1429
CHAPTER 14
IN THE YEAR of our Lord 1429, in one day, a great shame descended on the Florentine Republic. It was a bright November morning with an early frost underfoot and a hard cold sky above, a promising day for sunshine and merriment and sharp business for the vendors of onion tarts and sugared apples and those small meat pies that are eaten in hand. The wine taverns had been at serious business since dawn. The Piazza San Marco was crowded with city people and with country folk who had come in from the hillsides around Florence to witness the first public execution for sodomy within memory. Not for sodomy only, of course, but for the rape and mutilation of a ten-year-old boy.
Piero di Jacopo was to be burned at the stake and his ashes thrown into the Arno. It was Piero’s ill fortune to have raped the one child whose violation could concentrate the attention and the powers of the two great warring families of Florence, the Medici and the Albizzi.
Piero di Jacopo was a coppersmith from Bologna in the employ of Franco Severini, a servant to the estate manager of the Medici. As fate would have it, the boy he raped was the son of Marcello di Angelo, a servant to the estate manager of the Albizzi. Determining di Jacopo’s punishment, therefore, became a bitter contest between the Medici and the Albizzi. But in the end, since the accused was a notorious sodomite and since the violated child remained even now in medical care, judgment went to the Albizzi and di Jacopo was sentenced to death.
By sunrise it seemed that all the city had poured into the Piazza San Marco and waited, eager for the ceremony to begin. Somehow everyone knew the ritual: the prisoner would be led out, the indictment read, and then—tied to an ass—he would be paraded through the principal streets of the city to the Place of Justice to be burned at the stake. The excitement increased as the wait grew longer. A dense crowd, thick with the smell of wine and garlic, clustered around the church steps in anticipation. Children had ceased to run about and even the dogs had given over their quarrels and seemed to be waiting. The guards stood to attention, holding the crowd a little distance from the church steps.
At last the San Lorenzo bell began to toll its death knell and the church door was thrown open. A priest appeared—a Prior of the Benedictines—vested in a ceremonial cope of black velvet rich with gold embroidery and carrying a tall processional cross. He was followed by a young boy in a red gown and he in turn by a procession of six priests robed in black and holding before them huge black candles. They in turn were followed by two guards who led di Jacopo out onto the church steps. A great cry went up—“Sodomite! Burn him!”—and the crowd surged forward to get a better look at him. He wore only a long white shirt and his feet were bare and he shivered in the morning cold. He limped when he walked because of course he had been tortured into confession. But he had the comfort of knowing that because he had confessed his sins, mercy had been granted him: he would be hanged until dead before the fire was lit. But that would be later. Now he was the central event in this celebration of justice.
The cries to burn him continued on and an old woman threw a stone but she was restrained at once by the guards. This was to be an orderly ceremony, to warn and to instruct.
The Benedictine Prior handed off his gilded processional cross to the young boy in the red gown—this was the boy’s task, to hold the crucifix and by his own tender years to remind the crowd of the violated victim—and then, representing the Church militant, the Prior stepped forward and in a stout voice made his proclamation.
“In the name of Christ our Savior, praise and glory to God our Father. Amen. The trumpet of the Lord and the voice of the Highest shall call out on the day of judgment: ‘You who are worthy, come, O blessed of my father; and you who are unworthy, O accursed ones, go into the eternal fire.’ ”
He continued these holy denunciations for some minutes and finished with a malediction for di Jacopo and an exhortation to the rest of us.
“Do justice on the body of this sinner, as righteous sons of God and servants of our holy Church.” He sketched a great sign of the cross over the crowd. “May the mercy of God our Father and the merits of his son, our savior Jesus Christ, descend upon you and remain forever. Amen.”
He stepped to the side then so that the citizen representative appointed by the Curators of the Night Curfew—the Otto di Guardia—could pronounce the indictment on behalf of the Republic. This was Ser Bonaventura degli Buondelmonti, a man well advanced in years, chosen for this task by reason of his large family and his well-known detestation of the sin of sodomy.
A brief drum roll summoned attention and Buondelmonti began to read out the charges. “Theft, extortion, corruption, soul murder.” He read slowly. He had difficulty making out the script on the parchment and he was further afflicted by a catch in his voice and almost at once the crowd, attentive until now, began to grow restive. Buondelmonti labored on: “Sodomy, active and passive, continued and repeated over many years.” He paused and looked up. “The rape of a child under the age of ten, the severe laceration of his anus, injury to his head and arms.” He looked up once more and with difficulty cleared his throat. “Kidnapping and violation, debauchery, perversion, and other enormities hateful to God and man. These crimes cry to heaven for vengeance.”
“Burn him!” someone shouted.
“Enough of this! Let us see him burned!”
When at last Buondelmonti ground to a stop—“Vengeance now and punishment for eternity!” he cried—the crowd greeted his words with shouts and cat calls.
There came a pause, with much shifting about of Church and Republic officials at the top of the stairs. Nobody knew what came next.
“Strip him,” someone called from the crowd.
At this, the guards led di Jacopo forward and steadied him between them. Then, grasping his shirt at the neck—one on either side—they gave a single hard pull and tore the shirt from neck to hem. Instantly he was exposed to the crowd, naked, shivering. There was laughter and whistling and applause. He tried to cover himself but the guards tied his hands behind his back and a long cheer went up from the crowd. His privy parts were raw and swollen and this was what they had longed to see: he had been punished in the place of his crime. They shouted obscenities, they cursed his soul, and di Jacopo lowered his head in shame. He was exhausted already and it was early in the day.
The young boy in red had gone into the church and now he reappeared carrying a huge crown. It was a bishop’s mitre, a mockery painted white and gold, and on either side was scrawled the single word sodomia. One of the guards set it on di Jacopo’s head and turned him in a circle. The crowd whooped their satisfaction as he turned and they could see from the burn marks that he had been tortured in his anus as well as in his privy parts.
The mitre began to slip and they forced it down harder upon his brow.
Now the boy returned with a placard on a short cord. The boy showed no sign of being ill at ease. In truth he seemed pleased, as if he had rehearsed this role for many weeks and knew he was performing well. The guards tied the placard about di Jacopo’s neck so that it hung down before and behind. Sodomia, it said, and below that was a list of his crimes. The crowd applauded.
“Cut off his nose!”
“And his ears!”
“Cut off his cazzo!”
There were cheers—they wanted blood—but di Jacopo’s punishments had already been pronounced in law and he was obliged to give up his life but not his nose or his privy parts. Still, some in the crowd cried out for more.
From the side of the church an ass was led out and brought to the foot of the stairs. The guards huddled di Jacopo roughly down the church stairs and untied his hands so that he could grasp the hair at the ass’s neck. They half-helped and half-pushed him onto the back of the frightened beast and, as they pulled at di Jacopo’s legs so he could straddle its back, he let out a terrible groan and fell forward on the ass’s neck. They propped him up and, once he was steadied, they whipped the ass forward.
Buondelmonti led the proce
ssion. He was followed by the Prior with the tall processional cross and then the young boy in the red gown and then the six priests with the black candles and finally the battered Piero di Jacopo who was slumped over the ass. The soldier with his drum brought up the rear. It was a lusty and colorful procession with the great men in their crimson robes, women of every estate in fine silk or crude wool stuff, children scampering through the legs of horses, the colorful costumes of the soldiery, and at the center the condemned man naked on an ass, a mitre and placard proclaiming his crimes. They would process from the Piazza San Marco to the Piazza della Signoria where di Jacopo would be whipped around the square. From there they would move to the Mercato Vecchio and through the Street of the Furriers and on past the Stinche—that notorious prison—and wind through the principal streets of Florence past the Basilica of Santa Croce to emerge beyond the city walls at the area prepared with a platform and banks of straw and firewood that would become for him the Place of Justice.
The procession began and at once calls for his blood rang out.
“Kill him now!”
“Kill him here!”
“Cut off his balls!”
“His balls! His balls!”
“Cut off his cazzo!”
There were screams of pleasure.
I turned away. I could watch no more of this. The rage and the lust. The spectacle had at once become a terrible sight, obscene, and I was reminded—who can say why?—of being a child of six and watching the dyer Matteo and his wife Spinetta as they labored, naked, furious, at their pleasure. I was sick at heart and I sought the safety and comfort of the bottega. Still, I looked back and recognized among the heaving, pushing crowd many of the men who came and went in our bottega—servants, merchants, buyers and sellers. Our apprentices were there too, eager and uncertain, and as I paused at the corner of Via del Cocomero I saw Donatello himself, hanging back from the crowd, watchful and, I thought, troubled as well.
As I skulked through the silent back streets to the bottega I thought of my own three sons and how, like that bloodied crowd, I too would cry out for the death of any man who violated them. I hurried on my way.
I found no one at the bottega. Michelozzo, I knew, was in Pisa but I had thought to find Caterina at work or Pagno di Lapo, but no one responded to my knocking. I stood leaning against the door, wondering. Why should I care about this wanton sodomite? Why should I not witness this act of justice?
I returned to the Piazza della Signoria where the crowd had gathered in a huge circle to see him flogged. He had been lightly whipped around the circuit of the Piazza and was tied to a horse-post for the serious whipping. A ring of guards kept the crowd at a little distance so that everyone might see. Di Jacopo’s guards had removed the sodomia mitre and the placard, and now a uniformed officer, a specialist with the whip, was laying on twelve stripes to the counting of the crowd and the beating of the drum. This officer was an expert who knew just how to swing the whip so as not to lay open the flesh too soon—the prisoner had to survive to the place of execution—and loud cries of approval rang out as the whip moved down from di Jacopo’s back to his buttocks and curled around the tensed body to tease lightly at his privy parts. Di Jacopo writhed at each new stripe. The Prior stood to the side, at once a witness and a judge, and beside him, shivering, was the young boy in red who seemed no longer to enjoy his part in this morality play. The boy shifted from foot to foot, and at each crack of the whip he flinched and turned away. He could not be above ten years old, a child still, like my own Donato Michele.
Finally the guards untied the prisoner and put him again upon the ass, and with much shouting and cheering the procession continued on to the Mercato Vecchio. Here they came to a halt as the crowd milled about, eager for more. Again di Jacopo was pulled from the donkey, again he was tied to a post—there was the roll of the drum—and again he was given twelve stripes. Someone threw a rotted lettuce and someone else a pear and within minutes they were pelting him with whatever rotten fruits and vegetables came to hand. The mood was merry suddenly and some in the crowd began to sing bawdy songs that celebrated the joys of sodomy. They were comic songs that everybody knew and took in good part.
At the Street of the Furriers they made a long stop. This was the place where the crime against the boy had been committed and here the aged Buondelmonti read out the charges once again, slowly, with solemnity. As each was read the drum rolled and the whipping officer laid another stripe across di Jacopo’s back. Blood spurted from the shredded flesh. Again the crowd counted out the blows and again there were shouts of pleasure and vengeance. The officer laid on the whip more lightly now since he feared di Jacopo might not last. He must not die before the execution.
The sun was moving higher in the sky and, though it was November, it promised to be a fair day. The mood had changed again—the list of crimes had done that—and the crowd began to grow restless as the morning grew hot and the procession moved too slowly for their aroused expectations. Once more there were shouts of “Burn him!” and “Let us see him burn!” but the vested priest and the boy in the red gown and the six priests in black and the half-conscious di Jacopo clutching at the ass’s neck proceeded on—a lesson in endurance—with one last stop before the Stinche, the prison where criminals of every kind were immured in stone cells awaiting their fate. Sodomites, it was said, met special treatment here.
This was a place of reverent fear—at night you could sometimes hear the screams of the tortured—and so Di Jacopo was made to kneel on the cobblestones and bow his head to the ground three times over, a humble gesture to his fellow criminals. Shouts of “More!” and “Whip him!” came from the crowd, but di Jacopo was too weak for more, and the guards hauled him back onto the ass where he collapsed. They propped him up until he came to himself and then, with the Prior’s approval, the procession moved on.
But the crowd was not pleased. Those stripes on his back and buttocks were not bloody enough. Bowing to the cobblestones was no kind of vengeance at all. Only those far gone in drink were laughing now and the larger number seemed angry at the slow progress of the ceremony. They wanted more—and still more—and they wanted it now. They wanted pain. They wanted blood in plenty. They wanted that processional cross to be rammed up his asshole, far up and twisted, they wanted his balls to be cut off and stuffed into his mouth, they wanted his cazzo sliced in little pieces and thrown to the dogs.
They wanted his dying to go on and on without end.
The little boy in the red gown covered his eyes and began to whimper and one of the guards laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, comforting him. I wondered was he a father himself that he knew how to console the boy. And at this moment I saw Donatello, his face drawn and pale, his mouth tight in fear or anger. He is seeing himself, I thought. He is himself a sodomite. I turned away from a thought I had never allowed myself to think before, but at this moment I saw it was so and I hated myself for seeing it. I turned back to di Jacopo. Better he than Donato at the stake.
We came at last to Santa Croce but the whipping officer decided di Jacopo would not survive further stripes and, at his command, we passed on through the city walls to the Place of Justice by the river.
The Arno was at full water, a clear yellow, and scrawny trees along the banks were still in leaf and the day seemed festive suddenly. Huts of the very poor had been cleared away and the ground smoothed to make a kind of arena for the spectacle. In the center of this arena they had erected a high platform with banks of straw and firewood heaped around it, and in the middle a mighty gibbet from which di Jacopo would be hanged. Everything had been carefully planned and now a certain formality descended on the crowd. The procession, led by the Prior and his retinue of priests, wound in a huge circle around the arena in a ritual act, as on Easter Sunday in the Piazza della Signoria when we reverence the Eucharist. The clergy moved to the left and the civil authorities of the Republic moved to the right and the guards formed up in an inner circle to ensure that the ceremony wou
ld be carried out according to plan.
Di Jacopo was dragged from the ass but he immediately collapsed. The two guards got him to his feet and shook him till he came around and then held him up by main force. They seemed uncertain what to do next, so one of them went to consult Buondelmonti.
Buondelmonti left his body of officials and went to consult with the Prior and after a long moment the matter was decided. It was time for the central event. One guard trussed di Jacopo’s arms behind his back and the other guard placed a halter around his neck. They dragged him up the stairs to the platform and stood on either side of him and waited while once again, though in shorter form, Buondelmonti read out the charges. No one listened. All attention was fixed upon di Jacopo, who stood on the black box beneath the gibbet, his head bowed, his lips moving.
The drum rolled. A guard adjusted the noose, tightened it, and then stood down. And—a great wonder—the sun dipped behind a cloud and then slowly reemerged.
The crowd pressed forward. Di Jacopo lifted his head and tried to say something but his voice was lost in the general noise. He struggled against the ropes around his hands. The drum roll ceased and there was a keen silence.
Some one of the watchers shouted “Jesus! Jesus!” and the cry was taken up by others and the Savior’s name rang along the city walls and echoed off across the Arno. It was as if they were calling out for Jesus because di Jacopo could not. No one knew why this was happening.
The shouting stopped and, in the silence that followed, the signal was given, the drum rolled again, and all at once the black box was jerked from beneath his feet. There was a short barking sound and di Jacopo’s body plunged forward and down. His head snapped back and his legs flailed out wildly. How could there be any life left in him? Finally his legs stopped flailing and his body twitched and his head hung to the side at an impossible angle. Still, he appeared to be breathing. A man nearby, deep in his wine, shouted out, “Die! Die!” but the cry was not taken up. Everyone was concentrated, waiting for the precise moment of death, as if the devil himself might appear to lead off a new soul to hell. The moment was long in coming.
The Medici Boy Page 9
