The legend of the Fornaretto belongs to the beginning of the sixteenth century, a hundred years earlier. Travellers will remember being told by their guides how a poor little baker’s boy, who was carrying bread to a customer on a January morning in 1507, stumbled over the body of a noble who had been stabbed by an unknown hand. The sheath of the dagger lay on the pavement, and the boy was imprudent enough to pick it up and put it into his pocket, for it was richly damascened and very handsome. The police found it upon him, it was considered to be conducive circumstantial evidence, the poor boy confessed under torture that he had committed the crime, and he was hanged on his own confession.
A few days later the real murderer was arrested and convicted; and thereafter, in recollection of the tragic injustice that had been done, whenever the magistrates were about to pass a sentence of death, they were admonished to remember the poor Fornaretto.
By way of making the story more complete, the guide usually adds that the little lamp which always burns before an image of the Blessed Virgin on one side of the Basilica was lighted as an offering in expiation of the judicial murder, and that it is for the same reason that a bell is rung during twenty minutes on the anniversary of the baker boy’s execution.
Strangely enough, there is hardly a word of truth in this story. The only record in the archives of the Ten which faintly suggests it is the trial and execution of a baker named Pietro Fusiol, who had murdered a man of the people in January 1507, and there is no reference to any mistake on the part of the court. The ringing of the bell and the little lamp which burns day and night before the image, are a sort of ex voto offerings left by certain seamen in recollection of a terrible storm from which they escaped.
I pass on to speak of the political prisoners of the Republic, who were not by any means all treated alike, since some of them were confined in places of tolerable comfort, whereas others were treated little better than common criminals.
Dr. Heinrich Thode, Der Ring des Frangipane.
The story of Cristoforo Frangipane shows that political delinquents were not judged according to any particular code, and that each case was examined as being entirely independent from any other.
I must recall to the reader that during the league of Cambrai the Emperor Maximilian was commissioned to win back Friuli, Istria, and other provinces annexed by the Republic. Though the league had been formed in great haste, Venice was not taken by surprise, for it had long been apparent that the European powers desired her destruction and dismemberment.
Venice defying Europe, Palma Giovane; Sala dei Pregadi, ducal palace.
During the war which followed the Venetian army was at one time under the orders of Bartolomeo d’ Alviano, and that of the Emperor was commanded by Cristoforo Frangipane. Now the Frangipane family held lands in fee from Venice as well as from the Emperor, and owed feudal service to both; so that the Republic was justified in considering Cristoforo as a traitor according to feudal law, since he was in command of a hostile army.