During the summer of 1585, the
avvisi
were chock full of reports of heads. “Each day new heads of bandits appear.” “Today four more bandits’ heads appeared on the bridge.”
10
As an insult to the families who had produced such evil-doers, the pope often had the name of the executed man on a placard hanging from the pike. “Head of Ercole Castrucci,” read one sign flapping beneath a skull with patches of leathery skin and tufts of hair, the eyes picked out by crows, though perhaps the “head of” was unnecessary.
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One day, eight heads in sacks arrived in Rome, and the pope decreed that these, too, should be stuck on pikes on the Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge. According to an
avvisi,
“While these eight heads were on the bridge, two hours before sunset the pope came on horse, and wanted to see them, and stopping to look, you could tell the pleasure that the pope had of it, so that he went to the Church of Saint Mary Major to thank God for the blessing.”
12
Shortly thereafter, the pope told the governor that he wanted two criminal cavaliers to be beheaded in front of Castel Sant’Angelo. When he rode by to pick up the governor to take him to church, Sixtus wanted to see the executioner holding a head in each hand. The executioner, having whacked off the heads, was waiting for the pope’s arrival, and as he passed, raised both heads by the hair, “whereupon the pope, very happy, went to the Church of the Most Holy Madonna of the Rotunda.”
13
Whenever a particularly violent bandit was captured and executed, Sixtus cried with outstretched arms, “God be praised that he has given us so much favor to have assisted us with justice.”
14
The pope saw nothing strange about cutting off people’s heads and then going to church to thank God for giving him the opportunity to do so. In his first consistory, he had cried, “When human aids are lacking, many legions of angels will come to me to punish the malefactors and scoundrels.”
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God, he knew, was on his side.
Every two weeks, the pope called for his governor and expressed his astonishment at how few punishments had been meted out, saying that if he had been in his position he would have rounded up many more criminals, and the governor was getting quite lax. Whenever the governor was foolish enough to advise leniency in a particular case, Sixtus threatened to fire him and make him a defense attorney. The chronicler wrote, “So the governor was obliged to content the pope by watching night and day for the persecution and punishment of evil-doers, not pardoning even the lightest guilt.”
16
While the governor of Rome was responsible for law enforcement, traditionally cardinals had no such role. Yet Sixtus expected his cardinals to actively pursue criminals. Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna, like Sixtus, had been frustrated over Pope Gregory’s leniency with murderers. He built twelve gallows between the towns of Anagni and Frosolone, and decorated them with the chopped-off body parts of criminals he had executed. But Cardinal Alfonso Gesualdo had foolishly joined the Church without realizing he would be expected to kill people, and he lagged in meeting the pope’s expectations. When the pope reprimanded him harshly, he hastily rounded up and hanged twenty-five bandits and sent the heads to Rome. The pope was “satisfied enough.”
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