The Alchemist's Pursuit

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the course of writing these stories about a parallel historical Venice, I have collected a personal library of over forty books, and borrowed many others from libraries. To acknowledge all of them would be tiresome and also unfair, because I have improved certain facts and made some accidental mistakes also.

For this story, though, I should acknowledge my debt to three books in particular. First, The War of the Fists: Popular Culture and Public Violence in Late Renaissance Venice, by Robert C. Davis, Oxford University Press, 1994. Matteo the Butcher is my invention, and I have changed the dates slightly, but otherwise I have followed Davis's account of a unique and astonishing custom in a city that has always been unique and astonishing. The Ponte dei Pugni is still there in San Barnaba parish, although nowadays it has parapets to keep people from falling off.

A book I have borrowed much from is Coryat's Crudities (1611). (I have the Scolar Press facsimile edition of 1905.) Thomas Coryat journeyed from London to Venice and back in 1605, mostly on foot, and thus invented the "Grand Tour." On his return he wrote what may fairly be called the first travel book since Pausanias's Description of Greece in the second century AD. Coryat includes vivid descriptions of much of the Venice of his day-although some of his observations are clearly wrong (he describes the nude statue of Mars in the Doges' Palace as representing the goddess Minerva). It is thanks to him that I know that the Campo San Zanipolo was not yet paved.

Another valuable eyewitness, an exact contemporary of my imaginary events, was Fynes Moryson, another English-man. Moryson visited Venice in 1593, 1596, and 1597. I have a collection of extracts from his records published as Shakespeare's Europe: A survey of the condition of Europe at the end of the 16 th century, edited by Charles Hughes, published 1903, reissued 1967 by Benjamin Blom, Inc., New York. I used Moryson's eyewitness description of the doge's procession to San Maria Formosa and the Christmas Mass in the Basilica. I have had a private tour of that church, which included sitting in darkness until those glorious, incredible golden mosaics appeared, gradually being illuminated. It is an experience one could never forget. Nowadays the trick is done with electric lights, of course, so I was fascinated to discover that it was done with candles back in Alfeo's day. But the Venetians have been managing the tourist trade since before the Crusades.