Friday, August 2, 2013

Bernardina Executed For Murder: Sanudo Diaries: August 2, 1521; (31:163-65)

A woman who killed her husband was sentenced to be executed and quartered, for the first time, in Venice, this day. Sanudo spends some time with the story asserting it was "... a very important case: it is quite true that other women have killed their husbands, but none with such ferocity." [p. 130]

It was known that the husband had beat his wife for a long time. Luca, from Monte Negro had been married for twenty-two years to her and they lived in San Antonin, the central residential neighborhood of Venice, in that time. Luca ran a grocery. People called him "The Jew". He had disappeared in the spring. She later confessed, she had knocked him senseless as he lay asleep. Asleep at the foot of the bed in their daughter's room. The daughter was told to say nothing as the body was first hidden. Later, Bernardina told a minor officer that she knew, what had happened and had him help her bury the body under a staircase in the home. He told her, Sanudo quotes, "You will be quartered." [p. 128]

Luca, still dead, had to endure still longer indignities and remain under that stair, as his wife wrote letters to various places in order to explain his 'disappearance'. An uncle of Luca's came inquiring and she gave him some of these letters who, in turn went as far as Ancona to see if they were true. When they were not, Sanudo says, the uncle began to suspect the wife. Meanwhile the commander of the soldier that helped her bury the body, one Captain Giacomo di Novello found out and reported her to the state attorneys.
She was taken into custody, the trial was begun and when she was called to testify, she acquitted herself so well that she was allowed to go free. But then,

"She had taken into her home a certain Vincenzo Zarla and his wife, and I believe that he turned her in, because after the daughter had been called, he told everything in his deposition. The said Bernardino was arrested, and she confessed the truth in every detail as I have detailed above, without being tortured. The notaries of teh state attorneys were sent to oversee an excavation, and they found the dead body in the said storage space." [p 129]

The case was brought publicly before the tribunal of the Quarantia Criminal, and Sanudo siad many people came to hear it. This accursed, devilish woman, Sanudo calls her, an Erine. The documents were read, witnesses told all about the many years of abuse she had suffered and the three prosecutors voted to proceed and so discussion began as to her punishment. Two awful scenarios were argued for and then pronounced. She would be beaten senseless and then quartered and hung on the gallows for all to see. He says it again.

"Note that no other case has been found of a woman who, whatever her crime, was quartered. This is the first one." [p. 130]
The Editors remark on Sanudo's spending so much time with this story, longer than many. As they say, Elisabeth Crouvet- Pavan* pointed out in 1992, that while women can "cause them and are involved", rarely were they considered the enactors or protagonists of criminal offenses. Hence the lack of cases of capital punishment for women. But can you imagine the shuddering effect of such a case, in households all across the city? Seems cruel and sadistic. Husbands could point to the judgements of the state and say it wouldn't matter if he beat them all the time and everybody could know it, too. But there would not be any mercy for them if they struck back. Nor if they tried to be clever and cover it up. Amazing.

Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, “Sopra le acque salse”: Espaces, pouvoir et société à Venise à la fin du moyen âge. 2 vols. (Collection de l'Ecole Française de Rome, 156; Nuovi Studi Storici, 14.) Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1992. Paper 1: pp. x, 1–676. 2: pp. iv, 677–1121; 18 maps, 11 black-and-white plates.
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All quotes as Sanudo Diaries or Editor's notes or Editor's Footnotes 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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