The day came. It was the 11th of June. The procession took place and lasted twelve hours. It was attended by almost the whole city. Every human being that could crawl out of his bed helped to throng the closely packed streets; and, of course, the result was exactly what might have been expected. Ripamonti tells us that, The prayers turned out vain; and the pestilence, as if excited by the vociferation of the suppliants, increased the more and became more infuriate.' What else could have been anticipated from thus bringing together for twelve hours in one hot closely-jammed mass all the contagion lurking among the population of the entire city?

Our good canon, Ripamonti, had already | employed on the pious upholstery which once in his life undergone an imprisonment was to win God's favour and interposition. of five years in the dungeons of the inquisition; charged with atheism and neglect of his religious duties. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he avoids with a burned-child-like caution, saying anything in his writings that could offend the popular prejudices of his day. He relates accordingly all the preparations for this procession with the utmost gravity and propriety. Yet all his caution has not sufficed to prevent two or three little gleams of covert irony from glancing through the grave decorum of his narrative, which sufficiently indicate, to a congenially-minded reader, that the writer is laughing in his sleeve at the absurdity of the thing. Thus he tells us, that The body of St. Charles, or rather all that remained of it from the voracity of time, which destroys even the hardest metals, was laid in a coffer covered with white silk, with little windows in the sides of it, through which was seen the consumed figure of the saint, all the more venerable to the eyes of the devout than if it had been untouched.'

The

and whole quarters of the city appeared silent deserts. The dead could no longer be buried fast enough; and pestiferous corpses might be seen lying in the streets waiting the cart, which should carry them to the enormous, yet insufficient pits, which had been dug outside the city.

Redoubled consternation took possession of the people. Some said that the sins of Milan were not yet sufficiently chastised; and others maintained that it was evident from the failure of the procession that not even God had power to quell the pestilence. Eight days and nights the body of St. Charles remained exposed to the veneration The people of Milan were overjoyed at of the public in the cathedral, which was the prospect of the procession. They had during all that time crowded with votaries. the greatest hopes that it would be the And still the mortality kept increasing, as if, means of stopping the plague and saving says Ripamonti, the only answer to their their lives. At all events it secured them prayer was death. The deaths averaged, one more festival, and one more spectacle during July and August, 1700 a day. before they died: so the preparations were lazzaretto was horribly, loathsomely crowdmade on the grandest scale. The time al-ed. Great numbers of houses were empty, lowed for these was short, the fourth day from that on which the procession was determined on having been fixed for it. All Milan, therefore, was in a state of the most active bustle, night and day, during this time. Triumphal arches were raised, the streets were lined with tapestry and silk, and, in the words of the historian, emblems, verses, and hundreds upon hundreds of inscriptions in gilt letters a foot high,' were seen on all sides. Altars were raised at every corner, and balconies erected in front of the houses, in which bands of music and singers were placed. In short, Milan assumed the appearance of a city devoted to pleasure and festivity. The light and easily excited people seemed almost to forget the melancholy purpose of all these preparations in the bustle and activity attendant upon them. And it would be difficult to conceive a more shocking contrast than was presented during those days by the external appearance of the city decked for its fête, and the scenes passing in the interior of those gaily decorated houses. Corpses were shoved out of the way to make room for garlands, and the business of interring the dead was suspended, that all hands might be

In the meantime the disorder and licence which prevailed in the city increased the public calamity. It might, perhaps, have been expected, viewing the matter à priori, that the hourly contemplation, and visible propinquity of death, would lead men to turn their minds the more to that life, which they profess to believe awaits them after death. Thus preachers, unwisely in our opinion, substituting a principle of terror for one of rational preference for good, endeavour to excite the devotion of their hearers by continually representing to them the uncertainty of life, and presented unceasingly to their imagination the certain propinquity, and, perhaps, immediate vicinity of death. And it cannot be doubted that this kind of exhortation, though little calculated, as we think, to lead the mind to a deliberate decision of the will in favour of virtue, does yet produce in its hearers a tendency to recur

with frightened faith to the prescriptions of those dreadful days. Some of the atrocities their spiritual guides; just as the man, recorded are such as it is impossible for us whose life has passed in the indulgence of to transfer to these pages. But it is easy to unhealthy habits, runs to the physician at the imagine that such powers entrusted to such visible approach of death. It is, therefore, agents must have led to the most deplorable curious that the actual and palpable presence abuses. Robbery, and extortion on threat of death among men, and its unmistakeable of being forthwith bound and transported in imminence over each individual, should not the midst of a heap of pestiferous wretches to produce the same effect. It is notorious that the fearful lazzaretto, were among the most it brings about a diametrically opposite re- venial of the crimes perpetrated by them. sult. And this fact alone should give But the evil did not stop even here. The pause' to the operators of fear-born 'conver- lawless license thus put to such profit by sions,' as they are termed, and cause them to these monatti served as a hint to others. inquire a little further into the true nature And various gangs of debauched and shameof the effects they succeed in producing. less young men adopted their costume,The imagination of men will, of course, fixed around their ancles the bells, which be variously affected according to the variety were the distinguishing mark of these dreadof their temperaments. Solomon Eagles ed officials, and which were intended to warn has his prototype and pendents, as well as all the healthy to keep at a distance from that company of reckless libertine carousers them,-and wandered through the town, who held their meetings in the inn at Ald-entering under the pretence of being mogate, so admirably described in Defoe's natti' whatever house they chose. truthful fiction, doubtless well remembered by our readers. The immortal pages in which Boccacio describes the similar effects which followed from similar causes at Florence, will also be in the remembrance of many. At Milan the disorder and evils produced by the reckless libertinage of those, who were eager to put the confusion of society to profit, in order to pass what might remain to them of life in what they deemed enjoyment, were such as to reflect great discredit on the governors of the city, notwithstanding their historiographer's testimony in their favour.

Rob

bery to an immense extent, and many other most scandalous excesses and outrages, were perpetrated by these abandoned scoundrels.

Even in the execution of the duties to which they were appointed, the 'monatti' seem to have proceeded with the most reckless and unchecked cruelty and indecency. In the following passage Po della Croce vividly describes the miserable condition of the city, and the horrible sights that daily afflicted the eyes of the continually diminishing number of survivors.

"A fearful spectacle," says he," to see, was in those days the once so proud but now wretched Each of the carts appointed for carrying city of Milan! Houses were desolate, families forth the dead was attended by two monat-extinct. The shops were shut; all traffic had ti,' as they were termed. The origin of the ceased; the tribunals were closed; the churches name is doubtful, some supposing it derived abandoned; the streets empty. And none were to from 'uovos' (alone,'' solitary'), because be seen in them, but the ministers of death, who they were not permitted to associate with conducted the wretched plague-stricken from their any one; and others assigning other ety-houses to the lazzaretto. At every hour the huge dead-carts were creaking through the streets, the mologies. These monatti seem to have more horrible to see from their hideous load being been entrusted with most imprudently large heaped on them in a confused mass. The mo powers and authority. It was their duty natti,' who conducted them, hardened in heart and not only to carry the dead to the pits outside blunted in feeling by their horrible office, came the city, but also to convey the sick to the forth from the lazzaretto singing, with feathers in lazzaretto. And for these purposes they their caps; and with an audacity that seemed as if appear to have been armed with authority to they thought themselves exempted from the doenter any house, for the purpose of finding houses, which they treated more as if they were minion of death, they entered into the infected the dead and the dying. Of course the hired enemies come to plunder, than as friends to bring performers of these dangerous, horrible, and aid. These men would seize the pestiferous bodies loathsome duties, were necessarily chosen of the dead by the head, by the legs, or however from the lowest class of the populace. And, it might chance, and carry them out on their shoul. of course, if they were not brutes when se-ders like a sack of grain, and load them on the lected for this function, their offices soon cart, flinging them on the heap in utter carelessness rendered them such. The most shocking of the heads, legs, and arms hanging over the accounts of the horrors perpetrated by these men in the houses into which they were

sides."

The shocking picture is fully confirmed

thus empowered to intrude, are given by by Ripamonti and others. Ripamonti, and all the other historians of

VOL. XXXIV.

4

It might be thought that the unfortunate

city needed no further aggravation of its discover the persons guilty of disseminating miseries to fill its cup to overflowing. But the contagion by anointing persons and in the excess of their superstitious ignorance things. And the records of the legal prothe Milanese found the means of increasing ceedings which resulted from their perquisithe terror and misery of their condition. tions, are the principal documents which Many of our readers will have heard proba- disclose the particulars of this very singular bly in the pages of Manzoni,-the only Ita- delusion. lian novelist of our time, who may be said to have acquired a European reputation, many will probably through him have heard of the 'untori' or anointers,' and of the 'Colonna Infame,' which was erected to perpetuate the memory of their crimes. It is a dark page of human history; at the same time a most curious one, and it ought to be an instructive one. Signor Cusani has taken great pains to throw light on that part of Ripamonti's narrative which relates to this extraordinary subject; and the result of his researches is contained in three appendices to the second book of his author's history, which unquestionably give a more intelligible account of this mysterious matter, than has before been accessible to the public. Perhaps the entire annals of history do not furnish another equally humiliating picture of the evil workings of superstition, ignorance, and prejudice.

It was on the morning of the 22d of April that, some persons going into the streets, at daybreak, first observed certain stains along the walls, as if they had been anointed with some white and yellow unctuous matter. The increase of terror and dismay was shocking. And the minds of men, excited by the general panic to the highest pitch of nervous irritability, and augmenting reciprocally their fears by exchanging the most monstrous reports, suspicions, and assertions, were ready to receive with implicit credence the wildest impossibilities. It was said, and very generally believed, that emissaries of the prince of darkness were employed in this truly devilish work of anointing the walls for the purpose of spreading the plague. Some asserted that the devil himself had established a sort of emporium in Milan for the preparation and dispensation of the poisonous matters used by the anointShortly after it had become certain to theers. And a story was current, most satismost incredulous that the plague was in the city, and that the mortality was rapidly increasing, a report began to spread abroad among the people that the plague was purposely caused by the acts of certain evilminded persons: and that this was effected by anointing the walls and other substances with certain secret poisons, which infected all that touched them. The idea was not then a new one. The plague had before and elsewhere been attributed to human agency. And perhaps it is natural to men in the helplessness of such a calamity to endeavour to affix the responsibility for their sufferings on some object which they can pursue with their vengeance, and on which they may wreak their resentment against the unseen power that afflicts them. Thus even in our own days the populace of Paris, when smitten with the cholera, turned on the medical men with an accusation of poisoning the people. But here, at least, the notion was transient, and confined to the lowest people; and though morally, it was not physically impossible. In Milan the belief that the plague was caused by anointers,' spread through the city with inconceivable rapidity, and soon became all but universal. The absurdity and monstrous impossibility of the thing did not prevent even the physicians and men of science from partaking in the general delusion. The magistrates from the first exerted themselves to the utmost to

factorily attested,' of course, of a man who had been requested to get into a carriage which he had seen standing in the space in front of the cathedral, and who had then been driven to a certain house in the city, and made to enter, the interior of which he described, 'in a style equal,' says Ripamonti, 'to that of Homer's description of the cave of Circe in the Odyssee.' In this house he had an interview with the devil, who promised him enormous treasures if he would become 'an anointer.' But he refused, and in an instant found himself transported back again to the spot where he first had seen the devil's carriage. Ripamonti says that he had seen an engraving, executed in Ger many, representing the devil sitting on the box of a carriage, with an inscription stating that he appeared thus to the Milanese.

Several proclamations are extant in the archives of Milan which were published by the magistrates in the hope of discovering the perpetrators of the crime. The first is dated on the 19th of May, 1630. And it is remarkable that in this it is stated that 'certain persons have anointed the walls with unctuous matters of white and yellow colour, which have much alarmed the people, who suspect that this has been done to spread the plague,' etc., etc., a reward of two hundred crowns is offered to whosoever shall give information leading to the detection of such persons, together with a free pardon,

as he was taken down. He was again placed on the rack with the same result; and this was repeated several times. Till at length in hopes of death, as the only mode of escape from his tormentors, he declared that his project was to exterminate the city, and that he had composed the ointment with which the walls were smeared.

if such informer should be an accomplice. I seen Piazza in his life. He was submitted But in a subsequent proclamation of the 14th to the torture, and confessed himself guilty; of July, in the same year, it is stated that but instantly retracted his confession as soon persons have anointed the walls with poisonous ointments with the diabolical intention of spreading the plague.' And a reward of a thousand crowns is offered, together with a pardon, and the pardon of any three other criminals. The tendency of the most absurd belief to propagate itself from mind to mind, and to gain strength from the number of its asserters, each of whom believes because all the others do, is here curiously illustrated. Very few minds seem to have been able to resist the current of the popular delusion. Among these few there seems reason to think that our historian was one. We have already said that he was in many respects in advance of his age; but after the lesson he had had in his younger days, he took very good care not to differ from the received popular credence too openly.

During the proceedings in the case of Mora other anointers were arrested; and one Baruello voluntarily gave himself up on the same charge. This last declared that he and all the other anointers' worked under the direction and instigation of a great leader, who was the projector of the whole scheme. In giving this evidence he only fell in with the popular opinion, which had already conceived this idea. Yet it was not till the miserable man had been several times tortured, that he declared that this leader of the conspiracy was Don Giovani Gaetano Padilla, son of the governor of the fortress of Milan. He was at that time with the army before Mantua; but was immediately arrested and brought to Milan. He succeeded in most clearly proving an alibi, showing that he was at Mantua during the whole period to which Baruello in his evidence referred the interviews and other acts said to have been done by him in Milan. Yet it was not till after a very long and protracted examination and re-examination that he was at length set at liberty in 1632.

As for Baruello he esaped the gallows by dying of the plague: the others were executed. Several persons dying of the pestilence confessed in their last moments that they were anointers,' and the material of their crime was in many instances, says Ripamonti, found concealed about their persons.

It was not long, as may be easily supposed, before the magistrates obtained the information for which they offered such high bribes. An unfortunate wretch, one Piazza, was arrested on the information of some women, who declared that they saw him, from their windows, very early one morning, smearing the walls with ointment. This Piazza was a'sort of visitor of infected houses, under the board of health, and apparently a kind of inspector of the 'monatti. Having declared himself wholly ignorant of what was laid to his charge, he was subjected for four days to all the most horrible refinements of torture, which the practised ingenuity of the judicial tormentors could suggest. He was also promised a pardon if he would reveal the names of his accomplices. On the fourth day, his judges had, in the words of Ripamonti, After having in vain dislocated every limb, ordered him to be taken down from the rack from weariness, as also from clemency,' and he had been re-conducted to It is needless to detain our readers with his cell, when he suddenly cried out that a the minute and prolix accounts which have barber had given him the ointment. He been preserved of all the absurdities, which then proceeded to name one Giacomo Mora, these wretched victims of their own, or whose shop stood on the spot where the others' fanaticism, declared in evidence to 'Colonna Infame' was afterwards erected. their judges both voluntarily and under the The barber was forthwith arrested, and his influence of torture. Many new victims premises strictly searched. Various crocks were accused by them; and as this portion and pots and pans, containing substances of their declarations was at least intelligible, such as barbers are in the habit of compound-every name which fell from their lips was ing for the purposes of their business, were eagerly caught, and its utterance was an found. They also found an ointment, whose unfailing sentence of torture and death. component parts the barber told them, and which he had composed as a remedy against the plague. The story of Piazza was a tissue of absurdities, which it is almost incredible that the judges could have believed for an instant. Mora declared that he had never

The utter nonsense and absurd puerilities which they uttered, and which were gravely received and recorded by the judges, remain as a permanent proof of the extremity of irrational folly to which the mind may be led by terror, and the force of an epidemic fanati

will be seen from the following passage of Tadino, both that they were deemed capable of such a deed, and that they were, in fact, suspected of wishing for their own purposes to prolong the pestilence.

cism. Some gave long histories of incan- has already seen what sort of character these tations and orgies, at which supernatural men generally bore and deserved. And it events had taken place, and devils had taken part. Many gave various, and all equally monstrously absurd accounts of the substances used for anointing. Nothing was too gross, too monstrous, for the people, the judges, and even for the physicians, headed by the learned Tadino, to believe. The whole story furnishes one of the most curious and most humiliating cases of human infatuation on record.

"The monatti,' and attendants," says he, "perceiving the great licence they enjoyed, and the profit they made from their thefts, purposely let infected clothes fall from the dead-carts in the streets, during the night, in order that being picked up by the cupidity of the passers by they might thus be the means of disseminating the plague."

the

sanest of their fellow-citizens were possessed by such a singular monomania. The extraordinary effects of this nature, which may be produced on the minds of individuals by the prevalence of any epidemic popular delusion, is no new fact in the history of human nature. And the reader will, doubtless, remember the confessions, incontestibly sincere, and in many cases perfectly voluntary, of supposed witches during more than one period of access of the popular terrors of this sort.

But, perhaps, the most singular part of this very extraordinary page of history, is the fact, which seems incontrovertibly esta blished, that stains, such as were described It is extraordinary that this idea having in the magisterial proclamations, did really been once generated, it should not have exist and were repeatedly seen by many guided the tribunals in their investigations persons in various parts of the city. The on the subject, to a nearer approximation of question arises, whence came these stains, the truth. and for what purpose were they made? It As to Baruello, who accused himself, and is a very difficult question. Some modern as to some other miserable wretches, who writers have suggested that the anointments with their last breath declared that they had were the work of some ill-advised and been guilty of anointing, it is probable that thoughtless humcrists, who raised a laugh their minds had become partially unsettled for themselves at the expense of the public on a subject, respecting which, indeed, credulity. But Signor Cusani well observes, in his second appendix to Ripamonti's second book of his history, that even if we could suppose any one to have been sufficiently foolish, and indeed wicked, to have thus amused themselves with the terror and calamity of their fellow-citizens by playing off so bad a joke once or twice; yet that taking into consideration the very universal belief in the mortal nature of these ointments, and still more the fury of the populace, and the certain and dreadful death that awaited any one who should be detected in Again, it is possible that the promised such an act, it seems hardly credible, that pardon and reward may have, in some inthe extensive anointings, which history stances, operated to produce a lying confesproves to have existed, can be attributed to sion and some of that farrago of absurdity such a cause. But Cusani does not destroy which was given in evidence by the conthis first hypothesis without offering another, fessing witness. If so, such speculators on and, in our opinion, a far more probable one, the good faith of the magistrates found that in its place. The notion that the plague they had made a terrible mistake. For not might be thus caused and spread, was not, as one of those who came into their hands in has been already said, a new one. And the this matter of anointing escaped torture idea having once taken possession of the and execution, except such as slipped popular mind, Signor Cusani suggests, and through them by the operation of that far we think with great appearance of probabi- more merciful executor, the plague. One lity, that those who had an interest in the of these unfortunates, at the place of execontinuance of the plague might have cution, a few minutes before his death, said adopted this means of prolonging their that he could reveal an excellent specific gainful trade, with the most perfect convic- against the plague. Strange as it may tion of its efficacy. Piazza, the first arrest- seem, this man, who was about to be hung ed on the charge of anointing,' was, it will for composing ointments for the dissemina be remembered, an inspector of the infected. tion of the plague, was eagerly listened to, These men and the monatti' were very and his receipt was taken down at the galhighly paid, and moreover made large pro- lows, and was afterwards extensively used, fits by the opportunities of plunder which under the name of 'Hanged-man's Ointtheir position afforded them. The reader ment.' The receipt has been preserved.