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A Long Day in Monte Rotondo: The Politics of Jeopardy in a Village Uprising (1558)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Thomas V. Cohen
Thomas V. Cohen
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto
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Extract

One morning in the middle of May 1558, the chief constable of the Governor of Rome led a detachment of his police to Monte Rotondo, a rural town some twenty miles north of the capital. There was nothing unusual in his mission, which was to capture two outlaws, who, though banished from the papal states for homicide, had returned to live under the shelter of the local lords. Nor was there anything extraordinary in the first response of the villagers, who, caught between their signori on the one hand and the state on the other, did their best to lend the police a very feeble hand. What was more unusual was what happened next, when, half by design and half by mischance, the village rose up in arms against the police and, for much of the day, held them hostage. In this essay, we will study the tangled events of that day, not so much as an example of a rural insurrection as, rather, a handsome illustration of a particular style of negotiation. Thus, settlement as much interests us here as does conflict, for it illustrates well the dense interplay of liberty and constraint. The burden of our exposition is that, to extricate themselves from a perilous impasse, the villagers, their magistrates, and the city's police could all bargain cannily with all sorts of risks, not only their adversaries', but also their own. Not only did they threaten one another, but, to their own profit, they pointed out external dangers and cited the perils they themselves faced.

Type
Twisting the Arm of the Law
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 639 - 668
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1991

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References

1 For considerations of the play of jeopardy in a love affair, see Cohen, Elizabeth S. and Cohen, Thomas V., “Camilla the Go-Between: The Politics of Gender in a Roman Household (1559),” Continuity and Change, 4:1 (1989), 53–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The same two authors hope to discuss such matters at length in a book entitled Deeds and Words in Renaissance Rome: Trials before the Pope’ s Magistrates, forthcoming.

2 For a discussion of the tension between sacrifice and contract in Florentine social discourse, see Trexler, Richard, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 263–70;Google Scholar for a discussion of the tension between Christian altruism and everyday egotism as models for transaction, see Weissman, Ronald, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 1–89.Google Scholar

3 See Ginzburg, Carlo, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method,” History Workshop, no. 9 (Spring 1980), 5–36,CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a discussion of the epistemology of microhistorical enquiry. For a canny discussion of some of the pitfalls of the genre, see Kuehn, Thomas, “Reading Microhistory: The Example ofGiovanni and Lusanna,” Journal of Modern History, 61 (09 1989), 512–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Pastor, Ludwig von, The History of the Popes, Kerr, Ralph Francis, tr., vol. XIV (Saint Louis: B. Herder, 1936), 99–100.Google Scholar For a longer view of the struggle to tame the Roman Campagna, see Fosi, Irene Polverini, Una Societá Violenta: II Banditismo dello Stato Pontificio nella Seconda Metá del Cinquecento (Rome: Ateneo, 1985).Google Scholar

1 Fosi Polverini, Una Societé Violenta, 50, for a list of this and seven other villages that rose against the police between 1555 and 1559. Such rebellions against the police were particularly common in the troubled years after Paul IV's unsuccessful war against Spain and its allies among the barons.

6 Liana Vardi pointed this out to me.

7 Chartier, Roger, “Text, Symbols and Frenchness,” Journal of Modern History, 57 (12 1985), 682–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, warns against confusing events to which one wants to give a textual reading with the texts from which we know them. Kuehn, “Reading Microhistory,” 519–32, makes an extended argument for awareness of the degree to which legal texts and legal procedures can reformulate a story and hide the original deeds from the historian's inquiring eye.

8 For the scrupulosity of Roman law courts with evidence, see Peters, Edward, Torture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 54–62.Google ScholarPubMed

9 For two examples of trials in which the truth proves much more elusive, see Cohen, Thomas V., “The Case of the Mysterious Coil of Rope: Street Life and Jewish Persona in Rome in the Middle of the Sixteenth Century,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 19:2 (Summer 1988), 209–21;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Elizabeth S. Cohen and Thomas V. Cohen, “Camilla the Go-Between,” 53–77.

10 We suspect that the police had come all the way from Rome. They could not easily have lodged at nearby Mentana without alerting Monte Rotondo. Modern maps show two roads from Rome, the Via Salaria, which follows the Tiber floodplain, and the Via Nomentana, which crosses rolling hills to Mentana, whence its name. From there, it was only about a mile to Monte Rotondo. The very detailed 1547 map of the Campagna Romana shows two other roads and several cutoffs. The editor vouches for them. Ashby, Thomas, La Campagna Romana al Tempo di Paolo 111: Mappa della Campagna di Roma del 1547 di Eufrosino della Volpaia riprodotta dall'unico exemplare esistente nella Biblioteca Vaticana (Rome: Danesi Editore, 1914).Google Scholar Although we cannot prove that all were mounted, it is clear that the police had horses. If they came from Rome, they all must have ridden.

11 Pier Paolo came to the village before Muzio did. He had been in the village off and on for months. For their public behavior, see Pietro Ferrario, Massaro: f. 37r–v; Agostino di Filippo, Massaro: f. 39v; Antonio di Cascia, Massaro: f. 41v, for the game oipalla a maglio, a cousin of croquet. The manuscript of the trial that gives rise to our account lies in the Archivo di Stato, Roma, series Governatore, Tribunale Criminale, Processi (secolo XVI), Busta 42. It is a good copy fifty-two folios long. It contains the single or several testimonies of fifteen participants: the Bargello, his Lieutenant, five of the sbirri, the Auditore, the Vicario, five of the Massari, and the gentleman retainer of the Orsini, Mosca. None of the women nor ordinary townsfolk testify. We will cite the witnesses because viewpoint often matters. All folio citations refer to Busta 42 unless indicated otherwise.

12 For the torches, Mosca, the man of the Orsini: f. 20v. The witness claims only to have heard of them.

13 Lieutenant: f. 7r-v. In Latin, the Lieutenant's full name appears as Fioravante de Leliis.

14 Vicario: f. 29r for the date of entry.

15 Giovani d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 22r, for “messer Quintiliano della Roccha substituto di messer Scipione Ricci Vicario in Monte Rotondo.”

16 The lieutenant of the Bargello told the court that the policemen had the breve with them: f. 7r. But it is clear from the Vicario's testimony that he read it when he joined the Bargello at the Orsini palace: f. 26v. The Bargello's testimony confirms that impression: f. 1r; Pancrazio, sbirro: f. 16r.

For a discussion of the nature of the records of the criminal court of the Governor of Rome and of their strengths and weaknesses as sources for the social anthropology of the city and its hinterland, see T. V. Cohen, “The Case of the Mysterious Coil of Rope,” 210 n.3; E. S. Cohen and T. V. Cohen, “Camilla the Go-Between,” 57–58.

17 Vicario: f. 26v.

18 Lieutenant: f. 7v.

19 Bargello: f. 4r.

20 Bargello: f. 4r. The Bargello said he had Pier Paolo tied up in the room he used to sleep in. See also the testimony of Pancrazio, one of the sbirri: “I heard a voice saying, ‘He got away! He got away!’ Then I heard another voice, ‘He's caught! He's caught!’ And the Captain shouted, ‘Hold him! Hold him!’“ (f. 16r). For the ignominious nature of the task of binding prisoners, see Hughes, Steven C., “Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome: The Papal Police in Perspective,” Journal of Social History, 21 (Fall 1987), 97–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Vicario: f. 30v. He names two villagers who pointed out the window and two others who saw what Muzio was carrying.

22 Agostino di Filippo, Massaro: f. 38v.

23 Pier Angelo, sbirro: f. 18v. This testimony is a curious one. Pier Angelo was not on the scene, but part of a relief force sent from Rome. On the way, he ran in with one Mosca or Moschino, a retainer of the Orsini, who was returning from Monte Rotondo. Pier Angelo claimed to the court that Mosca had told him he had helped Muzio. Arrested, Mosca swore he had never been to the village that day. At his lord's request, he had ridden out, but slowly, because he had a boil. Meeting a nameless peasant at an inn and hearing a wonderfully exact account of the day's events, he had turned back toward Rome (f. 17v–21v). For more about Mosca's testimony, see below.

24 Vicario: f. 26v–27r, 30r.

25 Bargello: f. 15.

26 Vicario: f. 26r. Piacentino was clearly a leader among the villagers. He was in the thick of things on this day and became a prominent witness both in this trial and in another from 1561 (Busta 66, case 4).

27 Agostino di Filippo, Massaro: f. 41r; Antonio di Cascia, Massaro: f. 43v; Piacentino, Massaro: f. 46v.

28 Pietro Ferrario, Massaro: f. 38r.

29 Mosca, the gentleman of the Orsini (f. 21r; see also 21v). He claimed to have met the peasant a little way beyond the inn of the Malpasso, some distance short of the village (f. 20r). We have confirmation of such a message from a sbirro, Pier Angelo, who met Mosca the next day. To him, Mosca had said that a page of Signor Arrigo, quite late in the day, came and asked why the village had not detained the Bargello, for his lordship would soon come with soldiers (f. 17v- 18r). This page should be a second messenger surprised at the failure of Tullio's request.

30 For a discussion of the considerable frequency of village rebellions against papal justice, as a consequence of turmoil in the baronial class, after the war of Paul IV against the Colonna and their allies, see Polverini Fosi, Una Società Violenta, 48–50.

31 Bargello: f. lv. See also Augustino di Filippo Massaro: f. 38v. “We Massari, that is four of us, at that moment, went to the palace of the Lords. That is, Piacentino, Maestro Pietro, Antonio, Giovan Marco and I made four, or five. And we found the Bargello at the door. He told us that he had arrested Pier Paolo di Mantaco and that he wanted to take him away. Piacentino, one of the Massari, went forward and asked the Bargello, ‘What authority have you?’ And the Bargello said that he had the breve and that the Vicario had it in his hand to register it. And because we wanted to see what was in it to recopy it, we all went together to the house of the Vicario.”

32 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 22r.

33 Bargello: f. lv.

34 Bargello: f. lv.

35 Bargello: f. lv.

36 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 23r.

37 Mentana, or La Mentana, the next town south on the road to Rome, will figure often in these events. The police had probably stopped there on the way out, and they would pass back through it.

38 Bargello: f. 4v. The sacrilegious puttana vergine literally, means “whore Virgin.” Vicario: f. 31v: “The women say that they were shouting ‘Thieves, Thieves!,’ and that Anselmo was running up to see what it was all about.”

39 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 22r. Here I translate padroni as “masters.” The word had connotations of “protector,” “boss,” and “lord.” The villagers always referred to the Orsini as their padroni or as i padroni di quesla terra (the lords of this village).

40 We cannot tell where these Benzoni came from. The index for the 1547 map shows Benzoni lands scattered around the Roman hinterland but none in the neighborhood of Monte Rotondo. The closest were south, on the road to Tivoli. The Savelli, a more substantial family, had holdings in many parts of the Campagna. Palombara, not far to the east of Mentana, was theirs, as were holdings up the river on the Tiber's other bank, under Mount Soratte (see Caravale, Mario and Caracciolo, Alberto, Lo Stato Pontificio da Martino V a Pio IX [Turin: UTET, 1978], 5–7).Google Scholar

41 Busta 44, case 11, Apponiano (Marches of Ancona) is a trial in 1558, but it traces back to events in 1538. At Apponiano, the avengers seem to have instigated the police raid in hopes of causing such confusion in the village that they could strike. Might the same have happened here?

42 For the Savelli and their jails, see Cherubini, Paolo, “II Controllo dei Luoghi,” in Un Pontificato ed una Citta, Miglio, Massimo et al. , eds. (Citta del Vaticano: Scuola Vaticana di Paleografia, Diplomatica e Archivistica, 1986), 733–44,Google Scholar especially 734–6. See also Niccolo Del Re, , “La Curia Savelli,” Studi Romani, vol. 5 (1957), 390–400.Google Scholar The prison of Corte Savelli is traced back to 1438.

43 For the double time of the bell, see the Bargello: f. 6r: “The one who was ringing the bell didn't know how to ring it and when the noise stopped I said, ‘God pardon the fellow who sounded the call to arms!’ “; see also Vicario: f. 32r: “1 heard it ring double time [a doppioni].”

44 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 31v: “The women say that they shouted, ‘After the thieves! After the thieves!’ “ Cascia, a sbirro who was outside the village holding the horse of Captain Muzio, told the court he heard the latter.

45 Lieutenant: f. 7v.

46 Antonio Dominico di Torisi, sbirro: ff. llv–12r. The last words are ambiguous: non la volemo con voi che facemo li officii detli patroni. Which patroni does the Lieutenant mean, the Roman Governor or the Orsini? The lieutenant told the court (f. 8r.): “I was standing there and behind me were some of my men and I said, ‘There is the breve of the pope. Stand back! If you don't, you will be a cause for the ruin of this village [senon sarete causa di Rovinare questa terra].’” See also Lieutenant: f. 8r: “I answered that I am afraid we will all be cut to pieces, and I went down to the door of the courtyard shouting, ‘Where is the Captain? Where is the Captain?,’ for I was more worried about the Captain than about myself. One of the villagers said he has gone to the house of the Podesta [Vicario] with the Massari.”

47 Corsetto, sbirro: f. 14v.

48 Bargello: f. lv.

49 Bargello: f. lv; Vicario: f. 30v, in which he lists the Massari present. All were there, he says, save three, one of whom was sick.

50 Vicario: f. 27r: “I had hardly copied the half of the brief when one heard the boom of guns and shouts that said that one villager had been killed and about six of them wounded.”

51 Vicario: f. 30v.

52 Vicario: f. 30v. See also Bargello: f. lv.

53 See n.45 above.

54 Our intention here is not to revise classical bargaining theory, with its talk of risk, but to argue for a mind-set that manipulated risk in ways characteristic of a particular culture.

55 Philip Gulliver tells me that, in classical bargaining theory, only this last form of manipulated risk is termed jeopardy.

56 For the venality and inefficiency of Roman justice, see Fosi, Una Societa Violenta, 37.

57 Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence, 26–41, discusses the tensely agonistic tone of civic life in Renaissance Florence.

58 See Cohen, Elizabeth S., “La Virginità Perdutà Autorappresentazione di Giovani Donne nella Roma Barocca,” Quaderni Storici, 67 (04 1988), 169–91.Google Scholar For a lovely cameo of such an exchange, see novella 1. 9 of Bandello (any edition). A complaisant married lady says to her suitor, “lo vo', Lattanzio mio, crederti tutto quello che tu ora e tame altre volte del tuo amore che mi porti detto m'hai, e metier ne le tue mani la mia vita e I'onor mio. Fa ora che tu ne sia buon guardiano, e che in modo e te me governi, che danno alcuno e meno vergogna non ne sequa” (I wish, my Lattanzio, to believe everything that you have said to me about your love now and so many other times, and to put into your hands my life and my honor. So now see to it that you be a good guardian of it, and that you handle me in such a fashion, that neither harm nor shame comes of it). The common euphemism for intercourse, negotiare, might reflect the ease with which even the most intimate of exchanges could be seen to invite bargaining.

59 On this distinction between persons whose word could rest on the jeopardy of honor and those who, lacking honor, must through torture suffer the jeopardy of pain, see Peters, Edward, Torture (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 47–48,Google ScholarPubMed who finds for the twelfth century a preference to torture the lowly. This survived in sixteenth-century Rome. For a discussion of honor as jeopardy, see Cohen and Cohen, “Camilla the Go-between,” 61, 63. The subject of jeopardy as a cultural form deserves a paper of its own. Note how, in Bandello, Novelle, 1, 8, a peasant girl, having been raped, commits suicide to give fede to her virtue. In a Roman trial, a poor cobbler accused of sorcery and eager to demonstrate at once his veracity and his piety tells the court, “and if I have ever seen these things, may the earth open up and swallow me and may I be sent to Hell” (ASR, Governatore, Trib. Criminale, Busta 48, case 13, f. 15v. [1558]); an abductor protests his good faith, “And what I did for her, I would have done for any sister of mine, because when a person shares her affairs with me, she obliges me to stake my life” (Ibid, Busta 48, case 8, f.304v[1558]). In the same case, f. 3O5v, we hear how the girl had written an exculpatory note, “and a letter was made as a fede that he was not forcing me and I was asking him to carry me off, in case we were arrested on the road.” Thus, by cultural logic, a paper by which the abducted girl took upon herself the onus, the jeopardy, of responsibility was a fede. In one case (Busta 48, case 19, f. 767v. [1558]), a prostitute invokes the hand of her missing husband: “I don't know anything about it. Let me be killed by the hand of my husband if he is alive!” There is no end of examples of such language. For the case of a victim of rape who asks to be tortured to give fede to her testimony, see Gerrard, Mary D., Anemesia Gentileschi: The Image of the Female Hero in Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 461–2.Google Scholar The book includes a quite flawed but useful translation of an entire trial. For a discussion of the ramifications of Italian honor, see my unpublished paper, “The Lay Liturgy of Affront in Sixteenth-Century Rome” (forthcoming in The Journal of Social History).

60 Busta 38, case 2, f. I4r (1558). The court cites the qualitas personae in explaining its torture of a servant who had turned informer.

61 Busta 38, case 6 (1557).

62 Busta 38, case 6, f. 78v (1557): “lo gli resposi non piaqua a Dio che io gli mai far lal cosa et che vado tal nominania di me alia patria mia se voi volete la vita mia pigliatela et se volete chio sia con voi a far qualche cosa io mi offero metier la vita per voi et mesi mono alia spada dicendoli se volete la mia vita pigliatela.”

63 Kuehn, “Reading Microhistory,” 518–32, wisely cautions against letting a judicial agenda deform a tale. But, in this case, no legal interest in rebellio is likely to have much changed our story, except, depending on the witness, to magnify or diminish concerted action by the villagers. We maintain the structure we posit here was real and not just an artifact of guile, narrative art or legal rhetoric and the magistrates' preoccupations.

64 Busta66, case 4 (1560).

65 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 23v.

66 Lieutenant: f. 8v.

67 Lieutenant: f. 8v. The Vicario says he also was at the palace helping (f. 3Iv).

68 Bargello: f. 2r.

69 The tall tower of the Orsini palace, today the palazzo del commune, still stands. It appears clearly on the image of Monte Rotondo on the Volpaia map of 1547.

70 See also Lieutenant: f. lOr: “and because they said that this Corsetto had fired an arquebus shot at one of them that I should jail him. Otherwise they would do dire things [faceano et diceano] and kill us all. I jailed Corsetto and after a while they came to say I should let him go, that it hadn't been he. And the villagers themselves said that he had not been the one, and we found that the arquebus was loaded, with the powder on it, so it hadn't been fired. So then they gave back the gun and the lance; that was when we were about to leave town.” See also Lieutenant: lOr-v, who said that the Vicario came on behalf of the Massari and that each time he came he had eight or ten villagers with him, “and they railed and cursed and protested that if I did not put him in jail some scandal would arise and that they would attack us [vennero sopra di noi] and I to avoid error and because I could not do anything else, I put him in the tower and the Vicario [podestà] carried off the key of the prison.”

71 Lieutenant: f. 27r-v.

72 Bargello: f. 2r.

73 Bargello: f. 2r. See also Bargello: f. 5v: “I replied that I had written justifiedly because the kinsmen of the wounded and the dead man, according who what they had said, wanted to kill me. And because I was decided on writing those words, eventually, it was decided that the letter could go.”

74 Vicario: f. 3 lr. “Facemo comandamenti a bocca e bandi di modo che al ultimo li facemo levare de li.” Cf. Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 23v–24r: “For fear that an arquebus might be fired we cleared the people from the streets.” Cf. Agostino di Filippo, Massaro: f. 39r–v, for the pain of rebellion and the Castaldo and Capocroci. For Piacentino's role and the expression about the gratia dei signori, see Piacentino, Massaro: f. 45v–46r.

75 Lieutenant: f. 12r: “The Massari came with about twenty persons, messer Giovanni and the Vicario and they brought the Bargello to the palace where I was.”

76 Vicario: f. 27v, 3 lr: for “three or four hours.” The police only told the court that it had been a long time. Cf. Antonio Domenico, sbirro: f. 12r; Pancrazio, sbirro: f. 31r.

77 Lieutenant: f. 8v: lo havevo visto passare doi cavalli in poste et viddi a uno a uno mandare delli Archobusi fuora dissi al capilano che se noi menavamo il presone che ci ammazzarebbero per la strada.

78 Vicario: f. 33r: “Outside” [fuori] has more than a physical sense, for it was the term applied to bandits, “those who had gone out” [fuorusciti]. See, for instance, ASR, Governatore, Tribunale Criminale, Processi, Busta 38, case 6, f. 78r (1557).

79 Bargello: f. 2v.

80 Vicario: f. 33r.

81 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 24r: ‘Chi rispose di andare a piedi e chi senza arme che io non ci attesi mollo.’ See also Pietro Ferrario, Massaro: f. 40r, for a garbled version of who proposed to go armed and who to go unarmed.

82 Lieutenant: f. 8v-9r; Bargello: f. 6r.

83 Bargello: f. 2v. Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore, also told the court that fear of ambush was the major deterrent to going {Basta che non fu resoluto di andare via col pregione per il dubio de passi [fear of ambush]). Note that he says ‘go with the prisoner.’ Was there less danger of ambush without the prisoner? One of the Massari, Agostino di Filippo, in his testimony, raised the possibility that it was fear of ‘the enemies of the prisoner,’ that is, of the Benzoni, which figured, he said, in the thinking of the Lieutenant. The same may well have been true of the villagers.

84 Lieutenant: f. 9r; cf. Pietro Ferrario, Massaro: f. 36r: ‘We told them that we would keep them company as far as the end of the village [fino al tenimento].‘

85 Steven C. Hughes, ‘Fear and Loathing in Bologna and Rome,’ 104, for the intense opprobrium attached to the vile task of binding prisoners and, by contagion, to the papal police.

86 Lieutenant: f. 9r.

87 Antonio di Cascia, Massaro: f. 42v: ‘And when the lieutenant said that it was better to leave him there, and so it was that when the lieutenant said these words, I heard him and then it was answered to him in the part of the community that it did not want that weight on its shoulders but that it would command up the guards and guard him until the next day at that hour.’

88 Pietro Ferrario, Massaro: f. 36r.

89 Antonio di Filippo, Massaro: f. 40r: ‘Lassatelo al vicario che e corte’: The term is hard to translate. Jails, policemen and judges all were ‘corte.’ All had authority, all punished.

90 Bargello: f. 6v.

91 Lieutenant: f. 9v.

92 Rosen, Lawrence, ‘The Negotiation of Reality: Male-Female Relations in Sefrou. Morocco,’ in Women in the Muslim World, Beck, Lois and Keddie, Nikki ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 561–84,Google Scholar especially 573ff., which has an interesting discussion of what he calls ‘negotiating for reality.’ We can view Ventura's gambit in such a light.

93 Bargello: f. 6v.

94 Bargello: f. 3r.

95 Vicario: f. 50r. Cf. the Bargello: ‘The Vicario [podestà], together with the castaldo [balìa] and my men put messer Pier Paolo in the tower.’ See also Vicario: f. 30r: ‘I gave the key to the Lieutenant of Captain Ventura and said to the castaldo, “Go, see that they lock him in the tower and make them give you the key.”’

96 Lieutenant: f. 9v.

97 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 24v.

98 Vicario: f. 33v–34r. The Vicario's testimony is not always trustworthy. The noun impaccio and its cousin verb, impacciarsi, are both key words in the language of a mistrustful society. The root sense of its etymology was to hinder or entrammel. The closest modern English is ‘to get all tangled up.’

99 Bargello: f. 6v. This chronology of the key's adventures attempts a reconstruction from several testimonies. Matters make best sense if this reference to the police who feed the prisoner is mistaken. I think the police the Vicario mentions were assigned only after the key passed to him.

100 Lieutenant: f. 9r.

101 Bargello: f. 2v.

102 See Bargello: f. 6r for the quotation. See also Vicario: f. 33r. But the Vicario called the gathering a meeting [adunanza] rather than a General Council [conseglio generate]. He said only twenty-five were there. The Vicario, who wanted to minimize his own responsibility, was quick to tell the court that he himself was not there (f. 33v).

103 Bargello: f. 6v: ‘I told them that I was content so long as they [the police] did not hold the key and that they did not get involved in anything because it was to them [the villagers] that I had left the responsibility [la cura], for I had left them the policemen for their service.’ See also the court speaking to the Vicario: f. 35v: ‘It is not likely that the Bargello of the city, a diligent and experienced man, should put only two lowly [viliores] policemen whom he had in company in charge of a prisoner of such enormous importance in so dangerous a spot.’

104 In fact, a third villager rode on with the Bargello to Rome.

105 The adjective, the noun, and the verb all appear in the testimony. Pietro Ferrario, Massaro: f. 36r: ‘Mafu ributtato da parechi huomini che stavano li presso at Barigello per sua sicurezza’ (This is about the siege in the communal palace); Lieutenant: f. 9r: ‘comando sotto pena de Rebellione che li desse huomeni abstanza [sic] sino a Lamentana per condurre il pregione sicuro.’ Lieutenant: f. 9v: ‘Veneva a Roma ci venero ad accompagnar sino appresso a Lamentana sino al luogo sicuro che non fosse pericolo piu della Imboscata’; Aogostino di Filippo Massaro: f. 40r: ‘Il Barigello comandò alii Massari et latre genti del popolo che era li che gli facessemo compagnia per assicurare il prigione fino a lamentana.’

106 vicario: f. 24r. The court underlined videssero and testimonii, for it took the terms seriously.

107 Agostino di Filippo, Massaro: f. 39v–40r.

108 The court, to the Vicario: f. 46v. The court's reading was what predicti massarii acceptarunt et promiserunt custodire (Court to Vicario: f. 50v–51r).

109 Lieutenant: f. 9v; Bargello: f. 7r.

110 Bargello: f. 3r.

111 Piacentino, Massaro: f. 45r.

112 Corsetto, sbirro: f. 15r: ‘The captain showed my arquebus to everyone when he took the arquebus back, that it had not been discharged.’ This incident, which we have only from Corsetto's testimony, is hard to place in the sequence of events. It may have taken place earlier.

113 Moretto, sbirro: f. 12v; Cascia, sbirro: f. 13v.

114 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 25v. See also Vicario: f. 28v, to the effect that around noon (eighteen hours), he went to eat because the guard was being set up.

115 Vicario: f. 28r.

116 Vicario: f. 35r.

117 Agostino di Filippo, Massaro: f. 40v.

118 Antonio di Cascia, Massaro: f. 42r.

119 Moretto, sbirro: f. 12v.

120 Moretto, sbirro: f. 12v–13r; Cascia, sbirro: f. 13v; Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 14r.

121 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 25v–26r.

122 Pier Angelo, sbirro, told the court that Mosca, the servitor of the Orsini, told him of a page of Arrigo who came to town late in the day with word that Arrigo's soldiers would soon come (f. 17v–18r).

123 Antonio di Cascia, Massaro: f. 42r; Vicario: f. 28v–29r.

124 Giovanni d'Aspra, Auditore: f. 25v–26r: ‘I found that messer Pietro Paolo was no longer prisoner and when I asked what sort of mess [errore] was this, some people who were there, I know not who, said that the sbirri had stayed there and they had chased them away and that they had had good money for it. I said, “By God, this is a good excuse! Come, know that I found those poor fellows on the road for they were fleeing and they said that you wanted to kill them. This thing that you are saying is not probable.” Then I spoke to the Vicario, and I said, “What is this mess?” The Vicario answered me “I have the keys in hand. These villagers say that it was the sbirri, but I know who it was. For I have the examinations in my heart and I want to render an account of myself!” I said, “You are bloody right [state in cervello] that you have to render account! This is not the way things should happen!”’

125 Lieutenant: f. lOv.