(or: How to Distinguish Fake News Six and a Half Centuries Before Snopes)
Your
long-AWOL blogger is back, once again bringing you more than you ever
wanted to know about the middle ages in Italy. Today we will probe an
instance of research serendipity and how it turned up a whole slew of
fascinating medieval guys ‘n gals we would otherwise never have
known much about, despite the lurid tabloid-style coverage they got
from the chroniclers of their day.
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| Jacopo da Bologna |
I'm part of a trio that performs medieval music, and I was doing some background reading on fourteenth-century Italian composers prior to our recent concert, when I found the following snippet in a biographical sketch of Jacopo da Bologna, written by M. Thomas Marrocco:
Subsequent events in the conjugal life of Luchino Visconti would have us believe that the atmosphere of the court became surcharged with tension, suspicion, deceit, and finally murder.
Hmm.
I think maybe there’s a story here.
The
musician in me said, “Well, that’s interesting. I wonder which of
these pieces Jacopo wrote while he was in Milan.”
But
the novelist in me said, “Whoa! Murder? Conjugal life? Tension,
suspicion, and deceit? I need to know more about all of this!”
Whereupon
my inner musician raised her hands, palms out, backed away slowly,
and said, “Fine. You do that. I’ll just go practice a bit, shall
I?” Meanwhile, my inner novelist was digging in.
First
I read further. I found a quote from a Milanese archivist and
historian, Luigi Osio, which elaborated a bit on what Marrocco had
said (translation is, I think, Marrocco’s):
After almost 10 years of administration, he [Luchino] died suddenly at the age of 57 years on January 24, 1349, not without suspecting, however, that his wife [Isabella], fearing death at his hands, he being convinced of her infidelity, had had him poisoned.
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| Luchino Visconti |
The
plot thickens. Infidelity? Sudden death? Poison? I am intrigued.
However, I also experience my first little hiccup of skepticism: it
was summer of 1348 that the Black Death ravaged Italy, and a sudden
death in January 1349 might not, in fact, be all that surprising. I
mean, lots of people were doing that. It had become A Thing.
But
let’s see what others have concluded. On a whim, I picked up
Barbara Tuchman’s book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th
Century, since this incident
sounded sufficiently calamitous to be in there. And sure enough,
there it was:
Luchino… had been murdered by his wife, who, after a notable orgy on a river barge during which she entertained several lovers at once including the Doge of Venice and her own nephew Galeazzo, decided to eliminate her husband to forestall his same intention with regard to her.
Lots
of material here. First, I love that reference to a “notable orgy.”
Would that be as opposed to her usual run of the mill everyday
orgies? And the Doge of Venice? Izzy was clearly not slumming, here.
And her own nephew? What was that
about? And on a
river barge? This makes the Viking River Cruises look downright tame.
It
was time to do some serious poking around.
What
the chroniclers say happened
The
overall story, as best I can patch it together from various sources
which tend to disagree on dates and certain details, is this:
In
or around the year 1331, Luchino Visconti, a Ghibelline nobleman in
line to become lord of Milan and already lord of Pavia, wed Isabella
Fieschi, a Genoan noblewoman from a Guelf family and a niece of Pope
Adrian V. The wedding was celebrated with such pomp and ostentation
that historical re-enactors do it all over again every year. Here’s
a link to a picture of one such recent reenactment.
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| Pope Adriano V (Isabella's Uncle Ottobuono) |
It
was Luchino’s third marriage, Isabella’s first. She was much his
junior. She was said to be beautiful, lighthearted, and exuberant. He
was said to be easily offended and someone who never laughed, and in
fact had a prominent frown line etched deeply into his forehead. He
was the father of two illegitimate sons, but he had no legitimate
heirs. Luchino and his brother Giovanni, an archbishop, shared the
lordship of Milan after their father Matteo I Visconti died in 1339,
but Giovanni left most of the secular leadership to Luchino.
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| Giovanni Visconti |
Things
went along well enough, except for the occasional excommunication,
accusation of heresy, territorial dispute, and so on, until 1346
(some sources say 1345, some say 1340), when Luchino learned of a
plot against him. The conspiracy was spearheaded by a nobleman,
Franceschino Pusterla, whose wife Margherita may or may not have been
Luchino’s mistress. Unfortunately for Visconti family unity, also
involved were Luchino’s three nephews, Matteo, Bernabò,
and Galeazzo. Luchino had Franceschino hunted down and killed along
with his young son or
sons, and exiled the three
nephews. Nobody is quite sure what happened to Margherita, but we’ll
get back to her later.
After
sixteen childless years, at long last, in August of 1346, twin sons
were born to Isabella and Luchino. The composer Jacopo da Bologna
wrote a celebratory madrigal on the occasion of the baptism of little
Giovanni and Luca Novello [“Junior”], and you can listen to it here.
In
1347, Isabella obtained her husband’s permission to travel to
Venice, so that her little boys could be blessed in San Marco. She
set off by boat, flaunting a level of ostentation that rivaled her
wedding 16 years earlier. She was accompanied by musicians, jesters,
cooks, waiters, servants, and a bevy of lovely female attendants,
and people stood on the banks of the waterway to applaud as her boat
passed by.
So
far, so good. If the chroniclers are right (and I am not convinced of
this), she then made a teensy little error of judgment, and went on a
boat ride with three fine gentlemen – Ugolino Gonzaga, Andrea
Dandolo (the Doge of Venice), and her nephew Galeazzo (remember him,
from the conspiracy?). She is said to have entertained them in a way
not entirely consistent with her marriage vows.
This
incident coming to the ears of her husband (not too surprising
considering all those jesters and cooks and musicians and ladies),
Luchino flew into a rage and vowed to kill her in various unpleasant
ways, which he had a reputation for being good at. However, in
January of 1348 he died suddenly, and it was said by many that
Isabella had poisoned him, so maybe she was even better. She became
known as “Isabella del Veleno” - Isabel of the Poison.
She
then tried to set herself up as regent for her son Luchino Novello
(little Giovanni had died by this time, as so many medieval infants
did), but her late husband’s brother Giovanni checkmated this
effort, declaring Luchino Novello to be not only illegitimate, but
the son of Luchino’s nephew Galeazzo (remember Galeazzo?) and
therefore ineligible for the succession. Giovanni still didn’t
really want to deal with Milan himself, so he called back his trio of
nephews, banished by Luchino after the conspiracy, and gave the
lordship of the city over to Matteo, Bernabò,
and – you guessed it – Galeazzo. What’s sauce for the goose
apparently is not sauce for the gander.
Isabella
lived with her remaining now-disinherited son for several years under
house arrest in Milan, in a Visconti property on Via Romana, and
finally escaped to the relative safety of her family’s castle,
Castello Savignone. Luchino Novello grew up to be a condotierro,
never on particularly good terms with Milan; his mother presumably
died at some point in the Castello. (If you are wondering how the
Visconti managed to treat a pope’s niece in this way, note that
Pope Adrian V - born Ottobuono Fieschi - was elected to the papacy
many years earlier, in 1276, long before Isabella was born. Also he
was a very short-lived pope, reigning for only a little over a month
before he died.)
 | |||
| Castello Savignone (being restored) - licensed to Davide Papalini via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons |
It’s
impossible to do this kind of research without turning up various
fascinating tidbits. They may not be relevant, but they’re fun, so
here are a few of them, presented briefly.
Visconti coat of arms
The
blue snake eating a red person is one of the most dramatic devices we
see in medieval Italy. The Visconti motto, “Vipereos mores non
violabo,” apparently translates to something like “I will not
violate the snake’s uses.” The Visconti might well have been the
sort of folks that would find lots of uses for snakes. Apparently one
of their ancestors had killed a marauding snake that bit children.
Matteo
(not the nephew, but Luchino’s father)
At
one point Matteo was accused by Pope John XXII of conspiring with
none other than Dante Alighieri to commit necromancy. It doesn’t
seem to have come to much, but still, pretty wild stuff. He was also
accused of adhering to the Cathar heresy.
 |
| Bust of Andrea Dandolo (Istitute Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti) |
Andrea
Dandolo
The
Venetian doge-on-the-boat was
a friend and patron of the great poet Francesco Petrarca. Still a
young man, Dandolo had a lot to deal with. Even before the plague hit
his city, Venice had been through a major famine and a disastrous
earthquake, the latter striking on the 25th
January 1348. And the plague hit Venice hard, killing perhaps
three-fifths of the population (around 45,000 – 50,000 people) and
completely wiping out perhaps fifty noble families. Maybe he needed a
boat ride and a little R&R.
That's Doge Andrea Dandolo at the foot of the cross.
Ugolino
Gonzaga
This
third man-on-the-boat, the one who wasn’t a doge or Isabella’s
nephew by marriage, was a contottiero. His third wife, whom he
married in or around 1349, was Caterina Visconti, daughter of Matteo
Visconti (one of the conspiratorial nephews).
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| An episode during the plague at Milan (Wellcome Images) |
The
plague in Milan
According
to E.L. Knox, in The Black Death, “In Milan, to take one of the
most successful examples, city officials immediately walled up houses
found to have the plague, isolating the healthy in them along with
the sick.” Draconian, but apparently effective. And not something
that could have happened without the full agreement of Luchino.
 |
| Galeazzo Visconti |
 |
| Francesco Petrarca |
Galeazzo
II Visconti
Luchino’s
nephew, supposedly Isabella’s lover and the father of her sons,
and one of the men on the infamous boat, Galeazzo II was known for
his sponsorship of writers and intellectuals, including Petrarca; for
establishing the University of Pavia;
and also for his introduction of the Querasima torture protocol, in
which a victim slated for death was tortured over a forty-day period,
each torment carefully calibrated to cause maximum pain while keeping
the condemned person alive over that extended period. It
featured a day of torture followed by a day of recuperation, and
involved the rack, the wheel, flaying, eye-gouging, cutting off
facial features and limbs, and the strappado.
Luchino
He
may have been known as a tyrant, but he apparently loved his dog.
Luchino was an avid hunter, and the hunting hound called Varino was
featured in more than one madrigal written for his court. Luchino was
also a great castle builder.
Luchino
Novello
He
eventually married Luisa Adorno, daughter of another Venetian doge,
Gabriele Adorno. He was probably only about ten years old when he and
his mother escaped from their Milanese imprisonment.
Margherita
Pusterla
Margherita,
born a Visconti, was a cousin of Luchino’s. Many believe that she
was also his mistress. She was married to Franceschino Pusterla,
author of the conspiracy against Luchino, who, when the plot was
uncovered, attempted to flee, but was captured and executed. Some
believe that Margherita tried to flee with him and was also caught
and killed; others believe she managed to escape. A legend says that
she was walled up alive in the
Castello di Invorio by order of Luchino, and on dark nights her ghost
can be heard screaming for help from this tower:
Margherita
captured the imagination of the writer Giovanni Cesare Cantù
(1804-1895), who wrote a novel about her despite being a political
prisoner at the time, deprived of writing implements. He told her
story by writing on rags with a toothpick and candle smoke.
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| Cesare Cantù |
The
composer Giovanni Pacini wrote an opera in 1856 about the unfortunate
Margherita, based on Cantù’s
novel.
Jacopo
da Bologna
Remember
Jacopo? That’s how this whole project got started. In addition to
several madrigals extolling Luchino and his beautiful wife, written
while employed at the court in Milan, Jacopo later
wrote
a piece about a beautiful, once-loving woman who had turned into a
poisonous viper. Anybody we know, do you think? By the time this one
was written, Jacopo had moved on to Verona and was working for
Mastino II della
Scala,
yet another nephew of Luchino. Isabella’s
guilt may have been the official family position.
And
finally, last but never least, Isabella Fieschi herself. Is all this
scuttlebutt true? The chroniclers insist that it is, but I am not so
sure. It seems unlikely to me that she would take that huge entourage
of people off to Venice and then hold an all-too-public orgy on her
husband’s boat. I mean, would that really be prudent? Considering
Luchino’s reputation? But it is exactly the sort of rumor that
would spread like wildfire with the help of just a bit of malicious
gossip.
So
we have Isabella, still beautiful but no longer young by medieval
standards (assuming she was around 15 when she married, she would
have been in her early thirties by this time), and just having lost
one of her two sons, and probably glad enough to be out from under
her dour husband’s scrutiny for a while. But
even if she chose to kick up her heels a bit, is it likely she would
have risked everything in that way? I can’t make myself believe it.
Also,
at least some chroniclers suggest that the conspirators were exiled
perhaps as early as 1340, which would have made it rather difficult
for Galeazzo to father Isabella’s sons. But perhaps the exile did
happen in the same year as the birth, which would have made his
paternity at least possible.
Did
Isabella have enemies? Well, sure – she was from Genoa, and the
Genoans and the Milanese were at each other’s throats often enough.
She was from a Guelf family, he was Ghibelline. And remember the
conspiracy? Anyone who had sympathized with Franceschino Pusterla’s
attempted coup might well have held a grudge against Isabella
or other members of the family. (I wonder, how did Margherita and
Isabella feel about each other? Were they rivals? Friends? Was
Margherita Luchino’s mistress, and/or did Isabella believe she
was?)
Another
thing to consider is the fact that Isabella gave birth to twins. In
the middle ages, many people believed that twins were evidence that
the mother had been unfaithful – that two fathers were involved.
Could it be that giving birth to twin boys sixteen years after she
was married was what sealed her fate?
We
don’t even know when Isabella returned to Milan. If she was aware
of her husband’s anger and lethal intentions, would she have gone
back? And yet she was placed under house arrest in Milan, so at some
point she did go back. Presumably she did so to push her son’s
claim to the lordship of the city, once Luchino was dead. But it
seems highly unlikely that she was there to poison her husband in
person, not that it would have been difficult to find and hire a
surrogate. However, any of Luchino’s many enemies might have seen
an opportunity to off him and see her take the blame.
If
Izzy didn’t have Luchino poisoned (assuming he didn’t die of the
plague), then who did? We need to ask, along with Cicero and many
another ancient jurist, “Cui bono?” Who profits? Presumably, one
or all of the three brothers who eventually took Luchino’s place:
Matteo, Bernabò,
and
the ubiquitous Galeazzo. (Just offering up an alternative theory
here.)
One
doesn’t have to look back six and a half centuries to find examples
of a prominent woman brought down by gossip and innuendo. I can’t
prove it (not that the chroniclers are particularly heavy on proof
either), but I think she was maligned unfairly. She was bright enough
to escape from house arrest in Milan; how could she also have been
dumb enough to destroy her future and her son’s for a moment of
frankly unlikely lasciviousness?
And
even if she was, does that make her capable of murder? Pretty much
every male in the family had proved his murderous proclivities over
and over, but all we know of Isabella is that she was a pretty woman
who loved pleasure.
We’ll
never know. But my position, for what it’s worth, is that history
has not been fair to Isabella Fieschi.
