Q by Luther Blissett (poetry books to read txt) 📕

Benedetto Varchi, lecturer at the Florentine Academy, a member of the circle of the Infiammati in Padua.

Cosimo Bartoli, magistrate at the Florentine Academy and a reader of The Benefit of Christ.�

Anton Francesco Doni, man of letters, mounted courier operating between Florence and Venice.

Piero Vettori, friend of Marc’Antonio Flaminio and correspondent of Cardinal Pole.

Jacopo da Pontormo, an excellent painter, and his pupil Bronzino.

Anton Francesco Grazzini, known as ‘the Fish’, a poet who fulminates against the Church.

Pietro Manelfi, cleric from the Marche.

Lorenzo Torrentino, printer.

Filippo Del Migliore and Bartolomeo Panciatichi, patricians.

The tight circle of Florentine crypto-Lutherans. Different career paths, all ending up in the same place under the protective wing of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, a great patron and a bitter enemy of Farnese, always ready to revive the flames of anti-papal polemic for his own ends.

Titian has spent the whole of the past winter splashing around in that particular pond. It was there that he spent the days of the Conclave, among the most dogged supporters of Reginald Pole.

The inquisitors point out that his preferred company was the painter Pontormo and his pupil Bronzino.

Now in his sixties, Jacopo da Pontormo is spending day and night on what seems to be his greatest work, the fresco in the basilica of San Lorenzo, commissioned by Pier Francesco Riccio for Cosimo I. The work is shrouded in the greatest secrecy, even the boxes containing the preparatory sketches are sealed shut. Only Bronzino and a very few others are allowed a glimpse of what the master is doing.

Rumours, anonymous messages that have reached the Florentine Inquisition, the indiscreet eyes of certain friars: Pontormo is representing The Benefit of Christ Crucified in detail in the apse of the church where Cosimo de’ Medici is to be buried.

After the end of the Conclave there is no more news of Titian in Florence.

Rome, 8th May 1550

Carafa was counting on the French. But according to the information that reaches us from France, Henri II cannot afford to resume the war against the Habsburgs where his father left off, because he would need finances that no one is prepared to give him.

Carafa says the Emperor is preparing to reach an agreement with the Lutheran theologians, and if he succeeds in this the s_pirituali_ might win.

Carafa wants to remove Pole from Rome. He wants him out of Italy.

Carafa says a war of succession is about to break out in England. Henry VIII is dead, leaving behind him a host of children fighting for the crown.

Carafa says we must prepare the ground for the reconquest of England by the Catholic Church, and that we must ensure that the undertaking is entrusted to Pole.

Carafa says I must go to England to make contact with the supporters of Mary Tudor, a devotee of the Pope, who seeks to contest the crown against the claims of her younger brother.

Carafa speaks of a delicate and most important task that he can assign only to his most trusted servant. Carafa has never spoken to me like this.

Carafa serves hemlock in a silver chalice.

It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Carafa has taken me out of the larger game, the one I’ve been following from the start.�

The star of Qo�let is in decline.

In England. Dealing with four ignorant and badly dressed noblemen.

In England. Operation Benefit is no longer mine.

I’m not sure that I will go back. I may not even make it to London. I’ll find myself on the wrong end of an assassin’s knife somewhere along the road, unseen by anyone. My days are over. Thirty years of secrets are frightening to anyone preparing to begin a new chapter in the struggle for absolute power in Rome. There are ignorant young fanatics: there’s Ghislieri, the Dominican. There are the Jesuits. There’s no room left. Time to call it a day.

I’m tired. Tired and frightened. My luggage is ready and I look at it as if it weren’t mine. A few rags inherited from a life that is drawing to a close, far from the eyes of the world. The thought has been with me for some time now, but I didn’t think it would happen so quickly, or with this feeling of banality in my heart. This isn’t the way to prepare for it

I’d like to leave these pages to someone, the testimony of all that has happened. But to what end? For whom?

We plough our way through the twists and turns of history. We are shadows unmentioned in the chronicles. We don’t exist.

I have been writing for myself. Only for myself. And it is to myself that I dedicate and leave this diary.

Q’s diary

London, 23rd June 1550

Days of rain and discussion. Stolid aristocratic Englishmen plotting in broad daylight, incapable of any kind of diplomacy. They are skilful practitioners of the sword, which they all carry in full view. That’s it. Everything will be resolved by blood, and the winner will be the one with the bigger army.

Three contenders, three sides. Unlikely balance.

Edward, a little boy with the crown on his head, who has chosen as his private tutor no less a man than Martin Bucer, the great Lutheran theologian. Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and thus half Spanish, great devotee of the Pope. Then young Elizabeth, born of the blood of her mother Anne Boleyn, who seems to admire the schismatic path chosen by her father.

The families supporting Catholic Mary would love to see Reginald Pole returning to his homeland as a champion of Catholicism, and some of them are keeping the throne of Canterbury warm for him. For centuries these aristocrats have been busy eliminating one another, wiping each other out in clan wars more closely akin to the barbarian customs of the Celts than to the art of politics.

It’s worse than exile here. I have no news from Italy.

That knife never came. Carafa has granted me more time. Perhaps he’s deciding what to do with me. Or perhaps it’s all part of the plan.

The resolution adopted by the Stoics has nothing to do with me. I have no disappointment to expiate. Nothing to lament.

It’s raining here. It’s always raining. An island without seasons, cramming all four into a single day.

I’ll die somewhere else.

London, 18th August 1550

My task is completed. There is no stability in sight: I am coming back burdened with promises and the certain knowledge that the English nobles are entirely untrustworthy. Mary isn’t just knocking on our door, I’ve seen Spanish advisers here as well. Charles V has a son to remarry, although he is ten years younger than Mary. If Carafa predicts that Pole to return to his homeland, he will have to take into account the fact that this might mean a rapprochement between Spain and England, very much to the Emperor’s advantage.

Lack of interest in these events has made it difficult to write the reports that I have been sending to Rome, and now that I am preparing to leave, I am not in any great haste to return. What remains is my curiosity about a certain mystery, and my sense that there is one last thing to be done.

I want to give myself time to retrace my footsteps. To understand what it is that is trying to force its way to the surface.