496 edward muir
he ventured his own interpretation of the monster of Bologna, “which has
two faces, three eyes, and on top of its head the open vulva of a woman.”
he did not discuss the double forehead with three eyes, but wrote:
i turn to the third figure, of the vulva, with tears in my eyes, for italy has
become this monster with closed eyes and two faces looking in two dif-
ferent directions because of its division—one part looking west [toward
france] to follow its inclinations and it own convenience, the other looking
north [toward the holy roman empire] according to its passions—and thus
divided and blinded, o miserable wretch! it has become a monster. The open
vulva on its head is that homeland and province that has so long preserved
and defended the beauty, the virginity, and the modesty of calamity-stricken
italy. Since she has been so prostrated, and with her vulva open, many out-
siders, as we have seen with our own eyes, come to indulge their lust and
debauch [her]. even in this hour she continues to invite more outsiders.one need not dwell on the anatomical details that intrigued Sanudo, but
note his impulse to interpret the coincidence of a monstrous birth and a
war against Venice. The events of war had become so unpredictable that
the normally cautious Sanudo leapt into the interpretive void. he felt the
obligation to find meaning in the unusual, and he was aware that he was
taking a risk:
i am certain that theses modern “sages” who advise princes with their tricks
and their subterfuges, and “do not fear god but trust in their own cunning,”
would laugh at my words. And i laugh at theirs” with the confidence of
“a man who is catholic and well-mannered, serious, experienced, old, and
prudent, and removed from all passion and avarice... .”25When it came to allegations of witchcraft, Sanudo entered into one of the
great cultural controversies of his time, which drew cosmopolitan Venice
into the world of a mountain peasant culture that hardly seemed christian
at all. in 1518, Sanudo copied a letter from a Venetian patrician who wrote
about the witches of Val camonica, a mountain valley above Brescia:
This place, however, is more mountain than valley, more sterile than fer-
tile, and its inhabitants for the most part are more ignorant than anything
else, people afflicted with goiter, almost all of them with the grossest defor-
mations and completely lacking in the forms of civilization. Their customs
are most frequently rustic and wild; rare are those who are familiar with,
let alone observe, the commandments of the lord. one can say that in a
sense there is as much difference between these valley folk and the other25 Sanuto, I diarii, 17:515–16. Translations from Sanudo in Cità Excelentissima, pp. 416–17.
on this passage, also see niccoli, Prophecy and People in Renaissance Venice, pp. 52–56.