Veritas (Atto Melani) by Rita Monaldi, Francesco Sorti Page A

times. Your lordship does well to talk to your son in this language, which is the principal and most useful in this
country!”
    I smiled weakly at the good Ollendorf: time had flown and the dreaded hour of our German lesson had arrived. With Teutonic punctuality our preceptor was already standing at the door and waiting
for us.

    20 of the clock: eating houses and alehouses close their doors.
    Once the torture of the German lesson was over, in which as usual my son had shone and I had suffered, we left the convent once again for our evening appointment with the
rehearsals at the oratory.
    I have not yet had a chance to explain that we had had to make ourselves useful to Camilla de’ Rossi. The directress of the choir of Porta Coeli was an experienced composer, and for the
last four years had been charged by the Emperor to write and put on four oratorios for voices and orchestra, one a year, which had earned general applause. At the end of the previous year, however,
she had asked Joseph I for permission to retire and enter a convent as a lay sister. His Caesarean Majesty had therefore assigned her to the monastery of the Augustinian nuns of Porta Coeli, with
the task of directing its choir. Quite unexpectedly, just a few weeks ago Camilla had been told (“on urgent notification,” as she herself informed us with ill-concealed satisfaction)
that His Caesarean Majesty was demanding from her another Italian oratorio in music, which was to be prepared with all possible alacrity. In response to Camilla’s respectful protests, the
imperial emissary declared that if the task of composing a new work was beyond her, His Caesarean Majesty would have no objections to hearing again the oratorio from the previous year,
Sant’ Alessio
, which had been fully to his liking.
    The reason for this insistence was a pressing one. In recent years relations between the Empire and the Church had deteriorated to their lowest point for centuries. The conflicts between Pope
and Emperor were identical to those in the Middle Ages, when the Teutonic Caesars used to invade the territories of the Church, and the Popes who did not have enough cannons would retaliate by
firing off excommunications. This was what had happened three years earlier, in 1708, when the troops of Joseph I – who in the inflamed atmosphere of those bellicose years considered the Pope
too friendly towards the French – had invaded the Papal State in Italy and occupied the territories of Comacchio on the pretext of an old imperial right to those lands. The Pope, this time,
had decided to use his cannons instead of an excommunication, and so an unfortunate war had broken out between Joseph the Victorious and His Holiness Clement XI, which had, of course, concluded
with the victory of the former. At the end of this unequal conflict, the crisis had been protracted for another two years, and only now, in the spring of 1711, thanks to diplomatic efforts, was it
finally drawing to a peaceful conclusion: the Emperor, of his own free will, was about to hand back the Comacchio territories. Naturally, a complete and definitive peace, like any other political
strategy, required a suitable framework, such as could be afforded by a series of reciprocal acts of kindness and goodwill. And so five days earlier, on Holy Saturday 4th April, on the eve of
Easter, Joseph I had been accompanied by the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna, Cardinal Davia, and by a large entourage of ministers and high-ranking nobles, on a visit on foot to various churches and
chapels in the city. The next day, Easter Sunday, the Nuncio had accompanied Joseph to high mass, both in the morning and in the afternoon, in the church of the Reverend Barefoot Augustinian Friars
at the imperial palace, as faithfully reported by the gazettes. Finally, the following evening the two of them had attended the five last important sermons of Lent (which until two years earlier
had included that of the most famous court