Pictures in Umbria

by Katharine S. Macquoid

He turned away, making a sign to his guards, they fell on the stricken Grifonetto, and wounded him so that his "graceful limbs" could no longer support him; he fell in a pool of blood on the ground. The terrible news was at once carried to his mother Atalanta, and his sorrowful wife Zenobia; they hurried down to the Piazza, and found their dearly loved Grifonetto not yet dead, but bleeding from every wound. His mother fell on her knees beside him; she assured him of her forgiveness, and gave him her blessing in place of the curse she had laid on him. She implored him to pardon his murderers, and to give her a sign that he did so. At this the dying youth clasped the white hand of his young mother, whom he so dearly loved, and, pressing it, he expired. "No words," adds the chronicler, "can paint the grief of the wife who had so dearly loved him, or of the mother who had remained a widow because of her great love for this adored son. At last they rose, stained with the blood that streamed from him, and ordered his body to be carried to the hospital."

By this time Gianpaolo and his troops had returned to the Piazza, bent on taking a complete revenge on the conspirators and all enemies of the Baglione family in Perugia. A fierce battle was fought on the Piazza, and in the cathedral itself, for Gianpaolo had caused a large fire to be kindled before the door, so as to gain access to the interior; even those who took refuge at the high altar were slain there. More than a hundred persons were murdered by Gianpaolo's order; the dead bodies lay where they fell, till the cathedral was bloodstained from one end to the other.

Then the Magnifico Gianpaolo, being now the head of the family, took possession of Grifonetto's palace and of all the Baglione dwellings which, as has been said, were near the Porta Marzia. He gave command that all should be solemnly hung with black, as a token of mourning for the victims of "el gran tradimento,"—a term which Matarazzo constantly repeats. Gianpaolo also gave command that the cathedral of San Lorenzo should be washed with wine from one end to the other, and then re-consecrated, to purge it from the blood shed there during his vengeance on the slayers of his kindred, and on all who were in any way unfriendly to the house of Baglione.

Even Matarazzo, the enthusiastic admirer of Gian,—or, as he frequently calls him, Giovanpaolo,—bursts into lamentation over the continued excesses committed in Perugia till the death of his hero. The chronicler tells us that from the time the Oddi were banished there was no rule in the city, except that of might against right; every man who was powerful enough took the law in his own hands: rapine, murder, plunder, reigned unchecked. When the Popes, aware of the persistent excesses, sent now and again a legate to control and modify disorder, and to restore some amount of security to the dismayed and outraged citizens, the envoys rarely remained long enough to interfere, even if they ventured within the gates of Perugia, lest they should give offence to the Baglioni, and be either stabbed or at best flung out of window.

At last Gianpaolo submitted himself to the power of the Pope, and though the Perugians detested Papal government, they had suffered so severely under the Baglioni tyranny that they hailed the prospect of change, especially as the terms granted them promised moderation.

Leo the Tenth, however, had little faith in Gianpaolo Baglione; he therefore lured him to Rome by sending him a safe-conduct. On his arrival the Pope caused him to be imprisoned in the castle of San Angelo; where he was soon after beheaded.

Gianpaolo's descendants went from bad to worse. They were powerful in other states besides Perugia; captains of Condottieri in Venice, in Florence, also in the States of the Church. One of them, Malatesta Baglione, proved himself a most infamous traitor; he sold himself to Pope Clement VII., and, for his dastardly treason to Florence, was held up to public execration. The last male member of this terrible family died in the middle of the sixteenth century.

With the accession to the popedom of Paul the Third came the deathblow to the freedom of Perugia. He broke all the treaties as to municipal rights and privileges, etc., granted by his predecessors, and built a huge citadel to overawe the town, actually removing one of the Etruscan gates, the Porta Marzia (now restored to its original site), to make room for his tyrannical construction. The military despotism of Pope Paul must have been heartbreaking to a free, proud people like the Perugians.

There seems to have been less bloodshed under the Papal tyranny, but this little incident at its beginning, taken from an old record in the Public Library, was a savage sort of portent:

"While the Duke Pietro Aloigi stayed with his troops in Perugia, to order the new government, Agostino de' Pistoia and Antonio Romano, two of his soldiers, asked the Duke's permission to fight out their quarrel in his presence on the Piazza of Perugia. The Duke gave consent, and ordered that they should fight before the chapel of the Cambio. There, surrounded by the populace, the Duke being at one of the windows of the palace, they fought in their shirts with swords and daggers.