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“However the chronicler Leone Cobelli, took that book in verses that they had given him, wrote hesitantly about it and in fact talked about it doing, among other things, propaganda for the enemies”.
“But several suspected that it was a trick of the conspirators to disguise the murder they were preparing for he and bury Riario under a kind of damnatio memoriae,
” explained the witness.
“What is a damnatio memoriae?” asked the researcher.
Damnatio memoriae: The condemnation to be forgotten by history
“Have you ever wondered why you know a lot of things and facts about someone, while about others you only know some little things existed or happened but little or nothing is really well known about or what happened?” asked the witness.
“Yes, but I think it's due to the fact that in the place where he lived or where something happened, there were no good writers or reporters who decided to write the events. And so the memory of someone or something was lost”, replied the researcher.
“It may be almost true, but you said well at the end of your answer: in the end the memory of someone or something was lost”.
“Well, this is also possible for various reasons”.
“Yes, it is possible. But there are also some ways to make this succeed. It's almost impossible that something happen in one place and no one seeing nothing happen or forgetting all about, unless someone hard work to forget facts or make someone else forget everything”, replied the witness.
“I'm listening, continue your speech”.
“In contrast to events and characters from the past, of which we always know something, almost nothing is left about Riario and his exploits, including most of the official documents he wrote and signed”.
“Even the memories, sayings and tales that are usually handed down orally about someone, seem to be no longer present for Riario, while for his wife Caterina Sforza there are letters, written stories, sayings and memories that go on in time”.
“What's the cause?”
“Damnatio Memoriae, so the Latin people called it. It was a condemnation to be forgotten and removed from historical memory.”
“A practice that Romans and Egyptians had been doing for a long time and was used even after them to erase someone from history”, explained the witness.
“Basically every memory and thing the person had done in life was erased. Every writing he wrote, every image in which he was portrayed, every coat of arms and everything that remembered he. If the person had had coins minted with his name or image, it was forbidden to use them and they had to be handed over to be melted down or minted again in another form”.
“Even his properties were razed to the ground and stripped of all memory and that's what they did with Riario”.
“That was also what Caterina Sforza did in revenge for Riario's murderers when she took them and razed their houses and their property. So all memories and things about them would also disappear and they would be erased and forgotten from history too”.
“And where are these things written now?” asked the researcher.
“I have no idea where they are written now. But I can tell where they were written in the past”.
“Tell me”.
“The chronicler Leone Cobelli wrote some of them in his chronicles and, if you look at his original correspondence, you will see that some pages right in the spot that mention the facts of Caterina and Riario have been scratched and torn out”.
“Also another writer and chronicler from Forlì, very well known at the time, Guido Peppo, surnamed ‘della Stella’
, came to the same conclusions but now all of his writings no longer exist”.
“He had written many history books that told many facts and chronicles that happened in Romagna but all his writings disappeared, because he had been Riario's friend and his personal chronicler and perhaps for some other reason”, explained the witness.
“Who was this Guido Peppo, known as ‘della Stella’?”
“A writer and healer from Forlì, able to read and translate ancient Hebrew and Greek like few others in Italy”.
“Would a ghost have whispered all this in your ears?” asked the researcher.
“No, the first to tell me was my great-grandfather when I was eleven” replied the witness.
“Did your great-grandfather explain all these things to you when you were eleven?” asked again the researcher in disbelief.
“As strange as it seems to you, that's exactly what it is”.
Would you like to explain me who are you and what happened to you?
...asked more and more intrigued the researcher.
“My surname today is Plaxxxxx and the ancestors of my family in Riario's time were noble and in favour of the papacy, but back then we had another surname and we were called Paoxxxxx”.
“We had residences and offices in Imola and Forlì by papal concession, then some members of my family took part together with other Forlì families in the conspiracy against Riario and were considered traitors, while others of our family remained faithful”.
“And so my ancestors were forced to change the surname to Plaxxxxx. to separate us from the original family who had not betrayed the trust they had received and remained a family of nobles. Then with the passing of the centuries, we went from fallen nobles to administrators and city officials and gradually became simple employees and workers of various kinds here in Romagna”.
“Is that all?” asked the researcher.
“It may not seem like much to you, but I assure you that buried down in a forgotten and fallen family is a condemnation to amnesia for me”, explained the witness.
“That may be true, but you have tried to remember and keep many things alive, and you don't seem a forgetful guy to me”.
“Yes, but a lot of people of my family became forgetful from a long time ago. And will not enough for me to remember everything for redeem and regain our lost family memories.”
“Do you have many relatives?”
“I had many relatives. Now most of them have a surname similar to mine and they don't even know any more who they used to be and that we were relatives”, the witness laughed.
“Why don't try to explain or tell something to them” said the researcher.
“Come on. Most people wouldn't even know what I'm talked about, and a few others wouldn't even care to remember if it is true what they heard. Men create their own prisons and then forget themselves in”.
“Maybe you're right”, said the researcher, thinking about it for a moment. Then he added, “Please continue”.
“At the end of 1700 an ancestor of mine, with French Enlightenment ideas, became an official collaborator with the Jacobins of the Napoleonic government, then settled in Forli, and also wrote some reports and surveys on our population for their administrators”.
“He was apparently an esoteric masonic group with some Napoleonic officials in and began to study mesmerism
which had taken its roots in France at the time”.
“Carry on”, the researcher urged him.
“At night they used gathered together with Frenchmen in some rooms of the town hall and try to mesmerize many people to see what had happened in those places. And my enlightened ancestor also transcribed some things about what happened during those experiments”.
“Mesmerize”? The hypnotic practice discovered by Anton Mesmer?”
“Not really. Mesmerizing wasn't like hypnotizing and putting someone to sleep, but it was like magnetizing or tuning on, as we would say today, a person with someone or something”.
“Never heard of it before”, replied the researcher in amazement.
“Depends on how long time you means before. It existed in Mozart's time and only a century ago you would still have heard of this practice. Today it's no longer used, but back then it was used to mental connect a person with a place or another person”.
“You gives me some creeps just thinking about it. What happened anyway?” asked the researcher.
“It happened that some people mesmerized told what really happened in past and how some things had occurred in the centuries before, while others went over many details of what take place and told it like a heck.”
“Who were these people?”
“Some were Forli Jacobins in favour of the Napoleonic government that had settled for a short time in Forli, others were ordinary citizens and officials. And others were French military”.
“Carry on”.
“There were people who told many details, others who saw things that happened, others were a little reticent or frightened and told little or nothing”, explained the witness.
“And your great-grandfather would have told you all this when you were eleven?” asked the researcher.
“No. My great-grandfather was not yet born at that time, but he had heard from his father what had happened there and told me what they had done and what he still knew”.
“So your descendants told each other over and over the time what they knew and many of these things came from your ancestors in your hands?” asked the researcher.
“Pretty much, yes”.
“Tell me that”, said the researcher.
“After the Napoleonic government passed by, my Jacobin ancestor became an official of the municipality of Forli and died murdered by an his alleged illegitimate son in 1830”.
“Many years later another his nephews became custodian of the municipal warehouses which were then on the ground floor of the courtyard of the town hall. And he too, following in the footsteps of our ancestors, did esoteric research with other people in the late 1800s”.
“Did they only do esoteric research or did they something else too?” asked the researcher.
“They did something else too. So while they were there, they did some séances in the fortress of Ravaldino, that was the old fortress of Riario and Caterina Sforza, to which they had the access keys”, replied the witness.
“Séances in the late 1800s?”
“Sure. That was the heyday of those things all over the world”.
“That's true, but with all those mesmeric and séance sessions they did, what happened in the end?” asked curios the researcher.
“It happened that they tried to recall different people and not just Riario, to get him to tell them new things and many details”.
“Who did they recall?”
“Several people. One was Caterina Sforza, the others were some characters from Forli. Among other things, in the fortress of Ravaldino showed up the spirits of some French officers and Italian Jacobins who, eighty years before during the Napoleonic-Jacobin reign, had done mesmeric sessions inside that fortres, when they used as barracks for French soldiers”, explained the witness.
“Who were they?”
“French soldiers and some Forli officials from the Napoleonic era. The fact is that eighty years later, when the fashion for spiritualism arrived, other citizens towards the end of the 1800s, tried to summon people of all kinds to find out what had happened in past”.
“And these people who did the séances, eighty years after Napoleon's fall, who were they?” asked the researcher.
“I won't give you the names, but some of them were citizens. Others were former Garibaldians and Republicans. The keeper of the castle who took part in all this was my ancestor and, in 1957 when I was 11 years old, my great-grandfather told me a lot about what they knew and discovered then”.
“And what did they find out?”
“Many things about Riario and Caterina Sforza”, replied the witness.
“All right. Continue to tell me about Riario and Caterina Sforza then”, asked the researcher who was more and more raped and intrigued by the witness's account.
Who was Girolamo Riario and how did it happen in Romagna?
The witness begins to narrate:
“Girolamo Riario was born in Savona, his uncle was Pope Sixtus IV. So he became Count of Imola and Bagnara of Romagna by the will of his uncle who gave him those lands”.
“Moreover, Girolamo had a brother, Pietro Riario, who thanks to their uncle Pope or, according to some, their father,
became a very young cardinal and had a lot of ecclesiastical offices and numerous monasteries to manage”.
“Officially his brother was a cardinal, archbishop, pontifical and many other offices. He was as rich as he was young and it was not possible to understand how much he managed and how many assets he owned”.
“Just to give an example, at only twenty-six years of age his annual income came to sixty thousand ducats, which was then an enormous sum for anyone”.
“According to some he was also a little dissolute and lustful, but I would be cautious about that”, concluded the witness.
“Why?”
“Because he too was struck, along with Sixtus IV, by another kind of damnatio memoria that consisted of defaming them. He and his Uncle were part of the church and it was harder for those who dealt with these things to attack directly them”.
“Basically he was involved in some political scheming and gave Rome some historical festivals that, for cost and magnificence, ridiculed those ancient Romans, but it does not seem that he was a dissolute fool as many wanted pass him. On the contrary, like his brother and uncle, he was a fervent protector and observer of the Franciscans rules”.
“He died suddenly when he was only 28 years old and someone said he was poisoned or indigestion caused by too many revelries and memorable parties he had given, but it seems only that he fell ill during a journey and died”, explained the witness.
“So, at the death of Pietro Riario, Girolamo inherited his brother's economic and some of his ecclesiastical power, becoming administrator and manager also of his property, so much so that he was nicknamed the Archi-Pope, in contrast to the nickname of Anti-Pope which at that time the Pope's enemies received”.
“Probably in this days Girolamo Riario became one of the richest men in Italy, but Girolamo was more prudent and careful in managing money than his brother Pietro, so that he did not use give banquets or other pleasures than hunting”.
“Girolamo Riario was not a vain man, on the contrary he was a courageous and impetuous temperament, but a little reserved in character and, although his uncle was a protector of the Franciscans, he was more suited for the arms than for the church”.
“So, three years after the death of Cardinal Pietro Riario, Pope Sixtus IV, ran for cover his office and named Girolamo's cousin, Raffaele Riario, who was just 17 years old, as cardinal”.
“This young cardinal and Girolamo Riario recreated a copy of two trusted nephews in the service of Sixtus IV”.
