Read Veritas (Atto Melani) Online
Authors: Rita Monaldi,Francesco Sorti
It is quite plausible that Camilla de’ Rossi should have retired to the convent of St Lawrence. This is not only because it is impossible to find any trace of the musician after 1711,
either in Vienna or in her native Rome, but also due to a surprising account given by Lady Montagu, the famous English writer and traveller, who, visiting the capital of the Empire in 1716,
writes:
I was surprized to see here the only beautiful young woman I have seen at Vienna, and not only beautiful, but genteel, witty and agreeable, of a great family, and who
had been the admiration of the town. I could not forbear shewing my surprize at seeing a nun like her. She made me a thousand obliging compliments, and desired me to come often. It would be
an infinite pleasure to me, said she sighing, but I avoid, with the greatest care, seeing any of my former acquaintance; and, whenever they come to our convent, I lock myself in my cell. I
observed tears come into her eyes, which touched me extremely, and I began to talk to her in that strain of tender pity she inspired me with; but she would not own to me that she is not
perfectly happy. I have since endeavoured to learn the real cause of her retirement, without being able to get any other account, but that every body was surprized at it, and no body guessed
the reason. I have been several times to see her; but it gives me too much melancholy to see so agreeable a young creature buried alive
.
(
Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague: Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to which are Added Poems by the Same Author
. Paris 1822, pp. 37–38).
The therapies used by Camilla de’ Rossi, based on the medicine of St Hildehard of Bingen, are all authentic. There is nothing surprising in the fact that the Chormaisterin
learned these skills from her Turkish mother: as Karl Heinz Reger (
Hildegard Medizin
, Monaco 1989, p. 11) reports, some scholars see clear influences of Islamic culture on
Hildegard’s writings.
Ottoman Customs, Embassies and Legends
All the descriptions that Cloridia gives of Ottoman customs, such as the particular concept of hospitality (the guest as
muzafir
), Populescu’s account of the
harem, the dervish’s ritual, the Armenian use of the
tandur
, Atto Melani’s descriptions of the derebeys and the rebels of Giaur-Daghda, including his reflections on “men
without a conscience”, faithfully reflect the accounts given by contemporary travellers visiting the Ottoman Empire and their scandalised reactions to customs and ways of thinking that were
so different from those in the West. See, for example, Maccari,
Diario del mio viaggio di Costantinopoli presentato alla Maestà dell’Imperatore Leopoldo I
, Ms., 67 cc. This is
a stupendous manuscript in Italian, kept in the manuscript collection of the National Library of Vienna, which the authors will publish in the near future.
Accounts of the Ottoman Empire remained practically unchanged from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. See, for example, Ferriol,
Wahreste und neueste Abbildung des Türckischen
Hofes . . . 1708, 1709
. . ., Nuremberg, 1719; and the Piedmontese princess Cristina di Belgioioso, “La vie intime et la vie nomade en Orient”,
Revue des Deux Mondes
,
1855. Belgioioso, among other things, describes how she herself witnessed the magic dancing ritual of dervishes, who made cuts all over their bodies which then inexplicably healed within a few
seconds, just as described by the chimney-sweep.
During our research in Istanbul we had the good (and ill) fortune to track down, at an antiquarian’s in the Grand Bazaar, the
disjecta membra
of a Venetian diary on Constantinople
from the end of the sixteenth century; unfortunately the antiquarian had already stripped it of its cover and frontispiece, and had cut out all the individual pages in order to sell the engravings
for 150 euros each. This kind of malpractice is, alas, common among antiquarians throughout the world; to our way of thinking, it should be severely punished by the law. Yielding to our heartfelt
supplications, the antiquarian courteously allowed us a rapid examination of the fragmentary writings on the back of the engravings.
The Turkish legends that the students investigate (principally, that of the golden apple and the forty thousand of Kasim) are all genuine; they are reported, for example, by Richard F. Kreutel
(ed.),
Im Reiche des Goldenen Apfels. Des türkischen Weltenbummlers Evliyâ Çelebi denkwürdige Reise in das Giaurenland und in die Stadt und Festung Wien anno 1665
,
Graz-Vienna-Cologne, 1957.
The myth of Day
ı
Çerkes, or Day
ı
Circasso, recounted by Penicek, corresponds to the version provided by Kerstin Tomenendal,
Das türkische
Gesicht Wiens
, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 1999, p. 187 ff. The Turkish version of the legend is narrated in the excited travel account of the Turk Evliyâ Çelebi, who visited Vienna in
1665. The statue can still be admired on the façade of the palace. The address is: Heidenschuss 3.
Equally true is the inhuman practice of the kidnapping of Christian children by the Ottomans that Atto Melani describes. Robert Mantran discusses it in
La vita quotidiana a Costantinopoli ai
tempi di Solimano il Magnifico
, Milan 1985 (original edition: Paris 1965), pp. 104–105:
After the second half of the fourteenth century, which is to say, after the conquest of a part of Balkan Europe, the Ottomans, in order to ensure the regular
recruiting of an army that was expanding in strength and size, used a system that profoundly disturbed Christian consciences but which for a long period of time proved of great service to the
Turks: we allude to the dev irme, the “harvest”. This system consisted of the annual or biannual culling, in a certain number of Christian families of the Balkans, of male
children under the age of five. Separated completely from their parents, these children were sent to Anatolia, to Muslim families where they were brought up in the Muslim fashion, taught
Turkish and initiated into Turkish and Islamic habits and traditions. At the age of ten or eleven they entered the educational institutions of the palaces of Hadrianopolis and Gallipoli and,
after the conquest, Istanbul, and from this moment on they were termed
acemi o lan.
Depending on their aptitude they were sent to the army or to the palace, where they became pages
and were termed
iç o lan.
There then followed a procedure that saw them rise from rank to rank, and if they succeeded in attracting the attention of the sultan or of a sultana
or of some favourite, there was nothing to stop them from gaining access to the highest offices, even that of Grand Vizier. Having practically forgotten their origins and owing their own
position solely to the favour of the sultan they showed him the utmost devotion and had no other ambition than to devote themselves to his service
.
As regards the provenance of the upper classes of the “harvest”, see Giorgio Vercellin,
Solimano il Magnifico
, Florence 1997, pp. 11–12:
It is impossible to overestimate how much the presence of the Ottomans in Europe during the years around the Reformation influenced the course of history on our
continent, starting with the history of the countries between the Rhine and the Danube. The Protestants were the principal beneficiaries of the conflict of Charles V and Ferdinand I with the
“Infidels”, so much so that the greatest expert in relations between the Ottoman world and the Christian world, Kenneth Setton, has gone so far as to state (“Lutheranism and
the Turkish Peril”, in
Balkan Studies
, III, 1962) that without the Turks the Reformation could easily have suffered the same fate as the Albigensian Revolt. The Empire’s
strength was based on the crucial function of the janissaries, a highly specialised infantry corps created by Sultan Murad I (1362–1398) almost a century before the formation of the
first regular army in France. Issuing from the singular institution that was the
dev irme
[ . . . ] and distinguished by their white headgear, the janissaries were about a thousand
in number in the fourteenth century, 5,000 in the following century and 12,000 in the age of Suleiman.”
The description of the Turkish procession in Himmelpfortgasse is closely based on accounts of the visit, which were printed and distributed at the time:
Beschreibung der
Audientz . . . op. cit.
, Vienna, 9th April 1711.
The two subsequent audiences of the Agha at Eugene’s palace, respectively on 13th and 15th April 1711, are confirmed in A. Arneth,
Prinz Eugen von Savoyen
, Vienna 1864, vol. 2, p.
159. Arneth, however, makes a mistake: he says that the Agha left again on 19th April. This is not true. The farewell ceremony with Eugene’s substitute, the Vice-president of War, Count von
Herberstein, took place on 16th May and is described in the printed report entitled
Die an dem Tuerckischen Abgesandten Cefulah Aga, Capihi Pascia, ertheilte Abschieds-Audienz, mit Beschreibung
aller Ceremonien so darbey ergangen,
zu Wien, den 16. May 1711.
In addition the supplement of the
Corriere Ordinario
of 3rd June 1711,
Foglio Aggiunto
, (p. 91 of the year 1711) reports that the Agha did not leave until 2nd June,
“making for Constantinople with five boats assigned to him, and he took with him various things, which he bought here, including some Casks with Pocket-Knives, Scythes, and Sickles, and
similar Utensils.”
Further details on the various Turkish embassies to Vienna in those years come from R. Perger and E. D. Petritsch, “Der Gasthof ‘Zum Goldenen Lamm’ in der Leopoldstadt und
seine türkischen Gäste”, in:
Jahrbuch des Vereines für die Geschichte der Stadt Wien
, 55 (1999), p. 147 ff.
During the Turkish siege of Vienna there really was a betrayal by the Armenian Schahin and his servant, as Koloman recounts to the chimney-sweep on the fifth day; see K. Teply,
Die
Einführung des Kaffees in Wien
, Vienna 1980, p. 35 ff.
The story of Kara Mustafa’s lost head is also wholly authentic. Cf. Richard F. Kreutel, “Der Schädel des Kara Mustafa Pascha”, in
Jahrbuch des Vereins für
Geschichte der Stadt Wien
, 32/33 (1976–1977), pp. 63–77. There was actually a second head of a Turk in the city Zeughaus of Vienna, at the address no. 10, Am Hof. It belonged to
Abaza Kör Hüseyin Pascha, who fell near Vienna on 24th August 1683 at the Battle of Bisamberg (cf. Kerstin Tomenendal,
Das türkische Gesicht Wiens. Auf den Spuren der Türken
in Wien
, Vienna-Cologne-Weimar 2000, p. 186). The head of this forgotten war hero was kept as a companion to that of the more celebrated Kara Mustafa, and was listed in the catalogues only
until 1790. It had probably disappeared from the warehouses before that date, maybe long before, which is to say when it was stolen by Ugonio . . .
Ilsung, Hag, Ungnad, Marsili
The essential information on Ilsung is all confirmed by Stephan Dworzak,
Georg Ilsung von Tratzberg
, typewritten degree dissertation, Vienna 1954.
As Simonis recounts, in 1564 David Hag was appointed on the advice of Georg Ilsung to the post of court paymaster (
Hofpfennigmeister
): cf. Vienna State Archive, Haus-, Hof- und
Staatsarchiv, Familienakten, Karton 99, recommendation of Ilsung to Maximilian II of 3rd October 1563.
It really was Ilsung who advised engaging the mysterious healer Magdalena Streicher to treat (or to kill?) the dying Maximilian. This is reported in a letter from the doctor Crato von Crafftheim
to Joannes Sambucus published by M.A. Becker,
Die letzten Tage und der Tod Maximilians II
, Vienna 1877, p. 41. On David Ungnad see Hilda Lietzmann,
Das Negebäude in Wien. Sultan
Süleymans Zelt – Kaiser Maximilians II. Lustschloss
, Munich-Berlin 1987.
It was indeed Luigi Marsili (all the details concerning him are historically accurate) who taught the Viennese to prepare coffee, as the chimney-sweep says. In his leaflet
Bevanda asiatica,
brindata all’Enimentissimo Bonvisi, Nunzio apostolico appresso la Maestà del’Imperatore etc
., Vienna 1685, the Italian commander explains for the first time how to toast the
beans, grind them and mix them with boiling water. The other information on Marsili contained in Atto Melani’s account is confirmed by the numerous other works cited in the bibliography
appended to this book.
Bettelstudenten and Chimney-Sweeps
In issue 280 of the
Wiennerisches Diarium
, which reports the news from 7th to 9th April 1706, and which is held in Vienna’s city library, we discovered a very
rare account of the Viennese
Bettelstudenten
of the age, never unearthed by any historian:
Wednesday 7th April. For some time now it is to be noted that, despite the frequent Edicts published, many wandering students – and others who join them, but who
are not truly such – are still to be seen begging night and day in the streets and in front of the churches and houses, even during the school term; these, feigning to study, devote
themselves to idleness, to theft and robbery, like the tumult of 17th and 18th January last which broke out inside and outside the city, also at Nussdorf (for which detailed inquiries are
still being carried out to identify the culprits and punish them severely) and they tarnish the good name of the other students. This lamentable mendicancy – which is the word for
lounging about and succumbing to vice under the pretext of study – must be seriously uprooted: to this end it is necessary to complete the task laid down by the former Resolutions of
his Caesarean Majesty; to this aim the Rector, the Caesarean Superintendents and the Consistory of this most ancient University were exhorted to issue a special Edict and to give a final
warning to the
Bettelstudenten
who were roaming around and not studying: within 14 days they must depart from here and go to their homes or anywhere else. Failing to do so they will
be seized by the guards and taken ad Carceres Academicos, where suitable punishment will be meted out. Those impoverished students, on the other hand, who daily and continuously apply
themselves to their studies, must seek a study grant in the Alumnates or some other means of subsistence; only those who are unable, because of the numbers, to obtain such assistance, or
those who have no choice but to seek alms outside lesson times, will be allowed to continue in this fashion until the arrival of new orders. But they must always bear their identity badge,
get it renewed every month and show it if requested. Otherwise they will not be recognised as real students, but as vagabond students and will be immediately punished
.