Veritas (Atto Melani) (115 page)

Spannagel was perhaps too courageous, too keen to tackle delicate subjects, and perhaps he unwittingly committed the crime of
lèse majesté
. The seed of envy is always
fresh: in the end the historian was never received by the Emperor, and his biography was never to be published.

Perhaps in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Emperor, Spannagel began to write a history of the reign of Charles himself, in Latin. But the work was never completed, and the pages of the
work actually devoted to Joseph’s brother (cf. Susanne Pum,
Die Biographie Karls VI. Von Gottfried Philipp Spannagel. Ihr Wert als Geschichtsquelle
, unpublished dissertation, Vienna
1980) are ridiculously few. The historian who had loved Joseph must have found it hard to appreciate Charles.

The censoriousness of the successor of Joseph the Victorious did not end here. In 1715, four years after Joseph’s death, Charles had already carried out a singular operation: he assigned
two functionaries to go through all the correspondence preserved in the desks and in other furniture belonging to his father Leopold and his deceased brother. This meticulous examination lasted
almost four months (from 28th January to 20th April, and from 26th August to 19th September).

In the end, having received the list of documents, Charles ordered that a large portion of them be burned, personally noting, page by page, which papers must not be passed down to his
descendants: primarily, anything of personal or family interest. The State Archive of Vienna still holds the careful record of this examination with Charles’s annotations (Haus-, Hof- und
Staatsarchiv, Familienakten, Karton 105 n.239). What is striking, among the private papers of Joseph listed by the functionaries, is the great number of letters and memoirs concerning Landau: a
simple glance is enough to show just how important the double triumph in Bavaria was for the young
condottiere
. Among the papers sent to the bonfire were dozens and dozens of letters
between Joseph and Charles, between the brothers and their father and their wives, plus many more whose contents are not clear. When it is a matter of personal correspondence, the following words
are written in the margin: “burn so it does not reach the public.”

Why had such a great mass of documents been abandoned for four years? (This is even odder when one considers that not only papers but also jewels are listed among the items examined.) What
mysterious force drove Charles to destroy so many valuable family memories? Was the truth of the relations between the two brothers concealed there? Or was there something revealing about
Joseph’s death? The bonfire Charles ordered means that we will never know the answer to these questions.

Atto Melani

The news of the arrival of a certain Milani in Vienna at the beginning of April, which the chimney-sweep tells us that he read with amazement in the newspaper, is not invented.
According to the
Wiennerisches Diarium
of 8–10 April 1711, page 4, on 8th April a certain Signor Milan, an official of the imperial post from Milan, entered the city by the so-called
Scottish Gate, and he settled at the post station. (
Schottenthor . . . Herr Milan / kayserl. Postmeister / komt auß Italien / gehet ins Posthauß
). Anyone in Vienna can check
this item at the National Library, or in the city library of the Rathaus, as with all other quotations from newspapers of the day.

By a strange coincidence, both Atto Melani and Joseph I had their funerals in a church of the Barefoot Augustinians: in Vienna the Augustinerkirche, in Paris the church of the Barefoot
Augustinians of Nôtre Dame des Victoires. Atto’s funeral monument (a work by the Florentine Rastrelli, as the chimney-sweep correctly notes), can no longer be seen; it was probably
destroyed during the 1789 revolution. His remains are thus forever lost, thrown into the Seine during the revolutionary frenzy, as happened with the royal family of France, including the corpses of
Mazarin and Richelieu. However, a copy of the monument can be seen in Pistoia, in the Melani chapel inside the church of San Domenico. The Pistoia cenotaph gives us the only surviving portrait,
among the many that existed, of Atto Melani: a bust representing him in his abbot’s robes, with a proud stare, and a capricious cleft in his chin. The authors published it for the first time
in the volume they edited,
I segreti dei conclavi
, Amsterdam 2005.

All the details of the relations between Atto and his relatives (including the sending of candied oranges and mortadellas), the aches and pains of old age, his passion for expatiating on his
haemorrhoids, the circumstances of his death, his contacts with the Connestabilessa, the account of the great famine in France in 1709, the financial crisis of 1713, his last words before dying,
his burial and a thousand other details, are confirmed in his letters kept in Florence in the State Archive (fondo Mediceo del Principato 4812,
lettere al Granduca di Toscana e al suo
segretario, l’abate Gondi
) and in the Biblioteca Marucelliana (Manoscritti Melani vol.9,
lettere ai parenti in Toscana
). As regards the relations between Atto Melani and
Connestabilessa Maria Mancini Colonna, see the historical notes in the appendix to Monaldi & Sorti,
Secretum
, Edinburgh 2009, where many passages from Melani’s letters are
published for the first time.

In Atto’s correspondence one also learns that in 1711 he was indeed one of those who collaborated with Torcy, the powerful prime minister of the Sun King, as he proudly recounts on the
third day. But the letters sent from France to Tuscany during those years reveal that at the French court his opinions were no longer heeded, which is not surprising, given his advanced age. In a
letter from Paris to Gondi on 23rd February 1711, for example, Atto reveals that he travelled to Versailles but that Torcy did not receive him.

Atto’s desire, despite his extreme old age, to end his days in Tuscany is also expressed (cf. also the notes in the appendix to
Secretum, op. cit.
). On 17th December 1713,
eighteen days before his death, he wrote:

In Florence Atto was not held in any great esteem either. On 30th of the preceding March, Gondi wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany:

However, Gondi let him have his way just to appease Atto’s relatives in Tuscany.

From the family’s correspondence one learns that on 12th April 1711 Atto did indeed have the colic, as described by the chimney-sweep. The false blindness, which he adopts mainly to reject
his relatives’ requests for financial support, is confirmed by the letters that he sent in those years from Paris to Tuscany. On 23rd March 1711 he wrote to Gondi: “My health is always
vacillating on account of the variety of weathers that we have here, but even more because of my great age, considering that although I can no longer read or write with my own hand, God grants me
the grace of retaining my mental faculties at the age of eighty-five, which I will attain on 30th of this month.”

His blindness, which in 1711 already seemed to be well advanced, only started in actuality two years later: on 6th February 1713, when he had truly lost his sight, Atto wrote to Luigi Melani,
Domenico’s brother: “And then as a last stroke of ill luck, I can no longer read or write. And yet Monsieur de la Haye, my friend, regained his sight at eighty!” Afflicted by
faltering memory, like so many old men, Abbot Melani had forgotten that he had been claiming to be blind for quite some time now.

Camilla de’ Rossi

The spelling today is Camilla
de
Rossi, without the apostrophe.

A certain Camilla de Rossi was born and lived in the Trastevere quarter of Rome. She was a shopkeeper, from whom Franz de Rossi borrowed his bride’s new name. Her will is still in
existence (Archivio Capitolino of Rome, 6th December 1708, deeds of notary Francesco Madesciro).

As the Chormaisterin herself recounts, Franz de Rossi was a musician at the court of Vienna and died of
Lünglsucht
(phthisis) at the age of forty, on 7th November 1703, in an
apartment block in the centre of the city, the Niffisches Haus. The Vienna City Archive holds the deed (
Totenbeschauprotokoll
) certifying the death of Franz de Rossy, using the spelling
often found in public administration documents for foreign names:

Franz de Rossi is referred to as “königlicher Musicus”, a musician of the King and not of the Emperor; he was therefore in the service of Joseph I, who in 1703
was still King of the Romans, and not of his father, Emperor Leopold I.

The death is also reported in the
Wiennerisches Diarium
, 1703, n. 28, 7–10 November 1703:

However, almost no trace remains of the Chormaisterin, apart from the scores and libretti of her oratorios. What Gaetano Orsini tells the chimney-sweep is true: the composer
never received any payment for her musical services. The lack of any mention in the books of the imperial administration makes the figure of Camilla almost invisible. Fortunately the
Wiennerisches Diarium
, as the authors have discovered, reports the performances of oratorios on Good Friday in the same years that Camilla de’ Rossi’s oratorios are dated
(1707–1710), and it is no accident that Joseph I attended them, as he appears to have commissioned Camilla’s four oratorios. Apart from this indirect confirmation of the activity and
presence of the composer in Vienna, all of the authors’ searches in the archives have proved fruitless: Vienna State Archive – Hofarchiv, OMaA (Obristhofmarschallamtabhandlungen) Bd.
643 (Index 1611–1749); Bd.180 (Inventaria 1611–1749); Bd.181 (the valet Vinzenz Rossi, probably the cousin of Franz mentioned also by the chimney-sweep, appears there); OMeA
(Obristhofmarschallamt), Protokolle 6 e 7; Karton 654, Abhandlungen 1702–1704; Hofkammerarchiv, NÖHA (Niederösterreichische Herrschaftsakten), W-61/A, 32/B, 1635–1749, Fol.
455–929: list of various writings by musicians employed by Hofkapelle, Kammermusik and Hofoper (some years are missing, with a large gap from 1691 to 1771); Gedenksbücher,
1700–1712. No trace of Camilla in the birth, marriage and death certificates (
Geburts-Trauung- und Sterbematriken
), which start from the second half of the eighteenth century; the
same is true of the
Conscriptionsbögen
(a sort of census of homes and occupiers), which do not start until 1805; above all, there is no trace of any payment to Camilla in the private
coffer (
Privatkassa
) of Joseph I, from which payments were made to various musicians. Susanne and Theophil Antonicek (
Drei Dokumente, op. cit.
) have published the list of
musicians paid by Marquis Scipione Publicola di Santa Croce in the years 1709–1711 as “music superintendent” of Joseph I. No mention is made in these documents (pp. 11–29)
of Camilla de Rossi.

The information on other Italian musicians in Vienna is taken not only from the Viennese archives but also from L. Ritter von Köchel,
Die Kaiserliche Hof-Musikkapelle in Wien
1543–1867
, Vienna 1869, and B. Garvey Jackson, “Oratorios by Command of the Emperor: The Music of Camilla de Rossi”, in
Current Musicology
, 42 (1986), p. 7. Gaetano
Orsini really did sing for Camilla de’ Rossi’s oratorios, and was among the musicians who received payments from Joseph’s secret coffers (cf. Vienna State Archive,
Hofkammerarchiv, Geheime Kammerzahlamtrechnungen 1705–1713,
varii loci
, ad es. c.10v).

The convent of Porta Coeli really did exist. Unfortunately it was demolished by order of Emperor Joseph II in 1785, along with many other convents in the city. The archive of Porta Coeli, which
survived the demolition, is kept at the Vienna City Archive.

The story narrated on the fourth day by Camilla of the Turkish slave girl assigned to the novitiate at Porta Coeli and rejected by the other nuns is also authentic. Cf. P. Alfons
Žák, “Das Frauenkloster Himmelpforte in Wien”, in
Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich
, new series, VI, (1907), Vienna 1908, p. 164: “In
the year 1695 a Turkish slave girl of Gerolamo Giudici, the Spanish lieutenant of Cardinal Leopold Count Collonitz, was baptised at Saint Ursula, and she was to be educated at the convent of
Himmelpforte. The nuns protested against the arrival of the girl, since they were all noble novices, while she was a slave. Even the Kaiser agreed with them, on 3rd September 1695, and after the
lieutenant applied to the Viennese consistory on 12th September, requesting them to oblige the convent to take the slave into the novitiate, on 16th September, the request was turned
down.”

Nor should the sudden appearance of Camilla de’ Rossi in the buttery near Neugebäude occasion any surprise: the convent of Porta Coeli did in fact possess some properties near the
Place with No Name, as is attested by the documents concerning the convent held at the Vienna City Archive.