JACOPO BONFADIO.

Bonfadio executed in prison and his body burned—Errors in regard to the year of his death—The causes of his arrest and punishment—He was not guilty of the vices ascribed to him—The true cause of his ruin was his Annals—The pretence for his condemnation was his Protestant opinions.

A Painful episode of literary history is closely connected with the Fieschi conspiracy, and it has not yet been fully described. If that Bonfadio, with whose name the reader of these pages has grown familiar, the Bonfadio who was condemned for infamous crimes to an infamous punishment, was indeed an innocent man, the fact is one of great importance. We are able to add something to the history of this foreign[50] writer of Ligurian story whose fate illustrates that maxim which affirms:—The causes of great events are always imperfectly known; because those who are close at hand know only so much as persons whose interests require concealment of the truth choose to tell; and those who are distant interpret facts by passion, interest, caprice or previously formed opinions.

Genoa was the first Italian commune in which history was written by persons whom the government appointed for that purpose. As early as 1157, the great Caffaro wrote the annals of his country for that period in which he had been a witness of her acts, and read them to the elders, who ordered that his writings should be deposited in the archives of the city and commissioned the chancellor of the commune to continue the history. This was done down to 1264, and special additions were subsequently made embracing a period of thirty years. The increasing rudeness of the times, civil commotions in the city and frequent changes in the form and personnel of the government, arrested the progress of the annals near the close of the thirteenth century. Paolo Partenopeo revived the work in 1528. The senate appointed him to read rhetoric, especially the works of Aristotle on government, “because,” says Partenopeo, “politics should be publicly taught in a free city.” He wrote the annals of Genoa, and Bonfadio succeeded him in the same office.

Bonfadio was born in Gorzano, near Brescia, and led a life of vicissitudes and suffering. He was secretary to Cardinal Bari in Rome and afterwards served Cardinal Ghinucci. Beset with many misfortunes, which are unconnected with our subject, he wandered to Naples, Venice and elsewhere, and finally through Count Martinengo was invited to Genoa as a public reader of Aristotle. In Genoa his fate seemed to change, and he wrote cheerfully of his pleasant sojourn and especially of the gentle dames of our city. “It seems to me,” he says, “that even the Turkish female slaves entitle Genoa to be called the city of love.”

He lived long with Stefano Pinelli and was on terms of intimacy with Azzolino Sauli. G. B. Grimaldi, Domenico Grillo, Cipriano Pallavicini and other young men of high birth and studious tastes. His reputation in all branches of learning induced the senate to give him the coveted office of public annalist from the year 1528. He entered on it with pleasure and completed his task in a brief period; and though he laments that the eagerness of the senate to see the work did not give him time to clothe his narration with such a diction as becomes history, yet in beauty of style and skill in arrangement few Italian[51] histories can be compared with it. We must regret that the work only comes down to the year 1550, in which he met his unfortunate death. In that year he was torn from his studies and his friends and condemned to the flames; and though many gentlemen laboured with the greatest earnestness to save him, on the 19th of July he was beheaded in prison (this his friends secured as a favour) and his body was committed to the flames. We find the record in the books of the condemned kept by the Compagnia della Misericordia.

Casoni erred, therefore, in stating that he was executed in 1582, as also Tuano who fixes it in 1560, in which he is followed by Konning and Bayle. Nor less inaccurate are Pagano Paganini, Cesare Caporale, Chevalier Marini, Scipione Ammirato and Crescimbeni who tell us that he died by fire, since his body was only burned after death.

We know that the Biblioteca Civica of Genoa contains some rhymes of an ascetic character which are usually attributed to Bonfadio, at the end of which a marginal note says that he died in prison July 20th, 1561. This raised doubts about the year of his death and some have argued that he was not beheaded at all but died a natural death. A little experience in reading ancient manuscripts will enable any one to see at a glance that this note belongs to a period much later than the sixteenth century. Nor can that record by an unknown amanuensis be compared for authenticity with the catalogue of the condemned kept by the Compagnia della Misericordia. We pass over the rhymes. Except a few sprightly lines, they show the devoted ardour of a monk rather than the philosophic penetration and chaste diction of Jacopo.

The cause of his severe punishment was from the beginning involved in obscurity, and the lapse of centuries has seemed to increase rather than dissipate the darkness. He has been accused of dishonourable and illicit love and of having disclosed state secrets. Others tell us that powerful rivals in love caused his ruin, and still others that he had incurred the enmity of powerful families who instigated his arrest and condemnation. His biographers give us no light; rather they increase the confusion. But the opinion has prevailed that he was executed for illicit amours. The writers who maintained this opinion were of no great weight, and it is time to show the inconclusiveness of their judgment.

The statutes of Genoa attached the penalty of death to the crimes of Attic venery, heresy and witchcraft, for one of which Bonfadio must have been punished. No one accuses him of the last two. Tuano, who is quoted among those who charge him with lustful crimes, says nothing clearly but only that “Bonfadio was punished for an offence which it is prudent to conceal” (ob rem tacendam). But, besides that many things are better concealed, it is important to remember that Tuano, who did not even know the year in which Bonfadio was executed is a suspected authority in Italian affairs. Paolo Manuzio leaves us in equal uncertainty; in his golden Latin song he says that Bonfadio perished for a crime over which the sword of justice could not slumber, but he does not define the singular offence which he also says would not tarnish the glory of his name. The only one of his contemporaries who openly accuses him is the base Marini, whose verses, worshipped both by princes and the populace, invested falsehood with the appearance of truth. Cardano took up the tale and no one has yet destroyed the basis of the calumny. The judicious and impartial critic knows how little value is to be attached to any statement by Cardano; nor can a verse of the author of the Adonis be accepted as a guide for the opinions of posterity, especially since Garuffi has so severely criticized him for traducing the memory of so great a writer as Bonfadio.

One must know little of the low morals of an age which put a price upon sin and absolved offences before they were committed, to doubt that the vice with which Bonfadio is charged prevailed to a fearful extent.

Genoa, though she had the forms of a Republic, was no better than the rest of Italy. Let us admit then, for a moment, that Bonfadio fell into the common sin. It was neither so new nor scandalous to the senate as to have led to his death by fire. Such a charge was in the sixteenth century little less than ridiculous. We have gone over many volumes of the criminal Ruota of the time, and, though we have studied diligently, we find not a single case of severe punishment for that crime. Whether no cases are found because proofs of such beastly crimes are difficult to find, or because the vice was universal, is hard to decide. We find that a Francesco Spinola called the Caboga, who was brutally addicted to the vice was, not burned, but sent to the frontiers a few years after the death of Bonfadio. Though in 1479, a master workman in coral, who had violated a girl in Albaro was quartered with red hot irons, the severe sentence was not for the rape, but because he had afterwards killed his victim. It is not probable then that the government was severe against so common a crime, or would have condemned to the flames for it a man of such talent and position as Bonfadio. Had this been his only offence, his numerous friends in the senate would have encountered little difficulty in saving his life. Andrea Doria so lauded in Bonfadio’s immortal pages, who controlled all the affairs of the Republic, whose will was mightier than law, would have saved him from death. We must therefore believe that the blow which felled him came from a higher hand than Genoese law, from a hand with which it was idle to contend. This conclusion will help us to find elsewhere the true cause of his condemnation.

The most credible authorities of the time tell us that he was innocent of these vices, and they add that he suffered for secret reasons of state. Some even among these writers seem to have been borne down by current opinion and doubt if he were not guilty, but they add that it was only the pretext for his punishment. Such is the opinion of Giammatteo Toscano who wrote indignant verses against the Genoese for the murder of Jacopo. Caporali declared Bonfadio innocent. Ottavio Cossi and Ghilini tell us that having offended in his writings some very exalted persons, he was accused of infamous ardours. It is probably true that he incurred the enmity of illustrious families whose names were blackened in his history; Zilioli confirms this theory when he says that Bonfadio’s history was mortal to its author. Boccalini states the case with much greater clearness, blaming the pen of Bonfadio for having impeached the honour of great houses, adding that an historian should imitate vine-dressers and gardeners: that is to say, should speak only in the full maturity of events, when the great who had done evil are dead and their children incapable of vengeance. He enforces his theory by the example of Tacitus who preferred violating the laws of history to running risk of personal danger. In expressing these cowardly sentiments (an historian ought to tell the truth and to throw down his pen when that becomes impossible) Boccalini did not express his true opinions, and he was afterwards run through by the Spanish ambassador in Venice for writing freely against Spain.

Laying aside as untenable the opinion of Marini and Cardano, we agree with those who deny that Bonfadio had fallen so low, and we find support in the testimony of Ortensio Landi, a contemporary of our author and a man of great talents, who fell into disgrace at Rome for evangelical opinions. He tells us that Bonfadio was condemned on false testimony; and this was the belief of the learned of that period. There is in fact nothing to support the theory that he was guilty except the assertions of writers of little reputation for truth in other matters, who were, indeed, only servile retailers of calumnies which their authors wished perpetuated beyond the tomb. The nature of the penalty, the secrecy of the trial and the position of the accused were calculated to impress the popular mind with the belief in a crime against nature—a crime which famous examples, especially that of Brunetto Latini, showed to be the vice of literary men and public teachers of youth. There is, besides, in man an instinct which finds guilt where the axe falls. The public and the historians forgot one fact, Bonfadio read his lectures in a church and his auditors were not young boys. He says that he had “many aged listeners and more merchants than Students.”

The true cause of his condemnation must be sought in his Annals. He probably blamed pretty freely some persons who expected great praise. This opinion is adopted by Teissier among foreign writers, and in Italy by Fontanini and Mazzucchelli besides those already mentioned.

A careful reading of Scipione Ammirato will show that he really does not differ from these writers. “He was punished,” says Ammirato, “for teaching political principles contrary to those of his time and place,” although Bonfadio supported the Doria and Spanish party and opposed those who fought for more liberal government.

We must now enquire what persons offended by the bias of Bonfadio were sufficiently powerful to satiate their vengeance in his blood?

The times were unpropitious to literary freedom. Offences of the pen were punished by the dagger or by banishment. Boccalini was assassinated in Venice; Sarpi fell under a stiletto aimed by Rome. Oberto Foglietta was banished from Genoa, and if the government could have put hands on him he might have gone to the scaffold. Every independent writer was the target of powerful malevolence. So fell Bonfadio. In describing the conspiracy of Gianluigi Fieschi, he used unmeasured terms of reproach against that noble family and praised beyond all limit the Dorias and the Spanish government. His treatment of the Fieschi, whose fate nearly all lamented and who still had powerful friends in the Senate, provoked the vengeance of the partisans of Gianluigi and popular liberty and also of those nobles who were hostile to Doria and Spain. All other attempts to avenge the dead had failed, and they turned fiercely upon the historian who had outraged the memory of the vanquished. They charged him with a crime which must be punished by fire and secured his condemnation.

Nor did the rage of his enemies cease with his death; for they made every exertion to prevent the publication of his Annals; and, though the times were quiet and the Doria interest clamoured for the publication, their enemies kept the work locked up in the public archives. It was not published until 1586, (in Pavia by Gerolamo Bartoli) that is thirty-six years after the death of its author. Though Bayle and Papadopoli assert that Bonfadio himself published it, this statement must be put down among the numerous errors of his biographers.

We have seen what was the probable reason for the attack of Bonfadio’s enemies; it remains to investigate the pretext which they put forth, since the charge of Attic venery cannot be entertained. Two other crimes were punished among us by fire; and as there is no ground for supposing him accused of witchcraft or magic, we are forced to conclude that he was charged with holding the new religious doctrines which were then striking root in Italy. This opinion, so diverse from that hitherto held, may seem bold and we will briefly consider its probability.

It is well known that the revival of letters paved the way for religious reform. It is known, too, that Italy, seeing herself deprived of political liberty, turned her attention to religious freedom as the foundation of free institutions. In fact, the reformers among us sought mainly to restore democracy to the church. The first accents of religious liberty were heard on the banks of the Verbano and the teachers were Bernardino Ochino da Siena and Pietro Martire. Lucca, Pisa, Vicenza and Modena embraced the new doctrines, and Ferrara received as a guest in 1535, Calvin, the friend of Renata.

In the court of this duchess, were found the most distinguished of the reformers, among whom were Celio Secondo Curione and the beautiful Olimpia Morato, a miracle of virtue and wisdom. The religious community of Naples contained no less illustrious disciples all of whom belonged to the highest families of the land. Some maintain that Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, was of the number; Giulia Gonzaga and Isabella Manriquez certainly were; the latter found an asylum among the Lutherans. It is believed that Princess Lavinia della Rovere, of the house of Urbino, and Margaret of Savoy, wife of Emanuel Filiberto, embraced the new doctrines.

In those days the most cultivated Italians professed the boldest doctrines. Vasari tells us that Leonardo da Vinci had formed such heretical opinions that he accepted no religion whatever. Castelvetro, accused of heresy, with great difficulty escaped the grasp of the inquisition. Bishop Pietro Paolo Vergerio and his brother Giovanni Battista, whose condemnation was written by the same pen which drew the fatal capitulation of Forno; Guglielmo Grattarolo, Gerolamo Zanchi a canon of the Lateran, Giovanni Montalcino, the Sozzini of Siena, the brothers Scipio and Alberico Gentile and many other distinguished literary men held the views of the reformers. Paul III., appalled by the rapid progress of the new ideas, with his bull of April 1543, established the tribunal of the Inquisition in every city, Venice did not wish to suffer it; but Rome strangled Giulio Ghirlanda and Francesco di Rovigo, and all the reformers (among them are mentioned Trissino, Flaminio, Soranzo and Bembo) were forced to flee into exile.

Many noble men fell in Rome; Fannio Aonio Paleario and the Venitian Algieri. The church was saved by sword and fire; and the ecclesiastical writers agree with us in this:—It was the Inquisition that extirpated the new doctrines in Italy; without this intervention of force, the intellectual character of the Italians, the well-known licentiousness of the Popes, the habit of our poets to sport at friars and nuns, and the denial by our republics of infallibility to the Apostolic See, must have combined to promote the complete triumph of the religious reform.

The church always had great power in Genoa. As early as 1253, the friars of San Domenico executed a Master Luco as a heresiarch and confiscated his goods. The church grew so arrogant that three years later, Fra Anselmo, chief inquisitor, demanded that certain rules of his should be incorporated among the statutes of the Republic. The consuls refused to gratify him and the inquisitor excommunicated the city and its district. The government sent ambassadors to the Pope without success; it was forced to humble itself and register on its statute books laws dictated by a priest. In 1459, a decree of the Republic granted every facility and privilege to the father inquisitors.

The bull of Paul III. inflamed our inquisitors with extraordinary zeal. The partisans of the new creed were increasing rapidly, and the fathers resolved to convert or exterminate them. Among the heretics, to say nothing of laics, was Cardinal Federico Fregoso whose books on the psalms had been entered in the index. The prior of San Matteo was accused of heresy in Bonfadio’s time and cited to appear before the inquisition in Rome, in spite of the friendship and protection of Doria and the government. It has never been clearly proved that Bonfadio shared the views of the reformers, but everything conspires to the support of that theory. However that may be, his opinions were certainly such as to afford his enemies a pretext for the accusation. He hated the priests and spoke and wrote bitterly against them. His letters, which give him the first place in that branch of Italian literature, show that he was opposed to all religious orders and particularly the regular clergy called Theatine, who reciprocated the sentiment and spoke of his death as a judgment of God. His annals and the freedom of his speech made him many other enemies in Genoa, but though they were powerful he despised them. Carnesecchi warned him that one of them had established himself near his person and exhorted him to be cautious. Bonfadio replied:—“The man of whom you write to me from the Roman court always disliked me.... His eyebrows are shorn, and he never laughs; wherefore I doubt that He who can do all things is able to make the man good. He has done an evil work, but it was his own proper work, and if he has poisoned the fruits of my labours that was inevitable, because he bears a serpent in his bosom.” The serpent uncoiled himself and Bonfadio was undone. It was not difficult for his enemies to fasten upon him the charge of heresy, adducing as proofs his intimacy with wicked or heretical men whom Rome had already doomed. Among the first-class was NicolÒ Franco, of Benevento, who perished on the scaffold in Rome, prophesying the same fate for Pietro Aretina whom that age, after loading him with honours and riches, blasphemously called divine. Among the second class, that is those whom the church accused of heresy, were the Martinengo, who all belonged to the party of reform. We may mention Ortensia Martinengo, countess of Barco; Celso Martinengo, whose letters to Angelo Castiglione carmelite of Genoa (written for the purpose of converting Angelo to the new party) are extant; Count Ulisse Martinengo who went to Antwerp as the minister of the Italian church there when Gerolamo Zanchi declined the appointment. Bonfadio was even more intimate with Lord Bishop Carnesecchi who embraced the views of Luther in the school of Vermiglio and Ochino in Italy and of Melancthon in France. Carnesecchi was executed in Rome in precisely the same mode as Bonfadio in Genoa.

Bonfadio writing to Carnesecchi praises his divine talents and adds:—“As the Romans preserve the statue which fell from heaven, so may God preserve you for the edification of many and put off to a distant day the fading of one of the first lights of Tuscan virtue. May God enable you to be happy and live with that cheerfulness which characterized you when we were together in Naples.”

He was also very intimate with Giovanni Valdes a Catalan, who was among the first advocates of Luther’s opinions. After the death of Valdes, he wrote:—“Whither shall we turn, now that Valdes is no more? This is a great loss for us and for Europe; for Valdes was one of the rarest men in Europe. His writings on the epistles of St. Paul and the psalms of David are abundant proof of his ability. He was without controversy a complete man in deed, word and counsel. His little spark of soul kept alive his weak and emaciated body; his great part, that pure intellect, as if outside of his frame, was continually uplifted to the contemplation of truth and divine things.”

These words make it highly probable that Bonfadio held the doctrines of the man he so highly esteemed, and show us that this friendship for the enemies of Rome afforded sufficient ground for a charge of heresy. This will seem very credible, when we remember that a canon of the inquisition declared that the smallest evidences were sufficient for conviction of heresy; a nod, suspicion or common report, especially in the case of a man of letters, of whom Paleario wrote that the inquisition was sicam districtam in literatos (a dagger drawn against literary men.)

We conclude then that the religious views of Bonfadio and his friendship with the reformers gave his enemies the arms with which they slew him. The court of Rome had its hands in the business, and by the same act avenged its political friends, the Fieschi, and punished a friend of the reformation. The records of Bonfadio’s trial were never seen, and there is no proof that the criminal Ruota of Genoa condemned him. This is a new proof that the whole transaction was the secret work of the agents of the inquisition. The records of such a trial were not required to be filed in the archives of the state. Nor is this all; the agents of Rome had the right to conduct the trial without the participation of the civil power, whose duty was to render a blind obedience to the orders of the religious tribunal. This explains why the Dorias who had unlimited power over the government, were powerless to save Bonfadio, when he was charged with holding the opinions of the reformers, among whom we are disposed to number him, accepting the authority of Gerdesio a contemporary whose statement to that effect was not contradicted in his time.

Whatever views our readers may entertain of the merits of the contest between the Fieschi and Doria, it is certain that the cruelties of the latter provoked reprisals by the friends of the former, and Bonfadio the illustrious but partial historian of the conspiracy, was one of the most conspicuous victims. As Bonfadio succeeded Partenopeo in the office of public instruction, Giammatteo followed Bonfadio. The Jesuits enticed him, two years after his election, into their fraternity and they intrigued with such success that the instructors of our youth were chosen from their number, and men of genius were no longer employed by the Republic.

It is true that Tasso was invited to Genoa with the offer of a liberal salary; but it was the work of private citizens not of the government. Torquato received the call with pleasure but he did not accept the office. In 1614, Lucilio Vanini, the Italian Spinosa, opened public schools among us. He pursued the system of Bonfadio with such success that many young men were affected with heretical views and the teacher was forced to seek his personal safety in exile. He took refuge in France; but he was discovered and perished in the flames. Unfortunately his doctrines had taken root among us. To omit many, the painter Cesare Conte, the friend of Cambiaso, Chiabrera and Paolo Foglietta, was arrested in 1632, by the sacred office and ended his days in the dungeon of the ducal palace.