Besides being a crime, rape is also a morally revolting act.
But is there any evolutionary explanation for it?
Before getting scandalised, let us remember that this is only apparently a troublesome question. Even if someone could demonstrate that rape is somehow useful to the continuation of species, this wouldn’t affect the ethical aspect of it in any way: in fact, from time immemorial, human societies have set a series of rules to prevent social relationships from being regulated by the so-called “law of the jungle”. Our culture and laws also aim at protecting the weakest from the abuses of the strongest, who would instead prevail in the natural state.
Having that said, it is not easy to answer such question. Generalising, we could state that, at least in nature, rape derives from evolutionary adaptation; and yet, it doesn’t always turn out to be a winning reproductive strategy.
In the animal kingdom, non-consensual sex is quite rare, but it still exists, and sometimes can be particularly brutal.
The male sea otter forces the female to have sexual intercourse and, being unable to grab on to her slick and wet fur, he claws or bites her muzzle, often leaving her seriously injured. An extremely violent rapist, as reported by researchers in Monterey Bay, California, drowned the female during the intercourse; then he dragged her corpse through the sea for several days, until he found his next victim.
Ever since the seventeenth century, it is known that male mallards (the typical bright green-headed ducks that can be found in city parks’ ponds) organise gang rapes. When a group of ten males catches a female, they often rape her to death. Gang violence is so common in this species that almost a female out of ten dies in such a terrible way.
Among the “worst specimens” in the animal kingdom, there are bedbugs. Male bedbugs stick their sexual organ (which resembles a dagger or a lance) into a random part of the female body. By this assault, which is properly called “traumatic insemination”, the male releases his sperm into the female’s blood. Entering the bloodstream, the sperm reaches a sort of storing organ, where it is used to fecundate the eggs, as soon as the female manages to feed herself on some human blood, or it is digested in form of proteins. But male bedbugs don’t even stop in front of same-sex individuals: they stab them too, injecting their sperm which reaches the spermatic duct of the victim. The next time he will rape a female, he will unconsciously transmit her the sperm of his aggressor.
Entomologist Howard Ewans, quite disgusted by a similar show, wrote: “looking at the scenario of these bedbugs that enjoy while waiting for the next blood-based meal, i.e., that intercourse at pleasure and independently from sex, transmitting nourishment through the sperm, Sodoma looks like the Vatican” (cited in M. Miersch, Das bizarre Sexualleben der Tiere, Eichborn 1999).
Yet, as we already mentioned, such aggressions aren’t always useful to the species. Until recent times, researchers used to assume that the two sexes always had a common reproductive purpose; nevertheless, they are currently considering the hypothesis of a sexual conflict, caused by different evolutionary instincts in males and females. For example, males may seek frequent mating to increase the chances of transmitting their genetic make-up, while females tend to reduce the physical stress of mating in order to guarantee a healthier litter. These two strategies clearly don’t match.
Thus, in the long run, bedbug sexual frenzy ends up being counter-productive since the high frequency of mating doesn’t help the preservation of female fertility: on the contrary, the continuous ‘stabs’ jeopardise their longevity and reproductive success.
Rape also exists among some of our closest relatives, namely primates, and it is particularly common among orang-utans. But, just as it happened in our societies, some species have taken countermeasures, too.
The females of ring-tailed lemurs, red colobus monkeys, macaques, and spider monkeys are known to organise anti-rape groups, able to hold off the most troublesome males, and even to throw out of the pack the unwelcome individuals. A real monkey #MeToo, confirming that also in nature the two sexes happen to have a conflictual relationship.
Imagine you live in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
The “City of Evil”, one of the most violent places on the entire planet. Here, in the past few years, murders have reached inconceivable numbers. More than 3000 victims only in 2010 – an average of eight to nine people killed every day.
So every day, you leave your home praying you won’t be caught in some score-settling fight between the over 900 pandillas (armed gangs) tied to the drug cartels. Every day, like it or not, you are a witness to the neverending slaughter that goes on in your town. It’s not a metaphor. It is a real, daily, dreadful massacre.
Now imagine you live in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and you’re a woman aged between 15 and 25.
Your chances of not being subjected to violence, and of staying alive, drastically drop. In Juárez women like you are oppressed, battered, raped; they often disappear, and their bodies – if they’re ever found – show signs of torture and mutilations.
If you were to be kidnapped, you already know that in all probability your disappearance wouldn’t even be reported. No one would look for you anyway: the police seem to be doing anything but investigating. “She must have had something to do with the cartel – people would say – or else she somehow asked for it“.
Finally, imagine you live in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, you’re a woman and you’re an artist.
How would you explain this hell to those who live outside Juárez? How can you address the burden of desperation and suffering this carnage places upon the hearts of the relatives? How will you be heard, in a world which is already saturated with images of violence? How are you going to convey in a palpable way all this anguish, the sense of constant loss, the waste of human life?
Teresa Margolles, born in 1963 in Culiacán, Sinaloa, was a trained pathologist before she became an artist. She now lives in Mexico City, but in the past she worked in several morgues across South America, including the one in Ciudad Juárez, that terrible mortuary where an endless river of bodies keeps flowing through four huge refrigerators (each containing up to 120 corpses).
“A morgue for me is a thermometer of a society. What happens inside a morgue is what happens outside. The way people die show me what is happening in the city.“
Starting from this direct experience, Margolles oriented her whole research towards two difficult objectives: one one hand she aims at sabotaging the narrative, ubiquitous in Mexican media and society, which blames the victims (the afore-mentioned “they were asking for it“); on the other, she wants to make the consequences of violence concrete and tangible to her audience, translating the horror into a physical, universal language.
But a peculiar lucidity is needed to avoid certain traps. The easiest way would be to rely on a raw kind of shock art: subjecting the public to scenes of massacre, mutilated bodies, mangled flesh. But the effect would be counter-productive, as our society is already bombarded with such representations, and we are so used to hyperreal images that we can hardly tell them apart from fiction.
It is then necessary to bring the public in touch with death and pain, but through some kind of transfer, or translation, so that the observer is brought on the edge of the abyss by his own sensitivity.
This is the complex path Teresa Margolles chose to take. The following is a small personal selection of her works displayed around the world, in major museums and art galleries, and in several Biennials.
En el aire (2003). The public enters a room, and is immediately seized by a slight euforia upon seeing dozens of soap bubbles joyfully floating in the air: the first childish reaction is to reach out and make them burst. The bubble pops, and some drops of water fall on the skin.
What the audience soon discovers, though, is those bubbles are created with the water and soap that have been used to wash the bodies of homicide victims in the morgue. And suddenly everything changes: the water which fell on our skin created an invisible, magical connection between us and these anonymous cadavers; and each bubble becomes the symbol of a life, a fragile soul that got lost in the void.
Vaporización (2001). Here the water from the mortuary, once again collected and disinfected, is vaporized in the room by some humidifiers. Death saturates the atmosphere, and we cannot help but breathe this thick mist, where every particle bears the memory of brutally killed human beings.
Tarjetas para picar cocaina (1997-99). Margolles collected some pictures of homicide victims connected with drug wars. She then gave them to drug addicts so they could use them to cut their dose of cocaine. The nonjudgemental metaphor is clear – the dead fuel narco-trafficking, every sniff implies the violence – but at the same time these photographs become spiritual objects, invested as they are with a symbolic/magic meaning directly connected to a specific dead person.
Lote Bravo (2005). Layed out on the floor are what look like simple bricks. In fact, they have been created using the sand collected in five different spots in Juárez, where the bodies of raped and murdered women were found. Each handmade brick is the symbol of a woman who was killed in the “city of dead girls”.
Trepanaciones (Sonidos de la morgue) (2003). Just some headphones, hanging from the ceiling. The visitor who decides to wear one, will hear the worldess sounds of the autopsies carried out by Margolles herself. Sounds of open bodies, bones being cut – but without any images that might give some context to these obscene noises, without the possibility of knowing exactly what they refer to. Or to whom they correspond: to what name, broken life, interrupted hopes.
Linea fronteriza (2005). The photograph of a suture, a body sewed up after the autopsy: but the detail that makes this image really powerful is the tattoo of the Virgin of Guadalupe, with its two halves that do not match anymore. Tattoos are a way to express one’s own individuality: a senseless death is the border line that disrupts and shatters it.
Frontera (2011). Margolles removed two walls from Juárez and Culiacán, and exhibited them inside the gallery. Some bullet holes are clearly visible on these walls, the remnants of the execution of two policemen and four young men at the hands of the drug cartel. Facing these walls, one is left to wonder. What does it feel like to stand before a firing squad?
Furthermore, by “saving” these walls (which were quickly replaced by new ones, in the original locations) Margolles is also preserving the visual trace of an act of violence that society is eager to remove from collective memory.
Frazada/La Sombra (2016). A simple structure, installed outdoors, supports a blanket, like the tent of a peddler stand. You can sit in the shade to cool off from the sun. And yet this blanket comes from the morgue in La Paz, where it was used to wrap up the corpse of a femicide victim. The shadow stands for the code of silence surrounding these crimes – it is, once again, a conceptual stratagem to bring us closer to the woman’s death. This shroud, this murder is casting its shadow on us too.
Pajharu/Sobre la sangre (2017). Ten murdered women, ten blood-stained pieces of cloth that held their corpses. Margolles enrolled seven Aymara weavers to embroider this canvas with traditional motifs. The clotted blood stains intertwine with the floreal decorations, and end up being absorbed and disguised within the patterns. This extraordinary work denounces, on one hand, how violence has become an essential part of a culture: when we think of Mexico, we often think of its most colorful traditions, without taking notice of the blood that soaks them, without realizing the painful truth hidden behind those stereotypes we tourists love so much. On the other hand, though, Sobre la sangre is an act of love and respect for those murdered women. Far from being mere ghosts, they are an actual presence; by preserving and embellishing these blood traces, Margolles is trying to subtract them from oblivion, and give them back their lost beauty.
Lengua (2000). Margolles arranged funeral services for this boy, who was killed in a drug-related feud, and in return asked his family permission to preserve and use his tonge for this installation. So that it could speak on. Like the tattoo in Linea frontizera, here the piercing is the sign of a truncated singularity.
The theoretical shift here is worthy of note: a human organ, deprived of the body that contained it and decontextualized, becomes an object in its own right, a rebel tongue, a “full” body in itself — carrying a whole new meaning. Scholar Bethany Tabor interpreted this work as mirroring the Deleuzian concept of body without organs, a body which de-organizes itself, revolting against those functions that are imparted upon it by society, by capitalism, by the established powers (all that Artaud referred to by using the term “God”, and from which he whished “to have done with“).
37 cuerpos (2007). The remnants of the thread used to sew up the corpses of 37 victims are tied together to form a rope which stretches across the space and divides it like a border.
¿De qué otra cosa podríamos hablar? (2009). This work, awarded at the 53rd Venice Biennial, is the one that brought Margolles in the spotlight. The floor of the room is wet with the water used to wash bodies at the Juárez morgue. On the walls, huge canvases look like abstract paintings but in reality these are sheets soaked in the victims blood.
Outside the Mexican Pavillion, on a balcony overlooking the calle, an equally blood-stained Mexico flag is hoisted. Necropolitics takes over the art spaces.
It is not easy to live in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to be a woman, and to be an artist who directly tackles the endless, often voiceless violence. It is even more difficult to try and find that miraculous balance between rawness and sensitivity, minimalism and incisivity, while maintaining a radical and poetic approach that can upset the public but also touch their heart.
Yesterday, at the age of 87, Herschell Gordon Lewis passed away.
This man remains an adorable, unique paradox. Clumsy director yet a crafty old devil, completely foreign to the elegance of images, who only ever made movies to scrape out a living. A man who unwillingly changed the history of cinema.
His intuition — even slightly accidental, according to the legend — was to understand B-movies had the task of filling, unveiling mainstream cinema’s ellipses: the key was to try and put inside the frame everything that, for moral or conventional reasons, was usually left off-screen.
A first example were nudies, those little flicks featuring ridiculous plots (if any), only meant to show some buttocks and breasts; a kind of rudimental sexploitation, not even aiming to be erotic. H. G. Lewis was the first to realize there was a second taboo besides nudity that was never being shown in “serious” movies, and on which he could try to cash in: violence, or better, its effects. The obscene view of blood, torn flesh, exposed guts.
In 1960 Hitchcock, in order to get Psycho through censorship, had to promise he would change the editing of the shower scene, because someone in the examination board thought he had seen a frame where the knife blade penetrated Janet Leigh’s skin. It doesn’t matter that Hitch never really re-edited the sequence, but presented it again a month later with no actual modification (and this time nobody saw anything outrageous): the story is nonetheless emblematic of Hays Code‘s impositions at the time.
Three years later, Lewis’ Blood Feast came out. An awfully bad movie, poorly directed and even more awkwardly acted. But its opening sequence was a bomb by itself: on the scene, a woman was stabbed in the eye, then the killer proceeded to dismember her in full details… all this, in a bathtub.
In your face, Sir Alfred.
Of course today even Lewis’ most hardcore scenes, heirs to the butcheries of Grand Guignol, seem laughable on the account of their naivety. It’s even hard to imagine splatter films were once a true genre, before gore became a language.
Explicit violence is today no more than an additional color in the director’s palette, an available option to knowingly choose among others: we find it anywhere, from crime stories to sci-fi, even in comedies. As blood has entered the cinematic lexicon, it is now a well-thought-out element, pondered and carefully weighed, sometimes aestheticised to the extremes of mannerism (I’m looking at you, Quentin).
But in order to get to this freedom, the gore genre had to be relegated for a long time to second and third-rank movies. To those bad, dirty, ugly films which couldn’t show less concern for the sociology of violence, or its symbolic meanings. Which, for that very same reason, were damn exciting in their own right.
“Blood Feast is like a Walt Whitman poem“, Lewis loved to repeat. “It’s no good, but it was the first of its type“.
Today, with the death of its godfather, we may declare the splatter genre finally filed and historicized.
But still, any time we are shocked by some brutal killing in the latest Game of Thrones episode, we should spare a thankful thought to this man, and that bucket of cheap offal he purchased just to make a bloody film.
Among all the artists adressing the liminal zones of obscenity and taboo, few have explored the Unheimliche in all its variations with Toshio Saeki’s precision.
Born in 1945 in Miyazaki prefecture, he moved to Osaka when he was 4 years old and then landed in Tokyo at 24, right when the sex industry was booming. After a few months in a publicity agency, Saeki decided to focus exclusively on adult illustration. His drawings were published on Heibon Punch and other magazines, and slowly gained international interest. Today, after 40 years of activity, Toshio Saeki is among the most praised japanese erotic artists, with solo exhibitions even outside Japan — in Paris, London, Tel Aviv, New York, San Francisco and Toronto.
For Saeki, art — like fantasy — cannot and should not know any limit.
In spite of the sulfurous nature of his drawings, he had surprisingly little trouble with censorship: apart from some “warning” notified by the police to the magazines featuring his plates, Saeki never experienced true pressions because of his work. And this is understandable if we take into account the cultural context, because his work, although modern, is deeply rooted in tradition.
As the critic Erick Gilbert put it, “if you look at Saeki’s art outside of its cultural sphere, you may be troubled by its violence. But once you go inside that cultural sphere, you know that this violence is well-understood, that ‘it’s only lines on paper,’ to quote cartoonist Robert Crumb. This extreme imagery of Japanese artists, and their characteristic need to go as far as possible, can be traced several centuries back to the so-called bloody ukiyo-e of the 19th century“.
To fully understand Toshio Saeki, it’s essential to look back to the muzan-e, a bloody subgenre of prints (ukiyo) which appeared around the half of ‘800, drawn by masters such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. This latter created the Twenty-eight famous murders with verse, in which he depicted all sorts of atrocities and violent deaths, taken from the news or from the stories of Kabuki theater. Here are some examples of Yoshitoshi’s extreme production.
Other muzan-e, often particularly cruel, were drawn by Utagawa Yoshiiku, Kawanabe Kyōsai, and more marginally Hokusai; this current would then influence the more recent generation of artists and mangaka interested in developing the themes of ero guro – eroticism contaminated by surreal, bizarre, grotesque and crooked elements. Among the contemporary most prominent figures, Shintaro Kago and the great (and hyper-violent) Suehiro Maruo stand out.
So our Toshio Saeki is in good company, as he mixes the solid tradition of muzan-e with classical figures of japanese demons, bringing to the surface the erotic tension already hidden in ancient plates, making it both explicit and obsessive.
His work is a visionary maelstrom in which sex and torture are inseparable, where erotic pulsion is intertwined with frenzy and psychopatology. The manic intensity of his illustrations, however, is coupled with a formal and stylish elegance, which cools down and crystallizes the nightmare: his prints are not created on the spot, because this precise refinement points to a deep study of the image.
“Often they are connected with nightmares I had as a child, or extreme fantasies of my youth. These images made an impression on me, and I exaggerate them until they become those works that seem to have such a stong impact on the viewer“, declared the artist. These visions are carefully considered by Saeki, before he puts them on paper. For this reason his work looks like some sort of cartography of the further limits of erotic fantasy, those fringes where desire ultimately transforms into cupio dissolvi and cupio dissolvere (the desire to be annihilated, and to annihilate).
But, for all their shocking power, Saeki’s paitings are always just dreams. “Leave other people to draw seemingly beautiful flowers that bloom within a nice, pleasant-looking scenery. I try instead to capture the vivid flowers that sometimes hide and sometimes grow within a shameless, immoral and horrifying dream. […] Let’s not forget that the images I draw are fictional“.
And, again: “The important thing, to me, is awakening the viewer’s sensitiviy. I don’t care if he is a bigot or not. I want to give him the sensation that in his life — basically a secure and ordinary existence — there might be “something wrong”. Then hopefully the observer could discover a part of himself he did not know was there”.
Quotes appearing in this post are taken from: here, here and here.
For a deeper treatise on muzan-e, here’s an article (in Italian) on the wonderful website Kainowska.
Il viaggio della Batavia era partito male fin dall’inizio.
Quando questa nave della Compagnia Olandese delle Indie Orientali salpò da Texel, nei Paesi Bassi, il 29 ottobre 1628, una violenta tempesta la separò dalle altre sei imbarcazioni della flotta. Tornata la calma, soltanto tre navi erano in vista: la Batavia, appunto, Assendelft e la Buren. Proseguirono il loro viaggio fino al Capo di Buona Speranza, arrivandoci perfino in anticipo di un mese sulla tabella di marcia. Ma già a questo punto era chiaro che c’era sangue amaro fra il comandante Francisco Pelsaert e il capitano Adrian Jacobsz.
Pelsaert era uno degli uomini di maggiore esperienza di tutta la Compagnia, e mal sopportava l’amore del capitano per la bottiglia: l’aveva ripreso severamente, in pubblico e di fronte alla ciurma. Jacobsz, pur facendo buon viso a cattivo gioco, covava la sua vendetta.
Il terzo uomo più importante sulla nave, dopo il comandante e il capitano, era un certo Jeronimus Cornelisz. La sua era una storia strana, perché non era davvero un marinaio: aveva sempre svolto l’attività di farmacista, come suo padre prima di lui. Ma nel 1627 il suo figlioletto di pochi mesi era morto a causa della sifilide, e Cornelisz si era impuntato nel voler dimostrare che era stata l’infermiera a contagiare il bambino, e non sua moglie. Invischiato in azioni legali, era presto andato in bancarotta. Si era imbarcato sulla Batavia proprio per scappare dall’Olanda e fuggire i suoi guai finanziari.
A bordo della nave, Cornelisz divenne amico di Jacobsz; assieme, i due cominciarono a tramare un piano di ammutinamento per spodestare il comandante Pelsaert.
Le navi ripartirono da Città del Capo dirette verso Java, ma poco dopo aver lasciato la terra si persero di vista. La Batavia ora era sola nell’Oceano Indiano. Durante la traversata, Pelsaert si ammalò e restò per gran parte del tempo chiuso nella sua cabina. Fra gli uomini della ciurma, senza il rigido controllo del comandante, le cose cominciarono a precipitare.
Dei 341 passeggeri circa due terzi erano ufficiali ed equipaggio, circa un centinaio erano soldati e il resto era costituito da civili tra cui alcune donne e bambini. Come si può immaginare, essere donna in così stretta minoranza su una nave che ospitava centinaia di uomini, lasciati a se stessi senza una vera disciplina, era piuttosto rischioso. La prima a fare le spese di questa pesante situazione fu Lucretia Jans, una ventisettenne dell’alta società oladese che viaggiava per raggiungere suo marito a Giacarta. Jacobsz ce l’aveva con lei perché aveva rifiutato le sue avances; così nel pieno dell’oceano Lucretia venne assalita da uomini mascherati che la “appesero fuori bordo per i piedi e maltrattarono indecentemente il suo corpo“. Più tardi la donna dichiarerà di aver riconosciuto Jacobz e un suo scagnozzo dalle voci dei molestatori. Non è chiaro se questo incidente facesse in realtà parte del piano di ammutinamento: se Lucretia non avesse riconosciuto gli assalitori, il comandante Palseart avrebbe dovuto punire tutta la ciurma, e forse Jacobz puntava su un’eventualità simile per diffondere il malcontento fra i marinai.
Ma Palseart, a causa della sua malattia, non arrestò né punì i colpevoli. Mentre Cronelisz e Jacobsz architettavano nuovi espedienti per scatenare l’ammutinamento, la notte del 4 giugno 1629 successe qualcosa di imprevisto.
Il 4 di Giugno, un lunedì mattina, il secondo giorno di Pentecoste, con luna piena e chiara circa due ore prima dell’alba durante la veglia del capitano (Ariaen Jacobsz), giacevo ammalato nella mia cuccetta e tutto d’un tratto sentii, con un duro e terribile movimento, l’urto del timone della nave, e immediatamente dopo sentii la nave incagliarsi nelle rocce, tanto che caddi giù dalla branda. A quel punto corsi di sopra e scoprii che tutte le vele erano spiegate, il vento da sudovest […] e che stavamo nel mezzo di una densa nebbia. Attorno alla nave c’era soltanto una rada schiuma, ma poco dopo sentii il mare infrangersi violentemente intorno a noi. Dissi, “Capitano, cosa avete fatto, a causa della vostra incauta sbadataggine avete passato questo cappio attorno al nostro collo?”
(Diario di Pelsaert)
La Batavia si era incagliata sulla barriera corallina di Morning Reef, nell’arcipelago di Houtman Abrolhos, quaranta miglia al largo della costa ovest dell’Australia. A poco a poco i sopravvissuti vennero trasportati su due isole vicine, Beacon Island e Traitor’s Island. Alcuni uomini, fra cui Cornelisz, rimasero a bordo del relitto. Ma l’arcipelago non offriva a prima vista possibilità di sostentamento per tutti quegli uomini: il cibo scarseggiava (sulle isole si potevano trovare soltanto degli uccelli e qualche leone marino), e il problema più grave era la mancanza d’acqua dolce. Palseart decise, coraggiosamente, di tentare un’impresa impossibile – raggiungere Giacarta con le scialuppe di salvataggio che rimanevano a disposizione.
Alla fine, dopo aver discusso a lungo e ponderato che non c’era speranza di portare l’acqua fuori dal relitto a meno che la nave non fosse caduta a pezzi e i barili fossero arrivati galleggiando fino a terra, o che venisse una buona pioggia quotidiana per alleviare la nostra sete (ma questi erano tutti mezzi molto incerti), decidemmo dopo lungo dibattito […] che saremmo dovuti andare a cercare l’acqua nelle isole limitrofe o sul continente per mantenerci in vita, e se non avessimo trovato acqua, che avremmo allora navigato con le barche senza indugio per Batavia [antico nome di Giacarta], e con la grazia di Dio raccontato laggiù la nostra triste, inaudita, disastrosa vicenda.
(Diario di Pelsaert)
Pelsaert prese con sé 48 uomini fra ufficiali e passeggeri, Jacobsz incluso, e salpò per Giacarta. Ci arrivò 33 giorni dopo, incredibilmente senza perdite umane. Una volta nella capitale, Jacobsz venne arrestato per negligenza. Pelsaert cominciò a organizzare il viaggio di ritorno per salvare i superstiti, ma quello che non sapeva è che nel frattempo qualcosa di davvero inimmaginabile era successo sulle isole.
Cornelisz era rimasto sulla Batavia, incagliata nel corallo; ma poco dopo la partenza di Pelsaert la nave si era completamente sfasciata, portando con sé sott’acqua 40 uomini. Cornelisz riuscì a salvarsi e ad arrivare a riva aggrappandosi ai relitti galleggianti. I naufraghi erano amareggiati e furibondi d’essere stati abbandonati nel momento del bisogno dal loro comandante; Cornelisz quindi ebbe facile gioco nel reclutare una quarantina di uomini senza scrupoli per assicurarsi il potere sul gruppo. La sua intenzione iniziale era quella di catturare qualsiasi barca fosse arrivata per salvarli, e usarla per partire per conto proprio. Ma con il passare dei giorni un altro, più oscuro e folle progetto si fece strada nella sua mente: sarebbe diventato il tiranno incontrastato di quelle piccole e sconosciute isole, e avrebbe costruito un suo privato regno di piacere e di terrore, nel quale passare il resto della sua vita.
Chiaramente Cornelisz doveva eliminare qualsiasi oppositore o individuo pericoloso; così cominciò sistematicamente a sbarazzarsi degli altri sopravvissuti. All’inizio Cornelisz procedette in maniera subdola, spedendo per esempio una quarantina di mozzi a Seal Island, con il pretesto che lì si trovavano delle fonti d’acqua dolce; egli sapeva bene che in realtà non ce n’erano, e li abbandonò al loro destino. Un gruppo di soldati al comando di un certo Wiebbe Hayes vennero mandati ad esplorare delle isole all’orizzonte (West Wallabi Island), con l’intesa che sarebbero stati recuperati appena avessero acceso dei fuochi di segnalazione. Anche questa volta Cornelisz, ovviamente, non aveva alcuna intenzione di tornare a riprenderli.
Se fino ad allora Cornelisz si era mosso discretamente, pian piano ogni scrupolo venne a cadere. Alcuni uomini furono imbarcati per finte ricognizioni, e spinti fuori bordo dai sicari di Cornelisz; altri annegati direttamente sulla spiaggia. I potenziali oppositori erano ormai debellati, il dominio di Cornelisz divenne assoluto e con esso l’escalation di violenza non conobbe più freni. Cornelisz aveva stabilito che il numero ideale di abitanti dell’isola era di 45 persone – tutti gli altri andavano decimati senza pietà. Vennero organizzate le esecuzioni, infermi e malati per primi. I bambini vennero tutti massacrati. Alcune donne furono risparmiate soltanto per diventare schiave sessuali dei nuovi padroni dell’isola; Cornelisz si riservò come ancella personale proprio quella Lucretia Jans già concupita da molti marinai sulla Batavia.
Quando ci si accorse che sulla vicina Seal Island il gruppo d’esplorazione abbandonato a morire era in realtà ancora in vita (si potevano vedere i superstiti aggirarsi sulla spiaggia), Cornelisz inviò i suoi uomini ad ucciderli; missione che essi portarono a termine senza problemi.
Il controllo di Cornelisz era totale. Nonostante non avesse commesso personalmente alcuno dei crimini (aveva provato ad avvelenare un bambino senza successo, lasciando poi ad altri il compito di strangolarlo), con il suo carisma induceva i sottoposti ad agire per lui. A dire la verità, con il passare dei giorni, non vi fu nemmeno più il bisogno di convincerli:
Con una banda devota di giovani assassini, Cornelisz cominciò a uccidere sistematicamente chiunque credeva potesse essere un problema per il suo regno di terrore, o un peso per le loro limitate risorse. Gli ammutinati divennero inebriati di omicidi, e nessuno poteva più fermarli. Avevano bisogno soltanto della minima scusa per annegare, picchiare, strangolare o pugnalare a morte le loro vittime, donne e bambini inclusi.
Fra i testimoni, il predicatore Gijsbert Bastiaenz assistette impotente a tutte queste orribili carneficine, e vide trucidare di fronte a sé sua moglie e le sue figlie, tranne la primogenita che uno degli uomini di Cornelisz aveva preteso per sé. Scriverà il resoconto dell’eccidio in una lettera che ci è arrivata intatta.
Ma un giorno successe qualcosa che Cornelisz non aveva previsto: un fuoco di segnalazione venne avvistato su una delle isole all’orizzonte dove erano stati abbandonati Wiebbe Hayes e i suoi soldati. Chiaramente erano riusciti a trovare dell’acqua, e questo complicava le cose per Cornelisz: significava che il gruppo aveva mezzi per sopravvivere, e il pericolo era che quei soldati raggiungessero per primi le eventuali navi di salvataggio in arrivo.
Wiebbe Hayes però era stato avvisato dei massacri che avevano luogo su Beacon Island da alcuni uomini riusciti a fuggire; aveva dunque avuto il tempo di organizzare le sue difese. I suoi soldati avevano costruito armi di fortuna con i materiali arrivati a riva dal naufragio; avevano perfino costruito un piccolo fortino con pietre e blocchi di corallo. A questo punto erano meglio nutriti, e meglio addestrati, dei sicari di Cornelisz, e quando questi arrivarono per dare battaglia riuscirono a sconfiggerli facilmente in diversi scontri.
Quando Cornelisz vide tornare i suoi uomini a mani vuote, andò su tutte le furie e decise di prendere direttamente il comando delle operazioni. Attaccò Hayes, ma venne fatto prigioniero; e qui il suo regno sanguinario, durato per ben due mesi, conobbe la sua fine. A questo punto infatti comparve all’orizzonte una nave. Era Pelsaert che tornava a salvare i naufraghi, ignaro dei terribili eventi.
Il giorno 17, di mattina all’alba, abbiamo levato ancora l’ancora, il vento a nord. […] Prima di mezzogiorno, avvicinandoci all’isola, vedemmo del fumo su un lungo isolotto due miglia ad ovest del relitto, e anche su un’altra piccola isola vicino al relitto, fatto per cui eravamo tutti molto felici, sperando di trovare un buon numero, se non tutti quanti, ancora vivi. Quindi, appena gettata l’ancora, navigai in barca fino all’isola più vicina, portando con me un barile d’acqua, pane di mais, e un fusto di vino; arrivato, non vidi nessuno, cosa che ci diede da pensare. Sbarcai a riva, e allo stesso momento vedemmo una piccola barca con quattro uomini che aggirava la punta nord; uno di loro, Wiebbe Haynes, saltò giù e corse verso di noi, gridando da lontano, “Benvenuti, ma tornate immediatamente a bordo, perché c’è un gruppo di furfanti sulle isole vicino al relitto, con due imbarcazioni, che hanno intenzione di catturare la vostra nave”.
(Diario di Pelsaert)
Haynes spiegò al comandante che aveva preso in ostaggio Cornelisz; Pelsaert catturò senza problemi gli ammutinati, e nei successivi interrogatori ricostruì l’intero accaduto. I crimini commessi, oltre ovviamente all’omicidio di svariate persone, includevano anche innumerevoli stupri e il furto di beni della Compagnia e di effetti personali dei passeggeri.
Il 2 ottobre 1629 venne eseguita, sulla stessa Seal Island, la condanna dei colpevoli. Agli ammutinati venne tagliata la mano destra, prima di essere impiccati. Per Cornelisz la pena comportò l’amputazione di entrambe le mani, prima di salire sul patibolo.
A Giacarta infine si decisero le sorti degli ultimi protagonisti di questa vicenda.
Il capitano Jacobsz, che era già prigioniero, nonostante le torture non confessò mai di aver tentato l’ammutinamento sulla Batavia; morì probabilmente in prigione.
Il comandante Pelsaert venne ritenuto responsabile di mancanza d’autorità. Gli vennero confiscati tutti gli averi, e nel giro di un anno morì di stenti.
Wiebbe Hayes, che aveva invece combattuto coraggiosamente, divenne un eroe. La Compagnia lo promosse a sergente e in seguito a luogotenente.
Quello della Batavia è considerato uno degli ammutinamenti più sanguinosi della storia: dei 341 passeggeri originari, soltanto 68 sopravvissero (intorno al centinaio secondo altre fonti). Alcune vittime furono ritrovate, in fosse comuni, durante gli scavi archeologici. Se il relitto e i resti umani sono esposti al Western Australian Museum, a Lelystad nei Paesi Bassi è possibile ammirare una straordinaria replica della Batavia, eseguita a cavallo fra gli anni ’80 e ’90, e costruita con gli stessi attrezzi, metodi e materiali che si usavano nel Seicento.
Orson Welles, as is well known, changed the history of cinema at only 26 years of age with the unparalleled Fourth Power, a film that already in 1941 showed an unexpectedly modern and complex language. Welles was also an excellent magician and illusionist, but what few people know is that in his youth the multifaceted artist and intellectual had cherished the dream of becoming a bullfighter. His passion for bullfighting gradually waned over the years as Welles saw the sensationalistic and folkloric aspect of bullfighting take precedence over its symbolic meaning-in his words, the sacrifice of the“brave beast” meeting a“brave man” in a ritual battle.“I hate everything that is folkloric. But I don’t resent bullfighting because it needs all those Japanese people in the front row to continue to exist (and it really does); rather, the same thing happened to me as my father, who was a great hunter and suddenly stopped hunting, because he said: I killed too many animals, and now I’m ashamed of myself.” In the same wonderful interview with Michael Parkinson, Welles called bullfighting“indefensible and irresistible” at the same time.
Irresistible. Any violent confrontation between man and animal, or animal and animal, inevitably draws our gaze. It may be a primitive call that brings us back in touch with the ancient fear of becoming prey; but raise your hand if you have not been, at least as a child, entranced by television images of male lions fighting for the privilege over the female, or deer scoring for territory. Fighting, violence are an integral part of nature, and they still exert a powerful and ancestral fascination on us.
This is probably the impetus behind a type of “show” (if you can call it that), already ethically opposed in the 1800s, and now almost universally condemned for its cruelty: these are the so-called bloodsports, defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “any sport that involves killing or injuring animals for the excitement of spectators or people taking part.” Cockfighting, dogfighting, bullfighting, bearfighting, ratfighting, badgerfighting: the imagination has never had any boundaries when it comes to pushing two animals into a duel for the mere sake of entertainment. In this article we will review some of the more bizarre bloodsport-and you will probably find it hard to believe that some of these forms of “entertainment” exist, or existed, for real.
Goose shooting is still practiced today in some regions of Belgium, Holland, and Germany, but they use an already dead goose, killed by “humane methods” by a veterinarian. This was not the case at the beginning of the tradition: the goose, still alive, was tied by the legs to a board or suspended rope; the animal’s head and neck were carefully smeared with grease or soap. The contestants, in turn, had to ride under the pole and try to grab the goose’s slippery head. The hero of the day was whoever managed to take the bird’s head off, and often the prize for winning was simply the goose itself. It might have seemed a simple feat, but it was not at all, as a passage by William G. Simms testifies:
Only the experienced horseman, and the experienced sportsman, can be assured of success. Young beginners, who consider the feat quite easy, are constantly discouraged; many find that it is impossible for them to pass in the right place; many are pulled out of the saddle, and even when they have succeeded in passing under the tree without disaster, they fail to catch the goose, which keeps fluttering and screaming; or, they fail, going at a gallop, to keep their grip on the slippery neck like an eel and on the head they have caught.
Originating in the 17th century in Holland, the sport also spread to England and North America and, despite being criticized by many influential voices of the time, endured overseas until the late 1800s. A slightly different but equally ancient version is held annually in Switzerland, in Sursee, during a festival called Gansabhauet: competitors wear a mask representing the face of the Sun and a red tunic; the mask prevents them from seeing anything, and the participants, proceeding blindly, must succeed in decapitating a goose (already dead) hanging from a rope, using a sword from which, to increase the difficulty, the string has been removed.
Another wacky sport saw the light of day instead in more recent times, during the 1960s. This wasoctopus wrestling: without tanks or snorkels of any kind, competitors had to manage to grab a giant octopus with their bare hands and bring it back to the surface. The weight of the octopus determined the winner. The animal was later cooked, donated to the local aquarium or released back into the wild.
In the early 1960s a World Championship of octopus wrestling was held annually, attracting thousands of people, so much so that it was even filmed on television; in the 1963 edition a total of 25 giant Pacific octopuses were caught, the largest of which weighed nearly 26 kilograms. The gold medal was won by Scotsman Alexander Williams, who caught as many as three animals.
In Japan, the small town of Kajiki holds the traditional Kumo Gassen festival each year, which is the most famous spider fighting event. Practiced somewhat throughout Southeast Asia, this discipline involves the use of black and yellow striped argiopi. Lovingly raised as if they were puppies, the spiders are free to roam around the house, to walk on their masters’ faces and bodies, and to build their webs as they please-the price to pay for this freedom is hard wrestling training. To be fair, these arachnids are not particularly aggressive by nature, and even during combat, which takes place by means of a stick on which the spiders clash, it is rare for them to be brutally injured. In any case, a referee is present to separate them should things get too violent.
If Kumo Gassen is ultimately not a particularly bloody sport compared to others, let us instead conclude with what is perhaps the most chilling of all: fuchsprellen, popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. Imagine the scene. In an enclosed arena (the courtyard of a castle, or a specially demarcated space) the pairs of participants in the game would gather. Nobles with their consorts, high dignitaries, and scions of great houses. Each pair often consisted of husband and wife, so as to increase the competitiveness of the contestants. Six or seven meters apart, both held the end of a net or a set of ropes resting on the ground: this was their slingshot. Suddenly, a fox was released into the yard: frightened, it ran here and there until it ran over the sling of one of the pairs. At that exact moment, the two competitors had to pull the ends of the net with all their strength, to throw the animal as high as possible.
In the fox-throwing championship held by Augustus II of Poland, it was not only these beautiful animals that were shot into the air: a total of 647 foxes, 533 hares, 34 badgers and 21 wild cats were slingshot. The king himself participated in the games, and demonstrated (reportedly) his strength by holding the net with one finger, while two of the more muscular courtiers stood at the other end. Every now and then some new variation was also tried: in 1648 34 wild boars were released into the enclosure“to the great delight of the knights, but causing the terror of the noblewomen, among whose skirts the boars created great havoc, to the endless hilarity of the illustrious company assembled there.” Three wolves were tried in the same championship. Leopold I of Habsburg, on the other hand, joyfully joined the court dwarfs in finishing off the animals as soon as they landed, so much so that one ambassador noted his surprise at seeing the Holy Roman Emperor accompanying himself with that clique of“tiny boys, and idiots.”
After thirty years of legal battles, the manuscript of the 120 Days of Sodom of the Marquis de Sade has returned to France. It is a roll of sheets of paper glued one to the other, like an ancient sacred (or, better, sacrilegious…) book, 12 meters long and 11.5 centimeters wide, written in microscopic calligraphy on the front and back. A colossal work, very long, composed in secret by the Divine Marquis while he was a prisoner in the Bastille. And during the assault on the prison, on that famous July 14, 1789, the manuscript disappeared in the turmoil. Sade died convinced that the work he considered his masterpiece had been lost forever. The manuscript, however, has traveled through Europe amidst incredible vicissitudes (well summarized in this article), until the news a few days ago of its purchase for 7 million euros by a private collection and its probable inclusion in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This means that the book – and consequently its author – will soon be declared national heritage.
This recognition comes on the 200th anniversary of the author’s death: it took so long for the world to fully realize the value of his work. Sade paid for his artistic research with prison and posthumous infamy, and for this reason he is the most interesting case of collective removal in the history of literature. Western society has not been able to tolerate his writings and, above all, their philosophical implications for two centuries. Why? What do his pages contain that is so scandalous?
Let’s first of all clarify that erotic scenes are not the problem: the libertine literary tradition was already well established before Sade, and counted several books that can certainly be defined as “cruel”. Sade, in fact, was a mediocre writer, with repetitive and boring prose and limited linguistic originality; but this is also an important element, as we will see later. So why so much indignation? What was unacceptable was the total philosophical inversion made by Sade: inversion of values, theological inversion, social inversion. Sade’s vision, very complex and often ambiguous, starts from the idea of evil.
The problem of evil crosses centuries and centuries of Christian philosophy and theology (in the concept of theodicy). If God exists, how can he allow evil to exist? To what end? Why did he not want to create a world free of temptations and simply good?
According to the Enlightenment, God does not exist. Only Nature exists. But good and evil are nevertheless clearly defined, and for man to tend to the good is natural. Sade, on the other hand, goes a step further. Let us look, he suggests, at what is happening in the world. The wicked, the violent, the cruel, have a more prosperous life than virtuous people. They indulge in vice, in pleasures, at the expense of the weak and virtuous people. This means that Nature is on their side, that indeed finds benefit from their behavior, otherwise it would punish their actions. Therefore, Nature is evil, and doing evil means to agree to her will – that is, actually doing something right. Man, according to Sade, tends to good only by habit, by education; but his soul is black and turbid, and outside the rules imposed by society man will always try to satisfy his pleasures, treating his fellow men as objects, humiliating them, subduing them, torturing them, destroying them.
Sade’s research has been compared to that of a mystic; but where the mystic goes towards the light, Sade, on the contrary, seeks the darkness. No one before or after him has ever dared to descend so deeply into the dark side of man, and paradoxically he succeeds in doing so by pushing rationalist thought to its extreme consequences. Goya’s famous painting comes to mind, The sleep of reason generates monstersreading Sade, one has the distinct impression that it is reason itself that creates them, if taken to excess, to the point of questioning moral values.
Here then is the last resort: not only not to condemn evil anymore, but even to promote it and assume it as the ultimate goal of human existence. Obviously, we must remember that Sade spent most of his life in prison for these very ideas; thus, as the years passed, he became increasingly bitter, furious and full of hatred towards the society that had condemned him. It is not surprising that his writings composed in captivity are the most sulphurous, the most extreme, in which Sade seems to take pleasure in destroying and unhinging any moral code. The result is, as we said, a total inversion of values: charity and piety are wrong, virtue brings misfortune, murder is the supreme good, every perversion and human violence is not only excused but proposed as an ideal model of behavior. But did he really believe this? Was he serious? We will never know for sure, and that is what makes him an enigma. All we can say for sure is that there is almost no trace of humor in his writings.
His personality was flamboyant and never tame, perpetually restless and tormented. Impulsive, sexually hyperactive, even his writing was feverish and unrestrained. In The 120 Days of Sodom, Sade proposes to decline all possible human perversions, all the violence, cataloging them with maniacal precision: an encyclopedic novel, colossal even in size, compiled on the sly because at one point the authorities forbade him pen, paper and inkwell. Sade came to write it with a piece of wood using makeshift inks, and sometimes even with his own blood, in order not to interrupt the flow of thoughts and words that flowed from him like a river in flood. For such a character, there were no half measures.
His work is against everything and everyone, with a nihilism so desperate and terminal that no one has ever had the courage to replicate it. It is our black mirror, the abyss we fear so much: reading him means confronting absolute evil, his work continually challenges any of our certainties. Bataille wrote: “The essence of his works is destruction: not only the destruction of the objects, of the victims staged […] but also of the author and his own work.” His prose, we said, is neither elegant nor pleasant; but do you really believe that, given the premises, Sade was interested in being refined? His work is not meant to be beautiful, quite the contrary. Beauty does not belong to him, it disgusts him, and the more revolting his pages are, the more effective they are. What interests him is to show us the rotten, the obscene.
I ignore the art of painting without colors; when vice is within reach of my brush, I draw it with all its hues, all the better if they are revolting. (Aline and Vancour, 1795)
It is understandable, then, why, in his own way, Sade is absolutely unique in the entire history of literature. We need him too, we need his cruelty, he is our dark twin, the repressed and the denied coming back to haunt us. We can be scandalized by his positions, or rather, we must be scandalized: this is what the Divine Marquis would want, after all. What true artists have always done is to propose dilemmas, doubts, crises. And Sade is a dilemma from beginning to end, one that has displaced even scholars for a long time. Bataille compared Sade’s work to a rocky desert, beautifully summarizing the sense of bewilderment he makes us feel:
It is true that his books differ from what is habitually considered literature as an expanse of deserted rocks, devoid of surprises, colorless, differing from the pleasant landscapes, streams, lakes, and fields we delight in. But when will we be able to say that we have succeeded in measuring the full size of that rocky expanse? […] The monstrosity of Sade’s work bores, but this boredom itself is its meaning. (Literature and Evil, 1957)
At the beginning of the twentieth century Sade was finally recognized as a monumental figure in his own way, and his rediscovery (by Apollinaire, and then by the Surrealists) dominated the entire twentieth century and continues to be unavoidable today. The purchase of the manuscript becomes symbolic: after two centuries of obscurantism, Sade returns triumphantly to France, with all the honors and laurels of the case. But it will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, for a text such as The 120 Days to be metabolized in the same way that our society manages to incorporate and render inoffensive taboos and countercultures – it really is too indigestible a morsel. A cry of revolt against the whole universe, able to resist time and its ruins: a black diamond that continues to spread its dark light.
In Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, urban overpopulation entails extreme poverty. In order to survive, people have to come up with new ways of gathering attention. When Finnish photographer Perttu Saska saw what was going on at the corner of every street, he decided to document it in a series entitled A Kind of You.
These monkeys are exhibeted at traffic lights or in the alleys, dressed up in baby clothes and forced to wear doll’s heads that give them an unsettling, almost human appearance. They are trained to ask for charity, and sometimes to enact sad little performances like riding a small bike, or applying makeup while looking in a mirror.
The phenomenon of topeng monyet (“masked monkeys”) is certainly not a sight to behold: various animal rights associations are fighting to save the 350 macaques that are exploited, undernourished, often abused and locked up inside minuscule cages every night, in appalling sanitary conditions. There have already been some good results, as reported on this article.
But Saska’s photographs have the merit of raising questions not only on animal cruelty. The little monkeys, chained by their neck, with their dirty and torn clothes, with those doll heads (probably found in a dump), look like a grotesque and transfixed version of their owners: poor people, choked by the chains of misery, who live by their wits because there’s nothing else to do.
Saving the monkeys is important and righteous; it’s difficult to see how the ones on the other end of the leash will be saved.
This is what is really disturbing in Saska’s work: the feeling we are actually looking in a mirror, at “a kind of you”.
Dite addio a Campanellino, e alle graziose fate delle fiabe della vostra infanzia. Ecco che arrivano le aggressive, violente, rissose fate di Tessa Farmer.
Tessa Farmer è nata a Birmingham, nel Regno Unito, nel 1978. Diplomatasi alla Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art di Oxford, le sue incredibili opere le hanno già fruttato numerosi premi e riconoscimenti. Si tratta di installazioni del tutto particolari, in quanto realizzate unicamente con materiale biologico: insetti, piccoli animali, foglie, rametti, ecc.; ma la peculiarità delle sculture è di essere talmente minuscole che per apprezzarne appieno i dettagli è necessaria una lente d’ingrandimento. Il lungo e laborioso lavoro di assemblaggio dà vita a degli impressionanti diorami le cui protagoniste assolute sono proprio le fate, create con ali di insetto e un intreccio di microscopiche radici.
Ma le fate di Tessa Farmer sono, come dicevamo, molto distanti dalla raffigurazione iconografica tradizionale e folkloristica: si tratta di piccole creature scheletriche, orribili, dall’espressione e dai modi truci.
Ogni diorama raffigura un differente massacro ad opera dell’armata dei bellicosi esserini alati. L’opera intitolata The Resurrection Of The Rat (2008), viene presentata ufficialmente così:
Le fate hanno catturato, ucciso e mangiato la carne del ratto, prima di rilavorare la sua struttura ossea al fine di creare un’architettura multifunzionale. C’è una sezione adibita a gabbia, un nido di vespe e diverse aree per esperimenti e torture.
Ancora più fantastica e terribile la descrizione dell’installazione chiamata The Desecration Of The Swallow, del 2007:
Le mosche stavano deponendo le uova sulla rondine, e le loro larve stavano consumandola, finché le fate gliela sottrassero, e la fecero volare nuovamente imbrigliando insetti alati al suo corpo. Ora è divenuta una nave nella loro flotta, oltre che un pasto.
Le opere di Tessa Farmer, fantasie macabre e dalla crudele ironia, colpiscono lo spettatore non soltanto per la complessità della loro realizzazione ma soprattutto per il modo in cui giocano con il nostro immaginario, capovolgendo le connotazioni classiche associate alla figura delle fate. Da sempre simbolo della Natura incontaminata e magica (benefica), esse sono qui proposte come esponenti della parte più inquietante del regno animale: quella dell’aggressione parassitaria, dello sfruttamento al di là dei fini alimentari, del sadismo, della carneficina.
Ma le apocalissi in miniatura della Farmer suggeriscono anche un secondo livello di lettura. Forse, ciò che rende questi esserini talmente odiosi è la loro sospetta, inquietante somiglianza con la specie umana.
Questa è la storia del processo post-mortem ad uno dei pontefici più perseguitati della storia, e dimostra come a Roma, tra la metà del IX secolo fino a metà del X secolo, essere papa non fosse certo una passeggiata.
Si trattava di un’epoca turbolenta, la capitale era in mano a diverse potenti famiglie aristocratiche in violenta lotta fra di loro e ognuna cercava con ogni mezzo di installare sullo scranno papale uno dei loro uomini di chiesa, protetti e sostenitori della famiglia in questione. Le rivalità per il potere, gli intrighi e l’efferatezza di queste casate, vista oggi, è certamente stupefacente: riuscivano a far deporre il pontefice in carica, o perfino ad ucciderlo per vendetta contro presunte offese e decisioni a loro sfavorevoli. Dall’872 al 965 si avvicendarono ben 24 papi, 7 dei quali assassinati. Giovanni VIII, ad esempio, venne avvelenato, ma poiché il veleno tardava a fare effetto gli venne fracassato il cranio con un martello. Stefano VIII cadde in un agguato e venne ucciso tramite orribili mutilazioni.
Visto che usualmente il nuovo papa era spalleggiato dalla famiglia nemica del papa precedente, egli spesso si accaniva sul suo predecessore, e ne annullava le decisioni. Secondo alcune fonti coeve, nel 904 Sergio III divenne il primo papa (e unico, per fortuna) ad ordinare l’uccisione di un altro papa, Leone V, incarcerato e strangolato.
In questa sanguinosa confusione le bizzarrie si sprecavano: Giovanni XI fu ordinato pontefice (si suppone) in quanto figlio illegittimo di un altro papa e imposto dalla madre-cortigiana, e Giovanni XII divenne papa quand’era ancora adolescente (incoronato a 18 anni, ricordato come uno dei papi più dissoluti e immorali).
Questo dovrebbe darvi un’idea del contesto in cui si svolse l’assurdo processo di cui stiamo per parlare, e che è a detta di molti studiosi, il “punto più basso dell’intera storia del papato”.
Papa Formoso era asceso al soglio pontificio nell’891. Il periodo, come abbiamo detto, non era dei migliori e Formoso era inviso a molti, tanto da essere stato addirittura scomunicato e poi riammesso alla Chiesa una quindicina d’anni prima. Appena diventato papa anche lui dovette far fronte alle pressioni politiche, incoronando il potente Lamberto di Spoleto come imperatore del Sacro Romano Impero. Con un coraggioso doppio gioco, però, Formoso chiamò i rinforzi dalla Carinzia, invitando il re Arnulfo a marciare su Roma e liberare l’Italia, cosa che costui fece occupando il nord Italia, fino ad essere finalmente incoronato imperatore nell’896 da Formoso. Anche per gli imperatori, a quell’epoca, le cose erano piuttosto turbolente.
Proprio mentre Arnulfo stava marciando su Spoleto per muovere guerra a Lamberto, venne colto da paralisi e non potè portare a termine la campagna. Questo spiega perché Lamberto e sua madre Ageltrude avessero, per così dire, il dente avvelenato verso papa Formoso.
Nell’aprile dell’896 Formoso morì. Dopo un papato “di passaggio”, quello di Bonifacio VI che regnò soltanto una decina di giorni, fu incoronato papa Stefano VI. Egli era appoggiato proprio da Lamberto da Spoleto (e dalla madre di lui), e come loro nutriva un odio viscerale per papa Formoso. Nemmeno la morte di quest’ultimo, avvenuta sette mesi prima, avrebbe fermato il suo odio, così terribile e devastante.
Sobillato da Ageltrude e Lamberto, Stefano VI nel gennaio dell’897 decise che Formoso, deceduto o non deceduto, andava comunque processato, e diede ordine di cominciare quello che negli annali sarà chiamato synodus horrenda, “Sinodo del cadavere” o “Concilio cadaverico”.
Fece riesumare la salma putrescente di Formoso, dispose che venisse vestita con tutti i paramenti pontifici e trasportata nella basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano.
Qui si svolse il macabro processo: il cadavere, già in avanzato stato di decomposizione, venne seduto e legato su un trono nella sala del concilio. Di fronte a lui, un uguale seggio ospitava Stefano VII attorniato dai cardinali e dai vescovi, costretti dal papa a fungere da giuria per questa grottesca farsa. A quanto si racconta, il processo fu interamente dominato da Stefano VI, che in preda a un furore isterico si lanciò in una delirante filippica contro la salma: mentre il clero spaventato assisteva con orrore, il papa urlava, gridava insulti e maledizioni contro il cadavere, lo canzonava.
Di fianco ai resti di Formoso stava in piedi un giovane e terrorizzato diacono: il suo ingrato compito era quello di difendere il cadavere, ovviamente impossibilitato a controbattere. Di fronte alla furia del pontefice, il povero ragazzo restava ammutolito e tremante, e nei rari momenti di silenzio cercava di balbettare qualche debole parola, negando le accuse.
Manco a dirlo, Formoso venne giudicato colpevole di tutti i capi contestatigli. Il verdetto finale stabilì che egli era stato indegno d’essere nominato papa, che vi era riuscito soltanto grazie alla sua smodata ambizione, e che tutti i suoi atti sarebbero stati immediatamente annullati.
E così cominciò la carneficina. Le tre dita della mano destra con cui Formoso aveva dato la benedizione vennero amputate; le vesti papali furono strappate dal cadavere, che venne poi trascinato per le strade di Roma e gettato nel Tevere. Dopo tre giorni, il corpo verrà ritrovato ad Ostia da un monaco, e nascosto dalle grinfie di Stefano VI finché quest’ultimo rimase in vita.
L’orribile e selvaggia follia del Sinodo del cadavere però non passò a lungo inosservata: tutta Roma, rabbiosa e indignata per il maltrattamento delle spoglie di Formoso, insorse contro Stefano VI, che dopo pochi mesi venne imprigionato e strangolato nell’agosto dell’897.
I due pontefici successivi riabilitarono Formoso; le sue spoglie, nuovamente vestite con i paramenti pontifici, vennero inumate in pompa magna nella Basilica di San Pietro (non immaginatevi quella attuale, ovviamente, all’epoca una basilica costantiniana sorgeva sul medesimo sito). Tutte le decisioni prese da Formoso durante il suo pontificato vennero ristabilite.
Ma ancora non era del tutto finita. Vi ricordate quel papa che mandò a morte un altro papa, e che fece salire al soglio pontificio il suo figlio illegittimo? Costui era papa Sergio III, incoronato nel 904 e di fazione anti-Formoso; egli dichiarò nuovamente valido il Sinodo del cadavere, annullando così ancora una volta le disposizioni ufficiali del vecchio papa. A questo punto fu la Chiesa stessa ad insorgere, anche perché molti vescovi ordinati da Formoso avevano ormai a loro volta ordinato altri sacerdoti e vescovi… per evitare la baraonda, Sergio III dovette tornare sui suoi passi. Si prese la sua piccola rivincita comunque, facendo incidere sulla tomba di Stefano VI un epitaffio che ne esaltava l’operato e denigrava l’odiato Formoso.
Il setaccio del tempo, però, non gli renderà onore. Sergio III verrà giudicato come un assassino e un uomo dissoluto, e sarà ricordato principalmente per aver permesso a Teodora, madre della concubina con cui egli si intratteneva, di instaurare in Vaticano una primitiva forma di pornocrazia.
Papa Formoso, dal canto suo, arriverà quasi alle soglie della beatificazione. Eppure, ad oggi, non c’è mai stato un papa Formoso II. A dir la verità, il Cardinale Barbo, quando fu incoronato pontefice nel 1464, ci aveva fatto un pensierino, perché gli piaceva l’idea di essere ricordato come un papa di bella presenza (formosus, “bello”). I suoi cardinali, però, riuscirono a dissuaderlo, ed egli scelse il più tranquillo nome di Paolo II.
