by Rita Monaldi
The morning after, I acquired a costly complete recording of Couperin's many Pieces de Clavecin. After listening to it most attentively for days and days, the conclusion seemed evident: no music of Couperin's resembled the "Barricades Mysterieuses". I consulted dictionaries, I read monographs. The few critics who mentioned it all agreed that Couperin had composed nothing else like it. The dances from Couperin's suites almost all have a descriptive title: "Les Sentiments", "La Lugubre", "L’Ame-en-peine", "La Voluptueuse", and so on. There are also titles like "La Raphaele", "L’Angelique", "La Milordine" or "La Castellane": each alluded to some lady who was well-known at court and whom contemporaries would amuse themselves recognizing in the music. Only for the "Barricades Mysterieuses" did no explanation exist. A musicologist defined the piece as "truly mysterious".
It was as though it were someone else's work. But then, whose could it be? Full of bold dissonances, of languishing, distilled harmonies, the "Barricades" are too far removed from the sober style of Couperin. In an ingenious interplay of echoes, both anticipated and delayed, the four voices of the polyphony merge in the delicate clockwork of an arpeggio. This is the style brise, which the harpsichordists had copied from the lute players. And the lute is the closest relative of the guitar…
I began to admit the hypothesis that "Les Barricades Mysterieuses" might really have been written by Corbetta, as the apprentice-boy had said. But why then had Couperin published it under his own name? And how had it come into his hands?
According to the manuscript, the author of the rondeau was the obscure Italian musician Francesco Corbetta. It all seemed to be a pure invention: the idea had never entered any musicologist's mind. There was, however, an interesting precedent: even when Corbetta was still living, controversies broke out as to the authorship of some of his pieces. Corbetta himself accused one of his pupils of stealing some of his music and publishing it under his own name.
I was able to verify without the slightest difficulty that Corbetta really had been Devize's master and friend: it was therefore all the more likely that some scores must have passed from the one to the other. In those days, there was little printed music and musicians personally copied whatever was of interest to them.
When Corbetta died in 1681, Robert Devize (or de Visee, according to modern orthography) already enjoyed great fame as a virtuoso and teacher of the guitar, the lute, the theorbo and the large guitar. Louis XIV in person required him to play for him almost every evening. Devize frequented the foremost court salons. There he played in duo with other celebrated musicians, including, as it happens, the harpsichordist Francois Couperin.
So, Devize and Couperin did know one another and they played together; in all probability, they will have exchanged compliments, opinions, advice, perhaps even confidences. We know that Devize amused himself playing Couperin's music on the guitar (some of his transcriptions have come down to us). It is not improbable that Couperin will in turn have tried his friend's suites for guitar on the harpsichord. And it is inevitable that notebooks and scores should have passed from hand to hand. Perhaps, one evening, while Devize was distracted by the co-quettishness of some court ladies, Couperin may have taken that fine rondeau with the strange title from his friend's papers, thinking that he would return it the next time that they met.
Under the charm of that celestial music, and of the mystery that was taking form under my eyes, in a short time I again devoured the whole tale, minutely noting in a little exercise book all events and circumstances that would need verification. I knew that only thus could I clear my heart forever of the shadowy suspicion: was that strange story only a clever invention which, manipulating the truth, spread falsehood?
The fruit of the three years' work which followed is all in the pages which you are about to read. I would advise you that, in the event of your wishing to consult them, I have kept Photostat copies of all the documents and books cited.
One enigma above all caused me great anxiety, since it risked transforming the canonisation of the Blessed Innocent XI into a catastrophe. That was Dulcibeni's great secret, the origin of all his troubles and the real motive behind all his plotting: was Innocent XI really in cahoots with William of Orange?
Unfortunately, the apprentice mentions the question only in the final pages of his memoir, when Dulcibeni's enigma is dissolved. Nor had my two friends chosen to enrich the story with other relevant information, acting on their own initiative. Why on earth, I wondered with extreme disappointment, had two curious journalists like themselves failed to do so? Perhaps, I hopefully surmised, they had not succeeded in finding anything against the great Odescalchi.
My duty nevertheless required me to investigate and authoritatively to dispel all shadows and calumnies from the image of the Blessed Innocent. I therefore reread the revelations which the apprentice learned in the end from Pompeo Dulcibeni.
KINGDOM OF FRANCE
According to the Jansenist, William's debt to the Pope was secured by the Prince of Orange's personal possessions. Where, then, were his possessions? I realised that I had no idea where William's personal fief was situated. Perhaps in Holland? I looked at an atlas, and when I at last located Orange, I could hardly contain my surprise.
The Principality of Orange was situated in the south of France, surrounded by the Legation of Avignon. The latter was in fact a state of the Church; since the Middle Ages, Avignon had been part of the Papal States. And, in its turn, the Legation of Avignon was surrounded by France! A bizarre situation: the Principality of Orange was surrounded by its Catholic enemy, encircled in turn by another enemy: Louis XIV the great adversary of Innocent XI.
So the search must be conducted in Avignon; or rather, among the documentation pertaining to Avignon. I therefore obtained a special pass to the Secret Archives of the Vatican and spent several weeks there. I already knew where I must search: in the diplomatic and administrative correspondence between Avignon and Rome. I sorted through piles of correspondence, hoping to find some mention of Orange, William, or loans of money. For days and days, I found nothing. I was about to give up when, in a package of letters completely devoid of any interest, I found three loose quarto notebooks. These dated back to the last months of 1689, a few months after the death of Innocent XI. The new Pope, Alexander VIII Ottoboni, had only just ascended to the papal throne. Alas, the three quarto notebooks seemed comprehensible only to initiates:
22 76 18 11 97 46 98 64 48 36
71 37 81 18 73 67 14 38 69
26 10 48 46 31 22 14 76
39 0 71 48 76 98 13 48 76
39 37 71 44 22 41 67 14
0 22 34 13 83 78 89 5
77 44 0 64 0 39 93 14 11
48 97 84 34 48 11 76 0
2499 0 55 0 71 11 37 18 16
34 73 93 39 0 29 22 76 18
22 97 97 37 98 38 2575
5 36 14 34 0 76 13 84 18
79 69 2347 94 18 22 19 19
14 78 2316 97 48 94
36 34 37 14 18 71 71 73
18 22 97 46 39 37 46
88 48 71 19 34 37 76 16 37
18 0 98 46 18 13 13 48 39
93 0 34 94 20 97 14 77 76
36 14 38 69 2610 555
48 2336 0 55 64 0 16
37 71 73 39 0 16 44 48 16
39 14 19 14 18 81 0 34 31
22 18 16 73 34 48 79 71…
And so on, for twelve pages, with a total of twenty-four columns like that reproduced here. It was a letter in cipher, and at first I despaired of understanding anything.
Fortunately, however, the ciphers used in the letter were those habitually employed at the time by the Vatican Secretariat of State. I therefore compared the letter with other deciphered letters and succeeded at length in decoding a brief preliminary passage: unsudditofedelissimodellasantasedeedibvontalentogentilhvomoavignon ese, mihafattopervenireunalettera, aluiscrittadavnsvdditodelprincipedeoranges…
It took me days of work to obtain a correct and legible version of the text. I was, moreover, compelled to keep a number of indecipherable
terms in figures, but these were fortunately not necessary for understanding the text. It was a letter from Monsignor Cenci, Papal Vice-Legate of Avignon, who was writing to Rome in order to describe a strange negotiation:
A most faithful Subject of the Holy See and one of goodly Talents, a Gentleman of Avignon, has passed to me a Missive, sent to him by a Subject of the Prince of Orange, which tells of the great Desire of the Subjects of that Principality to come under the Dominion of the Holy See…
If he speaks to me of that Matter, I shall listen to and report all that he tells me, nor shall I accept or reject 2657. It seems there can be no Doubt but that this is being done with the Agreement of the House of Orange…
My Ministry has obliged me to communicate what I know concerning this exceedingly important Negotiation. The enclosed Folio contains a Copy of the aforementioned Letter, which was written to Signor Salvador, Auditor of the Rota of Avignon, by Monsieur de Beaucastel, Gentleman, of Courteson…
Here was what had happened: Monsieur de Beaucastel, a gentleman of the small town of Courthezon and a subject of the Prince of Orange, had first contacted a priest at Avignon, the Auditor of the Rota Paolo de Salvador, and then Vice-Legate Cenci. Beaucastel was the bearer of a proposal which was, to say the least, surprising: the Principality of Orange desired to offer itself to the papacy. I was astonished: how could the subjects of William of Orange, who were, for the most part Protestants, wish to give themselves to the papacy? And how could they be so sure that William would consent thereto?
Rummaging further in the correspondence between Rome and Avignon, I found the other letters exchanged between Cenci and the Vatican Secretariat of State, and even the initial missive from Beau- castel to Salvador. At the risk of seeming over-meticulous, I note that these documents, hitherto unknown to historians, are to be found in the Secret Archives of the Vatican, Fondo segreteria di Stato — legazione di Avignone-. folder 369 (Monsieur de Beaucastel to Paolo de Salvador, 4th October, 1689), folder 350 (two letters from Monsignor Cenci to the Vatican Secretariat of State, undated, and one from Cardinal Ottoboni to Cenci, dated 6th December, 1689) and in folder 59 (Monsignor Cenci to Cardinal Ottoboni, 12th December, 1689).
The few letters in cipher were all accompanied by their decoded version. I noted with surprise, however, that the only one which I had translated-the first and most important of all-was not thus accompanied. It was as though someone, in view of the extreme gravity of the contents, had arranged for the disappearance of the deciphered version… Moreover, the letter was not in its proper place, far from the packet of letters which contained the other missives.
Despite the difficulties, I succeeded at long last in reconstructing an extraordinary story, which no historian had yet brought to light.
The motive for the citizens of Orange wishing to come under the papal flag was as simple as it was troubling. William of Orange had accumulated a mountain of debt to Innocent XI; and the subjects of Orange, who had already had to disburse a great deal of money to the papacy, thought that they could best resolve their problems by directly offering their own annexation to the state of the Church: "Here in the Kingdom," writes Monsignor Cenci, "it is quite widely believed that the Prince of Orange still owes the previous pontificate large sums, in payment whereof he believes he can offer possession of a State from which he can gain little capital."
Precisely for that reason, however, not all the subjects of Orange were in agreement: "In the Past, we have already given too much Money to the Church!" protested Monsieur de Saint-Clement, former Treasurer of the Principality.
In Rome, however, Beaucastel's proposal was coldly turned down. The Secretary of State, Cardinal Rubini, and the nephew of the new
Pope, Cardinal Ottoboni, ordered Cenci to reject the embarrassing offer. It could not be otherwise: the new Pope knew absolutely nothing about such debts. It was, moreover, out of the question that the glorious Pope Innocent XI might have lent money to a heretic prince…
I was deeply shocked. The letters found in the Secret Archives of the Vatican confirmed what Dulcibeni had revealed to the young apprentice: William of Orange had been in debt to Innocent XI. Not only that: if the Prince of Orange did not pay up, that would result in the seizure of his personal property. Indeed, the debt had become so high that William's possessions and his subjects considered spontaneously donating themselves!
I could not, however, remain content with this. I had to find confirmation of the declarations of the subjects of Orange. I therefore needed to clarify my ideas about William: where did he obtain the money to finance his warlike undertakings? And who had financed the invasion of England?
All the histories of the Glorious Revolution, as the coup d'etat whereby the Prince of Orange grabbed the throne of England is now called, sing from the same hymnal: William is good, William is strong, William is so idealistic and disinterested that he does not even want to become King!
If we are to believe the historians, the valiant William seems to have lived on air: but who on earth had given him, since his youth, the wherewithal to fight and to defeat the armies of Louis XIV? Someone must have found him the money to pay for the munitions, the mercenaries (who in those days accounted for the greater part of all armies), the cannons and a few generals worthy of the name.
All the European monarchs then bogged down in wars were beset by the same problems of finding money with which to finance them. The Prince of Orange, however, had an advantage: if there was one city in which money circulated in the seventeenth century-a great deal of money-it was Amsterdam, where, not by chance, the banks of Jewish moneylenders flourished. The capital of the United Provinces was the richest financial market in Europe, just as Cloridia, and later the other guests, told the apprentice of the Donzello.
I consulted a few good books on economic history and discovered that, in the days of William of Orange, a good many of the businessmen in Amsterdam were Italian. The city was full of names like Tensini, Verrazzano, Balbi, Quingetti, and then there were the Burlamacchi and the Calandrini who were already present in Antwerp (almost all of whom were mentioned in the apprentice's tale, first by Cloridia, then by Cristofano). They were Genoese, Florentine, Venetian, all merchants and bankers, some also agents of Italian Principalities and Republics. The most enterprising had succeeded in penetrating the closed circle of the Amsterdam aristocracy. Others were well placed in the lucrative but perilous slave trade: such was the case of Francesco Feroni.
The most interesting case, however, was that of the Bartolotti, from Bologna: originally humble brewers, then merchants, and, in the end, the most prosperous of financiers. They had intermarried with a Dutch family until all trace of their original Italian blood was lost. In fact, the Protestant Bartolotti had in the space of a few decades become wealthy enough to be able to finance the House of Orange, lending money in quantity, first to William's grandfather, then to the Prince himself. The loans were sometimes secured against mortgages on lands in Holland and Germany.
Money against land: according to Dulcibeni, the Odescalchi had entered into an identical pact with the House of Orange. An interesting coincidence.
For the time being, I had learned enough about the Italian merchants and financiers of the House of Orange. It was time to pass on to the Odescalchi, and to get their papers to talk.
I spent months and months, I no longer recall how many, in the archives of Palazzo Odescalchi and the Rome State Archives, with only the help of one young assistant, both of us tormented by the cold and the dust, all day long with our heads bent over papers. We combed through all the papers of Innocent XI, in search of anything that could lead us to William of Orange: letters, contracts, rescripts, reports, memoranda, diaries, ledgers. All to no avail.
Much time had passed since the start of my research, and I had the feeling that I had run into the sands. I began to toy with the idea of giving up: until the thought came to me that Dulcibeni had spoken of Venice, saying that all the money for Holland had been sent from there. A
nd in Venice, there was a branch of the Odescalchi concern: it was there that I must seek the way through to my goal.
From the will of Carlo Odescalchi, Benedetto's elder brother, I learned that the property of the family had always remained commune et indivisa between the two: in other words, what belonged to the one belonged to the other. That was why the Pope seemed so poor on paper. Only by examining his brother's accounts was I able to discover how much he really possessed.
Carlo Odescalchi was in fact the fulcrum of the family's economic activity: he administered the family's considerable possessions in Lombardy; he also directed from Milan the branch in Venice, which was managed by two procurators. I therefore sought the two books containing the Inventory of Property referred to in Carlo's will. These could have resolved the problem. If a list of debtors were annexed to them, William of Orange would have appeared among them. Strangely enough, however, there was no trace of any such inventory.
I then took a look at Carlo's private ledgers, and at last found what I sought. In the heavy vellum-bound volumes kept by the brother of the Blessed Innocent XI until his death, and today held by the State Archives of Rome, there emerged trading and transactions on a colossal scale: millions and millions of scudi. A small proportion of the operations concerned commercial transactions: revenue from excise duties and rents. Then came what interested me: hundreds of financial operations, largely carried out from Venice by two procurators, Cernezzi and Rezzonico, who received commissions for these transactions. The blood in my temples throbbed violently when I saw that most of these operations were directed towards Holland. I wondered how the matter had never yet come to light; an archivist explained to me that these two ledgers had for centuries lain forgotten in the cellars of Palazzo Odescalchi and had only recently been sold to the State Archives of Rome. No one had yet looked into them.
It was not difficult to get to the bottom of the matter. Between 1660 and 1671, Carlo Odescalchi had ordered payments in various currencies from Venice to Holland totalling 153,000 scudi: a sum almost equal to the entire, gigantic annual outgoings of the ecclesiastical state (173,000 scudi) at the time when Benedetto was elected pope.
