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Updated: June 3, 2025
With Saplana the Commander of Famagosta, and with his own brother Gioan Peres Fabrici, as with some other members of the Queen's Council, many details of the conspiracy which was now being brought to so satisfactory a conclusion, had been arranged. They knew that the Neapolitan galley would be in port that night to support the uprising and the proclamation that should be made, if fortune favored.
When he presented himself, she asked him with some embarrassment whether he were, as she took him to be, Antigono of Famagosta. He answered in the affirmative, adding: "And of you, madam, I have a sort of recollection, though I cannot say where I have seen you; wherefore so it irk you not, bring, I pray you, yourself to my remembrance."
He it was, also, who, waiting for no parleying, thundered a refusal to surrender the city to those who brought the demand from the Fortress of Famagosta, signed in trembling letters by the Queen's own hand, "Caterina Regina." "Nay, but Her Majesty shall write the letters from her own palace freely that we, her loyal, servitors may know her will, or ever we surrender her city of Nikosia."
Fortunatus was buried with great pomp by the side of Lady Cassandra, in his own chapel, and was for a long time mourned by the people of Famagosta. There was a man who owned a donkey, which had carried his sacks to the mill industriously for many years, but whose strength had come to an end, so that the poor beast grew more and more unfit for work.
The fortress, not the Palace of Famagosta, had been the birthplace of the little Prince of Galilee; a wise precaution, possibly, in view of the diversities of sympathy to be found among the nobles of Cyprus.
The situation in Famagosta had been briefly indicated in the despatch which the courier of Bernardini had urged his spent and panting steed to deliver in Nikosia; there were also certain dark hints of rumors current among the outraged populace, that Rizzo, Chief-of-the-Council appointed to help the Queen, might soon be master of all the strongholds of the island, having forced letters from the Queen commanding their surrender to the envoys of the Chief-of-Council.
So the wily Primate keeping perhaps his own counsel as to the fabricator of the plot invented a scheme which he asserted that the unconscious Cornaro intended to carry into effect that night by which, when the great bell of the Castle should sound the call to arms, the Venetians in Famagosta, under Visconti and his band of Italian soldiers were to rise up and murder every Cyprian member of the Council of the Realm.
Rizzo and Fabrici had been absent at the time of the uprising of the citizens of Famagosta, and the wolf-like courage of the Chief-of-Council was on the wane: for the letters of the Queen had not proved the passport he had expected toward the surrender of the Cyprian strongholds to a traitor: since more than one of the Commanders had been found so staunch in loyalty as to question the validity of the royal signature.
"It is scarce fitting that your Majesty should be last to hear what is already proclaimed throughout Famagosta," he said, "that Alfonso of Naples hath been created Prince of Galilee and Heir to Cyprus." She looked at him with a scorn that burned. "Is your Grace a man," she said, "to use this speech? Or do I not hear aright from the horror of this night?"
"The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their territories to bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope by the senate, which elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at the end of the sixteenth century, to be liable to examination by his Holiness, as an act of confirmation of installation; but of course, everything depended on the relative power at any given time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few days after the accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the Signory, cap in hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara on a dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six years later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of Cambrai, that furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara on Cipico WITHOUT asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite Abbey of Vangadizza, in the Polesine, fell vacant through the death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose family it had been since some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome received the news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow, requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he heard from the senate. The pope talked of 'poor cardinals' and of his nephew, but made no positive reply; and, as Francesco Contarini was withdrawing, said to him: 'My Lord ambassador, with this opportunity we will inform you that, to our very great regret, we understand that the chiefs of the Ten mean to turn sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close the church doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain hours. This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere in this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there not the patriarch, who is at any rate your own; why not apply to him, who could remedy these irregularities? These are matters which cause us very notable displeasure; we say so that they may be written and known: it is decided by the councils and canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms any resolve against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without incurring censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent] may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas
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