Laying aside as untenable the opinion of Marini and Cardano, we agree with those who deny that Bonfadio had fallen so low, and we find support in the testimony of Ortensio Landi, a contemporary of our author and a man of great talents, who fell into disgrace at Rome for evangelical opinions. He tells us that Bonfadio was condemned on false testimony; and this was the belief of the learned of that period. There is in fact nothing to support the theory that he was guilty except the assertions of writers of little reputation for truth in other matters, who were, indeed, only servile retailers of calumnies which their authors wished perpetuated beyond the tomb. The nature of the penalty, the secrecy of the trial and the position of the accused were calculated to impress the popular mind with the belief in a crime against nature--a crime which famous examples, especially that of Brunetto Latini, showed to be the vice of _literary men and public teachers of youth_. There is, besides, in man an instinct which finds guilt where the axe falls. The public and the historians forgot one fact, Bonfadio read his lectures in a church and his auditors were not young boys. He says that he had “many aged listeners and more merchants than Students.”
The true cause of his condemnation must be sought in his _Annals_. He probably blamed pretty freely some persons who expected great praise. This opinion is adopted by Teissier among foreign writers, and in Italy by Fontanini and Mazzucchelli besides those already mentioned.
A careful reading of Scipione Ammirato will show that he really does not differ from these writers. “He was punished,” says Ammirato, “for teaching political principles contrary to those of his time and place,” although Bonfadio supported the Doria and Spanish party and opposed those who fought for more liberal government.
We must now enquire what persons offended by the bias of Bonfadio were sufficiently powerful to satiate their vengeance in his blood?
The times were unpropitious to literary freedom. Offences of the pen were punished by the dagger or by banishment. Boccalini was assassinated in Venice; Sarpi fell under a stiletto aimed by Rome. Oberto Foglietta was banished from Genoa, and if the government could have put hands on him he might have gone to the scaffold. Every independent writer was the target of powerful malevolence. So fell Bonfadio. In describing the conspiracy of Gianluigi Fieschi, he used unmeasured terms of reproach against that noble family and praised beyond all limit the Dorias and the Spanish government. His treatment of the Fieschi, whose fate nearly all lamented and who still had powerful friends in the Senate, provoked the vengeance of the partisans of Gianluigi and popular liberty and also of those nobles who were hostile to Doria and Spain. All other attempts to avenge the dead had failed, and they turned fiercely upon the historian who had outraged the memory of the vanquished. They charged him with a crime which must be punished by fire and secured his condemnation.