Europe's inner demons полностью

Other de Plotis appear in roles scarcely less exalted than the bishop’s. When the emperor Charles IV wished to ask Bartolo’s opinion on a delicate matter of blasphemy, he employed Marcus Aurelius de Plotis to convey the enquiry.⁽⁴⁹⁾ As for Count Joannes Baptista de Plotis, he was one of the emperor’s councillors. When a German nobleman claimed that Germans were more honourable and noble than Italians, Joannes Baptista called him a liar; and when the emperor asked Bartolo whether this amounted to legally insulting behaviour, Bartolo replied that it would have been unworthy of an Italian, and an imperial councillor at that, to have done otherwise. But the same Count Joannes Baptista had domestic problems: he had married a girl from another noble family of Novara, only to find later that she was related to him within the forbidden degrees. In view of the fact that the count, constantly travelling on the emperor’s service, had had little opportunity to look into such matters, the pope declared the marriage legitimate. Nevertheless, when the count died the question arose as to whether his children could inherit; Bartolo opined that they could.⁽⁵⁰⁾ Yet not all de Plotis were above reproach. Bartolo is sharp with Joannes Aloysius de Plotis, mayor of Milan, who had wrongfully imprisoned Hector de Mapamundis (meaning “Map of the World”) for an offence committed by Hector’s brother.⁽⁵¹⁾ Moreover, in challenging Joannes Maria de Plotis to a duel, Count Sebastianus de Plotis undoubtedly offended against the ancient statutes of Novara, which Petrus de Plotis in his day had helped to draw up. It was fortunate for him that Fabianus de Plotis heard him say that he had forgotten about the challenge; for this enabled Bartolo to take a lenient view.⁽⁵²⁾

Such is the true background of the witch of Orta: for some three centuries, until medievalists and anti-papal propagandists discovered her and found in her what they wanted to find, she was simply a minor character in a preposterous family saga. How this saga was ever accepted as the work of Bartolo is a mystery. Even apart from the absurdity of most of the incidents, the Latin style is utterly unlike his, and even the signature appended to each consilium — “Ego, Bartolus de Saxoferrato” — is one he never used. One can only assume that no scholar ever read these fragmented materials with enough attention to realize that they form a whole, and that that whole is a parody.

Who was the parodist? No hint is given in the Omnia Opera of Bartolo, nor in the work from which the faked consilia in the Omnia Opera were drawn — the collection of opinions on criminal cases first published by Ziletti in 1572. But if one inspects the two consilia which, though attributed to Bartolo, never reappeared in the Omnia Opera, one finds the answer. These are the consilia in Ziletti’s collection of matrimonial cases, first published in 1563. In each the rubric states that, though written by Bartolo, the opinion has only now been brought to light by the illustrious doctor of both laws Joannes Baptista de Plotis.

Giovanni Battista Piotto, or de’ Ploti, as he is variously called by Italian historians, was a prominent citizen of Novara in the second half of the sixteenth century.⁽⁵³⁾ A nobleman and landed proprietor, he was also a respected jurist, a pupil of the celebrated Andrea Alciati. Novara was at that time under the protection of Milan, which was itself a dependency of the Spanish crown; and Piotto acted for many years as Novara’s spokesman in Milan. He was zealous in defending Novara’s rights and privileges — it was thanks to him that the Spaniards desisted from demolishing the suburbs; and in due course his fellow-citizens acknowledged his services by bestowing on him the title of padre della patria. He was also a great producer of consilia — those published number more than a hundred.