Friday, August 28, 2015

Honoring A Murdered Knight in Forli: August 28, 1495

In Forli, on the morning of August 28, 1495, Elizabeth Lev tells us, an 'impressive sight' emerged from the fortress now known as il Rocca Ravaldino. The day before, Giacomo Feo had been cut down by deceptive local enemies, when he and his lover the Countess Caterina Sforza and the children, were out for a summer picnic. Despite the gruesome tumults and brutal reprisals of the day before (which would continue) and a likely sleepless night for the grief-stricken Caterina, she and her remaining family were the very picture of nobility, stability and power.

From Lev's book, The Tigress of Forli: 
"... hundreds assembled outside Ravaldino wearing the somber colors of mourning. The drawbridge was lowered and a procession slowly crossed toward the city gate. The vicar of the bishop of Forli, dressed in funerary robes, walked in front, accompanied by Scipione Riario, Girolamo's natural son, now in his twenties, who lived with the family. Caterina came next, holding the hand of little Bernardino, her three-year-old son by Feo. Her pale face bore the signs of a sleepless night, but her expression was unreadable. She looked at no one and acknowledged nothing except the little boy by her side.
The Sforza-Feo household made an impressive sight, with ambassadors, ladies in waiting, and an honor guard in polished armor wending their way across the moat. Three pages, dressed in mourning livery, rode with the group. The first displayed Feo's sword and golden spur, the second his helmet, and the last his cuirass, denoting Giacomo's knightly status. Dozens of nobles, both local and foreign, joined the cortege as they headed into the city. Others poured into Forli from neighboring towns, gathering in the market square, where a giant catafalque had been prepared during the night. The towering monument was draped in gold cloth and surrounded by torches. At the appointed time, the canons of the cathedral, the parish priests, and the confraternities encircled the platform, bearing aloft thirty-three crosses as they sang psalms and prayers. The air was heavy with the scent of incense; a slowly cadenced chant set a stately pace for tthe procession that then wound to the church of San Girolamo. Count Girolamo Riario, lord of Forli, had not rerceived such elaborate obsequies.
Feo was temporarily laid to rest in the chapel containing the splendid tomb of the unfortunate Barbara Manfredi, the murdered wife of Pino Ordelaffi."
This nearly photographic or video-quality set of images is beautiful and realistic. The linearity of the description makes completely clear what is going on and what it means for the players. The source for this vivid description must come from Leone Cobelli and his contemporary Chronicle of Forli. Details of the attack, the motives of the assailants, the following reprisals and acts of bloody vengeance ordered by the Countess, including torture and the mounting of several severed heads in the marketplace and leaving them there for over a year, as well as the notes and sources of this episode will come over the next few days.
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from pp 183-4 by Elizabeth Lev, The Tigress of Forli: Renaissance Italy's most courageous and notorious countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de'Medici : 2011, USA, Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt Publishing Company

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