A very curious state of things resulted from these customs. States depended, in large measure, for the execution of their judicial sentences in cases of manslaughter and treason, upon foreign murderers and traitors. Towns were full of outlaws, each with a price upon his head, mutually suspicious, individually desirous of killing some fellow-criminal and thereby enriching his own treasury. If he were successful, he received a fair sum of money, with privileges and immunities from the state which had advertised the outlaw; and not unfrequently he obtained the further right of releasing one or more bandits from penalties of death or prison. It may be imagined at what cross-purposes the outlaws dwelt together, with crimes in many states accumulated on their shoulders; and what peril might ensue to society should they combine together, as indeed they tried to do in Bedmar's conspiracy against Venice. Meanwhile, the states kept this floating population of criminals in check by various political and social contrivances, which grew up from the exigencies and the habits of the moment. Instead of recruiting soldiers from the stationary population, it became usual, when a war was imminent, to enroll outlaws. Thus, when Lucca had to make an inroad into Garfagnana in 1613, the Republic issued a proclamation promising pardon and pay to those of its own bandits who should join its standard. Men to the number of 591 answered this call, and the little war which followed was conducted with more than customary fierceness.[184]
Even the ordinary police and guards of cities were composed of fugitives from other states, care being taken to select by preference those who came stained only with honorable bloodshed. In 1593 the guard of the palace of Lucca was reinforced by the addition of forty-three men, among whom four were bandits for wounds inflicted upon enemies in open fight; twelve for homicide in duel, sword to sword; five for the murder of more than one person in similar encounters; one for the murder of a sister, and the wounding of her seducer; two for mutilating an enemy in the face; one for unlawful recruiting; one for wounding; one for countenancing bandits; and sixteen simple refugees.[185] The phrases employed to describe these men in the official report are sufficiently illustrative of contemporary moral standards. Thus we read 'Banditi per omicidi semplici da buono a buono, a sangue caldo, da spada a spada, o di nemici.' 'Per omicidio d'una sorella per causa d'onore.' To murder an enemy, or a sister who had misbehaved herself, was accounted excusable.
The prevalence of lawlessness encouraged a domestic custom which soon grew into a system. This was the maintenance of so-called bravi by nobles and folk rich enough to afford so expensive a luxury. The outlaws found their advantage in the bargain which they drew with their employers; for besides being lodged, fed, clothed and armed, they obtained a certain protection from the spies and professional murderers who were always on the watch to kill them. Their masters used them to defend their persons when a feud was being carried on, or directed them against private enemies whom they wished to injure.
It is not uncommon in the annals of these times to read: 'Messer So-and-so, having received an affront from the Count of V., employed the services of three bravi, valiant fellows up to any mischief, with whom he retired to his country house.' Or again: 'The Marquis, perceiving that his neighbor had a grudge against him on account of the Signora Lucrezia, thought it prudent to increase his bodyguard, and therefore added Pepi and Lo Scarabone, bandits from Tuscany for murders of a priest and a citizen, to his household.' Or again: 'During the vacation of the Holy See the Baron X had, as usual, engaged men-at-arms for the protection of his palace.'
In course of time it became the mark of birth and wealth to lodge a rabble of such rascals. They lived on terms of familiarity with their employer, shared his secrets, served him in his amours, and executed any devil's job he chose to command. Apartments in the basement of the palace were assigned to them, so that a nobleman's house continued to resemble the castle of a mediaeval baron. But the bravi, unlike soldiery, were rarely employed in honorable business. They formed a permanent element of treachery and violence within the social organism. Not a little singular were the relations thus established. The community of crime, involving common interests and common perils, established a peculiar bond between the noble and his bravo. This was complexioned by a certain sense of 'honor rooted in dishonor,' and by a faint reflection from elder retainership. The compact struck between landowner and bandit parodied that which drew feudal lord and wandering squire together. There was something ignobly noble in it, corresponding to the confused conscience and perilous conditions of the epoch.
While studying this organized and half-tolerated system of social violence, we are surprised to observe how largely it was countenanced and how frequently it was set in motion by the Church. In a previous chapter on the Jesuits, I have adverted to their encouragement of assassination for ends which they considered sacred. In a coming chapter upon Sarpi, I shall show to what extent the Roman prelacy was implicated in more than one attempt to take away his life. The chiefs of the Church, then, instead of protesting against this vice of corrupt civilization in Italy, lent the weight of their encouragement to what strikes us now, not only as eminently unchristian, but also as pernicious to healthy national conditions of existence. We may draw two conclusions from these observations: first, that religions, except in the first fervor of their growth and forward progress, recognize the moral conventions of the society which they pretend to regulate: secondly, that it is well-nigh impossible for men of one century to sympathize with the ethics of a past and different epoch. We cannot comprehend the regicidal theories of the Jesuits, or the murderous intrigues of a Borghese Pontiff's Court, without admitting that priests, specially dedicated to the service of Christ and to the propagation of his gospel, felt themselves justified in employing the immoral and unchristian means which social custom placed at their disposal for ridding themselves of inconvenient enemies. This is at the same time their defense as human beings in the sixteenth century, and their indictment as self-styled and professed successors of the Founder who rebuked Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane.
To make general remarks upon the state of sexual morality at this epoch, is hardly needful. Yet there are some peculiar circumstances which deserve to be noticed, in order to render the typical stories which I mean to relate intelligible. We have already seen that society condoned the murder of a sister by a brother, if she brought dishonor on her family; and the same privilege was extended to a husband in the case of a notoriously faithless wife. Such homicides did not escape judicial sentence, but they shared in the conventional toleration which was extended to murders in hot blood or in the prosecution of a feud. The state of the Italian convents at this period gave occasion to crimes in which women played a prominent part. After the Council of Trent reforms were instituted in religious houses. But they could not be immediately carried out; and, meanwhile, the economical changes which were taking place in the commercial aristocracy, filled nunneries with girls who had no vocation for a secluded life. Less money was yearly made in trade; merchants became nobles, investing their capital in land, and securing their estates on their eldest sons by entails. It followed that they could not afford to marry all their daughters with dowries befitting the station they aspired to assume. A large percentage of well-born women, accustomed to luxury, and vitiated by bad examples in their homes, were thus thrown on a monastic life. Signor Bonghi reckons that at the end of the sixteenth century, more than five hundred girls, who had become superfluous in noble families, crowded the convents in the single little town of Lucca. At a later epoch there would have been no special peril in this circumstance. But at the time with which we are now occupied, an objectionable license still survived from earlier ages. The nunneries obtained evil notoriety as houses of licentious pleasure, to which soldiers and youths of dissolute habits resorted by preference.[186] There appears to have been a specific profligate fanaticism, a well-marked morbid partiality for these amours with cloistered virgins. The young men who prosecuted them, obtained a nickname indicative of their absorbing passion.[187] The attraction of mystery and danger had something, no doubt, to do with this infatuation; and the fascination that sacrilege has for depraved natures, may also be reckoned into the account. To enjoy a lawless amour was not enough; but to possess a woman who alternated between transports of passion and torments of remorse, added zest to guilty pleasure. For men who habitually tampered with magic arts and believed firmly in the devil, this raised romance to rapture. It was a common thing for debauchees to seek what they called peripetezie di nuova idea, or novel and exciting adventures stimulative of a jaded appetite, in consecrated places. At any rate, as will appear in the sequel of this chapter, convent intrigues occupied a large space in the criminal annals of the day.
The Lady of Monza
Virginia Maria de Leyva was a descendant of Charles V.'s general, Antonio de Leyva, who through many years administered the Duchy of Milan, and died loaded with wealth and honors.[188]
For his military service he was rewarded with the principality of Ascoli, the federal lordship of the town of Monza, and the life-tenure of the city of Pavia. Virginia's father was named Martino, and upon his death her cousin succeeded to the titles of the house. She, for family reasons, entered the convent of S. Margherita at Monza, about the year 1595. Here she occupied a place of considerable importance, being the daughter of the Lord of Monza, of princely blood, wealthy, and allied to the great houses of the Milanese. S. Margherita was a convent of the Umiliate, dedicated to the education of noble girls, in which, therefore, considerable laxity of discipline prevailed.[189]