Spana Prosecution

The Spana Prosecution was a major criminal case which took place in Rome in the Papal States between January 1659 and March 1660.

[1] The Papal authorities under the leadership of lieutenant governor Stefano Bracchi investigated a case involving a criminal net of poisoners, mainly women, for selling the famous poison Aqua Tofana to clients who wished to commit murder, in particular women who wished to become widows.

[2] Her business was taken over by stepdaughter from her first marriage with Niccolo Spano Lorestino, Gironima Spana, who was established as an astrologer, but had been initiated by her stepmother in how to manufacture and sell the poison.

Since the apothecaries did not sell arsenic to women, Spana and Giovanna De Grandis employed the service of the male priest Padre Don Girolamo as a go-between.

It appears that the business was successful enough to expand outside of the then city borders of Rome, as the Spana organization employed at least one seller, Maddalena Ciampella, in Palestrina.

[1] One such incident was the case of the noblewoman Anna Maria Conti, who was interrogated in her own home; she confessed herself guilty after having been granted Papal immunity, and was thus not punished.

Many others were sentenced to house arrest or banishment, while a large part of those accused had been given Papal immunity in exchange for their confession.

The Pope gave the order that the documents regarding the trial should be sealed at the Castel Sant'Angelo, since he wished to avoid spreading knowledge about the poison and the bad example of the women.

Francesco Sforza Pallavicino used the Spana Prosecution in the 1660s as his paradigm for "pontifical commitment to law and order", and the case was often commented by Italian jurists during the 18th-century.

[1] Popular myth described an organization of female serial killers who murdered hundreds of husbands until they were caught in a trap by a Papal governor.

The Spana investigation has been fictionalized in the novel The Book of Secrets by Anna Mazzola (2024) and The Poison Keeper by Deborah Swift (2021).

It has been the subject of the opera “Aqua Tofana” by the Italian librettist Fabrizio Funari with music by composer Gaia Aloisi (2024).