crowned King of England in Westminster: "The first act of my reign shall
be to pardon all who have offended me; and I pray God that if He foresees
I am like to be any other than a just and good king, He may be pleased to
take me from the world rather than seat me on a throne to live a public
calamity to my country." It was this that gave him his magnificent courage
at Agincourt, where, with barely six thousand Englishmen, he faced and
utterly routed a French host of nearly sixty thousand men; it was this
that, in the midst of the gorgeous pageant which welcomed him at London as
the hero of Agincourt, made him refuse to allow his battle-bruised helmet
and his dinted armor to be displayed as trophies of his valor. It was
this that kept him brave, modest, and high-minded through all the glories
and successes of his short but eventful life, that made him the idol of
the people and one of the most brilliant figures in the crowded pages of
English history.
It is not given to us, boys and girls, to be royal in name, but we may be
royal in nature, even as was Harry of Monmouth, the brilliant young
English prince, and, knowing now something of his character, we can
understand the loving loyalty of a devoted people that marks this entry of
his death as it stands in the "Acts of Privy Council," the official record
of the public doings of his realm:
"_Departed this life at the Castle of Bois de Vincennes, near Paris, on
the last day of August, in the year 1422, and the tenth of his reign, the
most Christian Champion of the Church, the Bright Beam of Wisdom, the
Mirror of Justice, the Unconquered King, the Flower and Pride of all
Chivalry--Henry the Fifth, King of England, Heir and Regent of France, and
Lord of Ireland._"
FOOTNOTES:
[R] A stuffed doublet worn under armor.
[S] A coat of mail formed of small steel rings interwoven.
[T] The "marches"--frontiers or boundaries of a country. The nobles who
held fiefs or castles in such border-lands were called "the
lords-marchers."
[U] Favorers, or abettors.
[Illustration]
VIII.
GIOVANNI OF FLORENCE, THE BOY CARDINAL.
(_Afterward Pope Leo the Tenth._)
[A.D. 1490.]
It was one of the wild carnival days of 1490. From the great Gate of San
Gallo to the quaint old Bridge of the Goldsmiths, the fair city of
Florence blazed with light and rang with shout and song. A struggling mass
of spectators surged about the noble palace of the Medici, as out through
its open gate-way and up the broad street known as the Via Larga streamed
the great carnival pageant of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the head of the
house of Medici.
"Room for the noble Abbot of Passignano! room for my Lord Cardinal!"
shouted a fresh young voice from the head of the grand staircase that led
from the _loggia_ of the palace to the great entrance-hall below.
"So; say'st thou thus, Giulio?" another boyish voice exclaimed. "Then will
I, too, play the herald for thee. Room," he cried, "for the worthy Prior
of Capua! room for the noble Knight of St. John!" And down the broad
staircase, thronged with gallant costumes, brilliant banners, and gleaming
lances, the two merry boys elbowed their way.
Boys? you ask. Yes, boys--both of them, for all their priestly and
high-sounding titles. In those far-off days, as we shall see, honors were
distributed not so much for merit as from policy; and when royalty married
royalty at ten and twelve to serve the ends of state, there was nothing so
very wonderful in a noble prior of eleven or a lord cardinal of thirteen.
"Well, well, my modest young Florentines," said Lorenzo de Medici, in his
harsh but not unkindly voice, as he met the boys in the grand and
splendidly decorated entrance-hall; "if ye do but make your ways in life
with such determination as that, all offices needs must yield to you. A
truce to tattle, though, my fair Giulio. Modesty best becomes the young;
Giovanni's cardinalate, remember, has not yet been proclaimed, and 't is
wisest to hold our tongues till we may wag them truthfully. But, come," he
added in a livelier tone, "to horse, to horse! the Triumph waits for
none,--noble abbot and worshipful knight though they be--like to your
shining selves. To-night be ye boys only. Ho, for fun and frolic; down
with care and trouble! Sing it out, sing it out, my boys, well and
lustily:
"Dance and carol every one
Of our band so bright and gay;
See your sweethearts how they run
Through the jousts for you to-day."
And with this glee from one of his own gay carnival songs, Lorenzo the
Magnificent sprang to the back of his noble Barbary horse, Morello, and
spurred forward to mingle in the glories of the pageant.
It was a wondrous display--this carnival pageant, or "Triumph," of the
Medici. Great golden cars, richly decorated, and drawn by curious beasts;
horses dressed in the skins of lions and tigers and elephants; shaggy
buffaloes and timorous giraffes from the Medicean villa at Careggi;
fantastic monsters made up of mingled men and boys and horses, with other
surprising figures as riders; dragons and dwarfs, giants and genii;
beautiful young girls and boys dressed in antique costumes to represent
goddesses and divinities of the old mythologies; and a chubby little
gilded boy, seated on a great globe and representing the Golden Age--the
age of every thing beautiful in art and life;--these and many other
attractions made up the glittering display which, accompanied by Lorenzo
the Magnificent and his retinue of over five hundred persons, "mounted,
masked, and bravely apparelled," and gleaming in the light of four hundred
flaring torches, traversed the streets of Florence, "singing in many
voices all sorts of _canzones_, madrigals, and popular songs."
"By the stone nose of the _marzoccho_,[V] but this is more joyous than the
droning tasks we left behind us at Pisa; is it not, my Giovanni?" gayly
exclaimed the younger of the two boys as, glittering in a suit of crimson
velvet and cloth of gold, he rode in advance of one of the great
triumphal cars. "My faith," he continued, "what would grim-eyed old Fra
Bartolommeo say could he see thee, his choicest pupil in pontifical law,
masking in a violet velvet suit and a gold-brocaded vest?"
"I fear me, Giulio," replied his cousin Giovanni, a pleasant-looking,
brown-faced lad of nearly fourteen, "I fear me the good Fra would pull a
long and chiding face at _both_ our brave displays. You know how he can
look when he takes us to task? And tall? Why, he seems always to grow as
high as Giotto's tower there."
"Say, rather, like to the leaning tower in his own Pisa! for he seems as
tall, and threatens to come down full as sure and heavily upon us poor
unfortunates! Ah, yes, I know how he looks, Giovanni; he tries it upon me
full often!" and Giulio's laugh of recollection was tempered with feeling
memories.
Here an older boy, a brisk young fellow of sixteen, in a shining suit of
silver and crimson brocade, rode toward them.
"Messer Giovanni," he said, "what say'st thou to dropping out of the
triumph here by the Vecchio Palace? Then may we go back by the Via Pinti
and see the _capannucci_."
Now, the _capannucci_ was one of the peculiar carnival institutions of the
Florentine boys of old, as dear to their hearts as are the fifth of
November and its 'Guy' to the young Londoner of to-day. A great tree would
be dragged into the centre of some broad street or square by a crowd of
ready youngsters. There it would be set upright and propped or steadied by
great faggots and pieces of wood. This base would then be fired, and as
the blaze flamed from the faggots or crept up the tall tree-trunk, all the
yelling boys danced in the flaring light. Then, when the _capannucci_ fell
with a great crash, the terrible young Florentine urchins never omitted to
wage, over the charred trunk and the glowing embers, a furious
rough-and-tumble fight.
Giovanni and Giulio, for all their high-sounding titles, welcomed exciting
variety as readily as do any other active and wide-awake boys, and they
assented gleefully to the young Buonarotti's suggestion.
"Quick, to the Via Pinti!" they cried, and yielding up their horses to the
silver-liveried grooms who attended them, they turned from the pageant,
and with their black visors, or half masks, partly drawn, they pushed
their way through the crowds that surged under the great bell tower of the
Palazzo Vecchio and thronged the gayly decorated street called the Via
Pinti.
With a ready handful of _danarini_ and _soldi_, small Florentine coins of
that day, they easily satisfied the demands of the brown-skinned little
street arabs who had laid great pieces of wood, called the _stili_, across
the street, and would let none pass until they had yielded to their shrill
demand of "Tribute, tribute! a _soldi_ for tribute at the _stili_ of San
Marco!"
With laugh and shout and carnival jest, the three boys were struggling
through the crowd toward the rising flame of a distant _capannucci_, when
suddenly, with a swish and a thud, there came plump against the face of
the young Giovanni one of the thin sugar eggs which, filled with red wine,
was one of the favorite carnival missiles. Like a flow of blood the red
liquid streamed down the broad, brown cheek of the lad, and streaked his
violet tunic. He looked around dismayed.
"Ha, _bestia_!" he cried, as his quick eye detected the successful
marksman in a group of laughing young fellows a few rods away. "'T was
thou, wast it? Revenge, revenge, my comrades!" and the three lads sent a
well-directed volley of return shots that made their assailants duck and
dodge for safety. Then followed a frequent carnival scene. The shots and
counter-shots drew many lookers-on, and soon the watchers changed to
actors. The crowd quickly separated into two parties, the air seemed full
of the flying missiles, and, in the glare of the great torches that, held
by iron rings, flamed from the corner of a noble palace, the carnival
fight raged fast and furiously. In the hottest of the strife a cheer arose
as the nimble Giulio, snatching a brilliant crimson scarf from the
shoulders of a laughing flower-girl, captured, next, a long pikestaff from
a masker of the opposite side. Tying the crimson scarf to the long
pike-handle, he charged the enemy, crying, "Ho, forward all!" His
supporters followed him with a resistless rush; another volley of carnival
ammunition filled the air, and a shout of victory went up as their
opponents broke before their charge and the excited crowd went surging up
the street. Again a stand was made, again the missiles flew, and now, the
candy bon-bons failing, the reckless combatants kept up the fight with
street refuse,--dust and dirt, and even dangerous stones.
It was in one of those hand-to-hand encounters that a tall and supple
young fellow dashed from the opposing ranks and grappled with Giulio for
the possession of the crimson standard. To and fro the boys swayed and
tugged. In sheer defence the less sturdy Giulio struck out at his
opponent's face, and down dropped the guarded disguise of the small black
visor.
"Ho, an Albizzi!" Giulio exclaimed, as he recognized his antagonist. Then,
as the long pikestaff was wrested from his grasp, he raised the well-known
cry of his house, "_Palle, Palle!_ Medici to the rescue."[W]
"Ha, Medici--is it?" the young Albizzi cried, and, as Giovanni de Medici
pressed to the aid of his cousin, Francesco Albizzi clutched at Giovanni's
mask in turn and tore it from his face.
"Hollo!" shouted the scornful Albizzi. "We have uncovered the game! Look,
boys, 't is Messer Giovanni himself! Hail to My Lord Cardinal! Hail to the
young magnifico!" and, doffing his purple bonnet, as if in reverence to
Giovanni, he struck the lad with it full on his broad, brown cheek.
His followers applauded his deed with a shout, but it was a weak and
spiritless one, for it was scarcely safe to make fun of the Medici then in
Florence, and cowards, you know, always take the stronger side.
The supporters of the Medici hastened to wipe out the insult offered to
the boy cardinal. They pressed forward to annihilate Albizzi's
fast-lessening band, but the young Giovanni interfered.
"Nay, hold, friends," he said, "'t is but a carnival frolic, and 't is
ended now. Messer Francesco did but speak in jest, and, sure, I bear no
malice."
But the hot-headed Albizzi, the son of a house that had ever been rivals
and enemies of the Medici, would listen to no compromise.
"Ho, hark to the smooth-tongued Medici!" he cried. "Boys of Florence, will
ye bow to this baby priest? Your fathers were but boys when they struck
for the liberties of Florence and drove _this_ fellow's father, the lordly
magnifico, like a whipped cur behind the doors of the sacristy, and
scattered the blood of _that_ boy's father on the very steps of the altar
of the Reparata!"[X]
The young Giulio, when he heard this brutal allusion to the murder of his
father, could restrain himself no longer; but, rushing at Francesco
Albizzi, expended all his fierce young strength upon the older boy in
wildly aimed and harmless blows.
Giovanni would have again interceded, but when he saw the vindictive young
Albizzi draw a short dagger from his girdle, he felt that the time for
words had passed. Springing to the relief of his cousin, he clutched the
dagger-arm of the would-be murderer. There was a rallying of adherents on
both sides; young faces grew hot with passion, and a bloody street fight
seemed certain.
But, hark! Across the strife comes the clash of galloping steel. There is
a rush of hurrying feet, a glare of flaming torches, a glimmer of shining
lances, and, around from the Via Larga, in a brilliant flash of color,
swings the banner of Florence, the great white lily on the blood-red
field. Fast behind it presses the well-known escutcheon of the seven
golden balls, and the armed servants of the house of Medici sweeps down
upon the combatants.
"_Palle, palle!_ Medici, ho, a Medici!" rings the shout of rescue. The
flashing Milan sword of young Messer Pietro, the elder brother of
Giovanni, gleams in the torchlight, and the headstrong Albizzi and his
fellow-rioters scatter like chaff before the onward rush of the paid
soldiers of the house of Medici. Then, encompassed by a guard of bristling
lances, liveried grooms, and torch-bearers, and followed by a crowd of
shouting boys, masked revellers, and exultant retainers, the three lads
hurried down the Via Larga; the great gates of the Palace of the Medici
swung open to admit them, and the noise and riot of the carnival died away
in the distance. Through the hall of arches and up the grand staircase the
lads hastened to where, in the spacious _loggia_, or enclosed piazza,
Lorenzo the Magnificent stood waiting to receive them.
"Well, well, my breathless young citizens," he exclaimed, "what news and
noise of strife is this I hear? By San Marco, but you seem in such a sorry
strait that I could almost say, with our excellent rhymester, good Ser
Folgere:
"'How gallant are ye in your brave attires,
How bold ye look, true paladins of war,--
Stout-hearted are ye--as a hare in chase.'"
But his banter changed to solicitude as he noticed the troubled face of
his son. "Who, then, is in fault, my Giovanni?" he asked. "'T was well for
thee that Pietro sallied out in such hot haste; else, from all I hear, the
Black Brothers of the Miserecordia might even now be bearing to Santa
Maria, or the tomb, a prince of Holy Church, a son of the house of Medici,
slain in a vile street brawl."
"Nay, hear, my father, I pray, the whole truth of the matter," Giovanni
replied; and, as he relates, in presence of that brilliant and listening
company, the story of the carnival fight as we already know it, let us,
rather, read hastily the story of the great house of the Medici of
Florence, whose princely head now stands before us--he whom the people
call "_il gran magnifico_," Lorenzo the Magnificent, the father of the boy
cardinal.
Four hundred years, and more, ago there lived in the beautiful Italian
city of Firenze, or Florence, a wealthy family known as the Medici. They
were what we now call capitalists--merchants and bankers, with ventures in
many a land and with banking-houses in sixteen of the leading cities of
Europe. Success in trade brought them wealth, and wealth brought them
power, until, from simple citizens of a small inland republic they
advanced to a position of influence and importance beyond that of many a
king and prince of their day. At the time of our sketch, the head of the
house was Lorenzo de Medici, called the Magnificent, from his wealth, his
power, and his splendid and liberal hospitality. All Florence submitted to
his will, and though the fair city was still, in form, a republic, the
wishes and words of Lorenzo were as law to his fellow-citizens. A man of
wonderful tact and of great attainments, he was popular with young and
old, rich and poor. From a glorious romp with the children, he would turn
to a profound discussion with wise old philosophers or theologians, could
devise means for loaning millions to the king of England, sack a city that
had braved the power of Florence, or write the solemn hymns or gay street
songs for the priests or for the people of his much loved city. Princes
and poets, painters and priests, politicians and philosophers, sat at his
bountiful table in the splendid palace at the foot of the Via Larga, or
walked in his wonderful gardens of San Marco; rode "a-hawking" from his
beautiful villa at Careggi, or joined in the wild frolic of his gorgeous
street pageants. Power, such as his could procure or master any thing,
and we therefore need not wonder that the two boys whose acquaintance we
have made had been pushed into prominence to please the house of Medici.
Look well at them again. The boy, who, with face upturned toward his
father's kindly eyes, is telling the story of the street fight, is the
second son of Lorenzo, Giovanni (or John) de Medici, Abbot of Passignano,
and now, though scarcely fourteen, an unproclaimed cardinal of the Church
of Rome--the future Leo X., the famous pope of Martin Luther's day. His
companion is the young Giulio (or Julius) de Medici, nephew of Lorenzo,
and already at thirteen Grand Prior of Capua and Knight of the Holy Order
of St. John of Jerusalem. He, too, is to be in future years both cardinal
and pope--that Clement VII., of whom you may read in history as the
unfortunate prisoner of San Angelo, the antagonist of bluff King Henry
VIII. of England. And this other lad, this Buonarotti, who is he? A
protege of Lorenzo, the companion of his sons and a favored guest at his
table, his name is to last through the ages high above priest or prince or
pope, more illustrious than all the Medici, the wonderful Michael-Angelo,
the greatest of all the artists.
"So, so," Lorenzo said, as Giovanni concluded his story; "the matter is
graver than I thought. 'T is another yelp from the Albizzi kennel. The
Signory must look to it. Young Messer Francesco's tongue wags too freely
for the city's good. But back to Pisa must ye go, my lads, for it ill
beseems such as you, prelates and grave students of theology as ye are,
to be ruffling with daggers drawn in any wild street-brawl that these
troublous malcontents may raise against us."
And so back to the quiet University of Pisa went the boys Giovanni and
Giulio to pursue their studies in "theology and ecclesiastical
jurisprudence." Think how you feel, boys and girls, when, after a
particularly jolly vacation, or an entrancing evening at the circus or the
pantomime, you go back to what seem to you dull school studies, and then
consider whether this boy cardinal, after all the glitter and parade and
excitement of the carnival days, could be expected to fully relish his
tasks of dry and laborious study. I imagine his solemn old biographer
tells but half the truth when he writes: "The splendid exhibitions, the
freedom and the songs with which the spectacles of Florence were
accompanied, could scarcely have failed to banish at intervals that
gravity of carriage which the young cardinal was directed to
support";--all of which is a very dry and roundabout way of saying that
"boys will be boys," and that young Giovanni de Medici, cardinal though he
was, loved mischief and excitement and frolic quite as much as have all
healthy young fellows since the days of the very first boy.
Spending his time thus, between his stately Florentine home, his noble old
castle of an abbey at Passignano, and the University of Pisa, Giovanni's
three years of probation were passed. For a cardinal of thirteen was
something out of the common even in those old days of intrigue and
bribery, and Pope Innocent the Eighth, in making the appointment, had
insisted that the ceremony of investment should not take place until
Giovanni's sixteenth year.
* * * * *
"Whither so fast, my Maddalena?" asked young Francesco Albizzi, stopping a
dark-haired flower-girl, as on a bright March morning he rode into the
city. "What's astir, _cara mia_, that thou and all the world seem crowding
to meet me, here, at San Gallo's gate?"
"Thou, indeed?" and the flower-girl laughed a merry peal. "Why, brother of
the mole and lord of all the bats, where hast thou been asleep not to know
that to-day our young Messer Giovanni is to be proclaimed a cardinal?"
"So--the little Medici again?" exclaimed the wrathful Albizzi. "May the
_marzoccho_ eat his heart! Must he be always setting the city upside down?
Where is 't to be, Maddalena?"
"Why, where but at the altar of Fiesole? But do not thou keep me longer,"
she said, breaking away from the indignant young patriot. "All Florence
goes forth to meet my lord cardinal at the Bridge of Mugnone, and my
flowers will sell well and rarely to-day. But, hark thee, Messer
Francesco," she added, with warning finger, "we are all _palleschi_[Y]
to-day, and 't were best for thee to swallow thy black words. See, yonder
rides young Messer Pietro, and the Medici lances are ready and sharp for
such as thou."
And, as Albizzi turned sullenly away, Maddalena disappeared in the crowd
that, hurrying through San Gallo's gate, headed toward the flower-crowned
hill of Fiesole. There, overlooking the "Beautiful City," stood the gray
old monastery in which, on that eventful Sunday, the ninth of March, 1492,
the young Giovanni received the vestments--the long scarlet frock, the
mantle, cape, and train--that he was to wear as cardinal. With simple but
solemn words, as one who had known from his very cradle this lad, now
raised to so high a position and dignity, the worthy Fra Matteo Bosso, the
Prior of Fiesole, conducted the rites of investiture, and the
long-expected ceremony was accomplished.
"Illustrissimo," said Pietro de Medici, addressing his brother by the
title which was now his right, "will it please your grace to return to our
father's palace? All Florence waits to accompany thee from the Bridge of
Mugnone."
So, into the city, attended by the Archbishop of Florence and the civil
magistrates, with a glittering retinue, and followed by "an immense
multitude on horseback and on foot," with waving banners and shouts of
joyous welcome, through the great gate of San Gallo, rode Giovanni de
Medici, "on a barded mule housed with trappings of scarlet and gold," to
where, in the arched hall of the palace of the Medici, his father, sick
and reclining on his litter, awaited the coming of the boy cardinal.
"You are not only the youngest of the cardinals, my Giovanni, but the
youngest ever raised to that rank," Lorenzo said, after his warm
congratulations had been given. "Endeavor, then, to alleviate the burthen
of your early dignity by the regularity of your life and by your
perseverance in those studies which are suitable to your profession. Be
vigilant, be unassuming, be cautious, and deliberate every evening on what
you may have to perform the following day, that you may not be unprepared
for whatever may happen."
With these and other words of useful and practical advice did the proud
father counsel the young cardinal, and then, from all the acclamations and
illuminations, the joy, the fireworks, and the feasting that accompanied
the ceremonies at Florence, Giovanni, on the twelfth of March, with a
brilliant retinue, departed for Rome. Here, on the fifteenth of March, the
Pope, with much pomp, received him "in full consistory," as it is called,
welcomed him as a new member of the "College of Cardinals," and gave him
the "holy kiss." Placing the great scarlet hat on the boy's head as he
knelt before him, the Pope next encircled his finger with the sapphire
ring--emblem of fidelity and loyalty,--and the boy arose, by the
appointment and creation of Pope Innocent VIII., "the Most Illustrious and
Most Reverend Lord Cardinal Giovanni de Medici."
* * * * *