April, 1510. Venice, near Santa Ternita in the sestiere of Castello. Andrea Massario, a humble town crier, slept peacefully, while his wife, Andriana Misani, snuck out of bed, opened the outside door and let in her lover (and friend of the cuckold), Francisco. An axe and a sword were produced, and hapless, sleeping Andrea was carved into tartare.
Francisco and a couple chums, one of whom was a carpenter, managed to box up the body, load it on a small boat, and in the thick ebony of night, dump it unseen into the Canal dei Marani, by the Arsenale. Afterward, they returned to the scene of the crime, where the freshly widowed Andriana had already laid out her dead husband’s cash and valuables to be divided among the conspirators.
Andriana and Francisco ran off together to the opposite side of the city, living for a couple months in Dorsoduro. There they tried to blend in, even posing as pious children of God, becoming regulars at the church of Santa Marta. But they really were just waiting for the right moment to flee to Fusina on the terra firma, from where they could vanish into the anonymous countryside forever.
The plan caved in when Francisco’s accomplices were picked up by authorities and tortured until they confessed the whole scheme. Without getting the grisly details, be assured that Francisco did not “die well” or especially quickly after being found very guilty. His two pals got off easily in comparison: one was banished from the city for 5 years, the other for life.
Andriana’s punishment was the most creative: a room with a view. She was placed in a kind of wood and iron cage called a "cheba" and hoisted halfway up the campanile in Piazza San Marco, given only bread and water, with nothing to protect her from the elements. This was a theatrical punishment, to be sure, but also designed to be quite lethal, generally through starvation.
Somehow, amazingly, she managed to hang on for three months until one morning, October 11, 1510, they rattled her cage and she did not rattle back. She had done the impossible and escaped, never to be seen again. She remains a kind of legend to this day, and her beauty and seductive charms are mythologized, even though very little is actually known about her.
Run, Andriana, run.
I loosely translated this little Venetian bedtime story from an article by Espedita Grandesso in yesterday’s Gazzettino.
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