Venice’s First Witch “A perfect crime”(Lara Pavanetto) Venice’s First Witch
“A perfect crime”
By Lara Pavanetto


In the years when these events unfold, the Doge of Venice was Lorenzo Tiepolo (1268-1275). He had been elected at the death of Renier Zeno, whose reign had been marked by the clashes with Genoa for the control of trade in the East. Lorenzo Tiepolo had been admiral of the Venetian fleet, had fought at Tyre against the Genoese, and had brought back to Venice many parts of the monastery of San Saba, something that had been the object of much contention with the Genoese. Some columns of this monastery are still visible in the Doge’s Palace, in front of the Porta della Carta.

Lorenzo Tiepolo was the first doge to be elected with a new system, destined to last without material modifications until the fall of the Republic. It involved a complex system: the youngest member of the Grand Council went down into church of St. Mark and brought back with him a child aged between eight and ten – the first he ran into. He dubbed him “ballottino”, namely “little officer of the ballotte” (the balls used for the voting). These were deposited in a cloth hat, to serve as an urn, and numbered as many as were the members of the Grand Council– except that inside thirty of these had been inserted a slip of paper with the word “elector”. The child, having been blindfolded, drew out the balls and handed them one at a time to the members of the Grand Council passing in line before him. The thirty drawn had to be from different families and could not be related in any way. Those not drawn left the hall and the remaining thirty chose nine from among their number in the same way. These nine then met to elect forty members from the Grand Council using voting forms. Election depended on having seven votes. With the forty chosen, new recourse was made to drawing by lot, to elect twenty-five, who, after drawing lots again, were reduced to nine. These nine were then entrusted in their turn with choosing forty-five. Lots were drawn again, eleven remained, and these eleven chose, with a quorum of at least nine votes, the forty-one electors of the doge. Finally, the forty-one, sealed in conclave in the Doge’s Palace, proceeded to nominate the doge, who could not have fewer than twenty-five votes.

Lorenzo Tiepolo was the son of Doge Jacopo Tiepolo (1229-1249), brother-in-law of a king (his wife was probably daughter of the King of Romania) and a great marine general. His reign involved a series of important political decisions for Venice. After the settling of relations with Genoa and Byzantium in the Peace of Cremona in 1270, Doge Tiepolo worked hard to strengthen and guard Venetian domination of the Adriatic. To this end a watch team was instituted under the command of a “Captain of the Gulf” to keep a strict eye on the coasts of Istria and the Marche, to contain smuggling and guarantee the efficient collection of customs dues.

This is the picture when the story of the “witch” Diletta and her husband Tommaso Michiel, unfolds, bringing before our eyes a fresco of Venice in the Middle Ages and its policy of expansion in the Adriatic.

Tommaso Michiel and his brother Marco were leading actors in this policy Venice followed in Istria. But they also sat upon the Grand Council.

The document which tells the story of Diletta the “witch”, the only one that has come down to us across the centuries, had already been published in 1886, without, however, provoking any reactions, but in 1992 a valuable essay by Professor Marco Pozza brought the affair to the attention of a much wider public. Nevertheless, it was not the Professor’s particular concern to investigate and reconstruct the world of Diletta the witch and try to discover the real reason for her death. By contrast, these were the principal motivations which have inspired me.




In the One Thousand Two Hundred and Seventy-first year of our Lord, at the fourteenth session, on the sixth day of July in course, in the presence of Giovannino of the Quarter of Santa Sophia of Venice…

Diletta entered the room with her head lowered. It was 6 July 1271.
She had just arrived in Montona, in Istria, to join her family: her husband, her sister and her sister’s husband. She wore in her hair the usual plait down to her lower back, but her head was bared. She was simply dressed and carried her hands joined, as one in prayer.

The notary Messer Bonaventura, squeezed into his distinctive black cloth was tall and thin and beheld the women with a timorous gaze. He did not dare to sit until the Podestà Tommaso Michiel, the husband of Diletta, had with a gesture of the hand permitted him to do so. Then, his eyes wide, and the hand that held the quill trembling, he listened in silence to what the wife of the Venetian Podestà, a noblewoman and citizen of Venice, had to confess.

Standing, her head down, eyes half-closed and a slight blush in her cheeks, Diletta confessed to having had recourse to witchcraft, practising it against her husband and brother-in-law. She admitted having mixed into the food prepared for the two men black lodestone, host wafers and holy oil and also some menstrual blood of her own and from her mother. Not to mention some pieces of umbilical cord from her first and second children, which she had concealed at the time of their births.

“Why did you do it?” Messer Bonaventura had just asked her, in amazement.
Diletta had not answered. And then, as if she had not heard the question, she went on enumerating her crimes.
“I have washed my husband’s head with lye mixed with menstrual blood. I have bound with threads the blades of a pair of scissors and put them under the door of my room in Parenzo. I have had two wax dolls pierced with needles and I have kept with me a pig’s trotter bone, which I burned when I wanted a conflict with my family to end. I have carried with me from Venice the powder of a worm to use for casting the evil eye.”

At that point the Podestà Tommaso Michiel advanced towards the notary’s table, stepping out of the shadows where he and the rest of the family were standing, and held up a little glass bottle containing a white powder.
“Is this the worm’s dust that you brought from Venice?” the notary asked Diletta.
She raised her head a little, but didn’t even glance in the direction of her husband. Great fat tears rolled down her pink cheeks. She nodded, to confirm that that was the worm’s dust that she had used to spread the evil eye. Then, with a resolute voice, she added through her tears, “It was Beatrice, wife of Alberto dal Muro of Parenzo and Olivia, baker of Parenzo, who recommended I used it. They had even captured two lizards.”

There were many other things Diletta had to say that day, 6 July 1271. They all poured out of her, as she went on confessing her crimes. She wanted to redeem herself completely before entrusting her soul to God – before the tortures that awaited her in the main square of Montona.
And her entire family was there, behind her, in the triangle of light in the room, created by the torches suspended from the wall: her husband Tommaso, her sister Maria and Maria’s husband, Marco, Tommaso’s brother. There were some witnesses too, all members of the familia – the clan - of Tommaso her husband: Giovannino of Venice who lived in Santa Sofia, Pritivalle of Verona who dwelt in the Michiel house, Andruzzolo of Parenzo and others whom, however, the notary, Messer Bonaventura, does not mention in his document, and whose names therefore we shall never know.

Diletta told how, when still she resided in Venice, she had handed over the hem of a grey cloak and a piece of the sole of her husband’s shoes to a woman, of whose name she had been completely ignorant but who had been recommended to her by the wife of a stonecutter, in order for this woman to make from these a little statuette. She had done the same thing with a piece of a green cloak, a shoe and a shirt belonging to her brother-in-law. And finally she confessed that at Parenzo, the wife of a greengrocer who served the captain of the galley entrusted with the defence of the city had pledged to find her an amulet to wear at all times, in return for ten grossi.

Messer Bonaventura diligently and unquestioningly wrote down her whole confession. His document still exists, in the State Archive here in Venice; and it is the sole document to hand down to us the story of Diletta, wife of the Venetian Podestà of Montona, Tommaso Michiel.

Condemned to pay with her life for her mistakes, Diletta was burnt at the stake in front of the church of San Cipriano, one of the oldest in Montona – the church that all the podestà of the town customarily attended.
But how did things come to this tragic conclusion? How could it come to pass that the wife of a Venetian podestà should be burnt at the stake as a witch? And what role had been played in the whole affair by the woman’s husband, the Podestà Tommaso Michiel, and his family?
Why had Diletta confessed, knowing full well that she would finish at the stake? What is Diletta’s message to us, in her tales of spells and witchery? Can we, by analysing them, arrive at an understanding of the motives for her actions?


A Company of Brothers

It was imperative that the family’s estate not get divided. Its resources were not to be broken up, or the price would have been the demise itself of the family and its members.
At his death Giovanni Michiel - heir to the ancient Venetian house which according to the genealogist Marco Barbaro descended from Doge Vitale II Michiel - had left to his three sons, Angelo, Marco and Tommaso, a substantial patrimony, and expressed the firm desire that it remain in one piece: lands and property in Venice, in the parish of Santa Sophia and Sant’Apollinare, a market garden in Torcello, and saltpans, lands and vineyards in Chioggia. In addition, there was a fiefdom in Villanova and Vigonza in the territory around Ferrara.
The sons respected the will of their father, united their efforts and worked together to augment even further their family’s wealth and attempt to rise in society into the political field.

Like good Venetians, they hurled themselves into mercantile activity. Not only did they personally go to sea, but they also financed ventures undertaken by others in which they glimpsed good opportunities for profit. All this at least until the death of Angelo, which took place some time before 1271, who bequeathed his assets to his son and two brothers Tommaso and Marco.
Tommaso and Marco – two brothers united in fraternal venture. Angelo’s death had now brought them up against the fragility of their own human condition, and the brevity of life. It was perhaps the premature death of their brother that persuaded them to take certain specific decisions: take a wife, in order to have heirs, and make the first moves on the Venetian political scene. Such a thing would afford them an even steeper rise in society.

For the marriage, the choice of the two brothers fell upon two sisters: Diletta and Maria. We do not know the maiden name of the two women, but Diletta was to be recorded in the documents as nobilis domina and citizen of Venice.
Two sisters, married to two brothers. Two brothers who want wealth and prominence in Venetian politics.
Between 1266 and 1271 Tommaso and Marco were destined to appear more than once among members of the Grand Council, the centre of power in Venice. It elected all the magistrates and all the other councils: it voted laws, decreed punishments and granted amnesties. The Grand Council included all the citizens of Venice who counted in any way.
What role can the two women have had in the compulsive search of their two husbands to arrive at the top?
The two couples lived together, in the same building, sharing every aspect of their daily lives, an enforced coexistence that very soon was revealed not to be working. And that, in time, created grave conflicts between the two brothers.


In what should have been her principal role, as a mother, Diletta was straight off a failure. She became pregnant twice, but lost the first child, a boy, a few months after the birth, and was not even able to carry the second for the full term, losing a girl. The two ill-starred pregnancies scarred her deeply, in soul and of course in body.
The fear that she would be unable to give her husband a son began to haunt every minute of her life – to the point of imagining that someone wished her ill and had cast a spell on her. Inevitably, inside the family the clashes, tensions and rifts grew. And even between the two sisters the atmosphere became ever more oppressive and perhaps increased the envy and mutual suspicion.

But when did Diletta begin dabbling in magic?
Magic itself was part of Diletta’s cultural background itself of who, to solve her personal problems, took it into her head straight away to appeal to formulae and spells in a spiral that in the end was to become obsessive and tempt her to go perhaps too far.
In those times women were a traditionally passive element in life and in matters of love, and strict custom prevented them from taking steps on their own initiative. So a women were wont inevitably to rely on conspiring magically to use love potions, auguries and divination.
In the various tribulations of her life Diletta was to use magic to fight a hostile force that she felt wound about her and laid siege to her, preventing her from becoming a mother and so obtaining the love and respect of her husband.
Everything about her life is clearly caught up with magic. When she loses her two children, she takes it upon herself to put aside the umbilical cord and pieces of the placenta, because they have magical properties. Just as she was to put away some of the milk that comes after a birth.
All through the period of her marriage, as we shall see, Diletta was to give her all to bind her husband to her with spells and potions, and magic rituals too, thus revealing her whole world to us and, indirectly, the motives for which she was to die at the stake.
If we move like detectives, and analyze the magic Diletta used, we may be able to discover the secrets of her life and the wherefore of her death.


Enchantment and Desire

In her confession in Montona, Diletta recounts how when she was in Venice she had taken some things belonging to her husband and her brother-in-law to a certain woman for statuettes to be made.
In the world of magic the practice was relatively well-known of modelling or constructing dolls which represented the person upon whom one wanted to cast a spell.
With a doll one obtained a representation of one’s enemy, victim or beneficiary. Fundamental in its construction was the use of some secretion, object or relic belonging to the person being represented. The likeness would thus be ready to be subjected to every manipulation or torture, which then would be transferred to the person mimicked.
This is black magic. And it is usually the intention of this practice to work some love spell, or inflict some form of torture or curse.

What did Diletta want? A love spell or a curse? And why had she commissioned a figure of her brother-in-law Marco too? Was her sister Maria taking part in this sorceresses’ conspiracy?
Unfortunately we know nothing about Maria. But we do know that Diletta’s first pregnancies went completely awry. This could not but have weighed badly in her husband’s count.
For he, as a man, knew full well that women are used to playing with death, and above all with their own children. Everyone knew, indeed, that the majority of them had the habit of expelling the foetus from the womb with spells and herbs. Above all when the child was the fruit of sin! The sin of women!
How did Tommaso Michiel view her, that woman who had aborted not one but two children – two children dead? Suspiciously, to be sure. Because everyone knows one pregnancy can go wrong. But when two pregnancies go wrong, something definitely must be up. A divine punishment, the work of the devil, or the possibility that those children were the consequence of fornication, or adultery! For what most marks the character of a woman is lust – licentiousness!

Men stood to fear the mysterious arsenal women had, which could lead to death. Priests forbade belief in the value of potions and spells, but were themselves the first to believe in them, and all men followed them.
And Diletta? What would she have been thinking when she felt the searching and unquiet gaze of her husband over her body, the husband she so little knew and who was so single-mindedly engaged, along with his brother, in his work and in the successful political outcomes of the family?
Pregnancy was a dramatic affair, because the fate of the baby to be born was tied up in a million ways with what the mother did during pregnancy. A pregnant woman knew well to control her behaviour: not to do certain things, and to do certain others in such a way as not to fall victim of negative influences which might damage the child. A difficult experience of labour, for example, was assuredly connected to some enchantment the woman had undergone.
And then the baby has a fragile existence – precarious, particularly open to plotting, envy and the evil eye. Babies who have been struck by the evil eye cry, vomit, go pale and can even die.
Diletta lost two whole babies. She must have certainly thought that what had happened to her could not be normal. So while she recovered from the labour and bound up her breast tightly to close off the milk that would be of no use to any child, she decided she had to take measures to save her marriage and protect herself from the evil which had struck her. She decided immediately to put away some of her milk in a flask, and in a little box she hid pieces of the umbilical cord of the two children she had lost. It would all serve one day.

Her principal concern, to which her magical activity bears witness, would seem to be to restore her bond with her husband and become pregnant.
The statuettes are evidence of a desire to “fascinate” – to enchant – her husband, to bind him to her, to bring him back to her. After the unhappy outcomes of two pregnancies, relations with her husband must have been chilly. Diletta would be safe only after recovering that relationship and becoming pregnant once again, demonstrating that no malign force dwelt within her and finally giving her husband an heir.
Certainly Diletta must have sought the consolation and help of her sister in her struggle to escape the thorny situation in which she had found herself. But why did she commission a statuette of her brother-in-law Marco?
Maybe her sister Maria had also had problems in becoming pregnant? Perhaps she too had a difficult relationship with her husband?

We cannot now know what may have been the role of Maria in this story, and whether Diletta had the two dolls created with the complicity of her sister or not. We do know the sister would not be accused of sorcery, and Diletta was not to implicate her in her crimini. So we might say that Diletta acted on her own initiative. But every woman knows in her heart that this cannot have been true.
In that difficult situation in which Diletta found herself living, how can we think that she did not confide in her sister?

In Tommaso’s eyes, however, this whole affair of the dolls probably seemed something else, and that is the search for a curse that might explain the two mishandled pregnancies. All the more since, again in the period when she was in Venice, Diletta confessed to having procured the dust of a worm. Officially this was to work some spells when her husband and the brother-in-law had a grudge against someone. Did the woman want to participate and contribute in the social and political ascent of the two brothers, helping them with magic in the event of their running into obstacles along their path towards success?

But all this could be read in quite another way. She could have used that dust against her husband and her brother-in-law. Observing that Diletta thinks once again of her brother-in-law, for good or ill, and knowing that we will never really find out the true facts, the only certain factor common to all these works of magic, these spells, is fear: the fear for her marriage and her own life.

Whether Diletta had good intentions, or wanted to work with her witchcraft against her husband and her brother-in-law (be it even in consort with her sister), what emerges is the knowledge of the precariousness of her situation and the fear she had for her own life.

In 1270 Marco Michiel, Diletta’s husband, was nominated Podestà of Parenzo, in Istria. The Istrian Peninsula at that time was living out the turbulent transition from the domination of the Patriarch of Aquileia to that of the Government of Venice. When Marco Michiel was nominated Podestà of Parenzo, it was scarcely three years since the “consignment” of the community to Venice, and in the city a violent clash had taken place between the inhabitants and the local bishop, who had gone as far as excommunicating the Podestà and the officers of the Commune.
To face this situation, heavy with danger, Marco needed the help of his brother, who set off with him for Parenzo. Their wives, Maria and Diletta, followed them.
To be the Venetian podestà at Parenzo in that period required a solid dose of courage and a firm and resolute authority. They cannot have been easy, those days in Parenzo. Marco and Tommaso Michiel had to face together perilous and uncomfortable situations in the attempt to establish the authority of Venice.

And the two women – how did they react to this change?
It is precisely in Parenzo that the magical activity of Diletta becomes more intense, revealing hidden aspects of the life of her family.
It is very probable that it is in this period Diletta began to mix black lodestone, host wafers and holy oil into Marco and Tommaso’s food, not to mention the milk that she had conserved and the pieces of umbilical cord from her two dead children.
Powdered lodestone makes a person who has become distant come back to you and the milk and pieces of umbilical cord surely have a magical significance recalling fertility and abundance. The lodestone in particular would have the property of drawing love and favouring births. Host wafers and holy oil probably serve to reinforce the spell. All this is a confused and moving attempt to seek the help and support of God, which was not seen as conflicting with diabolical magic.
Diletta, through her spells, is seeking to narrow the gap between herself and her husband, to become pregnant. And she is weaving the same spell with regard to her brother-in-law, at which point it is reasonable to suppose that her sister Maria was also having the same problems in her relationship with her husband.
The principal preoccupation of the two women, then, was to become pregnant. For this reason, Diletta augments and redoubles her spells. In her confession she goes on to admit that she washed her husband’s head in lye (a soap) mixed with her menstrual blood. Another, desperate, love spell.

This confession bequeaths to us in all its starkness a moment in the family life of Diletta - one of the many moments which demonstrate a life dedicated to the care of her husband and the house. It is as if we can see her, as she silently and anxiously, but with great love, wets her husband’s hair with warm water and then delicately massages his head with the soap that she has prepared herself when she mixed it with her menstrual blood. Diletta may have recited, inside, some magic formulae while she washed and massaged her husband’s head. She may have remembered and said over in her mind the oath she had uttered the day of her marriage. “From now I will hold and embrace him, in the position which is proper to a good wife, with caresses, consolation and joy. And I will be obediently subject to his service, in love and fear, as according to the law a wife must be subject to her husband. I will no more part from him and, while he shall be in this world, I will not bind myself to any other man in marriage or in adultery.”

But the pregnancy, so long looked for, was late coming. Thus Diletta thought it best to put into action the curious spell that would protect her from the ill wrought by another. She took a pair of scissors, tied the blades with threads and put them under the door of her room, the room where she had her marriage bed. Into that room, then, evil could not enter, and so her fertility spells would prosper.


Tommaso enters the room. He opens the door and feels it grind into something. He hears a strange metallic noise. He lowers his gaze and sees a pair of scissors, tied together. What is the meaning of this? Who could have put them there? And why?

In her confession Diletta recounts an episode occurring in exactly the period when she was living in Parenzo.
The captain of the galley assigned to the protection of the city had singled out the wife of his grocer in Diletta’s search to have an amulet to carry on her person. This would have cost her 10 silver grossi, coins each worth 5 soldi; and since a golden ducat was worth eighteen grossi, that amulet was no minor investment.

This episode raises distinct questions, and considerable mystery.
Diletta must have been genuinely desperate. Her little homemade spells were not producing any effect and the fear of being the target of evil drove her to look for an amulet she could carry to protect her with more power, to ward off that evil which hung round her and prevented her from becoming a mother. Thus she went abroad to look for someone to help her. But she was in a city with which she was unfamiliar and was obliged to ask help of another. Who knows who led her to the captain of the galley that guarded the city? She does not say, but probably this was not a good idea on her part. The captain of the galley will have been at least a little surprised to find before him the wife of the Venetian Podestà asking him if he could put her in touch with a witch. And probably this episode will not have remained locked up entirely in the tablets of his heart forever, without its seeping out into the acquaintance of another.

Tommaso sat at the table, worried. He was waiting for someone. At last the door opened and a small, poorly dressed man entered the room. Tommaso looked up at him and leant against the back of the chair, raising his head in a gesture that seemed to express irritation and contempt.
The man in front of him kept his eyes lowered respectfully. He knew before whom he was standing.
Tommaso drew out from under his tunic a little pouch and pushed it with his hand across the table towards the man. The latter looked up slightly and his beady eyes rested on the pouch with satisfaction.
“Tell me in a nutshell what you know,” said Tommaso.
The face of the man in front of him opened in a broad, false smile. “Your Excellency shall be satisfied.”
Tommaso invited him with a wave of his right hand to continue.
“It is said, Your Excellency, that your noble wife has been seen at the port,” began the man.
Tommaso started slightly.
“It is said that she asked where she might find a sorceress. It is said that she found one and commissioned from her an amulet and that she spent 10 grossi.”
A slight tremor ran through Tommaso’s lips, perhaps a tic. A deep silence descended upon them. After some minutes, Tommaso gestured to the man that to take his pouch and go.
The latter did not wait to be asked twice. With a bound, almost, he approached the table and snatched the pouch, hiding it in his filthy garments. Then he hurried out of the room. Tommaso remained seated motionless at the table for several minutes. His rugged, marked face was grim, with the tremor, the tic, shaking his lips, twisting them into a strange grin.
Tommaso went on waiting. After a while, there stole into the room Abbot Leonzio. The abbot was red and corpulent – red of hair and red of skin – and he had eyes that oddly diverged. His aspect, however, despite the flashing red of his hair and complexion, was dark and off-putting.
He too remained standing before Tommaso.
“The man confirmed my account, my lord?” asked Abbot Leonzio. His whining and petulant voice contrasted with his cumbersome body.
Tommaso nodded silently. And his lips twisted again into a grin.
Abbot Leonzio anxiously turned his gaze heavenward and assumed a severe air. “Beware, my lord. Awful is the sin of those women who cast against men, who attempt to master them with spells and curses, making use of those dolls that they have learned to model in clay and wax. Such as these attempt to wither their husbands by poisoning them with bad herbs. The ladies, oh my lord, are naturally hostile to the male to whom their father or brother has entrusted them. They are fully conscious how to prepare the necessary to avoid conceiving and to abort. To kill the child they have within them!”


The Will

Their experience of Parenzo profoundly marked the relationship between the two Michiel brothers. So much so that their paths, for some reason, went separate ways.
On 2 March 1271, Marco and Tommaso turned to the division of the assets left them by their brother Angelo and at the same time broke up the brothers’ company which had till then held them together.
The family was no longer a single family; what is more, each of the brothers wanted to carry forward his own political career, alone.
In that year of 1271 the Michiel family was in Venice.
Diletta was pregnant, at last. And on the same day on which the two brothers divided up their property and brought to an end their company, she dictated her will.
It may not be so strange. The experience of pregnancy and childbirth was so dangerous that many women dictated their wills, recognising that they could also die. Above all, Diletta, after two pregnancies gone wrong, might have been right to fear for her life.

“I think, my lady, that it is better for you to draw up your will. Once again, for the third time.” Tommaso had said these words looking his wife straight in the eyes, with a serious expression. But he did not seem worried.
“Since Marco and I must refer to a notary to put our affairs in order, it would be worth it for you to take advantage of the moment to make a will,” Tommaso went on explaining calmly, pouring himself some wine.
They were at table, a long wooden table. And Tommaso was sitting at one end of the table, at the head, and Diletta at the other, opposite him.
She was holding a piece of bread. Slowly she placed it back in her dish in front of her, and with a deep sigh leant back against her chair. Her swollen belly did not allow her to sit in comfort. By now, she was unable to eat much. The child burdened her, and at times even breathing came to her with difficulty.
Tommaso continued eating, watching her and waiting for an answer.
Diletta was unable to speak. This idea of a will inspired a strange unease in her. It was not such a strange idea, but it came at the end of a very difficult period.

When she had discovered she was pregnant, she had wept for joy. But when she had told her husband, he had had a reaction so odd that she had been unable to find an explanation. At the news of the pregnancy, Tommaso had seemed almost frightened. He had kissed her on the forehead with evident embarrassment. And in the weeks that had followed, he had become almost a stranger to her. By now it was seldom that they ate together. And that day she had been pleasantly surprised that her husband had asked for her company at table for lunch.
What did this talk of a will mean, now?
“You are silent?” asked Tommaso, breaking the long silence, and the thread of Diletta’s thoughts.
“As you wish, husband,” she answered. And what else could she have answered?
Tommaso looked at his wife. He had to admit that her face was attractive, an almost perfect oval, lit by two hazel eyes endowed with a calm, sweet gaze. Her black hair was gathered in plaits and every plait was bound in a thread of milk-white pearls. However, he had never really liked this woman. Not that he had expected to find love in her. Marriage was more than anything a contract and very often, nay almost always, did not cater for the flowering of love and passion. But everything, between the two of them, had gone more wrong than had been expected at the beginning.
This would be the third pregnancy: would she be capable in the end, this woman, of giving him a male heir?
He had thought several times of repudiating her, but it would not have been so easy. Also the fact remained that Marco had married the sister, who was trying, through, indeed, her husband, to stitch the marriage back together. It had not been a good idea, really, to marry two sisters and live as one big family. All the relationships had become complicated and strained with time.
Marco seemed, finally, to have found a certain affection for his wife. And very often he picked Tommaso up for the severe way he treated Diletta. But Marco did not know the whole truth. He had not revealed it to anyone up to that point.
He would, at the right moment, and then, in one go, he would be free of every problem.
But first it would be necessary to wait for the birth, and see if the woman would in the end manage to give him a living male and herself survive the birth.

Diletta drew up her will, in Venice, on 2 March 1271. She named as her executors her husband and her brother-in-law. She laid out a series of pious and charitable legacies: 250 lire for the tithe to the bishopric of Castello in Venice; 250 lire for the celebration of two thousand masses in defence of her own soul, that of her mother Clemenza and her dead relatives. She also left the following bequests: 40 soldi to each congregation of the diocese of Castello, 20 soldi to every hospital, 40 soldi to the Ca’ di Dio, the same to the Ca’ di Misercordia, 5 lire to the preaching friars and another 5 to the minors, 10 lire to the monastery of Santa Maria della Celestia and 25 lire to Sister Giuliana of that monastery.

To her husband she bequeathed 1,000 lire. An identical figure she bequeathed to the baby she carried in her womb in the event of his being male, with the clause that the money would be administered by his father and his uncle up to the age of his majority. If the son died a minor, 200 would go to her brother-in-law and the remaining 800 would remain in the direction of the executors. If a girl were born, to her would fall half of the sum promised to the male, reduced to 100 lire if she married or became a nun, while the remaining 400 would be employed according to the judgement of Tommaso and Marco. In the event of the girl dying a minor, 200 would belong to Marco and the other 300 would be distributed at the executors’ discretion. The rest of her movable and immovable property would go half to her son or daughter and the remaining part she left to be used by Tommaso and Marco as they saw fit.
With her will Diletta, that 2 March 1271, brought about her own end.


The Perfect Plan

Her sister peeked round the door of the room. Diletta noticed and smiled happily at her, as she tried to pull herself up on to her elbows.
“Oh, sister dear!” cried Diletta and stretched out a hand to invite her in.
“Do not weary yourself,” answered the other as she came in and approached the bed where Diletta was resting.
Diletta shook her head: “I am not tired, I am full of energy! Oh! I am so happy!”
The sister embraced her tenderly and ecstatically. “Now you are safe, dear sister! You are safe!”
Diletta stretched out again and watched with satisfaction the small bundle at her side: little Riguccio slept peacefully, there beside her. His tiny hands clenched in fists. He was a beautiful baby! He was a boy!
Diletta knew that now it was her job to protect that little boy’s life, on which hers was also directly dependent.
Children are always particularly vulnerable to envy and plotting, to the evil eye. But she would be prepared.
She knew that a baby hit by the evil eye weeps, vomits and becomes pale. So it is just when they are doing well that it is necessary to be watchful.
His first bath had to be in warm water and wine, because wine has restorative properties. And immediately after the bath, the liquid had to be thrown out of the house, because her baby was a boy. If he had been a girl the bathwater would have had to be thrown into ashes.
Care would be needed! The teeth, nails and hair would all be the object of magic and risk. To favour teething she would obtain fox’s teeth. She would put them in a little pouch that she would leave in the cot with Riguccio – Little Enrico.
It would of course be her brother-in-law Marco that cut Riguccio’s hair for the first time, to set up that bond of protection, of him as an ally, this bond that made him, as it were, a “blood brother”, and a godfather.
She would not be able to take the baby out of doors before forty days had passed, and then straightaway she would take him to the church. At that point baptism would protect him from the devil and the evil eye.
But above all she had to be careful not to lose her milk! For now she would have to begin going out into the sun more and more often. With the help of her sister she had put away a few shreds of her placenta. She would wash them and make a broth. She knew that the envy of other women could dry out her breasts.
Diletta gave another smile of satisfaction. Yes, her sister was right: now she was safe.



The news was not unexpected. The Michiel brothers had good patrons. On their mother’s side they were related to Giacomo Contarini, who just a few years later became Doge. In 1271 Tommaso Michiel was nominated Podestà of Montona.

Montona is a beautiful town, even today. It has kept the ancient form of castle with the walls, the gates, the fine buildings, the water tanks and the crenellated tower. No matter from what direction one beholds it, it shines out in its splendour, situated on a hill nine hundred feet above sea level in the valley of the Quieto, which at that point widens out for almost a mile.
Once the visitor arrives in Montona, he immediately notices the Church of the Madonna dei Servi, which takes its name from the Serviti who had their friary there. The bell tower is fifty feet high.
As he climbs up through the town he arrives at Torrione delle Porte Nuove, in Renaissance style, decorated with the arms of the patrician families and with the machicolations (for pouring boiling oil and pitch on assailants) still intact. Following this he is welcomed by the square named after Josef Ressel, inventor of the propeller, who lived for some years in Montona. On the other side of the square he will see the loggia dating back to the fourteenth century.
Next to the loggia there is the Castellana Gate which leads on to Piazza Andrea Antico. Facing on to this square there is the Duomo, the Cathedral, of Montona, the Hotel Kastel (once the residence of the Marchesi Polesini) and the Town Hall. On the façade of the Castellana Gate there are various arms in stone, some inscriptions and a lion of St Mark.
The cathedral is dedicated to St. Stephen and was built between 1580 and 1614 on top of a prior edifice. According to tradition, the Cathedral follows a design by Palladio. The interior of the church is covered in frescoes. On the walls are the images of the patron saints of the churches dependent upon Montona. On the High Altar are the statues of Saints Stephen and Laurence, the work of Francesco Bonazza (1735), and a canvas of the Last Supper, of the Veneto school, dating to the eighteenth century.
Flanking the church, there is, waiting to be admired, one of the defence towers dating to the thirteenth century, which now functions as a bell tower.
Opposite the church there is a fifteenth-century well-curb with the town’s coat of arms: five towers, six roses and a lion of St Mark. On the west and east side of the square some openings lead to the ramparts which surround the castle. This ring of walls dates to the thirteenth century and varies in height from thirty to fifty feet. Passing through the Castellana Gate, and taking a left, our visitor comes into the “Borgo”, where the former hospital and the Church of St Cyprian are, the latter built in 1855 out of a vow made by the citizens upon the occasion of a cholera epidemic. Descending again, on the right he sees the church of the Madonna delle Porte. The main altar is almost in the centre of the church. According to a legend, the Virgin is supposed to have appeared upon a fig-tree exactly where the altar now stands.

When Tommaso Michiel arrived in Montona in 1271, he found a not yet entirely tranquil situation. The little city had not fully perfected its “consignment” to Venice.
In the course of the expansion of the Republic of Venice, a particular mechanism of integration into the Venetian State was one of “consignments” – dedizioni. These were acts through which it was communities and cities themselves who “gave themselves” to the Serenissima, which in exchange undertook to respect and safeguard by means of its Statute a good part of the prior existing laws and magistracies. In some cases there was indeed a spontaneous move behind the consignment, for the most part bound up with the search for commercial or fiscal advantages of allying with the powerful neighbour or a shift away from a more oppressive signoria to one that, in exchange for the consignment or the bloodless annexation, guaranteed greater privileges and liberties.

However, much more frequently it happened that in the face of the military advance of the Venetians, the defeated citizens and the lands, cities and burghs hurried to hand themselves over to the vanquisher, sparing themselves in this way military capture and the consequent sacking. Upon the act of the dedizione, the town council presented to Venice a series of chapters, or headings (capitoli), clauses defining the terms of the handing over – the requests for privileges and the limits on the authority that the Venetian podestà (in effect, governors) would have. From the Serenissima’s acceptance of the chapters derived the legal base for Venetian power and the juridical corpus governing the relations between Venice and the city under domination. Modifications and additions to the original chapters were then possible only upon the approval by the Signoria of the points presented by the ambassadors of the subject city.

In Montona, then, when the Venetian governor Tommaso Michiel reached it, discussion was still going on of the terms of the chapters. It would be Michiel’s job to superintend the operations of the Council of Montona. There was no reason to think that this would be particularly difficult.
Montona was a small town, whereas Tommaso Michiel was representing the Serenissima. What obstacles or perils could be thrown up by the Council of Montona?
No particular trickery would be needed by the new Podestà: it would be enough for him to air the potent name of Venice.

The gentlemen of Montona Council had been deep in discussion for hours. Despite the limited possibility for negotiation – perhaps, indeed, for this reason – they had been considering with meticulous attention every single point in what were to be the chapters, the clauses, of their town’s Statute. They had not been able to fight, but now they would be able to make some sort of contract. Not much, but some benefit might come, now they were passing under the control of the Serenissima.

Tommaso Michiel, wrapped in the severe elegance of his red velvet garments, presided over the work of the Council with ill-concealed indifference. His thoughts were elsewhere. For days he had been waiting for the end of the operation, in order to put into practice his plan. Nothing else mattered to him at that point in his life.
For it was this plan that would decide the rest of his life!
He thought back to the day when he had come to this little town clinging to the top of the hill: he had come with a small court that he had picked for himself with great care, and which Venice would duly confirm: a vicario giureconsulto (a sort of lawyer), a notary, the trusty Messer Bonaventura, three dominicellos (aides) and a servant. The councillors of Montona had been waiting for him, timid and curious, at the gate of the Castle.
Tommaso Michiel had sat splendidly upright in his saddle on his white horse. He had dressed to be rich but not luxurious, and looked the proud soldier. On his back he bore a quiver full of arrows.
The biting cold wind had lashed his face and ruffled his hair, long on his broad shoulders. His fierce proud eyes had rested calmly on the numerous councillors of Montona, who, in their turn, had found, before them a man tall and majestic, enfolded in rich garments, with an authoritative broad forehead. In the grooves lining his cheeks they read a history of ambition, hard work and battles won.
Yes, thought Tommaso Michiel: that day he had made a triumphal entry at Montona with his court.

Montona was not Parenzo… but it was exactly from Montona that his career would have leapt into life. For months he had planned everything with the greatest care, that is, ever since Diletta had borne little Enrico, and survived the birth. In the end, Diletta had survived, which he had not counted on. So he had to think about what to do. And when the post in Montona had come, he had immediately had an idea.
And now he was thinking that to put into action his plan, being podestà of Montona suited him. Much more than if he had been podestà in a bigger and more important city.


Horror Diabolicus

He woke her in the depth of night. He almost sneaked into her chamber. Careful not to make the slightest noise. He had waited deliberately for that hour of the night.
Diletta was very tired and slept soundly. Tommaso took some time to wake her. He had assigned her that little room that morning, when she had arrived in Montona. In this way he had made it clear that he would not be sharing her bed.
Diletta had been a bit surprised, but had not uttered a word. She had had all her baggage brought to that little chamber, thinking, in fact, that her husband had given it to her to stay in with her newborn baby. Evidently he did not want to be disturbed during his night-time repose.
“Wake up! Get up and follow me!” repeated Tommaso, quietly, shaking her.
She finally opened her eyes and saw him leaning ominously over her, a torch in hand.
“What can he want?” she thought, her eyes and mind foggy with sleep. But she did not dare to speak.
Tommaso shook her again, impatiently. “Get up! You must come with me!”
Diletta looked round her, for her gown, to cover herself. He sensed this.
“You do not need to put anything on!”
Diletta left her bed. She was wearing a white nightdress, down to her feet. Tommaso gripped her by the arm and pulled her towards him. “Now follow me, in silence. Do not make a sound!” he whispered, his face close to hers, gazing into her eyes.
Diletta’s heart began to beat hard. Her stomach turned over in fear. She docilely followed her husband, forgetting to wear the slippers she kept at the foot of the bed.
The only thought that crossed her mind was that she had her hair loose and out of order. To go to bed that evening she had undone her plait. She had, in fact, planned to put her hair up into a new style next morning, to celebrate her arrival in Montona. In order to be beautiful, for Tommaso.
Tommaso was dragging her by the arm behind him with great strength. He was hurting her, and she was afraid. She was ashamed of her bare feet and her loose hair. What did her husband want of her? What had happened?

Everything was profoundly silent, and pitch dark, scarcely illuminated by the torch Tommaso carried in his left hand. Diletta was not yet familiar with the new palace in Montona, and did not know where her husband was leading her.
They passed swiftly and silently down long, low-ceilinged stone corridors. They climbed a narrow, winding staircase and in the end reached a bare, high-ceilinged hall, lit by a few torches on the walls.
Tommaso hung his own torch on the wall, then pushed Diletta into the middle of the hall, while he went up to a large, black figure who was standing in a corner. As soon as her eyes had grown accustomed to the light in the room, Diletta realized that the large black figure who was standing next to her husband was Abbot Leonzio, the cleric who had for a year at least made up part of Tommaso’s entourage.
The two were looking at her: Tommaso dark and menacing, the abbot severe and sombre.
Diletta felt a shiver run down her.
“For some time now, there have happened in our family terrible things. The devil has come to live among us. He has found the one that called him, and been welcomed as a guest at our hearth, at our table, in our very bed!”
Tommaso pronounced these words firmly and sonorously, staring at Diletta with hatred.
“There has grown in our family the evil plant of witchcraft. A diabolical plant that must be uprooted, burned, annihilated!” he continued.
The abbot placed a hand on Tommaso’s shoulder, and Tommaso fell silent.
“You must know, my lady, why you are here. Why we have been compelled, I and your husband, to act so, with you,” said the abbot.

Diletta looked in bewilderment at the abbot, and then her husband.
“My lady, do you deny casting spells? Commissioning effigies and amulets to use against your husband?”
Diletta’s eyes widened.
Abbot Leonzio continued in his screechy voice. “For some time now, my lady, your husband has been aware of your doings. Do you recall Parenzo? I saw you myself, with my very own eyes, visit that sorceress of a greengrocer. Many saw you, in fact.”
Diletta remained silent, was amazed, bewildered, terrified. Was all this happening to her? Where was she? Why had they smuggled her in there, in the middle of the night?
“She has no respect,” Tommaso almost shouted to the abbot. “Look, she turns her head, she does not even listen to us.”
Abbot Leonzio lowered his eyelids and shook his head slowly. “Patience, my lord, patience. The mind of Woman is slow and false. There is a need for patience and determination.”
“Witch!” thundered Tommaso. “What breed of spell have you wrought upon me? I found out you plotted against my brother too. Is your sister Maria involved? The serving women saw you mix powders into my and my brother’s food. Did you want to kill us?”
Diletta started and began to tremble. It was all true. The accusations that her husband and the abbot were making against her were all true. She was a witch!
The thought assailed her for the first time. She had always known she was doing illicit things, but she had never considered up till then that she had been a witch.
What could she say, now? How could she defend herself? How could she defend Maria? She would never be able to explain that what she had done she had done for love.
In the hall, a deep, lugubrious silence had descended on the group. Tommaso Michiel seemed very agitated. He was breathing almost rancorously and was looking at Diletta anxiously, waiting for some word, some sign on her part.
Abbot Leonzio, after a few minutes, slowly approached the woman, looking into her bright, wide eyes.
“Save your soul, my lady. We both know that all the charges made against you are true and indisputable. Save your house from Evil, and confess your horrible crimes. God will have pity on you.”
Diletta seemed to be listening attentively. But suddenly she noticed something strange, a strange sensation in her feet: they were wet. She lowered her gaze and saw that her feet stood in an odd puddle of water. She moved them a bit, uncomprehendingly, and then realised: she had wet herself, out of fear, and had not even been aware of it.


The Perfect Crime

All the inhabitants of Montona were filling the square in front of the church. The heat was suffocating; the sun was beating down on their heads. But no one paid any attention, such was the anticipation, such was the electricity quivering in all those people, crammed even on the roofs.
The drums. Of a sudden the murmur of the crowd fell away. There she was, she was arriving. The lugubrious roll of the drums announced the arrival of the condemned woman in the square where the stack of wood had been prepared for the pyre.
At each step Diletta took, the crowd opened up before her. All eyes were fixed on the wife of the podestà who advanced head down towards her execution, flanked by two soldiers.
When the fire engulfed the whole of her and the flames leaped high towards the skies, some wept, others exulted over the end of the noble Venetian lady. The witch.


One of the principal clues of belonging to the world of witches was a sign that they were supposed to bear as a brand left by the devil (often a black mark, a wart, a mole or any other skin imperfection was enough). In order to conduct the research necessary to find it, the suspect was stripped naked and completely shaved; every last crevice and orifice of her body was examined including her genitals and under the eyelids. In reality this practice served to humiliate the defendant, who in many cases was raped by the inquisitors in person, in order to destroy every last element of pride or reticence. The next step consisted in spiking the body with long stickpins deliberately designed to seek out areas insensitive to pain, which could be another sign left by the devil.

Then it was the turn of the official instruments of torture: the witch’s chair, the ram (another sort of witch’s chair), the whip, the pillory, the rope, the rack, the trestle, the screw, the breast-press; torture by water or torture by salt, the thumbscrew or the wheel, the bull or the clamp. In these conditions the witch confessed all that they told her to confess. The sentence was already to hand: death. When the execution was the job of the State, the witch was held in custody while carpenters and workmen saw to the preparation of the scaffold for the burning at the stake. There were two modes to transport the witch to the place of execution: the prisoner was either led to the stake on a cart with a mitre on her head with her crimes written on it, or astride a donkey, seated backwards, bare-breasted, while being whipped by the executioner. In both cases a crowd followed the procession to hurl insults at the guilty woman and acclaim her inquisitors.

At the moment of the execution, after the crimes of the condemned had been read, the officiating inquisitor recalled the verses of the Fourth Gospel: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned”. It was the moment to light the fire. If the executioner turned out to be merciful, he might strangle the condemned before the flames singed them, but otherwise death descended amid heartrending screams. Even if a witch consumed by the flames cried out her repentance and invoked forgiveness of the Lord, she would not be freed, because, by law, repentance had to happen before the condemnation had been read out.

We do not know how it went when Diletta was condemned to the stake. We know only that it happened. Before the woman arrived in Montona to rejoin her husband, after giving birth, a strange chapter was added to the Statute of Montona, added upon the direct suggestion of the new Venetian Podestà: De pena sortilegiis. The chapter concerned, as is implied, the penalty for whoever carried out sorcery and spells. The penalty was death at the stake, to be carried out before the Church of San Cipriano, one of the oldest in Montona. The same church where, ever since his arrival, Tommaso Michiel, the Venetian Podestà, had gone to attend mass.
It would be nice to think that poor Diletta was spared the humiliation of the shaven head, the nudity and the torture. Probably she was, because she confessed immediately all she had to confess, without any reserve – so saving her sister. Furthermore, she remained the wife of the Podestà.
Was she brought to the stake on a cart or did she cover on foot the distance that separated her from the stack of wood, opening a way in silence through the people of Montona who filled the square in front of the church?
Was she preceded by officials of the Podestà or followed by a priest?
Was a stand erected from which her husband and the whole family could watch comfortably?
Was she strangled before being burnt?

The news of her tragic death at the stake reached Venice swiftly. Immediately her relatives appealed to the Quarantia to enjoin Michiel to return to Venice under threat of arrest, to answer a charge of murder.
Michiel did not obey the pressure and elected as his counsel Giacomo Contarini, a powerful personality related to him on his mother’s side. At the time, Giacomo Contarini was a procuratore of St. Mark’s. Contarini energetically took up the defence of his client.
On 8 August 1271 he appeared before Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo and the Five of the Minor Council, and sustained the irregularity of the injunction sent to his client, seeing as how the gubernatorial mandate of Michiel had yet to expire. The oath that Tommaso Michiel had sworn upon entering office in Montona prevented him from absenting himself from the municipality.
Contarini asked that there be no proceeding against Michiel, in the light of his absence from Venice, and that any provision taken against him be submitted to the consideration of a consilium sapientum appointed for the purpose. In due time his client would present himself to answer charges, his rights being protected.
The Doge and the Minor Council, upholding the request of Contarini, entrusted two experts, Marino Dolfin and Nicolò Dandolo, with the task of examining the question, which raised points of legitimate right and competence. In the end a board of Wise Men was to come to a judgement as to the correct course of action.
The two experts rejected one by one the points of Contarini’s defence: the doge had full reach over the pursuit of crimes of any nature, as omnia potest. They also underlined how Michiel, on account of so awful a crime, had lost all conditions of favour and so could be legitimately called to answer for it.
Thus the two experts recommended that the crime be punished, acting for the honour of God and the blessed St. Mark the Evangelist and the state of Venice.
In the meantime, however, Tommaso Michiel had not been just standing around.

Marco entered the room. Tommaso was still sitting at the table, by the light of a candle. In front of him were spread out all the documents that interested him. He scarcely glanced at his brother, distracted by his papers.
Marco closed the door behind him, went up to the table, and waited in silence.
“We have to move quickly. We must not waste time, or the money will run through our fingers like sand,” Tommaso said after a while, picking out one of the documents he had before him and putting it in an envelope.
“You will leave at dawn. It will be necessary to exhibit the will, to be able to dispose of the assets without problems,” he continued, closing the envelope and sealing it with wax.
Marco said nothing. He was suddenly aware that he still had in his throat and nostrils the “taste” of the pyre. Several days had passed by now, but that smell still lingered.
He knew that his brother had taken the best decision, and that all would work out for the best for his family. Also, now, without that “witch”, his marriage would improve. Still, often he felt rising in him a certain sickness. He wondered if Tommaso had felt that strange sensation since the day of the burning. But a small voice within told him that it was better not to ask questions.
He took the envelope from his brother’s hands, who looked him straight in the eye: “You will present this to the Doge and the judges. Inside is the original copy of Diletta’s will. Inside that envelope is the chance of a life in the future for me!”


On 14 August 1271 Marco Michiel exhibited before the Doge and the judges his sister-in-law’s will, managing to have issued on the same day a sentence favourable to his brother, who was authorised to avail himself of his deceased wife’s assets.
Not only the 1,000 lire established as a bequest in the will, but also another 1,500 which was the remainder of the woman’s dowry due to her husband.
We do not know how the trial against Tommaso Michiel was conducted, but we know that from 1275 onwards, he held positions of considerable rank.
When his relative and defence, Giacomo Contarini, ascended to the doge’s throne, Tommaso was re-elected to the Grand Council. In 1276 he was bailo – ambassador - in Constantinople, in 1284 consul in Alexandria, in 1291 Captain General of the Venetian fleet. In 1293 he was ambassador to the Count of Veglia, and commander of units of war in 1294.
He died some time between 1310 and 1315.
He had even remarried by then, to Marchesina, who we know died in 1280 and belonged to a branch of the Michiel family. From her he had three sons, Francesco, Giovanni and Marco.
Enrico, the son he had by Diletta, once adult, came into possession of the sum left him by his mother. Did they recount to him the story of his mother’s end? Did he find out something from Aunt Maria, his mother’s sister? We shall never know. But it is comforting to imagine that someone told him about her terrible and unjust end.




Afterword

The story of Diletta had to be told. Every one of us has the right to have our story told and be given the benefit of a hearing. A tale that will give back dignity and mystery to the lives of even those of apparently the least significance.
This is a way to defeat that great History, distant, abstract and murderous, and cross time.

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