Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini Vol 1 — Chapters 117-121
CXVII
THE CASTELLAN, meanwhile, ill and afflicted as he was, had himself transported to my prison, and exclaimed: “You see that I have recaptured you!
” “Yes,” said I, “but you see that I escaped, as I told you I would.
And if I had not been sold by a Venetian Cardinal, under Papal guarantee, for the price of a bishopric, the Pope a Roman and a Farnese (and both of them have scratched with impious hands the face of the most sacred laws), you would not have recovered me.
But now that they have opened this vile way of dealing, do you the worst you can in your turn;
I care for nothing in the world.
” The wretched man began shouting at the top of his voice: “Ah, woe is me!
woe is me!
It is all the same to this fellow whether he lives or dies, and behold, he is more fiery than when he was in health.
Put him down there below the garden, and do not speak to me of him again, for he is the destined cause of my death.
” So I was taken into a gloomy dungeon below the level of a garden, which swam with water, and was full of big spiders and many venomous worms.
They flung me a wretched mattress of course hemp, gave me no supper, and locked four doors upon me.
In that condition I abode until the nineteenth hour of the following day.
Then I received food, and I requested my jailers to give me some of my books to read.
None of them spoke a word, but they referred my prayer to the unfortunate castellan, who had made inquiries concerning what I said.
Next morning they brought me an Italian Bible which belonged to me, and a copy of the Chronicles of Giovanni Villani.
[1] When I asked for certain other of my books, I was told that I could have no more, and that I had got too many already.
Thus, then, I continued to exist in misery upon that rotten mattress, which in three days soaked up water like a sponge.
I could hardly stir because of my broken leg; and when I had to get out of bed to obey a call of nature, I crawled on all fours with extreme distress, in order not to foul the place I slept in.
For one hour and a half each day I got a little glimmering of light, which penetrated that unhappy cavern through a very narrow aperture.
Only for so short a space of time could I read; the rest of the day and night I abode in darkness, enduring my lot, nor ever without meditations upon God and on our human frailty.
I
thought it certain that a few more days would put an end of my unlucky life in that sad place and in that miserable manner.
Nevertheless, as well as I was able, I comforted my soul by calling to mind how much more painful it would have been, on passing from this life, to have suffered that unimaginable horror of the hangman’s knife.
Now, being as I was, I should depart with the anodyne of sleepiness, which robbed death of half its former terrors.
Little by little I felt my vital forces waning, until at last my vigorous temperament had become adapted to that purgatory.
When I felt it quite acclimatised, I resolved to put up with all those indescribable discomforts so long as it held out.
Note 1. This mention of an Italian Bible shows that we are still in the days before the Council of Trent.
CXVIII
I BEGAN the Bible from the commencement, reading and reflecting on it so devoutly, and finding in it such deep treasures of delight, that, if I had been able, I should have done naught else but study it.
However, light was wanting; and the thought of all my troubles kept recurring and gnawing at me in the darkness, until I often made my mind up to put an end somehow to my own life.
They did not allow me a knife, however, and so it was no easy matter to commit suicide.
Once, notwithstanding, I took and propped a wooden pole I found there, in position like a trap.
I
meant to make it topple over on my head, and it would certainly have dashed my brains out; but when I had arranged the whole machine, and was approaching to put it in motion, just at the moment of my setting my hand to it, I was seized by an invisible power and flung four cubits from the spot, in such a terror that I lay half dead.
Like that I remained from dawn until the nineteenth hour, when they brought my food.
The jailers must have visited my cell several times without my taking notice of them; for when at last I heard them, Captain Sandrino Monaldi [1] had entered, and I heard him saying: “Ah, unhappy man!
behold the end to which so rare a genius has come!
” Roused by these words, I opened my eyes, and caught sight of priests with long gowns on their backs, who were saying: “Oh, you told us he was dead!
” Bozza replied: “Dead I found him, and therefore I told you so.
” Then they lifted me from where I lay, and after shaking up the mattress, which was now as soppy as a dish of maccaroni, they flung it outside the dungeon.
The castellan, when these things were reported to him, sent me another mattress.
Thereafter, when I searched my memory to find what could have diverted me from that design of suicide, I came to the conclusion that it must have been some power divine and my good guardian angel.
Note 1. A Florentine, banished in 1530 for having been in arms against the Medici.
CXIX
DURING the following night there appeared to me in dreams a marvellous being in the form of a most lovely youth, who cried, as though he wanted to reprove me: “Knowest thou who lent thee that body, which thou wouldst have spoiled before its time?
” I seemed to answer that I recognized all things pertaining to me as gifts from the God of nature.
“So, then,” he said, “thou hast contempt for His handiwork, through this thy will to spoil it?
Commit thyself unto His guidance, and lose not hope in His great goodness!
” Much more he added, in words of marvellous efficacy, the thousandth part of which I cannot now remember.
I began to consider that the angel of my vision spoke the truth.
So I cast my eyes around the prison, and saw some scraps of rotten brick, with the fragments of which, rubbing one against the other, I composed a paste.
Then, creeping on all fours, as I was compelled to go, I crawled up to an angle of my dungeon door, and gnawed a splinter from it with my teeth.
Having achieved this feat, I waited till the light came on my prison; that was from the hour of twenty and a half to twenty-one and a half.
When it arrived, I began to write, the best I could, on some blank pages in my Bible, and rebuked the regents of my intellectual self for being too impatient to endure this life; they replied to my body with excuses drawn from all that they had suffered; and the body gave them hope of better fortune.
To this effect, then, by way of dialogue, I wrote as follows:- 'Benvenuto in the body.
'Afflicted regents of my soul!
Ah, cruel ye!
have ye such hate of life?
'The Spirits of his soul.
'If Heaven against you roll, Who stands for us?
who saves us in the strife?
Let us, O let us go toward better life!
'Benvenuto.
'Nay, go not yet awhile!
Ye shall be happier and lighter far- Heaven gives this hope-than ye were ever yet!
'The Spirits.
'We will remain some little while, If only by great God you promised are Such grace that no worse woes on us be set.
After this I recovered strength; and when I had heartened up myself, I continued reading in the Bible, and my eyes became so used to that darkness that I could now read for three hours instead of the bare hour and a half I was able to employ before.
With profound astonishment I dwelt upon the force of God’s Spirit in those men of great simplicity, who believed so fervently that He would bring all their heart’s desire to pass.
I then proceeded to reckon in my own case too on God’s assistance, both because of His divine power and mercy, and also because of my own innocence; and at all hours, sometimes in prayer and sometimes in communion with God, I abode in those high thoughts of Him.
There flowed into my soul so powerful a delight from these reflections upon God, that I took no further thought for all the anguish I had suffered, but rather spent the day in singing psalms and divers other compositions on the theme of His divinity.
I was greatly troubled, however, by one particular annoyance: my nails had grown so long that I could not touch my body without wounding it; I could not dress myself but what they turned inside or out, to my great torment.
Moreover, my teeth began to perish in my mouth.
I became aware of this because the dead teeth being pushed out by the living ones, my gums were gradually perforated, and the points of the roots pierced through the tops of their cases.
When I was aware of this, I used to pull one out, as though it were a weapon from a scabbard, without any pain or loss of blood.
Very many of them did I lose in this way.
Nevertheless, I accommodated myself to these new troubles also; at times I sang, at times I prayed, and at times I wrote by means of the paste of brick-dust I have described above.
At this time I began composing a Capitolo in praise of my prison, relating in it all the accidents which had befallen me.
[1] This poem I mean to insert in its proper place.
Note 1. Capitolo is the technical name for a copy of verses in 'terza rima' on a chosen theme.
Poems of this kind, mostly burlesque or satirical, were very popular in Cellini’s age.
They used to be written on trifling or obscene subjects in a mock-heroic style.
Berni stamped the character of high art upon the species, which had long been in use among the unlettered vulgar.
See for further particulars Symonds’ 'Renaissance in Italy,' vol. v.
chap.
xiv. CXX
THE GOOD castellan used frequently to send messengers to find out secretly what I was doing.
So it happened on the last day of July that I was rejoicing greatly by myself alone while I bethought me of the festival they keep in Rome upon the 1st of August; and I was saying to myself: “In former years I kept the feast among the pleasures and the frailties of the world; this year I shall keep it in communion with God.
Oh, how far more happy am I thus than I was then!
” The persons who heard me speak these words reported them to the castellan.
He was greatly annoyed, and exclaimed: “Ah, God!
that fellow lives and triumphs in his infinite distress, while I lack all things in the midst of comfort, and am dying only on account of him!
Go quickly, and fling him into that deepest of the subterranean dungeons where the preacher Foiano was starved to death.
[1] Perhaps when he finds himself in such ill plight he will begin to droop his crest.
” Captain Sandrino Monaldi came at once into my prison with about twenty of the castellan’s servants.
They found me on my knees; and I did not turn at their approach, but went on paying my orisons before a God the Father, surrounded with angels, and a Christ arising victorious from the grave, which I had sketched upon the wall with a little piece of charcoal I had found covered up with earth.
This was after I had lain four months upon my back in bed with my leg broken, and had so often dreamed that angels came and ministered to me, that at the end of those four months the limb became as sound as though it never had been fractured.
So then these fellows entered, all in armour, as fearful of me as though I were a poison-breathing dragon.
The captain spoke as follows: “You must be aware that there are many of us here, and our entrance has made a tumult in this place, yet you do not turn round.
” When I heard these words, I was well able to conceive what greater harm might happen to me, but being used and hardened to misfortune, I said to them: “Unto this God who supports me, to Him in heaven I have turned my soul, my contemplation, and all my vital spirits; to you I have turned precisely what belongs to you.
What there is of good in me, you are not worthy to behold, nor can you touch it.
Do then to that which is under your control all the evil you are able.
” The captain, in some alarm, and not knowing what I might be on the point of doing, said to four of his tallest fellows: “Put all your arms aside.
” When they had done so, he added: “Now upon the instant leap on him, and secure him well.
Do you think he is the devil, that so many of us should be afraid of him?
Hold him tight now, that he may not escape you.
” Seized by them with force and roughly handled, and anticipating something far worse than what afterwards happened, I lifted my eyes to Christ and said: “Oh, just God, Thou paidest all our debts upon that high-raised cross of Thine;
wherefore then must my innocence be made to pay the debts of whom I do not even know?
Nevertheless, Thy will be done.
” Meanwhile the men were carrying me away with a great lighted torch; and I thought that they were about to throw me down the oubliette of Sammabo.
This was the name given to a fearful place which had swallowed many men alive; for when they are cast into it, the fall to the bottom of a deep pit in the foundation of the castle.
This did not, however, happen to me; wherefore I thought that I had made a very good bargain when they placed me in that hideous dungeon I have spoken of, where Fra Foiano died of hunger, and left me there without doing me further injury.
When I was alone, I began to sing a 'De profundis clamavi,' a 'Miserere,' and 'In te Domine speravi.'
During the whole of that first day of August I kept festival with God, my heart rejoicing ever in the strength of hope and faith.
On the second day they drew me from that hole, and took me back again to the prison where I had drawn those representations of God.
On arriving there, the sight of them filled me with such sweetness and such gladness that I wept abundantly.
On every day that followed, the castellan sent to know what I was doing and saying.
The Pope, who had heard the whole history (and I must add that the doctors had already given the castellan over), spoke as follows: “Before my castellan dies I will let him put that Benvenuto to death in any way he likes, for he is the cause of his death, and so the good man shall not die unrevenged.
” On hearing these words from the mouth of Duke Pier Luigi, the castellan replied: “So, then, the Pope has given me Benvenuto, and wishes me to take my vengeance on him?
Dismiss the matter from your mind, and leave me to act.
” If the heart of the Pope was ill-disposed against me, that of the castellan was now at the commencement savage and cruel in the extreme.
At this juncture the invisible being who had diverted me from my intention of suicide, came to me, being still invisible, but with a clear voice, and shook me, and made me rise, and said to me: “Ah me!
my Benvenuto, quick, quick, betake thyself to God with thy accustomed prayers, and cry out loudly, loudly!
” In a sudden consternation I fell upon my knees, and recited several of my prayers in a loud voice; after this I said 'Qui habitat in adjutorio;' then I communed a space with God; and in an instant the same clear and open voice said to me: “Go to rest, and have no further fear!
” The meaning of this was, that the castellan, after giving the most cruel orders for my death, suddenly countermanded them, and said: “Is not this Benvenuto the man whom I have so warmly defended, whom I know of a surety to be innocent, and who has been so greatly wronged?
Oh, how will God have mercy on me and my sins if I do not pardon those who have done me the greatest injuries?
Oh, why should I injure a man both worthy and innocent, who has only done me services and honour?
Go to!
instead of killing him, I give him life and liberty: and in my will I’ll have it written that none shall demand of him the heavy debt for his expenses here which he would elsewise have to pay.
” This the Pope heard, and took it very ill indeed.
Note 1. Fra Benedetto da Foiano had incurred the wrath of Pope Clement VII.
by preaching against the Medici in Florence.
He was sent to Rome and imprisoned in a noisome dungeon of S. Angelo in the year 1530, where Clement made him perish miserably by diminishing his food and water daily till he died.
See Varchi’s 'Storia Fiorentina,' lib.
xii.
chap.
4. CXXI
I MEANWHILE continued to pray as usual, and to write my Capitolo, and every night I was visited with the gladdest and most pleasant dreams that could be possibly imagined.
It seemed to me while dreaming that I was always in the visible company of that being whose voice and touch, while he was still invisible, I had so often felt.
To him I made but one request, and this I urged most earnestly, namely, that he would bring me where I could behold the sun.
I told him that this was the sole desire I had, and that if I could but see the sun once only, I should die contented.
All the disagreeable circumstances of my prison had become, as it were, to me friendly and companionable; not one of them gave me annoyance.
Nevertheless, I ought to say that the castellan’s parasites, who were waiting for him to hang me from the battlement whence I had made my escape, when they saw that he had changed his mind to the exact opposite of what he previously threatened, were unable to endure the disappointment.
Accordingly, they kept continually trying to inspire me with the fear of imminent death by means of various terrifying hints.
But, as I have already said, I had become so well acquainted with troubles of this sort that I was incapable of fear, and nothing any longer could disturb me; only I had that one great longing to behold the sphere of the sun, if only in a dream.
Thus then, while I spent many hours a day in prayer with deep emotion of the spirit toward Christ, I used always to say: “Ah, very Son of God!
I
pray Thee by Thy birth, by Thy death upon the cross, and by Thy glorious resurrection, that Thou wilt deign to let me see the sun, if not otherwise, at least in dreams.
But if Thou wilt grant me to behold it with these mortal eyes of mine, I engage myself to come and visit Thee at Thy holy sepulchre.
” This vow and these my greatest prayers to God I made upon the 2nd of October in the year 1539. Upon the following morning, which was the 3rd of October, I woke at daybreak, perhaps an hour before the rising of the sun.
Dragging myself from the miserable lair in which I lay, I put some clothes on, for it had begun to be cold;
then I prayed more devoutly than ever I had done in the past, fervently imploring Christ that He would at least grant me the favour of knowing by divine inspiration what sin I was so sorely expiating; and since His Divine Majesty had not deemed me worthy of beholding the sun even in a dream I besought Him to let me know the cause of my punishment.
