The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories (34 page)

Though many Ignotists were discovered and arrested, their leader Foscari evaded capture. His Eminence sent out men into all parts of Italy, but could find no trace of him. His agents in France and Spain were equally unsuccessful. It is most likely that he took refuge in his native city of Venice where the authorities, as ever, showed themselves very unwilling to assist the Cardinal in his holy work. These frustrations drove my master nearly to distraction, and he lost much of his customary composure.

One of the last people to be taken in this purge of Ignotists was a young lady of noble family, Katerina Vernazza, who had a reputation for piety, beauty and wit. It was said that she could compose impromptu a sonnet that other poets might have laboured over for a month. Though His Eminence had never met her—he never allowed women guests at his dinner table—he knew of her good reputation and was very astonished that she was named as an Ignotist. At first he did not believe his informers, but the assertion was confirmed from many sources. Moreover, it was alleged that she had been Foscari’s mistress.

When La Vernazza was arrested many papers and treatises were found in her house which showed beyond doubt that she was a follower of Foscari. In particular, the Cardinal’s men found a document known as the ‘Homily and Responses’, of which I have cause to regret that it was not immediately burned.

His Eminence took a particular interest in La Vernazza’s case, since he believed her to be essentially virtuous, but led astray by the evil Count Foscari. He interviewed her many times, at first very gently and patiently, but when he found that this did not yield satisfactory results he felt obliged to put her to the question. He was very reluctant to inflict pain on this noble young lady, but, as usual, he put the sacred cause of Mother Church above his own petty scruples. There is no doubt, however, that these interrogations contributed greatly to the mental anguish of the Cardinal.

**

Fra Benedetto does not explain why they caused Vittorini such anguish. A clue is to be found in the surviving records of the Ignotist interrogations. These are fragmentary and only two of Vernazza’s many interrogations survive, the second and later one under torture. The following extracts are taken from them. I have followed without modification the style in which the inquisitions were recorded. The interrogator is, as usual, not named, but ‘His Eminence’ can only be Vittorini himself:

On the 19th November 1572 at the Castel Sant Angelo. Katerina Vernazza.

- Asked if she knew the man known as Foscari?

- She had some acquaintance with him.

- If she and he had been lovers?

- It was impossible to define the word lover, for love takes many forms.

- If she had committed fornication with him?

- These were mere words. ‘Lover’, ‘fornication’, they had no meaning except as people gave them meaning.

- That La Vernazza understood quite well the meaning of these words.

- Indeed. Far better than His Eminence. But what business was it of his? She understood that she was here on a charge of heresy not fornication.

His Eminence then warned the said Katerina Vernazza to show respect to the Office of the Holy Inquisition. To which she replied that respect for the office did not imply respect for the officers. After a short while the interrogation was then resumed.

- Asked if the Ignotists worshipped a god called Agnoia?

- Replied that God had many names and no name. For did not the Apostle Paul himself commend the Athenians for their worship of the Unknown God?

- If Ignorance was not worshipped by the Ignotists?

- Ignorance must be acknowledged, for the most eminent and orthodox divines have said that God is unknowable.

- If she knew of a rite of the Ignotists known as the ‘Homily and Responses’?

- She knew of many homilies and many responses for the ways in which God may be worshipped were many and various.

- If thereby she meant that one way of worshipping God was as good as another?

- That His Eminence knew well that her assertion contained no such implication in reason or reality. . . .’

And so on. This sparring continues for several pages with La Vernazza more than holding her own against the Cardinal. He returned more than once to her relations with Foscari but got the same dusty response. By the time of the second interview it has become an obsession.

On 3rd January 1573 at the Castel Sant Angelo. Katerina Vernazza was brought to the Question. Disrobed, she was laid on the frame and tied to it by the legs and arms. Was shown the fire and the irons heating in them.

- La Vernazza persisted that she was guilty of no sacrilege or blasphemy. Asked why she had been brought here?

- Exhorted to tell the truth. The irons were brought to her and shown for the second time.

- Ah, my God! Will tell the whole truth.

- If it was true that she enjoyed relations with Foscari in the presence of others?

- Before God, it was a lie told against her by her enemies.

- Before God? What God? The God of the Ignotists, or the one true God?

- There is only one true God.

- If it was true that a black dog was crucified in a rite of the Ignotists?

- It was not a black dog.

- What was it then?

- It was a creature of the mind. It exists, but only as each one perceives it.

The first application of the heated irons to the left leg. Exhorted to tell the truth.

- Ah! God have Mercy! What must she say? The black dog was there in all of us. Even in the mind of His Eminence. There must be a sacrifice so that its true meaning may become apparent.

- Must not waste time with such triflings. What were her relations with Foscari?

- They were as His Eminence imagined them to be.

- Ah, God! Ah, God! May His Eminence know such agony. May His Eminence know what he will not let himself know. May his dreams speak to him.

During the rest of the interrogation nothing of importance is said. The Cardinal presses Vernazza again and again about her relations with Foscari to which she returns ambiguous replies. The irons are applied several more times. Despite the clinical official language in which it is couched, the account of Vernazza’s interrogation is almost unbearably painful to read. Some days later Vernazza died as a result of her ordeal. Other Ignotists were handed over to the secular arm and burned alive on the Campo de’ Fiori. Fra Benedetto relates what happened next:

It may be said that His Eminence took all these incidents too much to heart, but it was in his nature to pursue his duty with the utmost zeal and with no thought to himself. It is true that the matter of the Ignotists preyed on his mind, so that they invaded not only his waking, but also his sleeping moments. He brooded over the meaning of a number of their writings, mostly composed by Foscari, and in particular the one called the ‘Homily and Responses’. He read it many times and when I suggested he put it away or burned it, he replied that he must fathom its mystery. If he did that, he said, he could root out Ignotism for ever.

It was very shortly after the death of Vernazza that the Cardinal began to be plagued by dreams. He would tell them to me because he said that relating them relieved him of some of the burden they placed on his spirit. Two in particular troubled him, because, unlike most dreams, they did not shift and change shape but held to one place and one consistent narrative. Their meanings, however, were very dark and neither I nor His Eminence could guess at them.

In the first dream he found himself walking along a stony path in a great wide valley. The sun was high and hot, the place waterless and barren. But this was at first a joyous dream, because he had a companion on his journey, our Blessed Saviour himself. His Eminence’s face lit up when he told this part of the story. Our Saviour walked on his right and just a little ahead of him, but would often turn round to give him words of comfort and encouragement. His Eminence said that if only he could remember those words that Our Saviour spoke to him, all the agonies of his spirit would be laid to rest.

As they walked along, His Eminence trying with all his strength to go faster to catch up with the Saviour, and the Saviour urging him onwards with sweet words, His Eminence told me that he noticed that something had come up beside him on his left hand. It was a small black dog. There was nothing unusual about the creature, except its utter and complete blackness. (His Eminence was not sure of the breed—his knowledge of dogs, he freely confessed to me, was limited—but he said it had a squat nose, a round barrel of a body and little thin legs.) It trotted briskly, never more than three feet away, always keeping exact pace with him, however fast he walked. Otherwise it seemed to take no notice of him. His Eminence said that, as the journey went on, he began to feel a peculiar and quite unreasonable horror of this creature. Several times he thought he might draw the Saviour’s attention to the little dog, but something prevented him. (Something like shame, he said.)

Presently they came to the end of the valley and to the foot of a high mountain. A rocky path wound upwards to the summit, and there Our Saviour left His Eminence saying that the Cardinal must make the ascent alone. Mourning the departure of his Divine Companion, His Eminence began the difficult climb and was further distressed to find that the little dog went with him. He tried to send it away, but it took no notice.

As he climbed up the path, the dog kept pace with him, but was now much closer, almost under his feet at times. A horror of touching it with any part of his body prevented His Eminence from physically attacking it. The stones he threw always missed the animal. He became possessed by the idea of escaping it, to the exclusion of all other thoughts. He started to run. The little dog ran behind him and began to emit sounds. They were not barks, His Eminence said; they were not the sounds that any dog might make. Though inarticulate, they were human in character, like the cries of a woman in pain. As he told me about this, my master the Cardinal covered his eyes in horror.

In his dream the Cardinal continued to run faster up the hill, but in no way could escape the dog. Suddenly, ahead of him on the path, was a great black hole, but His Eminence was running so fast that he could not prevent himself from falling headlong into it. Then he entered a great yawning darkness in which all sense of distance and direction vanished. The end of it only came when he awoke in his own bedroom.

The second dream began as a continuation of the first. He was falling down a dark hole. Reasoning with himself, he became convinced that he had died. Then suddenly, as happens in dreams, he found himself descending the steep steps into the dungeons of the Castel Sant Angelo. He still believed that he had died since the staircase that he descended was not quite like the one he knew in the real Castel Sant Angelo, firstly because there were many more steps. In the second place there was something curious about the walls. They were soft, warm and viscous to the touch. They felt like flayed flesh and shuddered as if a living pulse was moving through them. His Eminence said he had the feeling of walking through the organs of a vast body.

Something compelled him to continue to descend the steps towards the chamber where heretics and recreants are put to the Question. It occurred to him that, now he was dead, perhaps he was going to be punished for the pain he had inflicted on those he had tortured. He began to feel a great terror that, as soon as he entered the chamber, devils would seize him and bind him down, but he went on, trusting in a righteous God. When he came into the dungeon he found it to be deserted except for two figures bound and ready to be put to the question. One was La Vernazza, the other was a man with a leather mask over his face whom the Cardinal by instinct knew to be Foscari. The instruments were heating in the brazier. His Eminence waited to be bound down and tortured himself, but no-one came. Vernazza and Foscari remained silent, staring at him. Presently he saw one of the instruments, now red hot at its end, lift itself out of the brazier and come towards him, the handle towards his hand. Then he knew that he was destined to complete in the afterlife the work he had begun on earth. He approached the two bound figures and begged them very earnestly, as they valued their immortal souls, to confess their sins and errors. The figures remained silent and so the Cardinal felt it necessary to cause the pain which, in life, he was always reluctant to inflict. He had never used the instruments in person before, but he did so now.

His Eminence told me that what happened then filled him with an unbearable sickness and horror which lasted long after he had woken up. Each time he scorched the flesh of his victims with the burning iron they did not cry out in pain. They sighed with pleasure, giggled, laughed and uttered blasphemies such as he had read in the Homily and Responses. Perplexed and frantic, His Eminence began to strike Foscari and Vernazza all over with the burning irons. He stabbed them, he flung hot coals over them, burning himself in the process; but the more he attacked them the more they laughed and uttered blasphemies. Then he realised that he was in Hell, because in Hell there is no justice, but everyone is tortured in the way that is most terrible to themselves.

Despite the torment to his mind that these dreams gave him, His Eminence never relented in his pursuit of the heretical Ignotists. He succeeded in wiping the stain of their presence from the face of Rome; but, ever zealous for God and his Holy Church, he remained unsatisfied because he had not captured their leader Foscari.

Foscari was never heard of again, unless one counts the rumour that reached us some years later that he was lecturing on Natural Philosophy at the University of Leyden under the name of Doctor Foscarin and that he had a number of followers who called themselves Foscarines.