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thought never to have returned alive, meeting with his tragic demise a few weeks later, certainly before September of that year. From that
time onwards, Mavrogonato s name and memory were to be systematically omitted from all documents signed by his former associate,
Salomone da Piove, as well as by Salamone s sons, although reference to the privileges obtained by the influential merchant from Candia
appears to have become an established custom. This is not surprising and cannot be merely accidental. Salomone certainly knew the truth
about that last voyage to Constantinople in which Mavrogonato is believed to have met with unexpected death. Did Salamone know too
much? Did he wish to forget, or rather, cause others to forget, that he had been with him on that tragic maritime voyage? What is certain is
that Salomone da Piove was close to David Mavrogonato until the end. Perhaps too close.
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It is not therefore surprising to learn that, at around this same time, Salomone personally took over a bold project, perhaps planned
beforehand by his associate and collaborator from Candia,
p. 32]
"to take the life of the Great Turk", thus doing the government of Venice a great favor (56). To provide for the assassination of Mahomet II,
the nonchalant financier informed the Council of Ten that he had sent a Jewish doctor named Valco, whose Italian name was probably
derived from the well-known family of doctors, natives of Worms, called Wallach, Wallich or Welbush, to Constantinople, at his expense
(57).
"Salamon, as appears in the books of Your Majesties the Council of Ten, due to his wish to do a great yourselves and all of Christianity a
great service by attempting to take the life of the Great Turk, chose, at his expense, sent for a Maestro Valco, a Jewish doctor, whom he sent
with his own money" (58).
Even before that, we know that the Venetian authorities had been glad to avail themselves of the services of a Jewish barber-surgeon, Jacob
da Gaeta, the Sultan s personal physician, an expert spy and double agent, greedy for gain and treacherous, with whom Mavrogonato had
maintained frequent contacts (59). It also appears that Maestro Jacob had reached Venice in secrecy, together with Gaeta, on the same vessel
from Ragusa, in very late 1468, on the eve of the imperial visit and the Venetian congress of Jewish physicians, held on that occasion (60).
Maestro Valco, paid by Salomone, moved to Constantinople, and went quickly to work, but apparently with little result. Mahomet II was still
alive and kicking when the Jewish banker from Piove finally died, between the end of 1475 and the very early part of the following year. But
Salamone was occupied with certain other matters, much more serious and more disagreeable then merely "taking the life of the Great Turk"
during that period, which was to prove fraught with danger for all the Jewish communities of northern Italy. The Trent trials of the Jews
accused of little Simon s martyrdom had ended with the condemnation and execution of the principal defendants, who were burnt at the stake
or decapitated in June of 1475. Other defendants, including the women of the small community, were waiting to learn their final fate, after
which the trial proceedings were suspended in April by order of Sigismundo IV, Count of Tyrol, and were then newly interrupted the
following July by order of Pope Sixtus IV after a brief recommencement, requested by several parties for purposes of intervening in the
affair. The Pope then personally sent a special commissioner to Trent, the Dominican, Battista de Giudici, bishop of Ventimiglia, with the
task of investigating and
p. 33]
reporting on the facts. De Giudici, who had initially taken up lodgings at Trent, later moved to the nearby, but more secure, seat of
Rovereto, in territory belonging to Venice, where they met with the lawyers, all of top rate importance, whom the Jews of Padua had decided
to make available to the defendants (61). Salomone da Piove played a prominent role in the affair, requesting the Pope to appoint an apostolic
inquisitor and probably meeting Battista de' Giudici at Padua, on de Giudici s way to Trent (62).
In accordance with de' Giudici, with whom he maintained intense epistolary relations, as well as through another Jew from Piove, belonging
to the Cusi family of typographers, having strategically moved, to Rovereto, Salomone provided a safe conduct to a Paduan Jew, a native of
Regensburg, and sent him to Innsbruck with the mission of pleading the cause of the Trent defendants still in prison, before Sigismundo,
Count of Tyrol, and, if possible, obtaining their release. Salomone Fürstungar, his agent on this delicate mission, was an unscrupulous
intriguer who camouflaged himself by dressing, not as a Jew, but "in the German-style, with a short overcoat and a cap on his head", returned
from Tyrol disappointed and empty-handed. His bitter failure was also an indication of the failure of the efforts of all the German-origin
Jewish communities from the Veneto region to avoid the tragic consequences of the Trent affair for the defendants who were still alive (63).
Salomone da Piove is said to have died shortly afterwards (64).
The leadership of this conspicuous group, committed, as always, to avoiding the political and financial effects and repercussions of the Trent
trials on their Jewish brethren, thus passed into the hands of Manno di Aberlino (Mandele ben Abrahim) of Vincenza, maximum exponent of
the influential Ashkenazim community of Pavia (65). A prestigious banker with vast financial resources, he had been appointed collector of
Jewish taxes to the Lombard communities by the Duke of Milan in 1469. Manno was related to Salomone da Piove, whose first-born son
Marcuccio had married one of his brother Angelo s daughters (66). Manno was to meet Salomone da Piove at fairly frequent intervals at
Venice, where he had more or less officially opened a money lending shop, of secondary importance compared to the great bank at Padua but
still of strategic importance (67).
When Salomone Fürstungar, just recovering from the setback at Innsbruck, thirsting for revenge or just to reshuffle the cards, took to
considering murdering the captain of the guards of the podestà of Trent
p. 34]
[IMAGE]
[Letter in Hebrew sent by the banker Manno (Mandele) of Pavia to the physician Omobono Bonim of Venice, March 1476 (State Archive of
Trent, Archivio Principesco Vescovile, S.L., 69, 68).]
and even bishop Hinderbach himself, hiring an assassin for the task, a person above suspicion, a priest named Paolo da Novara, the
industrious Manno offered to finance the bold initiative, without regard to cost (68). Manno asked the priest, Paolo da Novara, who was
probably contacted through his brother Bartolomeo, a druggist at Piove di Sacco (69), to poison the persons responsible for the Trent trial
and to obtain the arsenic required to do so from the Venetian physician Omobono (Bunim), owner of the "della Vecchia" pharmacy at San
Cassian, who is also believed to have issued instructions on how to use the arsenic. As a reward, Paolo was to receive four hundred ducats,
half of it immediately, and the other two hundred to be withdrawn over the counter a Manno s bank at Venice (70). But the conspiracy, the
most prominent members of which were all Jews from Pavia, Padua, Novara, Soncino, Parma, Piacenza, Modena, Brescia, Bassano,
Rovereto, Riva and Venice, failed miserably, with the arrest and confession of the fanciful and avaricious priest (71).
--
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NOTES TO CHAPTER ONE
1) Cfr. P. Ghinzoni, Federico III Imperatore a Venezia (dal 19 febbraio 1469), in "Archivio Veneto", n.s., XIX (1889), no. 37, pp. 133-144.
2) On the Roman coronation of Friedrich III in 1452 see, recently, Ph. Braunstein, L'événement et la memoire: regards privés, rapports
officiels sur le couronnement romain de Federic III, in "La circulation de nouvelles au Moyen Age", Société des Historiens Médievistes de [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]