Alessandro Manzoni, I Promessi Sposi
(The Betrothed, 1827, Chapter 32)
A subtle, instantaneous, most penetrating poison – such were
the words that were found sufficient to explain the violence of the disease, and all its
obscure and most extraordinary symptoms. That poison was said to have been made from
toads, from snakes, from the spittle and pus of victims of the plague, from yet worse
ingredients. With the addition of black magic, anything became possible. An annointer!
That word was soon common, a resounding word, and a word of terror. Everyone was on the
lookout; every act could inspire suspicion. Suspicion soon turned to certainty, and
certainty to fury.
In the
church of Saint Anthony (In Milan) on a feast day of some kind, a man of more than eighty
years old knelt down to say his prayers; and when he had finished and wanted to sit back
on the bench, he dusted it with his cape.
That old man
is anointing the benches! Cried several women with one voice. All the people in the church
(in church, I repeat!) dashed at the old man, seized him by the hair, white as it was, and
loaded him with blows and kicks. Some pushing, some pulling, they hustled him to the door.
If they spared his life for the moment, it was only so that they could drag him in that
battered state to prison, to judgement, to torture.
‘I
saw him as they dragged him along the street,’ says Ripamonti, ‘and heard no
more about him afterwards. I do not think that he can have lived more than a few moments
longer after I lost sight of him.’
Nor
was it only in the city that such things happened. The madness propagated itself as fast
as the plague. Any traveler whom the peasants found off the main road, or who loitered on
the road to look around, or who lay down for a rest; any unknown person with anything
strange or suspicious about his face or clothing, was an anointer. The first word of his
arrival from anyone, even a child, was enough to set bells ringing and crowds gathering.
The unhappy stranger would be stoned, or dragged off to prison by the mob. Prison, in
fact, was a haven of safety for him, for the moment at least.
Theories of
witchcraft had been believed in previous pestilences (in 1570 in Milan) and throughout
Europe. Poisonous arts, diabolical operations, conspiracies of people bent on spreading
the plague by contagious venom or by black magic. To this end, a disturbing sight struck
the eyes and minds of the citizens. In every part of the city doors and walls were
extensively marked with a strange sort of ungent, a yellowish whitish filth. ‘The
stains had a scattered, irregular dampness about them, as if someone had used a sponge to
sprinkle and daub the dirt onto the wall.’ |
