For many, as I have often told you and now tell you even in tears, conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ .
—Philippians 3:18
T here are various stories as to who actually founded the Holy Alliance, the Vatican’s espionage arm. But it was surely Pope Pius V (1566–1572) who in 1566 organized the first papal espionage service with the goal of fighting Protestantism as represented by Elizabeth I of England.
Protected by the powerful cardinal Giovanni Pietro Caraffa (the future Pope Paul IV), Miguel Ghislieri had been summoned to Rome to take charge of a special mission. Ghislieri was instructed by His Eminence to create a sort of counterespionage service. Organized in the shape of a pyramid, it had the task of collecting information about anyone who might violate papal directives or Church dogma, so that they might then be judged by the Inquisition, or “Holy Office.”
The young priest was fond of secret societies, and for him the Holy Office was one of the most powerful “secret societies” of its time. The work carried out by Ghislieri’s agents in the regions of Como and Bergamo caught the attention of the powers-that-be in Rome. In less than a year, almost twelve hundred people ranging from peasants to nobles were judged by Inquisitorial courts. More than two hundred, after undergoing terrible tortures, were found guilty and executed.
The rope torture consisted of tying the presumed heretic’s hands behind his or her back and then lifting the prisoner by a rope hanging from the ceiling. Once the prisoner was suspended in this way, the rope would be released for an instant so the body would fall by its own weight, and then the fall would be broken while the prisoner was still a few feet above the floor. The violent motion would dislocate the suspected heretic’s extremities.
Another frequent tool was the water torture. The torturers would lay their victim in a wooden trough and stuff a soaked cloth in his or her throat while covering the nose to prevent breathing. When Inquisition doctors would halt the torment, many of the captives were already dead. 1
In 1551, under the papacy of Julian III (1550–1555), Miguel Ghislieri was promoted by Caraffa, for services rendered, to the position of commissary general of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, as the chief official of the Roman Inquisition was known. As such, Ghislieri set about improving the Holy Office so it could better fulfill its objectives. In the first place, he reformed its governing council, and the pope named a group of cardinals to control it. In the case of important figures of Roman society being brought up for judgment, these cardinals served as both judges and papal counselors.
It was also Ghislieri who, early in 1552, established the seven classes of criminals who could be judged by the courts of the Holy Office: heretics; suspected heretics; those who protected heretics; magicians, witches, or sorcerers; blasphemers; those who resisted the authorities or agents of the Inquisition; and those who broke, disrespected, or violated the Holy Office’s seals or emblems.
In that same year, Ghislieri began to assemble a true network of spies all over Rome. They operated everywhere, from the city’s brothels to the kitchens of its noble palaces. The information of all sorts that they collected was delivered personally to Ghislieri in one of two ways: by word of mouth or by the so-called Informi Rosso (Red Report). The latter was a small piece of parchment rolled up inside a red ribbon bearing the emblem of the Holy Office. According to the laws in effect, breaking of this seal was punishable by instant execution. In these reports, Ghislieri’s agents wrote down all the charges, often without a shred of proof, against Roman citizens thought to have violated Church precepts and so be susceptible to investigation by a tribunal of the Holy Office. The Informi Rosso was deposited in a small bronze mailbox dedicated to this purpose in the Roman headquarters of the Inquisition.
For years, the general of the Inquisition created one of the biggest and most effective spy networks and one of the best archives of personal data about the citizens of Rome. Nothing was said or done in the lanes or squares of the city without Ghislieri’s knowledge. Nothing was said or done in the interior of the Vatican, either, without the general of the Inquisition knowing about it.
On May 23, 1555, after the brief papacy of Marcellus II, which lasted for less than a month, seventy-two-year-old Cardinal Giovanni Pietro Caraffa was elected pope without opposition from either the faction favoring the Holy Roman Empire or that favoring France. The Venetian ambassador, Giacomo Navagero, described the new pontiff this way: “Caraffa is a pope of violent and fiery temperament. He is too impetuous to manage the affairs of the Church and, of course, this aged pontiff does not tolerate anyone contradicting him.” 2
Caraffa, now Pope Paul IV, came to fear the unprecedented power of Miguel Ghislieri, whom the Roman populace called “the shadow pope.” In spite of everything, however, the pontiff bestowed the title of cardinal on him. From then on, Ghislieri the Inquisitor became ever more dangerous and powerful. Many members of the College of Cardinals did not want to let him chart the future of the Catholic Church from his post atop the feared Inquisition.
Ghislieri’s agents did as they pleased, spreading terror through the streets of Rome. The cardinal’s spies, known as “black monks,” chose a victim and waited for him to go walking down some lonely street. At that moment he would be attacked, spirited into a closed carriage, and taken to one of the compounds of the Inquisition. A friar who was witness to the arrival of such captives described it this way, as published in Leonardo Gallois’s Historia General de la Inquisición in 1869:
The victim was taken to the ground floor, just off an inner courtyard near the main entrance. There began his initiation, in a circular room where ten skeletons hung from the walls to announce that in this abode the guests were sometimes nailed there alive to calmly await their deaths. After such a holy warning, the victim came upon two more human skeletons in an adjoining gallery, not on their feet as if receiving visitors, but spread out like a mosaic or carpet. On the right side of the same gallery, a grease-stained oven could clearly be distinguished. It was the secret replacement for the bonfires in public plazas which had fallen into disuse in this corrupt century …. Few cells, properly speaking, could be found here on the first floor, but on the second floor, to the right, was the chamber of the Holy Tribunal flanked by two doors. Above one was a sign proclaiming stanza del primo padre compagno and above the other, stanza del secondo padre compagno . Thus were named the two inquisitors in charge of the double mission of helping the Suprema to uncover criminals and turn them definitively into convicts. 3
Cardinal Ghislieri’s situation, however, changed completely when Pope Paul IV died suddenly on the night of August 18, 1559. As word of his death spread, sedition spread, too, through the Roman streets. Hunting down Ghislieri’s agents became one of the main pastimes of the aroused masses. Many of those who had loyally served the Holy Inquisition were killed by the crowds and their bodies thrown into the sewers. The disorder did not end there. The Roman masses attacked the palace that housed the Tribunal of the Inquisition and toppled the statue of the late pope. 4
Cardinal Ghislieri and some of his men managed to preserve a large part of the secret archives, which accompanied them in eight carriages in their flight from Rome.
At last, normalcy returned when, on December 25, 1559, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo de’ Medici, enemy of the late pope, became his successor under the name of Pius IV.
This pope was a man of firm character, a skilled diplomat determined to cleanse the Catholic Church of all traces of Paul IV. To this end, he surrounded himself with two loyal cardinals who were also his nephews, Mark Sittich von Hohenems and Carlo Borromeo. The first was a master swordsman, skilled in all the arts of war. The second was a master diplomat.
Borromeo had been Archbishop of Milan, papal legate in Bologna and Romagna, head of government in the papal states, and finally the pope’s private secretary. As a first measure, the cardinals Carlo and Alfonso Caraffa were arrested and confined in the castle of Sant’Angelo. So were Giovanni Caraffa (the Duke of Paliano) and other gentlemen of the duke’s court who were accused of the murder of his wife.
As his second measure, following the advice of Carlo Borromeo, Pope Pius IV decided to rehabilitate Cardinal Morone and Bishop Fiescherati, who had been accused of heresy by the Holy Office on Paul IV’s orders. His third measure was to send Cardinal Ghislieri into exile and dissolve his network of black monks. 5 His Eminence, who had taken refuge in an isolated monastery, thus returned to his duties in his former bishopric, which was well regarded when the College of Cardinals assembled once again after Pius IV’s death on December 9, 1565. Curiously, after three weeks of deliberations, Pius IV’s key advisor, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, decided to support the candidacy of Ghislieri, which was backed by King Philip II of Spain. For years, Ghislieri had been collecting an annual subsidy of eight hundred ducats from the Spanish crown. 6
On January 7, 1566, Cardinal Ghislieri was elected pope. He adopted the name Pius V. The Spanish ambassador reported, “Pius V is the pope whom the times require.” Philip II also approved of his ally’s ascension to the Throne of St. Peter. His selection represented a victory for all the forces who wanted a pontiff who was austere and pious but simultaneously able to fight and act energetically against the Protestant Reformation. What was surely true was that Pius V would use his broad experience as head of the Inquisition to create an effective espionage service, implacable and operating with blind obedience to the orders of the pope.
The first function of the agents of the Holy Alliance—a name bestowed by the pope himself on his secret service in honor of the alliance between the Vatican and the Catholic queen Mary Stuart—was none other than that of obtaining information about possible political movements and intrigues directed from the court of London. The reports they assembled were sent to the powerful monarchs who supported Catholicism and papal power against the rising Protestant tide. The main responsibility of the papal spies was to lend their services to Mary Stuart (Mary Queen of Scots) with the aim of restoring Catholicism to Scotland, which had declared itself Presbyterian in 1560, and to fight against Protestantism in general. Pius V understood that his main enemy was the schismatic Church of England, represented by Queen Elizabeth I, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Henry VIII had broken with the Catholic Church in 1532, when he asked Pope Clement VII (November 19, 1523–September 25, 1534) for permission to divorce his queen, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of the “Catholic Monarchs” Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and aunt of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who was also King Charles I of Spain, so as to marry his lover, Anne Boleyn. 7 The pontiff studied the letter sent him by the English king, an old parchment measuring sixty by ninety centimeters and bearing the supporting signatures of seventy-five leading personalities of the realm. Seventy-five red silk ribbons hung from the document, with seventy-five wax seals. 8
In his petition, Henry VIII expressed the desire to marry his lover, and he requested the pope’s permission to divorce his current queen, Catherine of Aragon. The petition was denied by Clement VII, which provoked Henry’s rage and rejection of the Catholic Church. The King of England decided to marry Anne Boleyn. In spite of Rome’s rejection, he ordered his marriage to Catherine annulled.
The definitive schism was provoked on January 15, 1535, under the papacy of Paul III, when, in order to give juridical legitimacy to his new ecclesiastic supremacy, Henry VIII summoned the clergy and the scholars of all the universities of his realm to publicly declare that the Roman pope had no divine right or other authority over England. The new church was to be a Catholic-Anglican institution under the authority of the crown.
The five-year reign of Mary Tudor, which came to an end with her death on November 17, 1558, was nothing if not intense. Wars, executions, internal rebellions, coups d’etat, and religious conflicts were the order of the day. The night Mary died, her sister, Elizabeth, was proclaimed Queen of England.
A great part of the English populace received the new queen’s ascension with joy. In part, this reaction stemmed from their painful memories of the reign of her sister, popularly nicknamed Bloody Mary. At her ascension to the throne, Mary had decided to restore Catholicism whatever the cost—a policy supported by Pope Paul IV but opposed by the Spanish ambassador. A precondition of this policy was to cut off the heads of all those who had defended the Reformation.
Many of the Protestant bishops (castigated by Mary as “bad shepherds who have led their flocks to damnation”) 9 were the first to be burned at the stake for the crime of heresy. The former bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley (the same who had shortly before judged Mary Tudor a bastard and proclaimed Lady Jane Grey Queen of England in her place), was burned alive on October 16, 1555, in a public square in Oxford. Hugh Latimer, the ex–bishop of Worcester, accompanied him in the flames. Another execution ordered by the queen, to the surprise of both Rome and the English Parliament, was that of the ex–bishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, who was condemned on March 21, 1556. Cranmer had pronounced the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and consummated the definitive break with papal power in Rome.
On January 15, 1559, Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England, and on May 8, Parliament opened its new session at which she proposed new laws permitting the reestablishment of Protestantism throughout the kingdom and its possessions. Rome and its Catholic Church, led by Paul IV, an old man of eighty-three, lacked the strength to resist the renewed religious shift in England. 10
What the pontiff knew for sure was that the only way to at least maintain a Catholic enclave in Protestant England was to support the Queen of Scotland, Mary Stuart. Over the years that followed, she would become a puppet in conspiracies hatched by Paul IV and his successors along with the powerful and monastic King Philip II of Spain, the capricious King Charles IX of France, the insignificant and uncultured Ferdinand I of Austria, and Mary’s own son, Prince James, who would eventually betray her and inherit her throne.
The circle began to close around Mary Stuart when the two men closest to her became spies for powers with important interests in Scotland. On July 29, 1565, she married the Catholic Henry Darnley. The new king-consort of Scotland was tall, strong, blond, and attractive to women, but unlearned and possessed of little culture. Furthermore, Darnley, though the new Scottish monarch and the bedmate of its queen, was himself a puppet in the hands of Sir Francis Walsingham, the head of Elizabeth’s spy network, and in those of the Scottish nobles. Darnley was a coward above all. 11
A few months later, toward the end of 1565, Mary developed a friendship with a young dark-skinned Italian from the Piedmont region, David Rizzio. Rizzio came to Scotland as a member of the retinue of the visiting Marquis of Moreta, ambassador from Savoy. 12 He was twenty-three years old and had round green eyes that caught the attention of a queen much attracted to men’s appearances. Rizzio was skilled in music and poetry, in the lute and the making of verses. He was also a priest and one of the most active spies in the recently created Holy Alliance. 13
Mary Stuart asked the ambassador of Savoy to cede young Rizzio for her personal enjoyment. Little by little, the Piedmontese courtier worked his way up in her entourage. Within a few days he rose from being a mere singer at the queen’s pleasure to a post as a personal attendant with a salary of seventy-five pounds a year. Thanks to this position close to the queen, Rizzio gained access to her most private papers.
The queen found in the Italian everything her husband, Henry Darnley, lacked. Rizzio had clear ideas and wide knowledge of the arts; he knew Latin, spoke perfect French and Italian, and was fluent in English, too. Despite his newfound royal favor, the spy continued to eat at the servants’ table, but a chance to alter this situation appeared when the queen fired her private secretary, Raulet. Though Raulet had been her most trusted assistant, she fired him when she discovered that he had been ignoring several Scottish nobles’ assertions about English “bribes.” Walsingham, head of the Elizabethan spy network, devoted significant crown funds to bribes with which to acquire the services of infiltrators in the Scottish court.
So Raulet’s desk was occupied by David Rizzio instead. In spite of being a loyal defender of the Counter-Reformation and informing Pope Pius V of all English and Scottish doings, Rizzio now dedicated body and soul to the service of Mary Queen of Scots.
The Holy Alliance’s spy was gaining more and more power, and Darnley knew it. The queen’s husband, however, knew that if he wanted to get rid of Rizzio, he needed to first consult Walsingham, who in turn needed to consult Elizabeth I. He knew that only thus could he be safely covered if his wife were to get wind that he was responsible for the assassination of the Piedmontese.
David Rizzio and his brother Joseph, whom he had brought with him from Italy, had become part of the Holy Alliance’s circle of spies in Scotland. Their mission, by order of the pope, was to collect information about John Knox, a former student of John Calvin’s, who surpassed his master in orthodoxy and fundamentalism. For Pius V, Knox was the only obstacle to Scotland’s returning to the bosom of the Catholic Church. According to the reports of papal spies, Knox was a former obscure Catholic priest who had decided to plunge into the Reformation. Calvin and George Wishart had been his teachers until the Scottish queen regent Mary of Guise (mother of Mary Stuart) had decided to burn Wishart at the stake. That was the act that engendered Knox’s dogmatic fundamentalism, as well as a deep and visceral hatred toward the Stuarts.
On the death of his teacher, John Knox became the leader of the so-called Rebellion against the Regent. French troops who landed in Scotland to support Mary of Guise captured Knox and sent him to the galleys. 14
After he was freed, Knox took refuge in Calvinist lands, where he learned how to preach and solidified his implacable hatred of sumptuous display. Almost as soon as he reached Scotland, he succeeded in winning both the lords and the people to the cause of the Reformation. Joseph Rizzio informed the pope of Knox’s activities, writing in one document:
Converted into a Scottish prophet, he thunders every Sunday from his pulpit in St. Giles, casting hatred and damnation on all who do not heed his word. Like a child, he celebrates every defeat suffered by a Catholic or by any adversary of a different religion. When an enemy has been killed, Knox speaks of God’s hand. Every Sunday at the end of his sermon he praises God and asks Him to soon do away with the reign of the usurping Stuarts and thus with the queen who occupies an undeserved throne. 15
David Rizzio himself informed Pius V about the encounter between Knox and Mary Queen of Scots:
“This meeting between the faithful Catholic queen of Scotland and the fanatical Protestant John Knox took place in Edinburgh. The preacher turned impolite and held the Roman Catholic Church responsible for a whore who could not be the bride of God. These words offended Queen Mary.” 16 The Holy Alliance told the Rizzio brothers to reinforce their security measures. Apparently they had made too many enemies in a very short time, and the pope’s network did not want to lose such precious agents. Two of the main enemies of the pair of Italians and of the Counter-Reformation in Scotland were the queen’s chancellors: Moray (her illegitimate stepbrother) and William Maitland, both Protestants.
Soon the spies of the Holy Alliance discovered, through a traitor, that Elizabeth I of England had been bribing Chancellor Moray and several lords to promote a rebellion against Mary. The pope could only inform the Spanish king, Philip II, who in turn sent word to the English court, through his ambassador, that if this were to happen, perhaps he would find himself obligated to send help to the Catholic queen. The ambassador made no mention of Pius V’s letter to Mary Stuart on January 10, 1566: “My dear daughter: We have heard with great joy that you and your husband have given great proof of your diligence by restoring in your kingdom the true religion of God,” though he must have been aware of it. 17
The ever-closer relationship between Mary Stuart and her secretary, David Rizzio, began to make many of the powerful men around the Scottish queen uncomfortable. Her marriage to Henry Darnley went from bad to worse. Darnley felt rejected by his wife, not only as a husband but also as a king. He felt disappointed that he had not been proclaimed King of Scotland with full rights and duties but only by honorific title.
Philip II, meanwhile, had written to his ambassador Guzmán de Silva, telling him “he should let the queen of Scotland know she should act with moderation [toward Rizzio] and avoid anything that could irritate the queen of England.” This message fell into the hands of Elizabeth I thanks to an infiltrator in the Spanish ambassador’s household who was loyal to Randolph, the English ambassador. In fact, Philip II did not understand Mary Stuart’s temperament, which put the pope’s spy in serious jeopardy. During an episode of pillow talk between Rizzio and Mary, the Italian had told the queen of his discovery that the English were paying Scottish rebels. 18
The English ambassador, for his part, did not know that David Rizzio and his brother had discovered in early February 1566 that the escape of Scottish rebels who had risen against the queen the year before had been financed through Randolph. Thanks to the Italian spies, Mary had a lengthy report on the English diplomat’s role in the Scottish unrest of the previous year. Armed with Rizzio’s report, Mary Stuart summoned the English ambassador to her presence on February 20, 1566.
Even today, expelling an ambassador is no simple matter. It was all the less simple in the sixteenth century if one wanted to escape the consequences of such an act, and Mary Stuart did not give the consequences enough thought. On the day after ordering Randolph’s expulsion, Mary sent Elizabeth I a letter absolving her of any responsibility, in spite of knowing that Elizabeth was the intellectual author of the operation and Randolph her executing arm. Even the nearly three thousand escudos used by Walsingham’s men to bribe those who aided the escape of the Scottish rebels had come from the English queen’s private coffers, but the Scottish sovereign always remembered the words of her Spanish counterpart about avoiding any action that could upset Elizabeth. 19 On February 21, 1566, Mary Stuart wrote Elizabeth I, in courtly French:
Lady, my good sister: In accord with the sincerity I always have practiced toward you, I believe I must write these words in which you shall be informed of the wrong actions and behavior of Randolph, your minister here. I have been told on good authority [by Rizzio and the Holy Alliance] that, in the most dangerous of the disturbances carried out by my rebels against me, the said Randolph supported them with the sum of three thousand escudos to win the favor of individuals and to strengthen my enemies’ hands. As a consequence, I immediately removed this thorn from my side, calling Randolph before me and my council and demanding that he admit to whom he had conveyed this sum. I dare to hope that, he having been sent by you to lend us his good offices but having devoted himself to the contrary task, you will deem him unfit to be shielded by your authority. However I do not wish to deal with him more harshly than to return him to you with letters that will convey my accusation in greater detail.
On March 1, 1566, Ambassador Randolph departed Scotland with his retinue, but he left the blow against Pius V’s spies almost fully prepared. One of his most valuable allies in this vengeance would be the queen’s husband, Henry Darnley.
In his return voyage to London, Ambassador Randolph stopped in the city of Berwick to await orders from his queen. From there he sent a letter to Elizabeth:
A matter of no small consequence is about to take place in Scotland. Lord Darnley is furious with the queen, because she has denied him the crown matrimonial and he has assured knowledge of such usage of herself [her relationship with David Rizzio] as altogether is intolerable to be borne…. He [Darnley] has decided to free himself of the cause of this scandal [the agent of the Holy Alliance]. The execution and performance of these matters will take place before the session of Parliament, as near as it is. 20
Darnley was no longer invited to the special sessions of the Council of State, he was denied use of the royal arms of Scotland, and he found himself reduced to a mere prince-consort. The contempt shown to Mary Stuart’s husband came not only from the queen herself but also from her closest courtiers. David Rizzio, as her private secretary, no longer showed Darnley official documents. He wielded the so-called Iron Stamp (the royal signature) himself, without consulting Darnley. The English ambassador no longer addressed Darnley by the title of Your Majesty, and coins bearing the faces of Mary and her husband and the legend Henricus et Maria were recalled from circulation; they were replaced with new coins bearing the legend Maria Regina Scotiae . To all this were added the rumors about Mary’s relations with her secretary, now become maître de plaisir , or “pleasure master,” to the queen.
Thanks to his ability to please Mary Stuart, the Holy Alliance’s agent had taken on princely gestures and was arrogantly carrying out maximum duties of state, when only a few months before he had been eating with the servants and sleeping above the stables. The nobles, many of them Protestants, knew that Rizzio was only a pawn of Pope Pius V in his plan to make Scotland a Catholic nation within the great plan of Counter-Reformation being carried out by Rome. 21 Apparently Mary Stuart had agreed with Pius V to make Scotland the first country to abandon the Reformation and return to the great Catholic union.
The pontiff had given orders to his agents to protect Mary Stuart from any danger that could impede such an important step. The Scottish nobles, for their part, regarded David Rizzio as the secret orchestrator of that design. Ambassador Randolph had already let his sovereign know this when he wrote in his letter from Berwick, “Either God will give him [David Rizzio] a quick end or they [the Scottish nobles] will make his life unbearable.”
In spite of their hatred for the Italian spy, the nobles did not want to confront their queen. They knew the harshness with which she had repressed the previous rebellion. Nor did they want to accompany Moray into the fate of an English exile. They reasoned that if they won the support of Henry Darnley, this would change the character of an assassination of Rizzio. Rather than being a simple crime of envy—and, as such, an act of rebellion against the queen—it would become a patriotic act in defense of the true faith (the Protestant one).
To lure Darnley to their cause, the conspirators would have recourse to something as simple as his jealousy of the Italian. They didn’t know that Rizzio, on the pope’s orders, had kept Mary from conceding the matrimonial crown and associated rights of rule to Darnley. Pius V wanted to avoid at all costs the possibility that, if something happened to the queen, Darnley as regent could change his mind about making Scotland a Catholic nation. But none of this bothered Darnley as much as the fact that his wife didn’t let him touch her, while she allowed the spy of the Holy Alliance to spend long evenings with her in her room.
Mary Queen of Scots was now pregnant with the child who years later would become James VI of Scotland and James I of England. The conspirators had, for the first time in the history of Scotland, a king’s permission to rebel against their sovereign. The conspiring nobles promised to seize power from Mary and give it to Darnley as the new Scottish king. For his part, he promised to grant them amnesty and to reward them with new lands once he assumed the throne. Walsingham’s spies informed him that “the queen [Mary Stuart] repents her marriage to Henry Darnley, but some talk of awarding him the crown of Scotland whether the queen likes it or not. I know that if that thing should take effect which is intended, David [Rizzio], with the consent of the king, shall have his throat cut within these ten days.” 22
Darnley did not want the pope’s spy dead for political reasons; he wanted him dead out of simple jealousy of the man who had made off with his wife’s trust and his royal seal. Moray prepared for his return to Scotland once the coup had been carried out, and the fanatic John Knox had already written a sermon praising the death or, better put, execution of a miserable Catholic. 23
It was March 9, 1566, in the afternoon, in Holyrood Castle. That very morning David Rizzio had received a warning from one of his spies, but he paid no attention. He knew he would be spending the whole day at the queen’s side and so nothing could happen to him, because no one would dare raise a weapon or even a hand against him in Mary’s presence. However, he was wrong. 24
The day went by quickly. Mary Stuart was reading in the chamber attached to her bedroom, on the fourth floor of the tower. Henry Darnley invited Rizzio to play cards there. The Italian suspected nothing. Several nobles sat down around the table in the royal chamber, along with the queen’s stepsister and, across from her, Rizzio, dressed in a damask gown. The conversation was pleasant, and music filled the small room. A miniature door in the rear, hidden by a curtain, opened to admit Darnley. The door had intentionally been left unlocked. The consort sat down next to his wife.
S econds later, the curtain flew open again and the conspirators appeared in the room, swords and knives in hand. The first to enter with unsheathed sword and be recognized by the queen was Lord Patrick Ruthven.
The queen stood up, knocking over her chair, and chastised Ruthven for coming into her presence with his sword out of its scabbard. The Scottish noble told her not to fear, because his intrusion would affect only the Italian spy. Rizzio had gotten to his feet, but he was unarmed. Only the queen could protect him. Darnley stepped back to get away from the imminent fight. Mary Stuart stepped in front of Ruthven, whose eyes were fixed on Rizzio, and demanded that he relinquish his weapon. The Scot replied, “Ask your husband.”
The queen turned to her husband, who was hidden behind a curtain. He managed to reply, between stammers, “I know nothing of the matter.”
Now Ruthven was joined by more of the conspiring nobles, likewise with swords in hand, who had mounted the narrow spiral staircase leading to the queen’s bedroom. Rizzio tried to escape, but the Scots grabbed his arm.
The rebels shouted to the queen that Rizzio was a spy of the pope and for this he deserved to die. Mary Stuart replied that if David Rizzio was to be charged, Parliament should do it. Ruthven held the Italian’s arms while another conspirator bound him with a rope. As he was dragged away, he grabbed at the queen’s dress, which ripped under the pressure of his terrified fingers.
Mary continued to protest. One of the rebels leveled a pistol at her. Ruthven brushed the pistol away with his hand so the shot passed above the queen’s head and buried itself in the wall. Darnley held the queen, who was sinking toward the floor. The others dragged Rizzio’s body down the narrow stairway, banging his head against the steps.
Once outside the royal presence, the conspirators pounced upon the Holy Alliance spy. The first thrust entered through his left side. The second pierced his right hand when he tried to cover his face and passed through into his neck. Bleeding, he tried to rise, but another thrust cut his jugular vein. A cry drowned in blood before it could exit from his mouth. Then Ruthven’s well-aimed thrust pierced his heart. Rizzio was dead. 25
Mary Stuart, still held by her husband, kept on shouting at the conspirators and her traitorous spouse. Darnley, his mouth to her ear, reproached her for having banished him from her bed in favor of Rizzio, while Ruthven returned to the room with his sword still dripping the Italian’s blood. In a voice deep and low, Mary repeated over and over that the pair of them had signed their own death sentences. Her vengeance would be terrible. 26
The cries and the sounds of swordplay attracted the attention of James Bothwell, head of the queen’s guard, but he found the door locked. After a brief reconnaissance, Bothwell and his second-in-command, Huntley, leaped in through a window, swords in hand. Henry Darnley calmed them by saying what had happened was the killing of a spy sent by Pope Pius V, whose mission was to prepare a landing of Spanish troops in Scotland. Thus Rizzio’s assassination both separated Mary Stuart from the Scottish crown and cut the direct line of communication between queen and pope.
A little more than three months later, on June 19, 1566, the new heir to the crown of Scotland was born. That Mary gave birth to James in the month of June means that he must have been conceived in September of 1565. That was the month of the Scottish rebellion, weeks after Mary Stuart had expelled Henry Darnley from her bed after having married him in July. David Rizzio appeared in the Scottish court in mid-September, which suggests the possibility that James VI was really the son of the Holy Alliance spy. Mary Stuart, very intelligently, pardoned Darnley, which allowed her to recover her crown and her freedom. But the Holy Alliance was not inclined to allow the murder of one of its members to pass without revenge.
The pope gave his agents an express order to identify the conspirator who had directed the murder of Rizzio, and Henry Darnley appeared at the top of their suspect list. 27
There are various opinions as to who specifically ordered the reprisals against the killers of David Rizzio. Whoever it was, they did not realize that this would be one more step toward the fall of Mary Stuart as the Scottish queen. 28
Elizabeth I of England had to bring a law of succession before Parliament, which would contain the name of her successor in the event of her death. Mary Stuart hoped to press her claim to the throne, but to win the title of heir, she had to avoid any error that would prejudice her case. The citizens of both Scotland and England tended more and more to see James as the prince of both nations, which displeased Elizabeth. Mary pondered how to break through the circle of enemies surrounding her and avenge the death of her loyal servant Rizzio.
Henry Darnley, her traitorous husband, knew that while Mary was pregnant he could not endanger the baby she carried in her womb. When all was said and done, this child would be the future monarch of Scotland and, with luck, of England as well. Therefore Darnley had ended the queen’s enforced seclusion and allowed a doctor and two aides to attend to her. Mary had used one of the nurses to communicate with Bothwell and Huntley, her two trusted men. When Mary managed to win Darnley himself to her cause, the conspiracy weakened still more.
Forty-eight hours after the assassination, all was forgotten. The Holy Alliance spy had been buried in a secret location. Now was the time to plot revenge.
The first four targets were Ruthven, the noble who first seized hold of Rizzio; Fawdonshide, who aimed and shot at the queen; John Knox, the radical preacher who labeled the queen a bastard; and finally Moray. All four were aware that there would never be a true pardon for them, and at the same time they recognized that the nobles would not lift a finger in their defense, because the child Mary was carrying would be the future ruler of a united kingdom of Scotland and England.
Pope Pius V was not disposed to permit the murder of one of his agents by four Protestants without revenge; the supreme authority of the pontiff required a response. The former head of the Inquisition summoned a priest named Lamberto Macchi.
This young man from Verona, son of an aristocratic family, had joined the priesthood at the age of only fourteen. He was a Jesuit, a member of the order founded by Ignatius of Loyola twenty-six years before. It had been created in 1540 as a rapid-strike force, a corps of soldiers ready to die for the faith and the pope, doing honor to the four Latin words that made up its slogan, Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam , “for the greater glory of God.” 29
Ignatius of Loyola had founded the order under three clear premises. The first was to be ready to answer the call of the pope at any time and any place. The Jesuits were, from the start, the “Pope’s Men.” Second, they were to be the pope’s soldiers. Members of the order had to prepare themselves to be devout, but also to be soldiers of God. Jesuits would be hanged in the squares of London, disemboweled in Ethiopia, eaten alive by Iroquois in Canada, poisoned in Germany, whipped to death in the Holy Land, crucified in Siam, left to die of hunger in South America, beheaded in Japan, and drowned in Madagascar, but the spirit of adventure in the name of God was what made the young nobleman Lamberto Macchi join their ranks.
For Ignatius of Loyola, it was very important that his men possess a variety of skills. The founder and his pope needed intellectuals. They needed chemists, biologists, zoologists, linguists, explorers, professors, diplomats, confessors, philosophers, theologians, mathematicians, artists, writers, and architects. They also needed commanders, intelligence agents, spies, and special messengers. Macchi was an expert in these arts. The son of a rich merchant, he had learned swordsmanship while he studied philosophy. He had learned to use explosives while he studied theology. He had learned the art of assassination while he studied foreign languages.
The pope ordered the Jesuit Lamberto Macchi to travel to the court of Scotland with the mission of discovering and revealing Rizzio’s assassins. Accompanied by three other Jesuits, Macchi knew what he was supposed to do once he had this list. For him, to snuff out the lives of four Protestants was more a religious issue than a personal one; the order, after all, came from the pope himself. In his bag he carried an Informi Rosso that gave him carte blanche for any action in defense of the faith. The name of this document dated from the time when the pope had been commissary-general of the Inquisition in Rome.
Macchi’s contact in the Scottish court was none other than Lord Bothwell, head of Mary’s personal guard, who now functioned as her advisor and a sort of regent, which displeased the British in general and Queen Elizabeth I of England above all. 30 Some nobles within the realm complained that Bothwell was more arrogant than the Italian David Rizzio, but the difference was that he knew who his enemies were—one of them being Darnley. Moray, on the other hand, was an ally, which placed him in open conflict with Darnley, who had begun to send accusatory letters to Queen Elizabeth in which he proclaimed that his wife, Mary Stuart, was unreliable in religion and that she was offering Scotland to Philip II, the protector of Catholicism.
Toward the end of September, Darnley made the fateful decision to leave Scotland, since the position of king had been denied him. This placed Mary Stuart in a difficult situation. Henry Darnley could not leave Scotland before the heir was baptized in Stirling Castle, especially given the continual rumors about the real paternity of Prince James. He had also not yet decided where to take refuge—in England under the protection of Elizabeth I or in France under that of Catherine de’ Medici. As a counterstroke, Mary Stuart sent a diplomatic letter to Catherine in which she accused her husband of possible treason.
While this was going on, the Holy Alliance agent Lamberto Macchi and his three comrades had arrived in Edinburgh, under the roof of one of Bothwell’s men, while they waited for a chance to act. Shortly before the end of 1566, Mary Stuart, as advised by both Moray and Bothwell, signed the pardon of the conspirators who had killed Rizzio, but this made no difference to Macchi. The Jesuit had an express order from the pope, and he had to carry it out without discussion or doubt. For Lamberto Macchi, a papal order was a religious truth.
As one of the instigators, Moray was in Macchi’s sights. Darnley knew that, in spite of the public proclamation of the royal pardon, he himself would be a prime target of the avengers, so he fled and took refuge in his father’s castle in Glasgow. 31
All Bothwell had to do was put the conspirators within reach of the pope’s agents, and they would take charge of the executions. Yet he also knew that he alone would be responsible before God, his queen, and the people of Scotland—a risk and responsibility he was willing to assume.
On January 22, 1567, Henry Darnley fell gravely ill with syphilis, but he remained hidden in Glasgow under the protection of his father, the Earl of Lennox. Meanwhile Mary Stuart, still convalescent, went in search of her husband to get him to return to Edinburgh under her personal escort. Even so, Darnley knew he could be attacked at any moment by Bothwell’s followers, by the pope’s agents, or by his former coconspirators whom he had left in the lurch and who now were back in Scotland thanks to the royal pardon. 32 Yet Darnley did not know that his return to Edinburgh would be the road to his death. He would not leave the Scottish capital alive.
If the avengers of the Holy Alliance wanted to get all the conspirators who had acted against David Rizzio, they had to do away with the husband of Mary Stuart. Their chosen locale was nothing less than Darnley’s own temporary dwelling place, an isolated building of typical Elizabethan construction in the neighborhood of Kirk O’Field, accessible by a dark, narrow road known as “Thieves’ Row.” 33
The interior of the house was decorated with an attractive open hallway, ornamented fireplaces, exquisite tapestries, elegant silver tableware bearing the royal seal of Scotland, Persian rugs, and a comfortable bed that Mary Stuart’s mother, Mary of Guise, had brought with her from France. 34 Lamberto Macchi and his men were not able to get too close to Darnley, so they had to attack with explosives. The time they chose for this, their first act of vengeance, was the night of Sunday, February 9, and the morning of Monday, February 10, of 1567.
That night the queen gave a grand ball and banquet in honor of the marriage of two of her most faithful servants. Lord Darnley and his retainers were, of course, invited. This gave the Holy Alliance agents time to prepare their attack while the house in Kirk O’Field remained unguarded. 35
Moray, meanwhile, had mysteriously disappeared from Edinburgh, and Bothwell was nowhere to be found—a fact noted not only by the nobility attending the queen’s festivities but also by Darnley, still debilitated by his disease. By 11 P.M. , Darnley was worn out and ready to retire, but the queen would not allow him to spend the night in the royal residence of Holyrood. So he set out for his cold mansion in Kirk O’Field.
The executioners of the Holy Alliance, aided by Bothwell, had placed a massive charge of gunpowder in the structural pillars of the house.
At about two in the morning, the Scottish earth trembled. The shock wave could be felt even through the thick walls of the queen’s residence. Suddenly the door to Mary Stuart’s bedroom burst open, and a servant showing the effects of great exertion informed her that the king’s residence in Kirk O’Field had been blown up. 36
Escorted by armed guards, Mary led a party that quickly arrived at the place where a few hours earlier a lordly mansion had stood flanked by green fields. Now they found only a large crater surrounded by burned and blackened earth. The scattered bodies of Henry Darnley’s servants appeared hundreds of yards from the site of the explosion. The king’s corpse lay in a creek a few yards away, along with that of a servant and the twisted remnants of his bed, various shards of which were embedded in his flesh. The wounds that the explosion had inflicted on the body of the king-consort of Scotland did not allow its finders to see the marks left by the slim cord with which he had been strangled.
The type of knot used to kill Darnley and his servant was the same one used by the members of a sect in the mountains of Alborz, to the northeast of Tehran and the northwest of Qazvin, called ashishin . The explorer Marco Polo had visited the castle of Alamut, headquarters of these ashishin, 37 in 1273. In one of his travel diaries he recorded their secrets, their systems, and methods of assassination, including more than thirty-two forms of strangulation. 38 Part of this text was recovered by the Jesuit Matteo Ricci during one of his travels to that part of the world, retracing the steps of the Venetian. 39
As soon as they had lit the fuses, the four Holy Alliance agents, including Joseph Rizzio, David’s brother, left Edinburgh on horseback. The explosion did not even make them turn their heads. Lamberto Macchi knew the result perfectly well. Part one of the revenge had been completed. The supreme pontiff in Rome was so informed.
May 15, 1567, still in mourning, Mary Stuart married Bothwell, whom everyone regarded as the mastermind of Henry Darnley’s assassination. On June 6, a group of lords rebelled in the face of Bothwell’s possible coronation as King of Scotland. Nine days later, after an inconclusive skirmish at Car-berry Hill, Bothwell took flight and Mary Stuart was taken prisoner. 40
Through a series of events, the relations between Elizabeth I and Philip II went from bad to worse. A report from Pius V, received in Madrid, did nothing to improve them. The report told the powerful Spanish king of the English crown’s implication in the recent events in Scotland that led to the ousting of the Catholic Mary Stuart. 41 The year 1568 proved to be the annus horribilis of Philip’s reign, and the actions of the Holy Alliance did not help. For the great protector of Christianity, that whole affair was really an “English tangle.” Still, the Protestant Elizabeth of England was not going to lift a finger against the Catholic Mary Stuart while Spanish armies under the command of the Duke of Alba were in Brussels, so nearby. Thus Philip II displayed his military power.
Meanwhile, Lamberto Macchi and his men had their search for the remaining conspirators firmly in mind. Macchi still carried the red-velvet-wrapped papal document that detailed their mission and conferred the pope’s protection. The parchment was to be destroyed once the vengeance was completed or returned to the pope if it were not. The priest’s next targets were Lord Patrick Ruthven; Lord Fawdonshide, who had aimed a pistol at the queen; the queen’s able if skittish stepbrother Lord Moray; and the radical preacher John Knox.
Fawdonshide was the next to fall. This time Lamberto Macchi and his three followers did not have far to look. Though brave enough to raise his weapon against the queen, Fawdonshide was found hiding in a small house on the outskirts of Lochleven, where he awaited his death in comfort. Putting up no resistance, he was led to a nearby tree and hanged by the neck. 42 The Scottish nobleman was still kicking at the end of the rope when the four horsemen of the Holy Alliance set off in search of their next victim. In the Informi Rosso , Fawdonshide’s name was crossed out with red blood.
Moray fell next, on January 11, 1570, the victim of a sword thrust through his neck. Macchi wet his finger in the Scotsman’s blood and crossed off his name on the parchment, but the avenging of David Rizzio was not over yet. John Knox and Patrick Ruthven remained alive. The Informi Rosso , which had been given to Lamberto Macchi in Rome, crowned with a papal seal, could not yet be destroyed.
More than a month later, on February 25, Pius V published the bull Regnans in Excelsis , which announced the excommunication of the heretic Elizabeth I of England. 43 Such a sentence was an extremely serious measure in sixteenth-century Europe, and it affected the English people more than it did their sovereign. English Catholics found themselves caught between the loyalty they owed their queen and that which they owed their faith and, therefore, the pontiff of Rome. The English Protestants, on the other hand, had been given a tool to label the pope the “Roman Antichrist.” 44 What most worried Elizabeth was not the content of the document as such, but the fact that behind the papal signature probably lay the hand of Philip II of Spain or that of Charles IX of France. However, the Spanish monarch sent a letter to his ambassador in London, Guerau de Spes, in which he showed his surprise:
His Holiness has promulgated a bull without consulting me or informing me at all. I would, surely, have been able to give him better advice. I fear that all this, far from improving the situation of English Catholics, will lead the queen and her councilors to intensify their persecution.
For the Spanish king, Pius V’s bull constituted a grave act of interference in European political affairs. Philip II himself knew that the years when a pope (Gregory VII) could oblige an emperor to humble himself before him, or in which a pope (Urban IV) could award the kingdom of Sicily to a prince, were long since over. The Spanish monarch had no doubt Pius V had mistaken the century in which he lived.
The consequences of the bull would be the martyrdom of thousands of English Catholics and the end of any possible détente between London and Rome. In the short term, the main victim of this declaration would not be Elizabeth I of England but Catholicism itself. The crowned heads of Europe knew this, but Pius V, the inquisitor-monk and creator of the papal espionage service, was not inclined to retreat, even if he had to use the Holy Alliance’s assassins in defense of the faith. Dark years lay ahead.