Reluctantly the priests agreed, but I could see that they did not see themselves as being bound by this. Possibly it would not matter.
The noises from the cellar continued, and once again, I was convinced that the ghost was rolling the heavy casks of wine over the floor.
At Signore Antonio’s gesture the guards closed the door of the dining room, and we had a measure of quiet in which Signore Antonio began to speak.
“LET ME BEGIN MANY YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS A young student in Florence and had enjoyed myself to some considerable extent at the Court of the Medici, and was not at all glad to see the fierce Savonarola come into that city. Do you know who this is?”
“Tell us, Father,” said Niccolò. “We’ve heard his name all our lives, but don’t really know what happened at the time.”
“Well, I had many friends among the Jews in Florence then as I have now, and I had scholarly friends, and one very grave teacher in particular, who was helping me to translate medical texts from Arabic which he as a great teacher of Hebrew knew very well. This man I venerated much as you boys have come to venerate your Hebrew teachers at Padua and at Montpellier. His name was Giovanni and I was deeply in his debt for the work he did for me, and sometimes felt that I did not pay him enough, for every time he gave me a beautifully prepared manuscript, I took it at once to the printer’s and the book went into circulation for all my friends to see and enjoy. I would say that Giovanni’s translations and annotations for me were circulated throughout Italy, as he worked very hastily and in fair copy most of the time without the slightest mistake.
“Well, Giovanni, who was my good friend and my drinking companion, depended upon me for protection when the friars would come and preach their sermons working up the populace against the Jews. So did his beloved and only son, Lionello, who was as good a friend and companion to me as I have ever had. I loved Lionello and I loved his father with all my heart.
“Now you know every Holy Week in our cities, it is the same. The doors are shut on all the Jews from Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday, as much for their protection as for anything else. And as the sermons are preached in which they are castigated as the slayers of Christ, the young ruffians make for the streets and hurl stones at any Jewish house they can find. The Jews remain indoors, safe from this onslaught, and seldom is more than a window or two broken, and when Easter Sunday is over and the crowd is quiet once more and people have gone back to their business, the Jews come out, repair the glass and all is forgotten.”
“We all know this, and we know they deserve what they get,” said Fr. Piero, “as they are indeed the murderers of Our Blessed Lord.”
“Ah, let’s not try the Jews here on fresh charges,” said Signore Antonio. “Surely Vitale here is respected by the Pope’s physicians and he has many members of his family in the employ of rich Romans who are glad to have him in their service.”
“Will you tell us please what Holy Week has to do with the ravings of this spirit?” Fr. Piero shot back. “Is he some Jewish ghost who imagines himself wrongly accused of the murder of Christ?”
Signore Antonio glared at the priest scornfully. And quite suddenly there came a racket from the cellar like none that had been heard before.
Signore Antonio’s face was very grave. And he stared at Fr. Piero as though he despised him, but he didn’t answer right away. Fr. Piero was shaken and enraged by the noise. So were the other priests who were with him. In fact, everybody was shaken, even me. Vitale sat flinching at every new assault from the cellar. And doors throughout the house began to slam as if in a powerful draft.
Raising his voice above the sounds, Signore Antonio spoke again:
“A terrible thing befell my friend Giovanni in Florence,” he said. “A thing that involved Lionello whom I so loved.” His face grew pale, and he turned to the side for a moment as though averting his eyes from the very memory he was about to report. “I only now as a father who has lost a son can begin to grasp what this meant for Giovanni,” he said. “At the time I felt too keenly my own pain. But what befell Giovanni’s only son was more miserable than anything even that has happened to my Lodovico under my roof.”
He swallowed, and in a strained voice went on.
“You must remember these were days unlike the days we now enjoy in Rome,” he said, “where the Holy Father keeps a check on the friars that they won’t work the populace into a frenzy against the Jews.”
“It’s never the friars’ intention to do these things,” said Fr. Piero. His voice was as patient and gentle as he could manage it. “When they preach in Holy Week they mean only to remind us all of our sins. We are all the slayers of Our Blessed Lord. We are all responsible for His Death on the Cross. And as you said yourself, it is no more than a drama, this throwing of stones at the houses of the Jews, and everyone returns to normal intercourse within a matter of days.”
“Ah, listen to me. In Florence in that last year that I lived there, during such a happy time with my friends at the court of the great Lorenzo, a dreadful accusation was made during Holy Week against Giovanni’s beloved son, Lionello, and it was an accusation that could not have contained a particle of truth.
“Savonarola had begun his preaching, he had begun insisting that the populace cleanse itself of sin. He had begun recommending the burning of all items that had to do with licentious living. And there was at his behest a group of young men, toughs all, who went about attempting to enforce his will. It was always this way with the friars. They had what were commonly called the friar’s boys.”
“Nobody approves of such things,” said Fr. Piero.
“Yet they congregate,” said Signore Antonio. “And a mob of them brought their fantastic charges against Lionello, accusing him of profaning the images of the Blessed Virgin publicly and in three different spots. As if a Jew would have been mad enough to do such a thing once. And here they put a triple charge against him. And at the behest of the friars and their ravings, a triple punishment for the young man was decreed.
“Now, mark my word, the young man was innocent. I knew Lionello! I loved him, as I’ve told you. What would have driven a man of intellect and polish, of love of poetry and music, to mock the Madonna and before others in three different places? And to show you how very preposterous all this is, imagine that he had committed some blasphemous act in one spot. Would he have been allowed to seek out a second and a third for the same crime?