The San Benogno Manuscript
One tranquil Sunday in March 1889, in the hours between Nones and Vespers, the Librarian of the Library of the Cistercian Abbey of Monte San Benogno, near Chieri (Italy) rediscovered an unsigned and undated manuscript that had long lain forgotten behind other, equally uncatalogued and aged leather-bound volumes. It was a slim work dealing with worldly questions, of equivocal historical interest. It was however rather naïvely enluminated. After ascertaining that the folios were at least six hundred years old, the monks decided to repair and restore the manuscript. In 2009, one hundred twenty years after the work’s rediscovery, the manuscript was published for the first time. Literary detective investigation has advanced the theory that the work, a history of the first two generations of the ancient medieval House of Torrechiavenna, was pennned by a tenth- or eleventh-century cleric.
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As more and more pages, squires, vavasours, knights, castellans and adventurers of every ilk journey further and further from their homesteads upon roads winding ever farther, the infinite variety of fields, woodland, townships and Holy Places to be encountered on this earth elicits wonder at nature’s and mankind’s capacity for invention. But so in the vast world, so also in an Alpine vale. There are low grasses and slender plantlings, bushes of varying species, flowers of every colour. Occasionally, in an undulating expanse of open field, one spies a solitary, mighty oak, leaving one to speculate on the origin of this specimen and on the circumstances that allowed a lone seed to take root and sprout precisely here, where no other specimen of its kind may be found.
In the interest of the education of your worthy sons present and to come, I beg you to receive, as a token of friendship, the true story narrated in these folios. It is the tale,
mutatis mutandis, of a solitary oak : the House Torrechiavenna. It grew from a single seed mysteriously planted named Ermenulfo. Put more prosaically, this is the story of a prince’s life. A most resourceful prince whose fame is as widespread throughout Italy and beyond as his origins are obscure ; whose legacy is as edifying as his adventures are inimitable. A valiant knight, indomitable champion and loyal servant, beloved and rewarded by powers temporal and divine. A life all the more treasured as its ending was tragic.
Many a legend has been woven from scraps of collective memory regarding Sir Ermenulfo. Most of them are pure fantasy. With this plume and fresh parchment, I wish to cleanse the vale of all falsehoods and calumnies that have clouded gullible minds, and to restore a clear view of a mighty oak in a wide Alpine field.
I wish to recount the truth about Ermenulfo, Count of Grisons, of the House Torrechiavenna.
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The first time the name Ermenulfo Torrechiavenna appears in a written document is the hour of his christening. In an ancient ledger, preserved in Holy Mother Church’s archives at Bellinzona, county of Grisons, one reads that Ermenulfo Torrechiavenna was born and baptized in the Year of Grace Eight-Hundred-and-Fifty in an Alpine hamlet no one has ever heard of. The names of mother and father are faded. No siblings are known, nor did any man or woman ever come forward claiming kinship. From birth, the future Lord of Grisons was unique.
The second time the name appears is in a bailiff’s report, complete with Royal Seal, in a matter of purported kidnapping and rape.
The document, exemplary in its brevity, yet manages to reveal much valuable information about the Count’s earliest years. Accusations of brutality, plunder and defilement -- all false, as the Royal Keeper of the Peace goes on to prove -- circulated amongst those of the Italian warlords who sought and used any means possible, honest or vile, to heap discredit on the name of Torrechiavenna. It was the occasion of the Count’s marriage that elicited incredulity, even stupefaction and -- eventually -- slander. For in the Year of Grace Eight-Hundred-Seven-and-Sixty, Ermenulfo met his lady love : Nest, a maid of great beauty, kindness and wise economy, who was of Welsh extraction.
It is no difficult matter to imagine the sensation this event caused in Grisons. Nine persons out of ten had never heard of, let alone seen, such a wonder as a Welsh maid. More astonishing still, Nest was daughter to His Grace the King of Powys.
Envious minds concocted a story as spurious as it was ignoble. Ermenulfo is a mere thug, they claimed. A leader of ruffians and wild mountain men, born in untamed forest of unknown and un-human commerce. The very existence of the Lady Nest proves his villainy, for how else could such a
nobile dama as a King’s daughter come to snow-capped Grisons except through having endured the ultimate dishonour ?
the house where Ermenulfo was born and raised
As always, the truth is much simpler than the falsehood.
Louis II of the House Karling, King of Italy and Burgundy, had engaged himself in Holy War to reclaim the territory of Apulia from the Muslim Infidel. Ermenulfo, knighted in his seventeenth year by King Louis II himself (a fact conveniently forgotten by the slanderers), accompanied his liege lord on this pious campaign. Far from having the soul of a thug, Ermenulfo was wont to display an excess of zeal and even cruelty in proving his courage and audacity. Thus, with a band of inexperienced archers and foot soldiers no more than five hundred strong, the young Count of Grisons abandoned the Alpine peaks and forests that he loved so well to offer his services to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and to His Majesty King Louis, in a Holy War.
Vista of the county of Grisons
It was a most perilous adventure -- what every son, every squire, every knight, dreams of. But the Lord’s hand guided even Ermenulfo’s ingenuous few to victory. Being thus honourably sworn to a worthy cause, Sir Ermenulfo earned a place amongst Italy’s noble train.
After their victorious enterprise, the King and his men decided to pay homage to the holy relics of Saint Nicolas at Bari. There they encountered many other pilgrims who had risked no less perilous a journey to visit the saintly bishop, amongst them the noble King of Powys. Ermenulfo had scarcely laid eyes on the King’s daughter, the Lady Nest, than he desired her hand.
King Louis and the King of Powys and their respective parties met often and prayed together daily for a fortnight. Hence there is no cause whatsoever to prevaricate scenes of impure violence and degeneracy. Sir Ermenulfo met the Lady Nest through her pilgrim father of Powys, who did not hesitate to consent to the union of his daughter and the debonair Italian, who had so valiantly proven himself in virtuous combat with a band of youths so small in number yet so remarkable in daring.
At the time of their first meeting in Bari, the king’s daughter was but a girl of thirteen. It was agreed that she would travel to Grisons in the year Eight-Hundred-Seventy, when the betrothed had come of age. No doubt it is the future Countess’ youth that inspired the slanderous tales of kidnapping and rape that later assailed the Count’s honour.
The journey to Bari, a splendid city renowned even in the centuries of the ancient Greeks and Romans, provided Sir Ermenulfo with more than sentimental ache. It taught him that he had much work to do if Grisons were to become a province exalted in the eyes of men. To that end, he despatched his most studious and faithful servant, Ascanio of Locarno, out of Italy, far from the Alps, all the way to Greek shores, to inquire after the finer arts and sciences necessary for laying down the foundations of a kingdom. The fruit of this labour was to place Grisons well ahead of all its neighbors in the domains of castle structure, homestead planning, soaring church architecture, and other areas of genteel life. The success of this plan -- to glean intelligence outside the kingdom of Italy -- whose fruits Sir Ermenulfo himself would barely see, is nevertheless his brainchild, one for which his descendants never cease to express their gratitude.
In anticipation of the arrival of his bride, Sir Ermenulfo set to the great task of civilizing his demesne. The whole province rejoiced, for the project presented occasion for lucrative employment, though it also incurred the levy of supplementary tithes.
Nest of Powys arrived in Grisons at the start of the Year of Grace Eight-Hundred-Seventy. The wedding ceremony and feast, to which everyone flocked, surpassed anything ever seen in Grisons to that day. The bride radiated felicity, which still deterred not the county’s old maids to gossip that the new Countess -- a foreigner -- would never adapt to Grisons’ climate, and would pack up her bags and abandon the Count at the earliest opportunity.
The formidable and breathtaking heights of Grisons
Count and Countess were devoted to each other, and ten months after her arrival, the Lady Nest gave birth to a daughter, the Lady Alessandra. Two years later, the couple were blessed with another daughter : Gabriella, the future great Duchess of Genoa.
During this time, well-crafted reports in secret code arrived periodically from various provinces of Byzantium. The information contained therein fulfilled Sir Ermenulfo’s desire to advance in all the arts, but especially in those that would contribute to building an invincible stronghold. The works undertaken would culminate in better defenses and grandeur, always an effective deterrent to the misdeeds of petty outlaws.
Word of Sir Ermenulfo’s enterprises could not fail to make deep impression on neighbouring lords, including King Louis. Consequently, and despite a certain disdain for things Italian so characteristic of the House Karling, a Royal Page presented himself one day at the Count’s home in Bellinzona to pray Sir Ermenulfo to grant His Majesty the pleasure of his loyal service.
It turned out however that King Louis troubled himself not with dreams of advancement from outside the French-speaking world. The service he required of Sir Ermenulfo consisted in acquiring knowledge of an entirely different sort : intelligence on the dreams of his vassals.
It was in the fifth year of Sir Ermenulfo’s rule, and only the second year of his marriage, that personal tragedy struck the House Torrechiavenna for the first time. In the summer of Eight-Hundred-Two-and-Seventy, the Lady Nest passed away. The county went into mourning. Long did the souvenir of the Countess’s soft radiance warm the cold winters of Grisons. In due course, Sir Ermenulfo remarried. The new Countess, the Lady Morag, bore not close
physical resemblance to the first Countess. Their
spiritual kinship however was evident to all. Her origins, though not Welsh, were sufficiently close to Powys and Gwynedd to leave no room for doubt as to why Sir Ermenulfo felt drawn to her.
The office of Spymaster to the King left Sir Ermenulfo ample time to administer his own demesne. Most notably, his immunity to corruption earned him renown throughout Italy as a just ruler, the bane of all who believed themselves above the laws of God and man.
One of Grisons’ dignitaries yet managed to cross paths with Sir Ermenulfo’s impeccable judgments : the best-forgotten Bishop of Disentis of lamentable repute. This wicked prelate had succumbed to the appeal of blasphemous lucre in the form of trafficking man-made relics. The affair was brought before the Count’s justice. The peddlers were found guilty, their malicious wares destroyed. Though the Bishop evaded sentence through lack of convincing evidence, his fury at losing a source of steady income moved him to seek revenge of a most heinous nature : the subverting of the Count’s fighting men.
Meanwhile, coded information continued to flow from the East towards Grisons’s lofty peaks. Sir Ermenulfo humbly considered that it reflected poorly on his House that he was himself incapable of deciphering his servant’s missives, but depended heavily on the help of learned monks. So it was that in the winter of Eight-Hundred-Eight-and-Seventy he took himself to the dwelling of an ancient hermit “to learn his books” as he himself advised his courtiers. His stubborn perseverance paid off, and he returned to the castle of Bellinzona not only lettered but with more acute perception of the meanderings of the human mind.
This new-found wisdom influenced a great number of momentous decisions. One of these, which inevitably raised eyebrows even at the Court of King Louis, was Grisons’s Law of Succession.
By instituting an elective monarchy in Grisons, Sir Ermenulfo paved the way for the principle of the advancement of the most worthy, not only in the Dynastic Succession but in every office, from stable boy to Chancellor, thus accustoming his subjects to the idea that, as the Good Lord Himself taught his disciples, the last could be first, or indeed the first be last. He at once set an example by taking under his wing a barefoot peasant lad whom he proceeded to instruct exactly as one would the son of a Marquess. His daughter Gabriella took a shine to the boy, and the two were often seen playing together when not attending assiduously to the lessons of their tutor.
Another beneficiary of Sir Ermenulfo’s newfound perspicacity was the dreadful Bishop of Disentis. Sir Ermenulfo penetrated the priest’s veneer of dignity and discovered a soul of vanity. He invented a mission for the Bishop, sending him to the Papal Court in Rome. The unmasked prelate actually groveled in gratitude, and his embassy to Rome bore rich fruit for the Court of Grisons.
Alas for himself, his sojourn in the Hoy City did nothing to improve his character. A few years later, he espoused the delusions of the Waldensian sect and attempted to sow its vicious seed in Grisons. Sir Ermenulfo had him arrested, and the humiliated cleric ended his days in the Count’s dungeons.