The Tigress of Forli (6 page)

Besides inciting indignation and envy with his display of sumptuous possessions, certain of the duke's personal excesses were becoming more audacious. He had once boasted that his greatest sin was lust and that he possessed it "in full perfection, for I have employed it in all the fashions and forms that one can do."
⁴
Wives, daughters, and sisters of other men were not safe from the duke's advances, and part of his private purse dealt with "personal affairs" (
certi nostri segreti
)—payoffs to mistresses and dishonored girls.

In 1474, however, the thirty-year-old duke developed an all-consuming infatuation with Lucia Marliani, a noble nineteen-year-old deemed the "most beautiful woman in Milan." Lucia became Galeazzo's new mistress with the complicity of her husband, Ambrogio Raverti, a Milanese merchant who knew a good business opportunity when he saw it. Raverti received four thousand ducats in hush money from the duke and another four thousand to dower Lucia's sisters; Lucia herself was awarded a yearly allowance plus an expensive residence. The besotted duke made just one contractual stipulation: Lucia must not "intermingle herself with her husband in carnal bond without our special permission, nor to have it with any other man except our person."
⁵

At first the duke tried to keep this affair secret. But as he made extravagant outlays for his mistress, such as twelve thousand ducats for a single brooch, word was bound to get out. By 1475, Lucia had been made a countess, and consequently the duke's donations to her were legally protected against any future attempt at recoupment that the duke's wife or his successor might make.

As Galeazzo's behavior became increasingly despotic and depraved, dissatisfaction mounted in the public square and hostility grew abroad, casting a shadow over the ducal household. The atmosphere of Christmastide 1476 was very different from the festive events preceding Caterina's marriage.

To make matters worse, that December the plague had erupted in neighboring Pavia, which meant quarantine for the city, panic in all the neighboring towns, and a shortened list of Christmas guests. Far from dampening Galeazzo's holiday spirit, the reduced numbers relieved him. Not without reason, he was beginning to suspect plots against his life. In November, he sent two of his own brothers, Ludovico (called "the Moor") and Sforza Maria, to France for the entire Christmas season, owing to the disagreeable fact that the duke could not be sure that they were still loyal to him. Bona of Savoy was tormented by nightmares. And the citizens of Milan were remarking on ominous portents—mysterious comets, hovering ravens, and ghostly flames enveloping the duke's chambers.

Caterina, now old enough to sense the uneasy atmosphere around her, would have wondered why her uncles were not present for the burning of the
ciocco.
Perhaps she was struck by the contrast between her father's relentless mirth and the grave and worried expressions of his courtiers. On Christmas Day, a jovial Galeazzo Maria attended his usual three Masses and enjoyed a long hunt. His foreign enemies were far away, intimates of dubious loyalty were at a safe distance, and the little coterie that remained was composed of faithful retainers. Convinced he had suppressed any enthusiasm for revolt in Milan, he rejoiced in the good fortunes of the house of Sforza.

As the Milanesi celebrated the Lord's birth, however, three citizens were busily plotting their lord's demise. Behind the walls of the monastery of Saint Ambrogio, Andrea Lampugnano, Carlo Visconti, and Girolamo Olgiati were beseeching the patron saint of Milan to help them rid the city of its tyrannical ruler and restore freedom. At least that was the prayer of nineteen-year-old Olgiati, the youngest of the conspirators. A poet and gentleman of the court, he owed his superb classical education in part to the ducal library. Having read of Brutus, Cassius, and the tyrannicide of Julius Caesar, he dreamed of republican liberty, eventually hatching the plot against the duke. Lampugnano, another courtier, would not have objected had such high motives been ascribed to him as well, but the true reasons for his involvement were rather more pedestrian. Having invested and lost substantial sums in unfortunate real estate deals, he hoped that the civil unrest following the duke's death would wipe clean his numerous debts. As for Carlo Visconti, the duke would have been shocked to see him among the conspirators. Visconti was the ducal chancellor, had been a trusted member of the duke's Council of Justice since 1474, and handled the delicate negotiations and correspondence with the Holy Roman Emperor when Galeazzo tried to gain recognition as the duke of Milan. Galeazzo would have been even more taken aback to hear of Carlo's motive: he was bent on avenging his sister, who had been seduced by Galeazzo. In a milieu where many husbands were happy to sell their wives to curry a little ducal favor, few would have thought that an outraged brother would become the instrument of the duke's end.

December 26, the Feast of Saint Stephen, was a cold, gray day in Milan. Icy winds from the Alps had brought enough snow to blanket the roads, and the duke was reconsidering his plan to hear Mass in the Church of Saint Stephen. Anxiously Bona begged him to remain in the castle, but the choir had already been sent ahead, and Galeazzo decided to maintain his yearly tradition of honoring the first Christian martyr. In his favorite room of the castle—decorated with golden sunbursts surrounding a dove against a red ground and Bona's motto,
À BON DROIT
, inscribed in gold—Galeazzo's children gathered to see their father off. His armorer brought the steel breastplate that he usually wore under his clothes for protection, but the duke, fearing that the metal would ruin the line of his new ermine-trimmed silk robe, decided to go without it. He embraced his two eldest sons and mounted his horse, riding off with his usual entourage of twenty courtiers.

At the church, Galeazzo dismounted and entered the ancient marble portal. Throngs of subjects surrounded their ruler, offering him good wishes. The lackeys, in livery of bright red and white, cleared a path as Galeazzo made his way down the nave, returning the greetings of the Milanesi. Then Andrea Lampugnano, assuming the subservient pose of a petitioner, approached the duke. Galeazzo, accustomed to frequent requests from Lampugnano, raised a preemptory hand as the conspirator knelt, sweeping his cap off his head. What the duke took to be a pleading gesture was in reality the secret signal to the assassins. Lampugnano struck first, plunging his knife into the duke's chest, and in a matter of moments the assassins rained fourteen blows on their victim. Thirty-two-year-old Galeazzo Maria fell, with barely enough time to gasp "I am dead." He expired on the cold floor of the basilica, his new scarlet suit stained with the deeper crimson of his own blood.

The conspirators had assumed that the people of Milan would rejoice at the assassination and rally to them in the expectation of greater freedom. They had miscalculated. Several horrified Milanesi moved forward to avenge their duke. Olgiati and Visconti escaped, but Lampugnano was found hiding among the skirts of the women and was killed instantly. The vengeful crowd dragged his corpse through the streets until it was mangled beyond recognition. Visconti was turned in by his own family, and Olgiati was apprehended almost immediately. Both men were publicly quartered, but Olgiati's stoicism earned him the admiration of the onlookers. His last words were
Mors acerba, fama perpetua—
"Death is bitter, but fame is eternal."
⁶
When the news reached the palace, there was no time for grieving. Everyone in Caterina's world sprang into action. Fearing a popular uprising in the wake of the duke's death, Galeazzo's trusted secretatary of state, Cicco Simonetta, raised all the drawbridges of the Porta Giovia castle, rendering the building secure. He then announced that six-year-old Gian Galeazzo was the new duke of Milan. Bona and Cicco both suspected that the duke's brothers, in league with the king of France, had a hand in the murder, but to avoid precipitating a coup d'état they chose not to publicly implicate them and instead declared that the assassins had acted alone, under the spell of ancient Roman ideology. This served to reassure their Florentine allies that the state was stable.

Bona then declared herself regent for her young son. Gathering the men-at-arms, she put them under the command of Robert Sanseverino, who had served the duchy for thirty-seven years. To placate the people of Milan, the duchess abolished the odious
inquinto
as well as several other taxes on basic necessities. Caterina witnessed Bona's transformation from quiet, patient wife and mother, enjoying leisurely days in her cottage on the castle grounds, to a dynamic and competent head of state, managing her responsibilities to the populace and dealing with rival claimants and external threats. The metamorphosis of Bona must have been a great lesson to the young countess, who knew that one day she might well find herself in a similar position.

Archived amid businesslike correspondence establishing her son's rule and issuing decrees, an extant letter from Bona of Savoy to Pope Sixtus IV provides an interesting glimpse into the private fears and thoughts of the newly widowed duchess. Frightened that her despotic, unfaithful husband Galeazzo had died suddenly and in a state of sin, she asked the pope if there was any way of obtaining absolution for him after death. Aware of Saint Francis's harsh dictum—"Woe to those who die in mortal sin!"—Bona was trying to save her husband's soul. Bona confessed for him, declaring that Galeazzo was "versed in warfare, both lawful and unlawful; in pillage, robbery, and devastation of the country" as well as "in carnal vices; in notorious and scandalous simony and in various and innumerable other crimes." Yet despite the duke's overwhelming sins, the duchess desired to free "that unhappy soul from the pains of Purgatory" because, as she wrote, "after God" she "loved [him] above all else."
⁷

Sixtus IV was more than willing to use his papal authority to absolve the duke and even went so far as to declare that with Galeazzo's death, "peace itself died in Italy." Bona, in return, repaid the sums her husband had extorted and donated a conspicuous amount of money to the papal fund for the defense of Christendom against the Turks.

Nor did Bona forget Caterina. In the first weeks of 1476, a month after Galeazzo's death, she wrote to Girolamo, confirming all the marital arrangements and declaring Caterina, now thirteen, old enough to join her husband in Rome. Her haste was probably dictated by concern for Caterina's safety in case a coup was attempted in Milan and as a preemptive move before the pope or Girolamo chose to repudiate the bride, now that her powerful father was dead. Cardinal Mellini, papal legate of Sixtus IV, traveled from Rome to celebrate the wedding, the last step in finalizing the marriage. Bona and all the court were present at the ceremony in Milan, which was simple and without pomp because the state was in mourning. In a bizarre turn of events, the one person who didn't appear was the bridegroom, Girolamo, for reasons that remain unclear. The count claimed that urgent business in Rome kept him from attending his own wedding; its nature remains unknown. Perhaps the sickly Girolamo was too ill to face the journey. At any rate, his behavior stood in sharp contrast to that of the eager and amorous suitor of 1473.

The simplicity of Caterina's wedding by proxy paralleled that of Galeazzo's burial. After the morning of December 26, when her father rode to his death at Saint Stephen's, Caterina never saw him again. As the assassins were hunted and captured, the duke's corpse lay unattended on the basilica floor. During the night, Bona had sent three hundred ducats' worth of jewels and a new robe to clothe her husband's body. After this small concession to Galeazzo's love of finery, the earthly remains of the duke of Milan were unceremoniously dumped into his father's sarcophagus in the cathedral; not even an inscription of his own name was added. The magnificent choir, which had delighted him so much in life, did not sing at his funeral, for no public Mass was offered, in fear that it might stir up rebellion. None of the pageantry so dear to Galeazzo graced his farewell to life, and Caterina's goodbye to her childhood home was equally unremarkable.

Christmastide, once the most blissful time of year for young Caterina, had now been twice tainted: by her premature deflowering and by her father's murder. In later years, when Caterina would have to fight for her life instead of celebrate around the
ciocco,
she would be more than ready.

T
ODAY I ARRIVED
safe and sound in Parma, but nonetheless inconsolable."
¹
Writing to her sister Chiara, on April 27, 1477, Caterina admitted that she keenly felt the separation from her family. Only three days into her journey to join her husband in Rome, Caterina's thoughts turned often and fondly to her stepmother, Bona, to whom she owed "all the honors paid her from land to land." On the same day, Caterina also wrote to Bona directly, using more formal tones as befitting her new rank but expressing the same message: the thirteen-year-old girl was holding up well but was already homesick.

Anyone who witnessed the lavish parade winding its way through Lombardy would never have guessed that the elegant young countess with the extravagant escort was feeling such lonely nostalgia. Count Girolamo had added his own retainers to Caterina's Milanese entourage of 40 relatives and servants, swelling their numbers to 150 or more. The glamorous retinue included the archbishop of Cesena and his escort of 13, the governor of Imola with 12 men, plus local nobles, musicians, and ladies in waiting. Caterina's procession coursed like a bright ribbon through the low-lying green plains of Lombardy. The scarlet and white flags emblazoned with the Sforza viper were followed by the silver and black livery of Cesena and the reds and blues of Imola; the vermilion rose of the Riario family blossomed among them. Before the era of mass media, such processions reinforced a family's status, announced political events, and provided entertainment. Village women gawked at the latest fashions, men discussed the suits of armor, and children scampered to find some souvenir of the passage of a contemporary celebrity. In the spring of 1477, the sound of trumpets echoing through the countryside announced the arrival of the new countess of Imola, bride of the pope's favorite nephew and sister to Gian Galeazzo Sforza, the new duke of Milan.