Few cases could alarm the Pope, yet Michele Zope's case had brought the Pope and every cardinal of the Roman Curia to attend the trial in person.
But Michele had not been taken to Rome as Galileo had been. As Archbishop Cambacérès had said before, the Inquisition in Udine had merely handed the "case file" over to Rome's Inquisition. It could be called the headquarters of all religious trials, and was therefore known as the "Holy Office."
Although the Pope himself presided, Cardinal Barberini served as the chief judge. During the retrial, he found numerous loopholes and believed that none of the things Michele had confessed to had been substantiated.
He therefore once again urged the judges in Udine to question Michele, the doctors, and the family of the murdered child.
By then, Michele had spent a year in Udine's prison. He had already fallen into despair.
"If no one wants to help me or do anything for me, how do you expect me to defend myself?" he said to his defense lawyer.
Georgiana had never expected that a lawyer would actually be willing to defend someone accused of witchcraft.
Yet all the lawyer could do was submit a petition to the ecclesiastical court: Michele Zope of Santa Maria la Longa, a repentant guarantor of the harvest, expressed remorse for his crimes and begged the court to send him to serve as an oarsman aboard a ship of the Republic of Venice. He was willing to wear iron shackles on his feet, asking only that his life be spared.
Another person questioned was Francesco Cassiano, thirty-six years old, a local physician in Udine. He had diagnosed the dead child as suffering from "systemic failure."
When the examiner asked whether the death had been natural or unnatural, he replied, "Doctors merely