A Poisoner’s Tale of Palermo and Rome with Cathryn Kemp

Palermo and Rome with Cathryn Kemp

A Poisoner’s Tale in Palermo and Rome – Come on a journey of poison and passion with Cathryn Kemp…

A Poisoner’s Tale – come with me into the shadowy 17th century backstreets of Palermo and Rome.

Discover a secret sisterhood of witches, healers, midwives and poisoners.

Meet legendary poisoner Giulia Tofana, who is wreaking havoc killing the abusive men of the Eternal City.

Hunted by Inquisitor Pope Alessandro Vll, how far will Giulia go to protect the downtrodden women of Rome?

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

A Poisoner’s Tale of Palermo and Rome with Cathryn Kemp

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

Giulia Tofana: Murderer or Saviour?

She is the female serial killer from history you’ve probably never heard of.

Giulia Tofana was a woman hell-bent on wreaking revenge and mayhem upon the men of 17th century Rome. She worked with a sisterhood of witches, healers, midwives and sorceresses. Together, they dispensed an undetectable poison, named Aqua Tofana, to the downtrodden women of Rome.

Some say, she killed up to 1000 men this way. A few drops caused certain death. For the bottles contained arsenic, belladonna and lead. Cathryn Kemp is here to take you on a Trail, a Poisoner’s Trail….

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

A Poisoner’s Tale of Palermo and Rome with Cathryn Kemp

For women in 17th century Italy, there were few options. If your family could afford a dowry for a husband, you might be married off from the age of 12.  Not surprisingly, this would be to a man, usually much older. They thought younger wives would produce healthy babies. If not, then it was the convent.

Girls and women had few choices and were often married into abusive marriages. Sadly, with no hope of divorce. Divorce was the privilege of men alone.

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

Campo De’ Fiori – Giovanni Vasi

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

What could they do if they were beaten, bored or abused?

This is where Giulia and her circle of poisoners, Giovanna de Grandis, Maria Spinola, Girolama (Giulia’s daughter) and Graziosa Farina stepped in.

Outcasts, rebels and outsiders, each had their own reasons for living outside of society’s strictures. Each dared to live a life where they chose freedom over the marriage bed or the church. Each were, ultimately, punished for this choice – just as so many women still are across the globe are today.

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

Who could watch the unfolding #metoo movement and not share their own stories of harassment?

Stories of feeling unsafe, being touched or violated without consent?

What about what is happening in Afghanistan?  Here, they deny girls education and deny women their rights. Then, there’s the wave of anti-female laws and measures sweeping across America and the world. Honestly, can you look at this without trembling at the peeling back of our contemporary freedoms? These women did something about it. They trod the darkest path of all and died for it.

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

The book is set in 17th century Palermo and Rome and yes, it is based on real events.

Shockingly, a real event of a trial in 1659 of five women executed as witches and poisoners in Campo de’ Fiori.

The woman thought to be Giulia’s mother, Teofania di Adamo, was executed the same way in Palermo in 1633.  Contemporaneous accounts describe the visceral brutality of the way these women were treated. Whores. Poisoners. Of course, they may well have been. However, in my story, they were also mothers, daughters and healers.

Basically, women who rebelled against the heavy strictures of the state and church. Women who defied the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and in doing so, became the prey of Inquisitor Pope Alessandro Vll. He hunted them down like animals in the crooked cobbed alleys, with his Governor Stefano Bracchi leading the charge.

Sant’Agostino, Palermo – the convent where Giulia and her mother, Teofania Di Adamo make the undetectable poison known as Acqua Tofana.

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

In a nutshell, this story has always felt important to tell as a woman. Women’s voices, if they weren’t aristocrats or queens, were not recorded by history. This is my retelling of the legend, giving Giulia and her circle the voices that have been suppressed and lost in the shadows of time. I spent time in both Palermo and Rome, in the state archives and libraries, and in places where some of these events happened.

Cattedrale di Montreale, Monreale – the cathedral where Giulia and her mother are outcast by the congregation

Map of locations in A Poisoner’s Tale

I also read widely around the subject, and engaged with historians and archivists, who were all immensely helpful. While some of the characters are based on actual historical figures, their portrayals and characters are fictitious. The lack of evidence gave me the creative space to imagine how they might have thought and felt, amid the turmoil of Early Modern Rome, the increasing paranoia of the pope and Inquisition and the trial that scandalised the whole nation. Was she a murderer or saviour? You decide.

BookTrail Boarding Pass:  A Poisoner’s Tale

Twitter: @cathrynkemp