The Secrets of Italy

by Corrado Augias

  Serves him right, you might be saying. According to Vasari, this episode even had a sequel. Upset and offended by his placement (and his threatened testicles), Messer Biagio went to complain to the pope, who asked him where, exactly, the artist had put him. “In hell,” Biagio said, to which the pope replied: “If he had painted you in Purgatory, there might be some remedy, but in hell no one can be saved.” Apparently even popes like to crack a joke every now and then.

  In 1564, the year Michelangelo died, censors decided to clean up the Sistine Chapel’s scandalous nudes. Fortunately the artist, who died in February, was no longer around to witness the debacle. The decision enacted one of the principles laid out in the Council of Trent the previous year, and from then on the infamous Counterreformation swept across Italy, stifling scientific research and hindering the arts as well. Daniele da Volterra, one of Michelangelo’s collaborators, as well as one of his heirs, was hired for the task. It was a matter of covering all the nude bits with britches, much the way hypocritical tendencies both old and new have required ballerinas’ legs to be fully clothed. Hapless Daniele—known to history as il Braghettone, “the pantmaker”—cleverly chose to cover the frescoes with tempera paint, so that once the storm passed and the moralizers forgot their cause the figures could simply be stripped back to their original form. He used that reversible technique on all but one fresco, the one about halfway up on the right depicting two martyrs of the New Covenant: St. Blaise and St. Catherine. Michelangelo had painted St. Catherine nude, with pendulous breasts, bent over a breaking wheel, the torture device upon which she was martyred. We know the two figures’ original positions thanks to a faithful copy Marcello Venusti completed before the censors’ intervention.

  This portion could not be easily restored because Daniele had not just painted clothes on the surface, he had actually scratched into the original fresco, primed it with a new coat of plaster, and completely repainted the two saints in different poses. In Michelangelo’s version Catherine was, as I said, bent forward; Biagio stood right behind her, also bent forward, in a posture that would easily lead any sexually troubled mind (the kind of mind that often plagues celibate men) to view it as a scene depicting coitus a tergo vel more ferarum, or “sexual intercourse in the manner of wild beasts”—basically, the two saints were going at it, doggy style.

  Of course these were all petty scruples, considering the work’s tragic strength, and Michelangelo would certainly have been furious—he never allowed anyone to question his work. We catch a glimpse of his infamous obstinacy in another anecdote. As he was busily working on the ceiling (grueling, laborious work done roughly twenty-five years before he got to the Last Judgment), Pope Julius II Della Rovere, who had commissioned the fresco, stopped in to see how things were going. After having a close look here and there and asking the artist to explain a few parts, the pope expressed some dismay. In particular, he noted that, on the whole, the paintings did not seem “rich enough.” Michelangelo’s reply—a retort only someone like him could throw in the pope’s face—was simply that “the people painted herein were, in reality, quite poor.” It seems this remark was met with utter silence.

  Such strong reactions prove that Michelangelo was fully aware of both his artistry and his indomitable temperament. He gave his work the weight it deserved, which he felt put him on a par with his patron, or perhaps even made him superior—even when his patron was the pope.

  There is another important aspect of the Sistine Chapel worth mentioning. Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is located behind the altar, not on the facing wall like all the others. Traditionally, Last Judgments were always painted on the wall opposite the altar, because they served as a warning. After facing the altar during the course of the service, the faithful then turned around to leave and were shown the various penalties awaiting those who violated divine law. In the Sistine Chapel the exact opposite happens: the celebrant and the faithful are forced to stare at the Last Judgment as they say their prayers. I do not know whether it was the chapel’s floor plan that imposed this solution or the artist’s iron will. We could probably easily find out by asking an expert. I never have, because I like to imagine (albeit without any historical basis) that Michelangelo chose this configuration so as to make his work a warning addressed not only to the average churchgoer, but to the cardinals, celebrants, and the pope himself.

  After all, Rome was very corrupt back then and the Reformation was in full swing. It traumatized Michelangelo, who was a member of the so-called spiritual Franciscans we heard about in chapter 7, and the papacy considered the movement’s followers Lutheran sympathizers. That suspicion is almost certainly unfounded, but it is true that this small coterie aimed to encourage a revival of the evangelical spirit as a remedy for the Church’s corruption. The group’s unofficial leader was Vittoria Colonna, widow of Ferdinando Francesco d’Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, who had withdrawn to the convent of San Silvestro al Quirinale to live an almost cloistered existence. A small court of intellectuals gathered with her: high priests, writers, poets, and artists, including Michelangelo, who gave her a number of his works as presents. There has been speculation that the two were romantically involved, which is both plausible and irrelevant. Whatever the nature of their relationship, what really counted was their intellectual and spiritual bond. In his biography of Michelangelo, the painter and writer Ascanio Condivi reports that, upon Vittoria’s death at the age of fifty-six (February 25, 1547), Michelangelo was overcome with emotion and leaned down to kiss her face.5

  But the question that all of these Last Judgments pose is: why and to what end was it such a popular, widespread subject? Various churches throughout Italy also boast sculpted versions of the Last Judgment, often lining the pulpits so as to impress upon the minds of the faithful, during the sermon, the idea of impending doom. This is obviously not about the quality of the works—which are often very good, when not excellent or downright supreme—but rather about their practical and pedagogical purposes. The punishments sinners are condemned to for all eternity in such scenes are not dissimilar to the equally atrocious ones Christian martyrs suffered in times of persecution, or those inflicted on witches and heretics by the courts of the Holy Inquisition. At the church of Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome there is a series of sixteenth-century frescoes by Pomarancio depicting scenes of martyrdom. Its repertoire is vast: we see limbs amputated, people being whipped, stoned, crushed, flayed—everything the cruelest part of the human mind has ever devised for doing harm is depicted here. According to legend even the Marquis de Sade, the man whose name is synonymous with an obsession for inflicting pain on others, was troubled by the scenes. The difference lies in how such punishment is received by its victim. The faces of the martyrs glow with ecstasy, despite their suffering; but the faces of the damned, as in Matthew 22:13, show only “darkness … weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

  In other words, Last Judgments were one of the many means through which the Church tried to uphold orthodoxy and enforce obedience. Had the situation necessitated, actual torture and burnings could be arranged, harbingers of the true torments of hell, but the ideological inculcation of this precept was entrusted to these works of art, designed to spread a stern warning.

  From time immemorial one of religion’s aims has been to contain the self-destructive forces inherent to human communities. As early as the fifth century B.C.E. the Sisyphus fragment, attributed to the Greek Sophist Critias, hypothesized that the gods were invented to restrain human passions and enforce moral behavior. This point has been hotly debated over the centuries, so much so that even present-day “modern thinkers” often complain that the promise of eternal life and the threat of eternal punishment no longer receive due consideration.

  There are at least three ways to curb the antisocial tendencies that can develop in some individuals: threaten otherworldly punishment; threaten temporal punishments such as jail, forced labor, and death; or find a way to make most people share a belief in the need for moral behavior
. In other words, ensure that civil rights and obligations are observed out of a deep conviction. This third tactic is the most difficult but, once implemented as broadly as possible, it is also the safest. Spinoza was one of the first to point out that this was the best solution. Not even Kant liked the idea that people be forced to behave properly only out of a fear of punishment. The Enlightenment ideal (or utopia, if you will) was that good behavior be the result of a freely developed conviction.

  The imposition of any precept by threatening divine punishment runs the risk of leading to a theocracy, or to a society where there is no distinction between sin (understood as a divine offense) and the offense that instead harms humans’ ability to coexist—which would be the worst approach, as attested to even today by the most strictly observant Islamic theocracies.

  A sense of the “sacred” is positive if fostered within each individual’s conscience, because it generally embraces rules that people have developed in order to protect themselves from themselves. But when anyone tries to spread the sense of the sacred as if it were a social value for absolutely everyone, that constitutes a dangerous overreach. That is what happens when religious moral values are imposed on those who do not participate in that religion—a phenomenon that, from the eighteenth century onward, most advanced societies have considered a serious violation of individual rights. In most present-day civil societies, the legal punishments established for those who commit crimes are based on certain rules, voted on by parliament or a similar governing body. Divine punishment, on the other hand, stirs people’s darkest fears with threats of frightening and often unspecified punishments, and hinges upon credulity, which can in turn easily cross over into superstition and fanaticism. That is a highly emotional, dangerous combination, as we have learned from all religious warfare, both ancient and modern, regardless of who promotes it.

  The idea of the “sacred” turned into faith, and faith elevated in turn to a precept of truth—or claims of exclusive possession of the “Truth” with a capital T—is the source of all intolerance, because Truth does not tolerate contradiction. When the upper echelons of religious hierarchy say that the values they profess are “nonnegotiable” and that they should therefore be imposed on everyone, regardless of their beliefs, they betray the principle of charity—which, in theory, is the very foundation of many religions. Religions like Christianity.

  This is one of the most contentious points separating the religious way of life and the secular idea of tolerance. Moreover, the separation between the ethical-religious sphere and the sphere of civil rights and duties is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. As the scholar Claudio Magris observed a few years ago, “The sublime evangelical sermon on the mount is greater than any code of conduct, but it is also unfit to be taken as a code of conduct.”6

  All in all, it is a good thing that these Last Judgments no longer scare anyone, and can now be appreciated for what they often are—namely, masterful expressions of human creativity.

  11.

  THE INVENTION OF THE GHETTO

  This final chapter also begins with the story of an individual, but this one comes straight from literature rather than real life—a man made not of flesh, but of feelings and passions. He first appeared in a fourteenth-century novel by Giovanni Fiorentino, and was later reworked by one of the world’s finest poets, perhaps the greatest there ever was, William Shakespeare. In his tragedy The Merchant of Venice we meet Shylock the Jew, manager of a pawnshop who lends money at the set interest rate; no other profession is open to him, since city laws forbid Jews to pursue any other activity. But when a gentleman named Bassanio comes in to obtain a loan, citing his friend Antonio (the merchant of the play’s title) as guarantor, instead of the usual penalties for noncompliance Shylock stipulates that, in case of nonpayment, he will take a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. Shylock’s resentment of Antonio, stemming from the latter’s open anti-Semitism, had grown into genuine hatred over time. At one point he tells Antonio: “Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.” The plot takes many twists and turns, with various subplots, but the tragedy remains focused on Shylock’s hatred, which explodes in the famous soliloquy in act 3, scene 1. In this passage, at once both invective and confession, Shylock bares his soul to show us the turbulent feelings underlying his cruel request:

  He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

  These are the words of a deeply offended man spewing out the reasons for his resentment; he demands the previously agreed-upon amount of Antonio’s flesh, and not even double or triple the loaned sum could replace that which has no economic value—redemption. Even the Doge cannot refuse to apply the law that the bond be paid as stipulated. Ultimately things work out differently, and the drama ends on an almost happy note. But the complex interconnectedness of the various characters and situations is striking, insofar as the details paint a historically accurate backdrop, beginning with the vast reach of the Serenissima’s maritime trade.1 The republic’s commercial strength is precisely what required a guarantee that its laws be respected: as long as Venice’s word remained reliable, businesses could continue to flourish. Indeed, in act 3, scene 2, Antonio is awaiting the return of some of his vessels, and Bassanio rattles off a list of where they are coming from:

  From Tripolis, from Mexico and England,

  From Lisbon, Barbary and India?

  And not one vessel ’scape the dreadful touch

  Of merchant-marring rocks?

  Such was the extent of Venice’s sixteenth-century trade network, so the play is set during a time when the city was nearing the peak of its splendor. The Jews had facilitated much of its fortune (both literal and figurative) through their deft handling of money, for which they gained a reputation as usurers, but they actually played an essential role that greatly benefited the republic.

  In one way or another, money has always be lent all around the globe, even before the advent of banks. Before there were banks there were moneylenders, who issued loans in exchange for pawned goods or for written IOUs. Borrowers who could provide collateral were granted more favorable interest rates. The invention of credit was one of Italy’s greatest fifteenth-century innovations. Checks, bills of lading, bearer notes, and promissory notes were some of the new tools that aided the expansion of businesses by eliminating the risk of having to carry around large amounts of money on often adventurous expeditions. These instruments were the ancestors of today’s credit cards.

  Excluded from many trades and professions, banned from teaching, forbidden to work in real estate and agriculture, the Jews were left with few opportunities to earn an honest living. Two of the few trades still allowed them were in used clothes (the rag trade) and interest-based moneylending, forbidden by the Christian religion. A small group of Jewish bankers based on the mainland, in Mestre, was allowed to do business in Venice proper, provided that they stayed no longer than a fortnight. But then a series of tumultuous events, including the War of the the League of Cambrai in 1508, brought hostile coalition troops to the edge of the city, and many inhabitants of Mestre, including Jews, took refuge in the lagoon. The Jews were looking for a safe haven, the Serenissima was looking for money, the two came together and what had started out as a small Jewish population began to grow. Their residence permits still had a time limit, and they had to pay for them, but now they could stay much longer than th
e earlier fourteen-day period.

  The League of Cambrai included Pope Julius II Della Rovere, who fought Venice because he wanted to extend his dominions past Ravenna and the Romagnan coast. But just a few months later the pope realized that France, an ally in the League, posed a greater danger than Venice, so he switched sides to join the Serenissima. This lessened the threat to Venice, but not the threat to its Jewish inhabitants.

  At the moment of greatest distress, when it seemed the coalition of enemy forces might destroy the city, the Jews were faced with yet another danger. From all the city’s pulpits Franciscan preachers claimed that the enemies would be pushed away and danger averted only after Venice cleansed itself of the sins it had accumulated. One of those was the presence of the Jews, murderers of Jesus Christ.

  Those words did not fall on deaf ears, and the Serenissima, while maintaining its independence, allied itself with the papacy. These were the circumstances in which a measure that would soon change world history—or at least Jewish history—was drawn up. Several members of the city council began speaking out against the Jews, accusing them of corruption and of illegally building synagogues. One of the most outspoken was the prominent Zaccaria Dolfin, who was concerned about the public treasury. Driven by a violent anti-Semitism, on March 26, 1516, he launched the accusation that Venetian Jews were a foreign group whose presence had brought many evils to the city. The solution he proposed was to concentrate them all in a single neighborhood that could easily be patrolled: “they should all be sent to live in the Ghetto Nuovo, which is like a castle, and [it should be closed] off with a wall and drawbridges.”2 Three days later, on March 29, a decree ordered that:

  The Jews must all live together in the Corte de Case, which are in the Ghetto near San Girolamo; and in order to prevent their roaming about at night: Let there be built two Gates, on the side of the Old Ghetto where there is a little Bridge, and likewise on the other side of the Bridge, that is one for each of said two places, which Gates shall be closed at midnight by four Christian guards appointed and paid by the Jews at the rate deemed suitable by Our Cabinet.3