THE KETTLE

This is a tale of two cities, and an electric kettle. One might perhaps say with more accuracy that it is about two countries, or two cultures, rather than cities, but it is definitely about a kettle.

I preface the tale with mention of a satirical piece written by British comedian John Cleese, which like many people around the world I recently received, forwarded in an email from a friend. Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A. stated that the Queen was revoking American independence because of the abject failure of the United States to find itself half-decent presidents. Political institutions would be dissolved, and the British Prime Minister would appoint a Governor for America.

There would be other effects too, more keenly felt by average Americans. They would henceforth refrain from shooting each other to settle spats, jettison baseball and American football for cricket and soccer, drink tea (in proper cups and saucers), return the letter “u” to words such as colour, and learn how to pronounce aluminium.

It was very funny, as one would expect from John Cleese. But the notion underpinning it - perfectly serious as with much good humour - is the ongoing sideshow of a United States haplessly flailing, falling into ever deeper political and economic mush, while abnegating the very human rights and values it once purported to cherish.

Cleese’s genteel rant underlined something further too, however, which is how different two leading nations of the English-speaking world - one a colony of the other only a little over two centuries back - truly are. That called to mind a tale of mine from a number of years ago, which I now offer to readers in a refreshed, refurbished, revitalised, retitled and somewhat shorter form.



The night before I left London, my friend Tom telephoned from Los Angeles with a special request: could I bring them back an electric kettle? He explained that Americans tend to boil water on a stove, or use a coffee-making or home cappuccino machine, and so electric kettles can be very expensive, if you can find one in the first place.

I departed into a liver-spotted grey morning, and stopped off at one of those London shops with windows displaying everything from shopsoiled chamber pots to vibrators made in Taiwan. A stooped old man emanated from the shadowy recesses, and I explained I was flying to the United States that afternoon and wanted to buy a kettle. After first marvelling with respectful terror upon the miracle of powered flight, this latter-day Steptoe recommended a particular kettle, ‘retailing at 20 pahn’.

I noted it lacked a wall plug. For reasons known only to the English - could this, like the long-persisted-with afternoon closing of pubs, be some hangover from the Blitz? - British electrical appliances are sold with cables bared to the copper wiring. To my mind, this national characteristic was as odd as the American eschewal of the kettle. Of course, for a ‘small extra fee, guv’, the salesperson will wire on the plug for you, on the spot, and he did.

On the flight I sat beside a sixtysomething English couple on their way to San Diego, and retirement in a motorised home. They enthused at length upon the medicinal digestive properties of papaya seeds. Seven, the man assured me, and precisely that number only, would cure any stomach ailment. I noted it, and have since attempted to eat seven papaya seeds each day, even if my digestion remains stubbornly intermittent.

Tom and Alison picked me up at LAX and whisked me back to their West Hollywood condo, eager to try out the new kettle. But then, disappointment. It took twenty minutes for the water to boil. Their patented US adaptor did not work properly with the British plug. We all looked at each other and sighed. There was nothing for it: we would have to seek expert help.

Americans have enormous problems understanding English spoken by non-Americans. The differences go much deeper than mere accent, vocabulary and idiom, into stress, intonation, rhythm. Americans often sing-song in time-worn patterns, typically "Hello, how are you.. I'm fine, how are you?" Outsiders who do not have the hang of this sing-song may be misunderstood, even if they are speaking the very same words as the locals. Then there is the plain ignorance many Americans have of anything which lies beyond the Valley, the Hudson, the lower forty, the end of the block. This was highlighted by a telephone conversation which Tom recounted he had with a journalist working for a prestigious national magazine in New York.
'You're from... now where'd you say you're from?' she asked.
'England,' Tom replied.
'Enga-land?'
'Yes. England.'
'Cool. Say, do they speak English there?'

Seeking a new adaptor for the English kettle, we encountered predictable linguistic hurdles. It is axiomatic that an entire generation of Americans cannot speak a sentence without a liberal sprinkling of the word "like". The same generation has also managed to reduce English's wide palate of approbrious adjectives to "cool".

A representative of this generation sat behind a counter before us now, in blue jeans, t-shirt, blond pony tail and reversed baseball cap. His tag said his name was Caleb, and that he was an Electrical Appliances Services Consultant, a role usually referred to outside the United States as a shop assistant.
'An adaptor for my English kettle,' Tom repeated, very slowly, but too English altogether.
'Keddle?' Caleb tried.
'Kettle,' Tom articulated. 'For boiling water.'
'You mean a, like, pot?'
'Yes. Only it's electric. You don't put it on the stove.'
'Stove?'
'Hob.'
'Oh, I geddit. You mean, for, like, coffee or somethin'?'
'For tea.'
'Oh. Tea.'
His eyes emitted a blue, knowing gleam. He finally had a fix on us and our weird English ways. Tea. It was all about tea. 'So, wassa problem?' he asked, finger on his place in the newspaper.

'England has a different voltage to America,' Tom explained carefully. 'I need an adaptor for the kettle's wall-plug.' He produced the British plug, that solid, sizeable lump of government-regulated, welfare society plastic and brass, its three prongs staunchly protruding.

Caleb’s eyes widened. 'That's a plug from, like, Enga-land?' We nodded. 'Cool,’ he enthused. ‘But I ain't seen nothin' like that before. So sorry, cain't help you.' He was already back in his LA Weekly.

'Can you suggest another shop where I might be able to find such an adaptor?' Tom attempted. Caleb gave a little shrug and a "well-lemme-see-now-you-might-just-try", and dispatched us to the first of what became a succession of electrical goods places. We did find adaptors in some, but only for Americans travelling overseas, so that they could run their hair-dryers and shavers in Finland, Thailand, and, like, Enga-land. We ended the paper chase at a massive warehouse in West LA stacked floor-to-ceiling with fuses, wires, switches, circuits, gadgets and gismos. The ultimate home handyman hang. This had to be the place.

After the inevitable wait of fifteen or so minutes as the counter assistant loudly sorted out his marriage on the phone, we were granted an audience at last when another assistant rose lugubriously from his seat by the Cafe Bar, and sauntered over. This man is perhaps most easily described as a flesh and blood Homer Simpson, complete with doughnut, although his name-tag revealed his name as Bob. When we outlined our inquiry, his response was direct:
'No problem, just swap over the plug. Swap it for an American one.'
The readiness of this solution took Tom so much by surprise that he couldn’t manage to reply at all at first, while Bob wandered off to a stand displaying hundreds of different wall plugs in dusty cellophane boxes.
'Any of these will do just fine,' he said, passing one to Tom. 'Just pay on your way out and have a nice day.'
Still speechless, Tom could only stare down at the plug.
'But...' I asked quickly before Bob could get away, 'isn't it a problem that England is on a different voltage?'
'Wha?' His eyes narrowed as he sensed a hitch in getting us out of his hair and back to his seat by the Cafe Bar.
'Different voltage,' I repeated, madly over- articulating. 'America is on 110 volts. England is on 220, or 240.'
'Tha' so?' Bob said, genuinely surprised.
'Mightn't the kettle blow up with too much voltage?' I persisted.
He pushed back an imaginary baseball cap, and gave his front bald patch a scratch. 'Well now,' he sighed, 'that may just be so.'
It was a hot day, and, like his English kettle, Tom was on a slow boil. 'Just a minute, you work here - can we or can't we just change over the plug?'
Bob's eyes searched the stained white polystyrene ceiling panels. 'Guess better not,' he muttered, voice falling on the last word. He had realised that he would have to fix us. It would take time. His big round eyes flicked back yearningly to his seat by the Cafe Bar, the National Enquirer spread out before it, the coffee ready and just waiting to be poured and sipped, and another whole doughnut. Would he never get back there?

Twenty minutes later we were at the check-out with, not just an adaptor, but a full-scale transformer the size of a shoebox. It was heavy as a pair of dumb-bells, cost 25 dollars, and was made in the People's Republic of China.
'Can I return it if it's not right?' Tom asked.
'Sure,' Bob said breezily, sensing escape at last. 'You got five days bring it back.’

We stepped out into the smoggy late afternoon sun lugging the transformer, and loaded it into Tom's vintage silver Corolla, running sweetly after being serviced by a pair of overalled mechanics name-tagged Jesus at the local Chevron gas station on Sunset Boulevard.

We dropped the kettle off at an electrical goods repair place recommended by Bob, where the English plug wired on by Mr Steptoe in grimy Kentish Town for one pahn was to be re-wired with an American plug to fit the transformer, by a guy name-tagged Dwight (baseball cap front on, blond pony table pulled down through the back of it) for five dollars.

Ten minutes later we pulled up outside the condo’s basement electric security gate, with a real sense of achievement. We were on our first beer when Alison got home from work. She had spent the past eleven hours dressing a 'medium tech kinda funky' (the director's brief to her) dentist's surgery set for a TV toothpaste commercial. Tom proudly showed her the electric transformer from the People's Republic, but she cast a chilly eye over the big orange lump of metal resting in its recycled cardboard box.
'Tom, really...'
'What?' he said defensively.
'I just wanted a kettle. A kettle we could use here, and take away on holiday, and I could take on assignment. I can't take that. It's too big and cumbersome. And is it safe to use?'
Tom cleared his throat. 'It should be, yes.'
'But is it?'
'I... don't know yet.'
'Well have you tried it?'
'Not yet. We were waiting for you.'
'Then I suggest we don't. Who knows what will happen? I think you should just take it back.'
‘But...’
‘It’s useless Tom. It’s too heavy. And it’s very ugly. And probably dangerous.’
Tom looked at the orange thing a moment longer, opened his mouth again, but said nothing.
'We should really have just paid the hundred or so dollars for a kettle after all,' Alison sighed.
'They won't take it back,' Tom said gloomily.
'Why do you say that?' she replied.
'I know them. They won't. I know they won't.'
'But Tom, the guy said...' I began.
'I know what the guy said. But they won't. They never do. They say they will but they never do.'
'Of course they will,' Alison soothed. 'If they don't honour their customers, they’ll go bankrupt. This is America.'
'This is America alright,' Tom retorted. 'And it's already bankrupt. By the trillions.'



The following day we were back at the service counter with the transformer. The only person serving was a neat little Hispanic man who conscientiously ignored us while peering down at a circuit board. We looked around for Bob, but his place by the Cafe Bar was empty, the scene somehow dismal. The Hispanic man, whose name was Xavier, continued to ignore us until Tom spoke up loudly. 'Excuse me, may I have some service please.'
He did not look up. 'What is it?'
'I'd like a refund on the transformer I bought here yesterday.' Tom took out the receipt and deposited it on the counter.
Xavier glanced up. 'No refund on that item.'
I was surprised by this, coming so quickly and so cut and dried, but Tom, who had been expecting it all along, psyching himself with muttered obscenities at the wheel on the way, did not miss a beat. 'Why not?' he snapped.
'It's the law.'
'What law? Federal law? State law?'
'Just the law,' he said, with a renewed frown of interest in his circuit board.
A sardonic smile crept across Tom's face. He stood well away from the counter now, and started moving about, loping. In that moment he reminded me of a beast I had once seen in a wretched little resort in Mexico, on the polluted Baja coast just south of Ensenada - a lion, an old gold, lop-eared, shaggy lion, somehow brought to that blighted place and kept in a barred box for the idle amusement of tourists, pacing.
'What law?' Tom repeated, hard.
'The law that says we can't take back transformers once they've been sold. No electrical goods store can. We all have to post the regulation in the store.'
He made a vague gesture behind him, to a bare wall which completely lacked such a posted regulation - indeed, in its very American way, any regulation at all.
Tom stared at the wall in bewilderment. 'But there's nothing there!' he cried out.
'Well there should be,' Xavier said, turning some tiny screw. 'It's the law.'
Too stunned to go on for the time being, Tom lapsed into an exasperated silence. At the same moment, my nose irritated by the LA smog, I happened to sneeze mightily. The man looked up over his spectacles. 'God bless you sir,' he said, in a totally unexpected instance of human compassion.
'Thank you,' I said, wiping my reddened nose with a handkerchief. 'But when we bought this thing here yesterday the man who served us said we had five days to return it.'
'No-one would have said that,' he said calmly.
'Well, this man did.'
'Who did?' His eyes did not budge from the board.
'The guy who was sitting by the Cafe Bar,' Tom said, recovering his momentum now, loping about again.
At this the Xavier shot a mischevious glance across to another counter assistant, a young white flour-sack of a man tagged Jed, who was doing his own fair share of ignoring a queue of complainants. 'The guy by the Cafe Bar, he says...' Xavier chuckled, and Jed grinned back.
'He does work here, doesn't he?' Tom pressed on, but sensing difficulty from some unexpected quarter.
'Works here, yeah, sure does,' Xavier said. 'Only all he does is sit. At that Cafe Bar.'
'What?'
'All he does,' Jed agreed. 'All he can do. Don't know shit.'
'You're telling me,' Tom said slowly, 'that all this guy, Bob, that was his name, Bob... that all he does is sit over there by the Cafe Bar?'
'That's right,' said Xavier. 'Drinking coffee, reading the papers. Only today he's not.'
'Why?' Tom asked suspiciously.
'He's absent,' Xavier said, and Jed down the counter let out a little hoot of laughter.
'Always absent if you ask me,' Jed said.
'But he works here - in this store!' Tom almost shouted.
'Yeah, he does. But he's not, you know, quite right in the head. I don't know why they keep him on, but they do. It's not my business, I just work here. But he just sits over there, doesn't do nothing,' Xavier said.
'Just comes in here, drinks his coffee, dunks his doughnuts, reads his paper right there by the Cafe Bar,' Jed agreed. 'Lord, how he loves that Cafe Bar. Lives for that damn thing, he does.'
'So you can't believe anything he told you,' Xavier said. 'If you did, you'd probably end up with an electric shock. So you can't listen to him, he doesn't know anything, and if he gave you the wrong idea, that’s too bad. That's just how it is.'
'I want to see the manager,' Tom snapped, with an furious tremble.
'He ain't in today.'
'When will he then?'
'Tomorrow, maybe,' Xavier said.
'This is utterly preposterous and you know it. I'll have to report you to the consumer affairs people.'
Who? I couldn’t help but think. If such people existed. But Tom’s threat, however emptily made, did appear to have some effect. Xavier’s eyes came up for a moment from the circuit board and engaged with Tom's, the drama of the moment punctuated with another staggering sneeze from me.
'God bless you sir,' Xavier said again.
I idly wondered if he was born here, or how he'd come into America - whether he’d ever been one of those people a Texas State Trooper once searched my car boot for: 'Sorry sir, we're jes' lookin' fer wetbacks.'
Xavier stared a moment at Tom, returned his attention to the circuit. I could tell though he was weighing up the aggravation he was getting from us against the aggravation he would get from his boss if he was found to be getting soft on all the bums queuing up to get good money back for all the useless bits of junk they'd bought here. But he sensed he had to do something in our case. We were strange. Foreign. We could not be stalled any longer. The so-called "moment of shit" had come.
'Okay,' Xavier said. 'This is what we do. I'll give you a 25 dollar credit on the transformer. You can take your pick from the store.'
Tom replied with another of his sardonic smiles. 'And what about the law? That law you were talking about. The government regulation that's meant to be posted on the wall but isn't? What about that?'
He didn't even look up. 'What about it?'
Tom got 25 dollars in light bulbs and we left. Driving home we passed the repair shop where the kettle was having its plug re-wired on by Dwight - the one with the blond pony tail pushed back through his (not reversed) baseball cap. And there, on a dusty shelf out back, Tom’s English kettle no doubt ended its days, a stranger in a strange land.


The black woman behind the check-in counter for my Sydney flight seemed distracted. As she took my passport and ticket she kept glancing around as if looking out for a friend, or snooping supervisor perhaps. Her fingers leafed automatically to some old US airport tax stamps in my ticket.
'Paid your airport tax yet sir?' she said tersely, still not looking at me. Her name-tag said Loretta.
'Not yet.'
'What are all these then?'
'They're old ones,' I said, feeling somehow guilty.
'You'll have to pay some tax then.'
'Okay. How much is it?' I felt for my wallet.
Her serious eyes finally came to rest on mine. 'Well, where you bin?'
'Er... I flew from LA to London. That's when these stamps are from. And then I came back here, went down to Mexico... and now...'
'Mexico...' Loretta's purpled eyelids gave a tiny flutter, her fingers no longer dog-earing my passport. 'You like it down there?'
'Yes, a lot. I’ve visited a couple of times.'
'Mexico,' she repeated to herself, as if recalling some sultry, long lost weekend. As she looked up at me again she noticed a newly purchased cinema magazine in the crook of my elbow, with Spike Lee on the cover. 'Do you like him?'
'Some of his films,' I said. 'How about you?'
'He's okay.'
'I liked Do The Right Thing.'
'Oh yeah, now that was real good,' she agreed. 'But some of his other stuff is like, you know, just too sexist. Like that one She's Gotta Have It. Now that was sexist shit.' She paused. 'But, then Malcolm X was good. Long, but good.' She smiled, a flash of white teeth. 'I'm Loretta by the way.'
'Nice to meet you, Loretta.'
We shook hands.
'There's no tax payable sir.'
'Really? Why, thank you.'
'I like your hat,' she said, handing me my boarding pass. 'And you have a nice flight, won't you?'

This document is claimed to to have been discovered in 2002, wedged between layers of old wallpaper being removed from a sixteenth century Roman house on the Spanish Steps then undergoing renovation. Scholars are in accord in expressing deep concerns regarding its authenticity. For that reason it was not included in my book "Tales of the Popes: From Eden to El Dorado", but I post it here as a quasi-historical curio.





MY DAY
by Pope Alexander VI

11.20am
Awaken in the Papal four-poster to an immaculate Vatican day. The weather has been infallible recently, or is it only me? Sweep back a lock of hair from the downy cheek of the angel beside me, only to find that it is not Giulia after all, but Maria, her chambermaid. Notum to self: check rostering.

11.45am
Morning routine with my personal trainer, Brother Rocco. Assume throne after only three push ups and squats due to the rigours of the night before. Issue Papal Bull to stomach to desist from its unholy territorial expansionism.

Midday
Papal robing ceremonial, in attendance Brother Joan (undergarments, hygiene and manicure), Brother Fabio (principal frocker), Brother Boccaccio (slippers, silks and mitres).

12.30pm
Light Brunch of Devilled Valencian Larks’ Tongues and Grilled Cheeks. Cold as ever, but who wants to risk a tummy ache? The lion’s share had been rather too thoroughly tasted by Brother Cantarella. I should probably dispense with him but he is skilled in other areas.

1.30pm
Inspect progress of mural being painted outside my bedchamber of my darling little Giulia clad as the Virgin Mary. Instruct artist to cover up one bosom but make the eyes foxier.

2.30pm
Issue Papal Bull declaring Lucrezia a virgin yet again, and dispatch an epistle to her with God’s blessing for the impending birth. In my post scriptum I tell her that papa really does love her, very very much.

3pm
Audience in Throne Room with delegation from the sacked city of Capua, devout and humble friars who are collecting alms for the widowed, the injured and the poor of that stricken city. Express my sincere sorrow for the people of Capua, and take into safe keeping the 2000 ducats in collected donations they have carried with them for the poor, scrupulous to provide full and proper receipting for same. They depart delighted at my Papal blessing.

4pm
Working cocktails with Cesare to discuss developments in our Romagna campaign, in the wake of his triumphant sacking of Capua. Notice Cesare keeps his back as tight against the wall as I do. Cesare looks quite well for an advanced syphilitic, although his nose could do with subtle repositioning.

5pm
Hear confession from the Conclave of Cardinals. Going rates for penances are: Giving a Papal Bribe, 1000 ducats; Taking a Papal Bribe, 500 ducats; Treachery and Deceit, 5 ducats; Fornication, 200 ducats plus the indulgence of one pontifical night with the fallen woman so that the Holy Spirit may enter her too; Gluttony, 500 larks’ tongues (Valencian); Covetousness, impounding of coveted item(s) from third party Cardinal. Finish up spot on 5.30, all sinners thoroughly absolved.

6pm
Pontifical Power Nap.

8pm
Dinner with Cardinal Rotunda. After main course he complains of stomach discomfort and dies early.

10pm
Beauty sleep with my darling little Giulia, only when I am rolled off her I discover to my surprise that it’s Maria again. Notum to self: priority to sort out rostering.

HOW BAD WERE THE BORGIAS REALLY?

In October 2002 a major exhibition opened at the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome, The Borgias: The Art of Power. It drew together more than two hundred artworks from museums around the world. In addition to Pinturicchio, who decorated the Borgia apartments in the Vatican, and who painted Giulia Farnese as the Virgin Mary for Alexander’s bedchamber, other artists who met the Borgias, and whose works were part of the exhibition, included Michelangelo, Titian and Bellini. One room was dedicated solely to Cesare Borgia’s military costumery.

Intent upon the question of whether the Borgias really were as bad as history has presented them, the exhibition’s curators were keen to mount a strong defence. Co-curator and Borgia scholar Learco Andalo said at the opening, ‘The aim of the show is to put the record straight. The Borgias are the victims of biased historical accounts based on malicious rumour.’1

While few could deny the ruthless machinations of Rodrigo Borgia - Pope Alexander VI - and his son Cesare, the organisers in particular cast doubt upon the more shocking stories, such as incest with Lucrezia. Co-curator Carlo Alfano said many alleged crimes of Lucrezia were untrue, adding: ‘Nor were claims that she had had an incestuous relationship with her father true, probably'2, and attested to the view that rumours of Borgia incest were spread by Lucrezia’s jilted and disgruntled spouse, Giovanni Sforza.

Many historians concur that the accounts of incest were probably fabricated by Sforza, but that is not to say Alexander and Cesare did not behave in a scandalous manner in other respects, in particular the strong suspicion that Cesare raped Caterina Sforza. But it would appear with regard to Lucrezia at least, some basic human taboos were observed by the Borgias.

Various accounts deem Lucrezia a woman wronged by previous generations whose stories became mingled with luridly colourful fictions about her, growing into a literary cottage industry which flourished during the nineteenth century. The Lucrezia industry shows little sign of slowing down. With new books, stage productions and films still being developed and released about her life, the name would appear to return its mystery and allure for authors, directors and public alike.

What then is the truth of the popular reputation of the Borgias as poisoners, which has rightly or wrongly persisted for generations? It seems again that an intermingling of history and Romantic fiction, and the fact that poisoning was common during the Renaissance, may have led to the prevailing view.

The Borgias are said to have killed up to seventy of their rivals through poisoning, with some accounts of them killing people at a rate or one or two a week. In some versions Lucrezia’s chef and poisoner worked side by side in her kitchens - surely very dangerous if they got their mixing bowls confused.

Their poison of choice was popularly a white powder called cantarella, said to have had a pleasant taste but be extremely toxic and leading quickly to death. Its purported use grew into the stuff of proverbs - which may have come from the Borgia’s political foes - such as “tasting the cup of the Borgias”, being a synonym for sudden, mysterious death.

According to the more macabre accounts, Alexander and Cesare experimented in applying arsenic to the entrails of freshly slaughtered beasts, from the decaying flesh of which they later harvested the fabled cantarella, less detectable and far more powerful than arsenic itself. Another version has the Borgias force-feeding arsenic to a bear, and extracting cantarella from its vomit.

Borgia biographer Marion Johnson, while pointing out that many people at the time were interested in trying to poison others, believes it was at best a very imprecise skill. ‘Poisoning was an art practised all over Italy... The science however, was defective, and more was attempted than accomplished... Legend portrays Cesare as an inveterate poisoner. No doubt he was interested, but the method was far too unsure for one who aimed to practise an efficient terror.’3

The curators of the The Borgias exhibition refuted any inference that Lucrezia was a poisoner. ‘Lucrezia poisoned no-one,’ Learco Andaro stated. ‘She was poisoned by the pen of history and nineteenth century Romanticism. She was instead a gifted stateswoman. She even ran the Vatican in her father’s absence.’4

It would appear the jury is less decided, however, about whether Cesare was a poisoner. Nineteenth century historian Jacob Burckhardt considered that in addition to his fixer Don Michelotto, Cesare employed his own personal poisoner, a Spaniard called Sebastiano Pinzon.5 Here too is historian Garrett Mattingly’s assessment of Cesare:

‘It was said that he was his father’s rival for his sister’s bed. (Almost certainly false.) It was said that after the horrible sack of Capua he seized forty beautiful highborn maidens and added them to his personal harem. (Highly unlikely, Cesare does not seem to have shared his father’s excessive appetite. The maidens were probably commandeered by Cesare’s captains, though perhaps in his name.) It was said that he seduced that gallant youth Astorre Manfredi, and when he tired of him had him murdered. (Possibly, but the motive for the murder was more probably purely political.) It was said he murdered his brother, the Duke of Gandia. (Probable. At least his father seems to have believed it.) And that he had his brother-in-law, Lucrezia’s second husband, murdered. (Pretty certainly true). But it was a dull week when one, at least, of the embassies of Rome did not chalk up another murder to Cesare’s credit, sometimes by poison, sometimes by the hands of hired assassins, sometimes by his own dagger. Probably he really was responsible for a fair share of those bodies hauled out of the Tiber... As he marched through the anarchic Papal States, seizing one town after another, by bribery or trickery or the sheer terror of his name, his legend hung over him like a thundercloud.’6

That thundercloud lifted with the deaths of Rodrigo and Cesare Borgia. The final judgement on Rodrigo fell to the men entrusted with his corpse, their feelings of whom may have mirrored those of other ordinary Romans. ‘...the body was carried to the Chapel of Santa Maria della Febbre and placed in its coffin next to the wall in a corner by the altar. Six labourers or porters, making blasphemous jokes about the pope and in contempt of his corpse, together with two master carpenters, performed this task. The carpenters had made the coffin too narrow and short, and so they placed the pope’s mitre at his side, rolled his body up in an old carpet, and pummelled and pushed it into the coffin with their fists. No wax tapers or lights were used, and no priests or other persons attended to his body.’21


1. The Borgias: The Art of Power http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=art&scheda=borgia
2. ibid.
3. Johnson, M., The Borgias, Penguin Books, London, 2001, pp186-187
4. http://www.italica.rai.it/index.php?categoria=art&scheda=borgia
5. Burckhardt, J., The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Mentor, New York City, 1960, p109
6. Mattingly, G., in Plumb, J.H. (ed), Renaissance Profiles, Harper Torchbook, New York City, 1965, p23
7. Testimony of Johann Burchard, papal master of ceremonies, in Walsh, M.J., he Popes: 50 Celebrated Occupants of the Throne of St Peter, Quercus Publishing, London, 2007, p155

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HIT FOR SIXTUS - THE PAPAL PAZZI

On Easter Sunday in 1478, the good burghers of Florence gathered in the Duomo, the splendid cathedral which sits at the heart of their equally splendid city, to celebrate the traditional High Mass marking the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from his tomb. Amid the hundreds crowding the pews that day were the young Medici brothers, Lorenzo, not yet thirty years of age and ruler of Florence, and his brother Giuliano.

Among the other worshippers in the Duomo was a priest named Francesco de’ Pazzi, who intended to lead the assassinations of the brothers in a coup d’etat to end Medici rule of the Florentine Republic. Before the sun set that day, the River Arno ran red with the blood of the dead.

Francesco’s family the Pazzi had grievances against the Medici going back generations, to when Giovanni de’ Medici, the great grandfather of Lorenzo and Giuliano, had imposed taxes on the rich to the benefit of the poor. The move had predictably made Giovanni popular on the street but detested in the halls of the aristocracy.

Although the Pazzi had long nursed the ambition of bringing down the Medici, it was via the scheming of a pope, Sixtus IV, that they almost achieved their aim. But the Pope played the Pazzi for a patsy, by hatching a plot with them with the goal of annexing the plum prize of Florence to the papal states, while exposing himself to no risk.

The conspirators led by Francesco de' Pazzi saw their first opportunity to strike at a banquet given by Lorenzo on 25 April 1478, at his villa in the hills of Fiesole just outside Florence, but because Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano was ill and unable to attend, the plan was postponed until the next day, Easter Sunday. Even then it was uncertain whether Giuliano would be able to attend, but being a red letter day in the Christian calendar, special arrangements were made to get him there.

Francesco de’ Pazzi took his place in the pew behind the two Medici brothers, and gripped the dagger concealed in his priestly garb. He had chosen the dramatic high-point in the Mass as his moment to strike, and when the officiating cardinal raised the Sacred Host high, the bells rang and the congregation all bowed their heads, he leapt forward and thrust his dagger into the unsuspecting Giuliano, following up the first strike with a furious assault until the young man lay mortally wounded on the marble floor of the cathedral, bleeding from twenty stab-wounds.

But all did not go according to plan for the plotters. Lorenzo escaped, and the attempted coup collapsed. The Pazzi were hunted down: the Medici triumphed again, and all the while the Pope in Rome seethed.

THE HAIRSHIRT PONTIFF

In the late thirteenth century a corrosive power struggle between two of the oldest and the most influential families of Rome resulted in paroxysms for the papal office. The Orsini and Colonna families had been literally taking the Throne of Saint Peter in turns, when in 1294 the cardinals were deadlocked in electing the next pope, support in the conclave evenly divided between candidates from each family - and, more widely, loyalties to the Guelphs and Ghibellines - with neither side able to secure the necessary two-thirds majority.

The conclave had dragged on for more than two years, even being relocated to Perugia to escape the oppressive summer heat and an outbreak of plague in Rome. When still no candidate could be agreed upon, and with the citizenry demanding a decision - the practice had begun of bricking in the cardinals until they elected the next pope - a wild-card entry gained unanimous agreement from the exhausted cardinals. But in electing the illiterate cave-dwelling mystic Pietro di Morrone as their head, they had chosen the mediaeval equivalent of a hippie cult leader to be CEO of General Motors. Indeed, any modern cult leader would be better equipped to run a major corporation than Morrone was for the papacy.

He was born into a peasant family in 1215, and became a Benedictine monk, but left the monastery for the mountain solitude of the Abruzzi, east of Rome. He lived a hermit’s life of extreme privation in the mould of John the Baptist, as befitted a mystic anchorite of the era, clad in a hair-shirt and weighed down with iron chains, praying all day into the night, subsisting on little more than water and crusts of dry bread. Given his diet, or lack thereof, it is not surprising he began experiencing visions, which ultimately brought fame from far afield to the cave-dwelling holy man. He founded his own order devoted to the Holy Ghost, which became known as the Celestines, and to escape the ever increasing traffic of pilgrims, retreated to a cave at the hermitage of San Onofrio, on another remote peak.

But even thence his fame spread, attracting the eye of the French king of Naples, Charles II of Anjou, who made the difficult journey to meet him in 1293, and devised a plan which was to have serious consequences for the Church for many decades to come. Charles encouraged the holy hermit to write a letter to the cardinals criticising them for their drawn-out deliberations, and their snap response, which the king might well have anticipated from such exhausted and frazzled men, was to elect Pietro himself.

The vote taken, the pope-elect had to be advised of his elevation to the pontificate, which meant dispatching Vatican envoys on a journey of some 200 kilometres to the remote and rugged mountains where the elderly hermit resided. Clad in their Vatican finery, the envoys were joined en route on this curious expedition by a throng of monks and other faithful, ultimately scrabbling up the rocks to the hermit’s lofty refuge, ‘...a cave over a thousand feet up on the desolate mountain. It was set upon a narrow plateau, with a sheer drop upon one side, and there the party was forced to crowd. News of the approaching cortege had filled Peter (Pietro) not so much with dismay as outright terror. He had intended to fly yet again to one of his remoter refuges, but his disciples, with a keener awareness of the fruits involved, had dissuaded him. When (met) he was peering out through the bars of his cell, his eyelids swollen and darkened by tears, his face emaciated. He barely seemed to understand what was being said to him; then he threw himself upon the ground, prayed, arose, and with infinite reluctance, accepted.’1

By the time Pietro and his entourage descended the mountain, the joyful word of a new pope at last had spread far and wide, and a cheering multitude estimated in the hundreds of thousands poured in to greet the startled pontiff-elect. The next surprise for all concerned was that the new pontiff did not wish to go to Rome to be crowned, but accepted an invitation from King Charles to go south to Naples, where the unhappy cardinals eventually agreed to join him, and he established his papacy as Celestine V.

From the outset things were difficult. The new pope chose to live humbly in a custom built replica of his mountain cell, and could not speak Latin, the language of the papal court, but instead vernacular Italian, the roughness of which assaulted the delicate ears of the papal courtiers. He also appeared to have little idea of his role and his power to rule by decree, and from the outset dispensed positions and money virtually to anyone who bothered to ask, and they were inevitably very many in number.


1. Chamberlin, R., The Bad Popes, Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill, 2003, p81

THE PAPAL CORPSE IN THE DOCK

A century after Charlemagne’s time, Rome was again deeply riven by factional chaos, the city paralysed as two syndicates battled for control of the papacy, its wealth and possessions. This time it was the factions of Formosus (pope 891-896 CE) and the man who occupied the Throne of Saint Peter soon after his death, Stephen VI (896-897). The state of war between the two camps reached its nadir at the “Synod Horrenda”, otherwise called the “Synod of the Cadaver”, in early 897, at which the rotting corpse of the eight months dead Formosus was put on “trial” by Stephen.

‘The corpse was provided with a counsel, who wisely kept silent while Pope Stephen raved and screamed his insults at it... The real crime of Formosus was that he had been a member of the opposite faction and had crowned “emperor” one of the numerous illegitimate descendants of Charlemagne after having performed the same office for the candidate favoured by Pope Stephen’s party.’1

On the grounds of this disagreement, and the various other pretexts for which his corpse had been dragged from its tomb and re-clad in papal robes, Formosus was duly found guilty and condemned. As the death sentence was no longer an option, Pope Stephen ordered the corpse be stripped of its papal vestments, and the three now skeletal fingers of the right hand once used for blessing to be chopped off. The corpse was then dragged around the streets of Rome, no doubt as a public warning to those who still supported the faction of Formosus, before being tossed into the Tiber. The body was later recovered by fishermen, who re-buried it properly.

No such final dignity awaited Pope Stephen. The supporters of Formosus, unbowed by the ghastly display, rose against the pope and imprisoned him, before having him strangled just a few months after the notorious “trial” he staged. That murder in turn led to all-out war on the streets of Rome. Years of chaos ensued, with the papal office virtually a revolving door, with popes murdered and bloodshed rife.

‘Stephen was followed by Romanus (897), who was deposed after four months and apparently imprisoned in a monastery. Theodore II (897) served for only 20 days, dying of natural causes, to be followed by John IX (898-900) who was pope for two years, while Benedict IV (900-903) managed three. Benedict may have been murdered, though that is not certain, but Leo V (903), who followed him certainly was. Leo was imprisoned by the priest Christopher who proclaimed himself (an anti)pope. He was then put to death, along with Christopher, by Sergius III (904-911).’2

According to historian Eamon Duffy, 'a third of the popes elected between 872 and 1012 died in suspicious circumstances... Stephen VIII (939-942) [was] horribly mutilated, a fate shared by the Greek antipope John XVI (997-8) who, unfortunately for him, did not die from the removal of his eyes, nose, lips, tongue and hands.’3

For well over a century the Church and papacy would remain wracked with violence, murder and mutilation.



1. Chamberlin, R., The Bad Popes, Sutton Publishing, Phoenix Mill, 2003, p20
11. Walsh, M.J., The Popes: 50 Celebrated Occupants of the Throne of St Peter, Quercus Publishing, London, 2007, p73
12. Duffy, E., Saints and Sinners: a History of the Popes, Yale University Press, 1997, p83



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