“… Though you may absolve yourself of all your worldly possessions, you will never be able to bring back what once was. Etruria, which was given into your hands, shall be lost for a thousand years. Perhaps, in time, new shoots shall spring forth from buried roots, but it shall never stem from thy doing….”
— The prophesy of the spirit of Tarquinia
The story I am about to tell is nine-hundred years old, though for my part, it is roughly half of a lifetime in the making. Although I have been telling the story for a few short years, the research for this work had begun in earnest about a dozen years ago. Evidently, the seed of this story was planted many lifetimes ago, and only decided to come to life around the time I began to approach my thirtieth birthday. Some have called it a change of life event or a mid-life crisis, while others may have called it the result of traumatic stress from a series of unexpected job changes and an unavoidable incapacity of my wife due to a spinal injury and resulting back surgery. Some said that it was inevitable, though for me, it hit me like a shot out of nowhere. An ambulance ride to the local emergency ward and an extended stay at the hospital, a myriad of tests and a phalanx of so-called specialists yielded no answers for my medical condition. The “official” prognosis seemed to be, “It’s all in your head!” I suppose that they were right after all because there was no physical reason for me to feel the way that I felt. My wife – the only one in my life who really knows me – suggested that I put my “Mr. Big Shot Banker” life toward the back of the shelf, and that I try to connect with the inner me – the young child who loved to draw and write stories and create things. We had been married for thirteen years and had worked hard to provide a home for four great kids. In fact, we had two homes at the time when I lost my first job. We were moving through the turbulent eighties and banking was beginning to hit some rough patches, and I found myself looking at a very promising banking career being suddenly flushed down the toilet. Prospects looked difficult, but not impossible and I was to land myself another job with another bank which I viewed as a minor setback but one that would keep me on my trajectory to become a bank president someday. Unfortunately, that lifeboat was riddled with holes just below the waterline and within six months of my jumping ship, that boat was about to sink. I rode out that mistake until the very end and quickly found myself another job at half the pay. By that time, the real estate market had begun to tank, and my new job was in jeopardy. The stress was unbelievable, and it is no wonder that something had to give. I believe that it was during this period of extreme stress that the seed which was planted deep within my being was moved to awakening. Though I did not begin to feel its effects for several more years, I knew that something was happening within my soul. Following my wife’s suggestions, I enrolled in an art class at the local museum school and started to get in touch with the artistic side of this banker.
Art has always been a big part of my life and somehow, I had lost my way and pushed that part of me way to the back of the shelf. By bringing it back out into the light, I had found a re-awakened, fresh look at my life. I took my head out of the books and ledgers of finance and, at the very least, opened my consciousness up to all that I was missing. Like an infant learning to crawl and then to walk, I began to see and experience different ways of viewing my surroundings and to listen to my inner being. It was then that I had become aware of that part of me – that hidden seed – which had now sunk its taproot into my soul and was beginning to sprout its delicate tendrils which had lifted my spirits and had invited my mind to travel to the inner recesses of my being. In my art classes I began to refine my skills in painting, and through a series of self-awareness classes involving some tantric visioning, I was able to listen to the voices growing within my soul and to embrace those visions which were visited upon my conscious and sub-conscious brain. Strangely enough, I began to dream of distant lands and times past, experiencing visions of what I now know to be past life experiences.
This was so strange to me, yet so comforting at the same time. Strange- for I had never traveled outside of my own country, except perhaps on several vacations to the warm tropical islands of the Caribbean. Europe was a distant place, not a place on either of our radar, and surely not a place that we had ever talked about visiting. As time went on, my dreams and my memories were becoming more “old-world” in nature, mysteriously similar to the countryside of Tuscany. My dreams were of an ancient time, and on many occasions, I would wake my wife, who would angrily tell me that I was yelling in some foreign language. My paintings began to take on a certain Italian Renaissance feel, many of my landscapes becoming echoes of the Tuscan hills and valleys, the stoic cypress trees against an indigo, star-filled sky. My palette took on the colors and hues of the marbles in the great Duomos of Florence, Siena, and Rome. I could not explain this metamorphosis but merely embraced it, and let it take me wherever I was destined to go.
I began to grow more and more interested in Italy and had decided to learn the language. At first, I tried a myriad of self-learning tapes which I listened to dutifully on my one-hour commute to and from the bank. Later I enrolled in an adult education class where my instructor opened my mind and my senses to the greatness of Dante Alighieri. From Dante to Boccaccio to Petrarch I found myself being catapulted into the ancient world that once was the greatness of Tuscany.
As all this was unfolding, I had begun to explore more deeply my own Italian roots. I had known that I was half Sicilian (on my mother’s side) and half Napolitano, or so I thought (on my father’s side). I had learned a few brief stories from my grandfather who came to this country at the beginning of the twentieth century, leaving behind the wasteland of the hill country located south of Rome and north of Naples, for a promise of a rich and rewarding life in America. He came as a young man and was hosted by his older brother who had already come over and established new roots in richer soil. His brother would set him up in this new world and would also present him with his new wife. Grandpa’s father had, years before, escaped from a newly unified Italy, in order to avoid serving in the Italian army, which was at that time at odds with the pope and the Vatican, the last hold-outs of the old-world order on the Italian peninsula. That pope, Leo XIII, was Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci (1810-1903) and, according to my grandpa, was his father’s cousin. For noble reasons, or so the story goes, my great-grandfather found it preferable to leave his family and flee from his homeland, choosing not to swear allegiance to the state which was the enemy of the pope.. In the dead of night, he left his family and sought passage to the new world and a new life. He would eventually bring his family over to be with him, but in his absence, my grandfather, a mere toddler, was left with his mother to endure the hardships of the old world and to rely upon the occasional kindness of His Holiness, the pope. Nothing of the old world was ever shared with me by my grandfather, nor my grandmother, for she spoke little English until her death and I had little interest in such things. My father had little knowledge of his own Italian roots, not even being certain of the name of the village in which his ancestors had lived. We were living in America and the curtain had been drawn shut to hide the past, to allow the living to focus upon a new future.
In my search for self-awareness, I had found myself driven to pull back that curtain and to travel those ancient paths which lay hidden to those of us who became American. At first, I had concentrated my research on the Pope, finding it quite easy in this age of Google and YouTube, to actually see and hear the spoken words of the first modern-day pope to be photographed and audio recorded. His papal reign was one of the longest in the history of the church, spanning twenty-five years and bearing witness to all the social and political challenges of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He remained a self-imposed prisoner in the Vatican for his entire reign. I have researched several volumes of biographies of this great leader and have reviewed many papers and writings available to us on the internet, yet, most fascinating to me was the history of his family which he was required to produce upon his election to the Papal Throne. He traced his history (on his mother’s side) to the Roman Tribune, Cola di Rienzo, and his father’s history, through sixteen generations to a certain Pier Anthonio Pecci, a descendent of the Pecci of Siena, who, as an ambassador of Siena had worked with Catherine de Medici, Queen of France (mother of Francis I) to transfer control of Siena from Spain to France. Their political scheming had failed and Pier Antonio was banished from that fair city and sent into exile to the wilds of Carpineto Romano in the foothills south of the Rome. The Peccis survived for over two centuries in that wilderness until their fortunes were changed once again by the meritorious deeds of the pope’s father who was awarded the title of Count by the Emperor Bonaparte for his role in wiping out the bandits who plagued the southern borders of Rome and by bringing peace to that region.
My research took me further back in history, beyond Pier Antonio, to the fifteenth, the fourteenth, the thirteenth, the twelfth century, and into the mists of the most ancient of histories- to Florence, to Siena, to the ancient city of Cortona. In each century I encountered Pecci men of letters; ambassadors, bishops and princes of the church, saints and sinners, men of great wealth and power, patrons of the arts and science, and captains of commerce. They were members of the Siena’s Novesci, the Government of the Nine, who ruled Siena for seventy-five years in the fourteenth century and who brought us many of the glorious buildings and art that we enjoy in Siena today. They ruled in the best of times and in the worst of times. Their fortunes were great but were subject to Fortuna’s whims.
As I set myself upon this journey of discovery, I knew nothing of this glorious past, but had felt myself driven to travel as far back as I could possibly be allowed by resources and internal memories. When resources were found to be lacking, I relied upon distant memories, whose paths I had found to be most illuminating and surprisingly accurate. I would experience visions of people and places and events that I had never experienced before and allowed my inner guide to show me to hidden gems that would help me to bring out this story which has been growing within my soul. And yet, even before I first set foot upon this path, I found myself being consumed with what my wife called “this Italian thing.” I began to speak a bit more fluently, picking up, or pointing to objects and blurting out its Italian cognate, and of course, driving my wife crazy. My cooking became more centered around what I was to later learn is considered the traditional Tuscan style. I began to paint the most ethereal and surreal landscapes, not of places that I had seen, but of places that I had experienced in my dreams. Church bells would harken me back to those places, as would the sounds of a horse- drawn carriage being pulled over a cobblestone road in Boston. The dampness of a stone building in the fall air, and the smell of a moss- covered stone wall in the woodlands of New England will instantly take me back to those far- away places. I hear the haunting voices of the monks as they sing their Gregorian chants and I long to be back in the land that has grown so strong within my heart.
In 2001 I finally convinced my wife to travel with me to Italy. Reluctantly she agreed, hoping that by making such a pilgrimage, I would somehow satisfy this thing that was consuming me. We planned a rather ambitious trip, figuring that that would be our first, and most likely, our last trip abroad. We spent a week together in Sicily and enjoyed the beauty and the culture that that wild country has to offer. We then met up with our daughter in Rome and spent another week in Positano, a beautiful village on the Amalfi Coast. We started our third week back in Rome to meet up with our eldest son and youngest daughter and we drove north to finish our trip in the beautiful walled-in city of Siena. My wife could understand my desire to visit Sicily and the area south of Rome because of my family connection, but she had no idea, nor did I, at the time, why Siena was such a strong attraction to me. Florence was more of an obvious choice for our third week, owing to my own renaissance in the arts, but for whatever reason, I had insisted that we must stay in Siena. Fortunately, I let my heart lead the way, for the minute I drove through the Porta San Marco and was embraced by Sena Vetus, I knew that that part of my being had finally made it home. My wife and children had noticed how easily I had adapted myself to our surroundings, walking the Via di Citta to the Duomo and the Via Banchi di Sotto to the Campo. We enjoyed all that that fair city has to offer in just a few short days, and yet I could not get enough. Certain places and buildings attracted me more than others, and I would learn much later in my studies that those places and buildings had, in ancient times, been owned or constructed by members of the Pecci clan or had had some connection with this powerful family in the distant past.
That trip was to be the first of many which would help me bridge that gap which separates my present-day life from the memories which I carry within my soul. With each trip, a few more stones have been up ended, each time revealing new clues to my past. On my second trip to Tuscany – one year later – I joined a group of painters, rented a magnificent villa in the outskirts of Arezzo, and was fortunate enough to paint in the land of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Signorelli – of Piero della Francesco and Fra Angelico. Such beauty was all encompassing. It was during this trip that our small group took a morning detour to the ancient hill town of Cortona to view the Signorelli frescos and to have a quick lunch. Just as Frances Meyes had fallen in love with Cortona, so was I enraptured, and I had made a vow to myself to bring my wife and children back to this very special place. And we have, on many occasions returned to this magical place, feeling so at home, for we have met so many wonderful people there.
How strange it had seemed to me, the attraction of these two hill towns at opposite ends of Tuscany, and yet, how comforting they were – and are – in my memory. I see the mists spread over the hills and vales as far as the eye can see to the mighty peak of Amiata from our palazzo in Siena, and I smell the spring burn-off from the thousands of tiny controlled blazes which dot the quilted valley below the ramparts of Cortona, their billowing plumes of scented olive, apple, cedar, and sage, obscure the glimmering waters of Lago Tresameno and the distant mountains of Umbria. And yet, it is not so strange at all. For in my journey, my quest for knowledge and my trips to the distant past, I had stumbled upon the earliest reference to the Pecci name (thus far) – a certain merchant banker of some means by the name of Paolo Pecci who had hailed from that ancient city of Cortona. Though I cannot be certain that he is an ancestor to our particular line of the Pecci, I cannot help but feel that it is this Paolo who has left those many bread crumbs upon my path of discovery and has lifted his lantern and beckoned me to follow him back into the mists of time.
I have also sought the wisdom and guidance from historians throughout the ages in such writings as Church Building in the Middle Ages by E. Norton; Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages by Lacroix; also,A History of Siena by Langton Douglas, and Siena the History of a Mediaeval Commune by Schevill,both authors having made many references to the great eighteenth century Sienese historian, Giovanni Antonio Pecci, who wrote extensively, and in great detail, about the political and communal society of the medieval Republic of Siena in his published works Memorie Storico – Critiche Della Citta Di Siena and as my story developed to encompass more of the medieval world than just the regions of Tuscany, I sought material from Matthews’ chronology The Popes to help keep all of the many players in place in my story, and Madden’s biography, Enrico Dandolo & the Rise of Venice to help to humanize those icons of Venetian history. Following a series of dreams, I had had about the quest I was planning for my main character, I had envisioned the imperial city of Constantinople and more particularly, the church in which the heist in my story takes place. I had made several sketches of this magnificent building in order to help visualize the setting for the story’s action. About a year after making those sketches, while rummaging through the old book shelves in a small bookstore not far from my home, I happened upon a very small book by E. Mastrogiannopoulos titled, Byzantine Churches and immediately opened to the church of my dreams, The Church of the Holy Apostles. Though it was exactly as I had envisioned the church to be, it was not located in Constantinople itself, but upon further research, I did find evidence of the church of the same name in the city which fit nicely into my story. The book also provided me with other locations which helped place my characters within actual places throughout the story. Such chance happenings upon valuable information were many and seem to add validity to my deep-set feelings of being guided by past experiences. Finally, I wish to acknowledge Pope Pius II for his Commentaries, as edited by Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta, which, though written two and a half centuries after my main character’s penning of his memoirs, helped me to hear the voice of medieval man and gave me a style and point of view that was most helpful in telling my story.
The story which unfolds itself in THE PECCI CHRONICLES – Confessions of A Corsair is fiction, though many of the main characters have, in truth and deed, carved their importance upon the history of Medieval Europe. The words of Giovanni Bartolameo Pecci da Cortona are recorded in that aged man’s last journal. His words have been dictated through the ages and the many incarnations of lives accumulated in the memory of this writer. For point of reference, Giovanni (fictional character) is the father of that merchant banker Paolo, and his story is told, as an act of contrition – his final accounting of his life. This is intended to be the first in a series of novels entitled “The Pecci Chronicles” which will follow this powerful family throughout the ages.