Some Code, A Roman Disaster, A Sentence: On Or About July 1, 1499, 1527, 1494

In 1499 tensions with the Turks were on the rise. Andrea Gritti was a merchant for Venice acting as a spy to alert the city as best he could to the activities in Istanbul. Marin Sanudo tells us that Gritti used a kind of code language that would not be understood for what it was even if intercepted by the officials there. It took six weeks to receive a letter from the east and it would confirm the  prior launch of the Turkish armada.

Sanudo Diaries: July 1, 1499 (2:869-70) "After dinner there was a meeting of the Great Council. And a brigantine arrived, so that the entire city was full [of news] that the Turkish armada had set sail because so it was said by the master of the brigantine. Then the doge came up to a meeting with the savi di Collegio, and the letters were read. The truth was seen, and the master was sent for and greatly rebuked by the doge for having spread this falsehood. The master answered that his men on Corfu had told him it was so....
A communication from Andrea Gritti, consigned in Pera, was read. It is dated May 27 and is written in a cipher using a kind of business-transaction language. It states that the [Turkish] armada is assembled and will sail to Corfu within fifteen days and that the land army is organized and will go to Greece; he writes briefly using his code." [p. 233]

The war broke out and Gritti and sixteen others were captured and imprisoned for over two years.
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By 1527 Andrea Gritti would be doge of Venice. In those later days, an even greater turmoil than the Turk had arrived in Italy. Emperor Charles V had lain siege to and then sacked Rome itself. Many were allowed to flee, many Cardinals were killed or captured, held for ransom, robberies, rapes, destruction of holy relics and much else went on for a very long time. Italy was shocked, even terrified to the core. All of Europe shook from the scandalous brutality visited on the Holy See of Peter. In a way it was the biggest story in Italy since the invasion of the Huns or the Goths a thousand years before. So Sanudo gathered as much news as he could about it. This is just one excerpt.

Sanudo Diaries: July 1, 1527 (45:435-36) "Copy of a letter from Rome, sent June 15, 1527, written by a [certain] Vincenzo da Treviso [secretary of the archbishop of Spalato].
... As far as matters in Rome go, everyone has been taken prisoner, ... other convents of Rome [have become] bordellos, and such is the fate of all Roman women; the head of St John has been found in a ditch in the gardens of Sancta Santorum. The heads of St Peter and St Paul have been similarly stripped and ruined; the costume of Our Lady with all the relics has been thrown on the ground; all the silver has been stolen, as has everything else in Rome. All of the account books and registers of the banks have been cut up.... Mass is no longer said, nor are church bells rung in Rome. There is no image of Christ in the churches that has fewer than one or two hundred knife wounds, and St Peter's sarcophagus and the case containing Veronica's veil have been smashed. I would not be capable of recounting to you the cruelties that have been committed and are being committed in Rome." [pp 185-6]


All above quotes from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008
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In concluding the case against Marina González in Toledo, sentence was handed down on June 30, 1494, as follows:

"HOLDING GOD BEFORE OUR EYES

We find that we must pronounce and declare that the chief prosecutor's intention has been well proven, while the party of Marina González has not proven anything useful. Therefore, we must declare her a relapsed heretic and an apostate. She has incurred a sentence of major excommunication, and the confiscation and loss of all her possessions. We must relax her to justice and the secular arm, and we declare our judgment through these writings.

This judgment was given in Toledo, June 30, 1494, by the lord inquisitors in the Plaza de Zocodover in that city, acting as the tribunal, while standing on a wooden scaffold; this judgment was read in a loud voice in the presence of  Marina González. Juan de Sepúlveda and Nicolas Fernández, canons of Toledo, were witnesses, as were the doctor of Canisales, and the magistrate Francisco de Vargas (treasurer of their Highnesses), and many other noblemen."

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quotes entirely from The Spanish Inquisition 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources, edited and translated by Lu Ann Homza, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2006