One day as the pope was passing by the monastery of the Saints Apostles, he stopped his carriage, got out, and walked through the open front door. Inside, he saw the monk-doorkeeper eating a bowl of beans in a little room. When the man saw the pope, he rose hastily and asked his pardon. But Sixtus told him to continue eating and to have a bowl of beans brought for him, too. Painfully aware of the dishonorable table setting, the doorkeeper begged the pope to allow him to bring a nice tablecloth and silver spoons, but Sixtus waved his suggestions away as he dug into his beans “with great gusto… remembering his poor childhood while he ate. His servants who saw him from a distance were astonished that the pope ate those beans with a wooden spoon, and with a filthy napkin.”
Sixtus finished his bowl of beans and then chowed down another. Finally, he set his spoon down and said, “These beans have given us two more years of health and life, because we have eaten with gusto, and without fear.”
16
Chapter 21
Vices Rebuked
And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife,
even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife,
the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
– Leviticus 20:10
F
or years, Sixtus had looked on the moral failings of his fellow Romans with revulsion. Now, as pope, he was in a position to do something about it. Astrology, gambling, and taking the Lord’s name in vain would be punished with fines, whipping, exposure in the stocks, and for multiple offenses life in the galleys. But casting a horoscope, rolling dice, and saying
Goddamnit
were the least of Rome’s moral problems.
It is likely that Sixtus, who had joined the monastery at ten, had never had sex in his life. He was known for his “egregious chastity,” according to one contemporary report, and while he respected sex in marriage as the means of producing children, he despised illicit sex and was determined to punish it severely.
1
He issued a law prohibiting the hanging of obscene pictures in taverns, which served as goads to the private parts. Then he proclaimed that those guilty of incest, sodomy, and abortion would be executed. He was particularly horrified at parents who sold their children into prostitution. One woman was found guilty of peddling her young teenager to an older man; the girl was forced to sit in the front row and watch her mother’s execution, wearing the jewels the man had given her.
But upon further reflection, Sixtus decided this didn’t go far enough. He would make adultery a capital crime. The cardinals were horrified, fearing that half of Rome’s population would be executed, and some were a bit worried about themselves. They ran to the pope, begging him not to issue the ordinance. But the pope replied that “an infected arm had to be amputated or the entire body would be vitiated.”
2
In fairness to the people, the pope gave them good warning. Old adulteries would be ignored, but starting immediately new ones would be punished with the full rigor of the law. The pope was particularly disgusted by the custom of poor men selling their wives to lords and princes. “The husbands would support the family in this way, letting the lords have sex with their wives while they went to another place,” the chronicler reported. “This greatly afflicted his Holiness, who thought there was nothing more monstrous in the world than men acting more like dogs than men, making a business off of their own wives.”
3
He offered rewards to people who reported the adulteries of friends, relatives, and neighbors.
Sixtus discovered that a certain Ludovico Piedemantello had kept a concubine for many years, despite the fact that the gentleman was married to “a lady of signal prudence” by whom he had sired five children.
4
The pope warned him in writing to cease and desist from visiting his concubine and then stationed spies outside her house.
It is odd that, initially at least, no one took the pope’s warnings seriously. Sure enough, Ludovico was seen entering the house and arrested. Despite the pleas of his wife, who threw herself at the pope’s feet, and the petitions of five noble families who were related to Piedemantello, the pope gave the order to behead him and his concubine. There were dozens of similar cases, and Roman men, who had looked on adultery as a prerogative of the male gender, suddenly found themselves obliged to be faithful to their wives.
The pope also wanted to eliminate prostitution in Rome. But when he floated this idea shortly after his coronation, the city council informed him that it would ruin Rome economically. Banks would fail as many had loaned great sums to prostitutes, who usually paid them back promptly. The customs duty officers – who had bought their positions – insisted they should be reimbursed 20,000 scudi a year for the taxes they would lose if the prostitutes – who imported luxury goods – were exiled. Landlords would lose good tenants who paid on time and in cash. Worse, when men didn’t visit prostitutes, sometimes they visited the wives and daughters of virtuous citizens or, heaven forbid, satisfied their desires with other men.
An economic asset all around, the prostitutes were also good for tourism. As one Roman courtesan declared in a popular novel of the time, her clients were “the kind of men who come to see Rome, and having seen the antique rubbish, want also to see the modern kind – that is the ladies.”
5
Just such a visitor was Michel de Montaigne. After seeing the Vatican and the ancient monuments, he set out to gawk at the prostitutes and found them advertising their wares from their windows, leaning on cushions. The streets below were full of men shopping for women. “The more licentious,” Montaigne wrote, “in order to have a better view upwards, have a sort of open skylight in the roof of their coach.”
6
Alas, the view from the street was largely an optical illusion. Montaigne reported sadly, “Having alighted from my horse on the spot and obtained admission, I wondered to find how much more beautiful they appeared than they were. They know how to present themselves from their most agreeable side; they show you only the upper part of the face, or the lower, or the side face, covering and displaying themselves in such a way that you will not see a single ugly one at a window.”
7
Pope Sixtus particularly hated prostitutes displaying their wares near the Vatican. He forced them into a kind of whore’s ghetto, known as the Ortaccio, the only place they could work legally. Sixtus ordered the Ortaccio prostitutes to paint their doors green to make clear to all exactly what kind of house it was. Guards were stationed in the hallways behind the green doors to interrogate the men entering to see if they were monks, priests, or husbands. If so, they would be beheaded. Had the married Michel de Montaigne visited the prostitutes four years later, his status as a foreigner under the protection of the French king and ambassador would not have prevented an ignominious execution.
Naturally, business declined steeply as wealthy married men had been the mainstay of the prostitutes’ earnings. Many women packed up their baggage wagons, jumped into their opulent coaches, and rumbled off to greater pickings in Naples and Venice.
The prostitute who dared to ply her trade outside the Ortaccio would be severely punished. A big burly bailiff would hoist her over his shoulders, with her skirts pulled over her head, and expose her bare behind to a hooting crowd. The executioner would then whip her behind with fifty strokes. One visitor to Rome who witnessed such a performance reported that the executioner “in a short time reduced her white bottom to a bloody red.” Having been set on her feet, the woman pulled down her skirts, shook herself like a dog, and staggered off “just as if she had come from a couple of weddings” to the loud cheers of spectators.
8
Sixtus received an unusual request from his nuncio to Spain regarding the validity of the marriage of eunuchs, of which Spain had an inordinate number. This in itself would not have been a bad thing, since lack of testosterone usually resulted in more peaceful citizens. But the eunuchs had taken to marrying women and then surprising them on their wedding night with their missing equipment. Now the women were crying for a divorce, and the eunuchs protested that they were indeed capable of having sex, still in possession of functioning penises even if the testicles had long ago been thrown out with the trash.
The pope assembled a committee of doctors, philosophers, and theologians who concluded that “whatever doubt there is about the rest, this is certain, that these half-men are not in a position to have children.”
9
Since having children was the main purpose of marriage, Sixtus declared these marriages null and void.
Remembering that Paolo Giordano had given Vittoria two gowns, one of gold thread and the other of silver, Sixtus decreed that women could only possess one such gown of precious metal threads. He became furious when he saw women in the streets all dolled up in jewels and rich dresses, especially on holy days. The pope called such women “ruined houses.”
10
Each family’s carriage bore a coat of arms on the doors – a kind of sixteenth-century license plate – and when the pope saw a carriage stuffed with luxurious bejeweled women, he made a note of the coat of arms and sent the governor to talk to them. On the streets of Rome, more modest attire became the fashion.
Many of Sixtus’s new regulations were inextricably connected to Francesco’s murder. A group of lawless bandits had killed him, and the pope was exterminating every lawless bandit he could get his hands on. The weapons that had done his nephew in were knives and guns, and these he outlawed on the streets of Rome on penalty of death. An arrogant nobleman had arranged the murder, and Sixtus was putting all arrogant noblemen in their place, taking away their privileges and diluting their power. That particular nobleman had enormous debts, and the pope was forcing all his subjects to pay their debts immediately.
Francesco’s death had been caused by a flirtation – and many believed it had in fact been adultery – between his wife and a nobleman. Adultery was now punished with death. Vittoria had been motivated to marry the duke by female finery she had been unable to afford as Francesco’s wife. Female finery on the streets of Rome had become dangerous.
* * *
The streets of Venice had also become dangerous. Now that Lodovico’s gangsters could no longer brawl with Paolo Giordano’s, who were tucked away in Padua, they picked on honest Venetian citizens, thereby disturbing the serenity of the most serene republic. The Senate decided that such men were wasted in civilization. Their swashbuckling violence would be better put to use in fighting Turks on the Greek island of Corfu, which was used as a Venetian trading post.
Lodovico was named governor of Corfu but found reasons to put off his departure. He needed to obtain the pope’s permission for his wife, Giulia Savelli, to journey from Rome to Venice as he wanted to take her with him. He required time to round up men, weapons, and provisions.
It seems likely that Lodovico kept postponing his trip because he was keeping a careful eye on the duke’s health. Though he should have stayed full-time in his rented Venetian palace, collecting supplies for his voyage to Corfu, Lodovico moved into the Contarini Palace in Padua, a couple of blocks away from Paolo Giordano’s Foscari palace. Vittoria could not have been pleased at the sinister shadow following her.
On October 30, the duke and duchess visited a Paduan notary, Francesco Rosati, to make a will, which Paolo Giordano wrote in his own hand. Feeling death approaching, Paolo Giordano was worried about Vittoria, who was “poor in reputation, as well as in possessions, little favored by the Orsinis, and without hopes of any support after his death,” according to a
relatione.
11
He named Virginio his heir and stated that Vittoria should get back her 5,000 scudi dowry, as well as the super dowry of 20,000 scudi that he had promised her on their wedding day. In the two years following his death, she would receive an additional 60,000 scudi. Moreover, Virginio must give her 16,000 scudi cash to buy a palace and a vineyard or villa in Rome. Virginio was further required to let her reside in every palace he inherited from his father, providing her during her stay with bread, wine, wood, straw, and hay for forty people and fifteen horses.
Paolo Giordano left other legacies worth 16,800 scudi. Some 8,000 scudi were to be used to build a monastery in Bracciano as penance for his hefty sins, while another 1,000 was to buy the statue of the Virgin of Loreto a magnificent chalice, no doubt a bribe for her to convince Saint Peter to open the pearly gates. He wanted an ornate family tomb to be built in the Basilica of Loreto, with statues of himself and Vittoria and their coats or arms. He named as his executors the dukes of Ferrara and Urbino.
Later that day, the duke called in another notary, Tiberio Valento, to write a codicil which Paolo Giordano signed. After all, it was possible that Virginio, guided by his cunning de Medici uncles, wouldn’t give Vittoria a single scudo, let alone allow her and her forty-person entourage to reside at his palaces. Vittoria might not be able to return to the Papal States – not even to live with her parents – if the pope forbade her to do so, or if the Orsinis and de Medicis made threats. She might find herself penniless, friendless, and adrift.
But Paolo Giordano realized he could provide her with a legacy located in the Venetian Republic, where the pope and the de Medicis couldn’t get their hands on it. This legacy consisted of the valuable items he had bought and stored in his various rented palaces. No matter that they weren’t paid for; his creditors would have to look to his primary heir, Virginio, for payment.
Vittoria’s indisputable inheritance would include the two convertible carriages the duke had bought; the twelve superb horses to pull them; the beds, wardrobes, tables, desks, and chairs of marquetry and ivory; the enormous expensive tapestries of mythological figures covering the walls; her sumptuous rainbow of gowns ornamented with pearls and rubies; her jewel box bursting with gold chains and gemstones; and the silver platters, gold cups, and porcelain dishes he had bought to entertain all those smiling noble couples who gladly recognized Vittoria as his wife. Such goods were called
mobili –
the word often used for furniture – but it literally meant
mobile items,
including animals, those things not cemented into or bolted onto a building.
Several contemporaries estimated the value of these goods at the eye-popping sum of 100,000 scudi. Armed with such valuable items, Vittoria could sell them, one by one, and live comfortably for many years even if her Roman legacies never materialized. The
mobili
were absolutely vital to her future.
But Paolo Giordano’s grandiose wishes regarding his estate failed to consider his mountain of debts. Creditors who waited patiently for years while their debtor was alive snarled for their payment like ravenous wolves the moment the debtor died. Thirteen-year-old Virginio, as principal heir, would be required to satisfy hundreds of thousands of scudi in debts that his father had contracted before he even met Vittoria. He would have to pay Venetian vendors tens of thousands of scudi for her
mobili
and hand over more than 100,000 scudi cash as her widow’s portion. But the estate had almost no cash. Virginio would be forced to sell much of his duchy to come up with it, though even this path might be barred by the legal entanglements of the 1477 Orsini will prohibiting such sales.