If now we eliminate the deaths of Don Garcia, Cardinal Giovanni, Duke Francesco, Bianca Capello, and Lucrezia de’Medici, as doubtful, there will still remain the murders of Cardinal Ippolito, Duke Alessandro, Lorenzino de’Medici, Pietro Bonaventuri (Bianca’s husband), Pellegrina Bentivoglio (Bianca’s daughter), Eleonora di Toledo, Francesco Casi (Eleonora’s lover), the Duchess of Bracciano, Troilo Orsini (lover of this Duchess), Felice Peretti (husband of Vittoria Accoramboni), and Vittoria Accoramboni—­eleven murders, all occurring between 1535 and 1585, an exact half century, in a single princely family and its immediate connections.  The majority of these crimes, that is to say seven, had their origin in lawless passion.[224]

[Footnote 224:  I have told the stories in this chapter as dryly as I could.  Yet it would be interesting to analyze the fascination they exercised over our Elizabethan playwrights, some of whose Italian tragedies handle the material with penetrative imagination.  For the English mode of interpreting southern passions see my Italian Byways, pp. 142 et seq., and a brilliant essay in Vernon Lee’s Euphorion.]

CHAPTER VI.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS:  PART II.

     Tales illustrative of Bravi and Banditti—­Cecco Bibboni—­Ambrogio
     Tremazzi—­Lodovico dall’Armi—­Brigandage—­Piracy—­Plagues—­The
     Plagues of Milan, Venice, Piedmont—­Persecution of the
     Untori—­Moral State of the Proletariate—­Witchcraft—­Its Italian
     Features—­History of Giacomo Centini.

The stories related in the foregoing chapter abundantly demonstrate the close connection between the aristocracy and their accomplices—­bravos and bandits.  But it still remains to consider this connection from the professional murderer’s own point of view.  And for this purpose, I will now make use of two documents vividly illustrative of the habits, sentiments, and social status of men who undertook to speculate in bloodshed for reward.  They are both autobiographical; and both relate tragedies which occupied the attention of all Italy.

Cecco Bibboni.

The first of these documents is the report made by Cecco Bibboni concerning his method adopted for the murder of Lorenzino de’Medici at Venice in 1546.  Lorenzino, by the help of a bravo called Scoroncolo, had assassinated his cousin Alessandro, Duke of Florence, in 1537.  After accomplishing this deed, which gained for him the name of Brutus, he escaped from the city; and a distant relative of the murdered and the murderer, Cosimo de’Medici, was chosen Duke in Alessandro’s stead.  One of the first acts of his reign was to publish a ban of outlawry against Lorenzino.  His portrait was painted according to old Tuscan usage head downwards, and suspended by one foot, upon the wall of Alessandro’s fortress.  His house was cut in twain from roof to pavement, and