_The Times of Dante and Boccaccio_
"Godi, Fiorenza, poi che sei si grande
che per mare e per terra batti l'ali,
e per l'inferno il tuo nome si spande."
--_Dante._
The century that passed from the birth of Dante in 1265 to the deaths
of Petrarch and Boccaccio, in 1374 and 1375 respectively, may be
styled the _Trecento_, although it includes the last quarter of the
thirteenth century and excludes the closing years of the fourteenth.
In general Italian history, it runs from the downfall of the German
Imperial power at the battle of Benevento, in 1266, to the return of
the Popes from Avignon in 1377. In art, it is the epoch of the
completion of Italian Gothic in architecture, of the followers and
successors of Niccolo and Giovanni Pisano in sculpture, of the school
of Giotto in painting. In letters, it is the great period of pure
Tuscan prose and verse. Dante and Giovanni Villani, Dino Compagni,
Petrarch, Boccaccio and Sacchetti, paint the age for us in all its
aspects; and a note of mysticism is heard at the close (though not
from a Florentine) in the Epistles of St. Catherine of Siena, of whom
a living Italian poet has written--_Nel Giardino del conoscimento di
se ella e come una rosa di fuoco._ But at the same time it is a
century full of civil war and sanguinary factions, in which every
Italian city was divided against itself; and nowhere were these
divisions more notable or more bitterly fought out than in Florence.
Yet, in spite of it all, the Republic proceeded majestically on its
triumphant course. Machiavelli lays much stress upon this in the Proem
to his _Istorie Fiorentine_. "In Florence," he says, "at first the
nobles were divided against each other, then the people against the
nobles, and lastly the people against the populace; and it ofttimes
happened that when one of these parties got the upper hand, it split
into two. And from these divisions there resulted so many deaths, so
many banishments, so many destructions of families, as never befell in
any other city of which we have record. Verily, in my opinion, nothing
manifests more clearly the power of our city than the result of these
divisions, which would have been able to destroy every great and most
potent city. Nevertheless ours seemed thereby to grow ever greater;
such was the virtue of those citizens, and the power of their genius
and disposition to make themselves and their country great, that those
who remained free from these evils could exalt her with their virtue
more than the malignity of those accidents, which had diminished them,
had been able to cast her down. And without doubt, if only Florence,
after her liberation from the Empire, had had the felicity of adopting
a form of government which would have kept her united, I know not what
republic, whether modern or ancient, would have surpassed her--with
such great virtue in war and in peace would she have been filled."
[Illustration: FLORENTINE FAMILIES, EARLY THIRTEENTH CENTURY, WITH A
PORTION OF THE SECOND WALLS INDICATED (_Temple Classics: Paradiso_).
(The representation is approximate only: the Cerchi Palace near the
Corso degli Adimari should be more to the right.)]
The first thirty-four years of this epoch are among the brightest in
Florentine history, the years that ran from the triumph of the Guelfs
to the sequel to the Jubilee of 1300, from the establishment of the
_Secondo Popolo_ to its split into Neri and Bianchi, into Black Guelfs
and White Guelfs. Externally Florence became the chief power of
Tuscany, and all the neighbouring towns gradually, to a greater or
less extent, acknowledged her sway; internally, in spite of growing
friction between the burghers and the new Guelf nobility, between
_popolani_ and _grandi_ or magnates, she was daily advancing in wealth
and prosperity, in beauty and artistic power. The exquisite poetry of
the _dolce stil novo_ was heard. Guido Cavalcanti, a noble Guelf who
had married the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti, and, later, the
notary Lapo Gianni and Dante Alighieri, showed the Italians what true
lyric song was; philosophers like Brunetto Latini served the state;
modern history was born with Giovanni Villani. Great palaces were
built for the officers of the Republic; vast Gothic churches arose.
Women of rare beauty, eternalised as Beatrice, Giovanna, Lagia and the
like, passed through the streets and adorned the social gatherings in
the open loggias of the palaces. Splendid pageants and processions
hailed the Calends of May and the Nativity of the Baptist, and marked
the civil and ecclesiastical festivities and state solemnities. The
people advanced more and more in power and patriotism; while the
magnates, in their towers and palace-fortresses, were partly forced to
enter the life of the guilds, partly held aloof and plotted to recover
their lost authority, but were always ready to officer the burgher
forces in time of war, or to extend Florentine influence by serving as
Podestas and Captains in other Italian cities.
Dante was born in the Sesto di San Piero Maggiore in May 1265, some
eighteen months before the liberation of the city. He lost his mother
in his infancy, and his father while he was still a boy. This father
appears to have been a notary, and came from a noble but decadent
family, who were probably connected with the Elisei, an aristocratic
house of supposed Roman descent, who had by this time almost entirely
disappeared. The Alighieri, who were Guelfs, do not seem to have
ranked officially as _grandi_ or magnates; one of Dante's uncles had
fought heroically at Montaperti. Almost all the families connected
with the story of Dante's life had their houses in the Sesto di San
Piero Maggiore, and their sites may in some instances still be traced.
Here were the Cerchi, with whom he was to be politically associated in
after years; the Donati, from whom sprung one of his dearest friends,
Forese, with one of his deadliest foes, Messer Corso, and Dante's own
wife, Gemma; and the Portinari, the house according to tradition of
Beatrice, the "giver of blessing" of Dante's _Vita Nuova_, the
mystical lady of the _Paradiso_. Guido Cavalcanti, the first and best
of all his friends, lived a little apart from this Sesto di
Scandali--as St Peter's section of the town came to be called--between
the Mercato Nuovo and San Michele in Orto. Unlike the Alighieri,
though not of such ancient birth as theirs, the Cavalcanti were
exceedingly rich and powerful, and ranked officially among the
_grandi_, the Guelf magnates. At this epoch, as Signor Carocci
observes in his _Firenze scomparsa_, Florence must have presented the
aspect of a vast forest of towers. These towers rose over the houses
of powerful and wealthy families, to be used for offence or defence,
when the faction fights raged, or to be dismantled and cut down when
the people gained the upper hand. The best idea of such a mediaeval
city, on a smaller scale, can still be got at San Gemignano, "the fair
town called of the Fair Towers," where dozens of these _torri_ still
stand; and also, though to a less extent, at Gubbio. A few have been
preserved here in Florence, and there are a number of narrow streets,
on both sides of the Arno, which still retain some of their mediaeval
characteristics. In the Borgo Santissimi Apostoli, for instance, and
in the Via Lambertesca, there are several striking towers of this
kind, with remnants of palaces of the _grandi_; and, on the other side
of the river, especially in the Via dei Bardi and the Borgo San
Jacopo. When one family, or several associated families, had palaces
on either side of a narrow street defended by such towers, and could
throw chains and barricades across at a moment's notice, it will
readily be understood that in times of popular tumult Florence
bristled with fortresses in every direction.
In 1282, the year before that in which Dante received the "most sweet
salutation," _dolcissimo salutare_, of "the glorious lady of my mind
who was called by many Beatrice, that knew not how she was called,"
and saw the vision of the Lord of terrible aspect in the mist of the
colour of fire (the vision which inspired the first of his sonnets
which has been preserved to us), the democratic government of the
_Secondo Popolo_ was confirmed by being placed entirely in the hands
of the _Arti Maggiori_ or Greater Guilds. The Signoria was henceforth
to be composed of the Priors of the Arts, chosen from the chief
members of the Greater Guilds, who now became the supreme magistrates
of the State. They were, at this epoch of Florentine history, six in
number, one to represent each Sesto, and held office for two months
only; on leaving office, they joined with the Capetudini, and other
citizens summoned for the purpose, to elect their successors. At a
later period this was done, ostensibly at least, by lot instead of
election. The glorious Palazzo Vecchio had not yet been built, and the
Priors met at first in a house belonging to the monks of the Badia,
defended by the Torre della Castagna; and afterwards in a palace
belonging to the Cerchi (both tower and palace are still standing). Of
the seven Greater Arts--the _Calimala_, the Money-changers, the
Wool-merchants, the Silk-merchants, the Physicians and Apothecaries,
the traders in furs and skins, the Judges and Notaries--the latter
alone do not seem at first to have been represented in the Priorate;
but to a certain extent they exercised control over all the Guilds,
sat in all their tribunals, and had a Proconsul, who came next to the
Signoria in all state processions, and had a certain jurisdiction over
all the Arts. It was thus essentially a government of those who were
actually engaged in industry and commerce. "Henceforth," writes
Pasquale Villari, "the Republic is properly a republic of merchants,
and only he who is ascribed to the Arts can govern it: every grade of
nobility, ancient or new, is more a loss than a privilege." The double
organisation of the People under the Captain with his two councils,
and the Commune under the Podesta with his special council and the
general council (in these two latter alone, it will be remembered,
could nobles sit and vote) still remained; but the authority of the
Podesta was naturally diminished.
[Illustration: CORSO DONATI'S TOWER]
Florence was now the predominant power in central Italy; the cities of
Tuscany looked to her as the head of the Guelfic League, although,
says Dino Compagni, "they love her more in discord than in peace, and
obey her more for fear than for love." A protracted war against Pisa
and Arezzo, carried on from 1287 to 1292, drew even Dante from his
poetry and his study; it is believed that he took part in the great
battle of Campaldino in 1289, in which the last efforts of the old
Tuscan Ghibellinism were shattered by the Florentines and their
allies, fighting under the royal banner of the House of Anjou. Amerigo
di Narbona, one of the captains of King Charles II. of Naples, was in
command of the Guelfic forces. From many points of view, this is one
of the more interesting battles of the Middle Ages. It is said to have
been almost the last Italian battle in which the burgher forces, and
not the mercenary soldiery of the Condottieri, carried the day. Corso
Donati and Vieri dei Cerchi, soon to be in deadly feud in the
political arena, were among the captains of the Florentine host; and
Dante himself is said to have served in the front rank of the cavalry.
In a fragment of a letter ascribed to him by one of his earlier
biographers, Dante speaks of this battle of Campaldino; "wherein I had
much dread, and at the end the greatest gladness, by reason of the
varying chances of that battle." One of the Ghibelline leaders,
Buonconte da Montefeltro, who was mortally wounded and died in the
rout, meets the divine poet on the shores of the Mountain of
Purgation, and, in lines of almost ineffable pathos, tells him the
whole story of his last moments. Villani, ever mindful of Florence
being the daughter of Rome, assures us that the news of the great
victory was miraculously brought to the Priors in the Cerchi Palace,
in much the same way as the tidings of Lake Regillus to the expectant
Fathers at the gate of Rome. Several of the exiled Uberti had fallen
in the ranks of the enemy, fighting against their own country. In the
cloisters of the Annunziata you will find a contemporary monument of
the battle, let into the west wall of the church near the ground; the
marble figure of an armed knight on horseback, with the golden lilies
of France over his surcoat, charging down upon the foe. It is the tomb
of the French cavalier, Guglielmo Berardi, "balius" of Amerigo di
Narbona, who fell upon the field.
The eleven years that follow Campaldino, culminating in the Jubilee of
Pope Boniface VIII. and the opening of the fourteenth century, are the
years of Dante's political life. They witnessed the great political
reforms which confirmed the democratic character of the government,
and the marvellous artistic embellishment of the city under Arnolfo di
Cambio and his contemporaries. During these years the Palazzo Vecchio,
the Duomo, and the grandest churches of Florence were founded; and the
Third Walls, whose gates and some scanty remnants are with us to-day,
were begun. Favoured by the Popes and the Angevin sovereigns of
Naples, now that the old Ghibelline nobility, save in a few valleys
and mountain fortresses, was almost extinct, the new nobles, the
_grandi_ or Guelf magnates, proud of their exploits at Campaldino, and
chafing against the burgher rule, began to adopt an overbearing line
of conduct towards the people, and to be more factious than ever among
themselves. Strong measures were adopted against them, such as the
complete enfranchisement of the peasants of the contrada in
1289--measures which culminated in the famous Ordinances of Justice,
passed in 1293, by which the magnates were completely excluded from
the administration, severe laws made to restrain their rough usage of
the people, and a special magistrate, the _Gonfaloniere_ or
"Standard-bearer of Justice," added to the Priors, to hold office like
them for two months in rotation from each sesto of the city, and to
rigidly enforce the laws against the magnates. This Gonfaloniere
became practically the head of the Signoria, and was destined to
become the supreme head of the State in the latter days of the
Florentine Republic; to him was publicly assigned the great Gonfalon
of the People, with its red cross on a white field; and he had a large
force of armed popolani under his command to execute these ordinances,
against which there was no appeal allowed.[9] These Ordinances also
fixed the number of the Guilds at twenty-one--seven Arti Maggiori,
mainly engaged in wholesale commerce, exportation and importation,
fourteen Arti Minori, which carried on the retail traffic and internal
trade of the city--and renewed their statutes.
[9] Some years later a new officer, the Executor of Justice, was
instituted to carry out these ordinances instead of leaving them to
the Gonfaloniere. This Executor of Justice was associated with the
Captain, but was usually a foreign Guelf burgher; later he developed
into the Bargello, head of police and governor of the gaol. It will,
of course, be seen that while Podesta, Captain, Executore (the
_Rettori_), were aliens, the Gonfaloniere and Priors (the _Signori_)
were necessarily Florentines and popolani.
The hero of this Magna Charta of Florence is a certain Giano della
Bella, a noble who had fought at Campaldino and had now joined the
people; a man of untractable temper, who knew not how to make
concessions; somewhat anti-clerical and obnoxious to the Pope, but
consumed by an intense and savage thirst for justice, upon which the
craftier politicians of both sides played. "Let the State perish,
rather than such things be tolerated," was his constant political
formula: _Perisca innanzi la citta, che tante opere rie si
sostengano._ But the magnates, from whom he was endeavouring to snatch
their last political refuge, the Parte Guelfa, muttered, "Let us smite
the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered"; and at length, after
an ineffectual conspiracy against his life, Giano was driven out of
the city, on March 5th, 1295, by a temporary alliance of the burghers
and magnates against him. The _popolo minuto_ and artizans, upon whom
he had mainly relied and whose interests he had sustained, deserted
him; and the government remained henceforth in the hands of the
wealthy burghers, the _popolo grosso_. Already a cleavage was becoming
visible between these Arti Maggiori, who ruled the State, and the Arti
Minori whose gains lay in local merchandise and traffic, partly
dependent upon the magnates. And a butcher, nicknamed Pecora, or, as
we may call him, Lambkin, appears prominently as a would-be
politician; he cuts a quaintly fierce figure in Dino Compagni's
chronicle. In this same year, 1295, Dante Alighieri entered public
life, and, on July 6th, he spoke in the General Council of the Commune
in support of certain modifications in the Ordinances of Justice,
whereby nobles, by leaving their order and matriculating in one or
other of the Arts, even without exercising it, could be free from
their disabilities, and could share in the government of the State,
and hold office in the Signoria. He himself, in this same year,
matriculated in the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, the great guild which
included the painters and the book-sellers.
The growing dissensions in the Guelf Republic came to a head in 1300,
the famous year of jubilee in which the Pope was said to have declared
that the Florentines were the "fifth element." The rival factions of
Bianchi and Neri, White Guelfs and Black Guelfs, which were now to
divide the whole city, arose partly from the deadly hostility of two
families each with a large following, the Cerchi and the Donati,
headed respectively by Vieri dei Cerchi and Corso Donati, the two
heroes of Campaldino; partly from an analogous feud in Pistoia, which
was governed from Florence; partly from the political discord between
that party in the State that clung to the (modified) Ordinances of
Justice and supported the Signoria, and another party that hated the
Ordinances and loved the tyrannical Parte Guelfa. They were further
complicated by the intrigues of the "black" magnates with Pope
Boniface VIII., who apparently hoped by their means to repress the
burgher government and unite the city in obedience to himself. With
this end in view, he had been endeavouring to obtain from Albert of
Austria the renunciation, in favour of the Holy See, of all rights
claimed by the Emperors over Tuscany. Dante himself, Guido Cavalcanti,
and most of the best men in Florence either directly adhered to, or at
least favoured, the Cerchi and the Whites; the populace, on the other
hand, was taken with the dash and display of the more aristocratic
Blacks, and would gladly have seen Messer Corso--"il Barone," as they
called him--lord of the city. Rioting, in which Guido Cavalcanti
played a wild and fantastic part, was of daily occurrence, especially
in the Sesto di San Piero. The adherents of the Signoria had their
head-quarters in the Cerchi Palace, in the Via della Condotta; the
Blacks found their legal fortress in that of the Captains of the Parte
Guelfa in the Via delle Terme. At last, on May 1st, the two factions
"came to blood" in the Piazza di Santa Trinita on the occasion of a
dance of girls to usher in the May. On June 15th Dante was elected one
of the six Priors, to hold office till August 15th, and he at once
took a strong line in resisting all interference from Rome, and in
maintaining order within the city. In consequence of an assault upon
the officers of the Guilds on St. John's Eve, the Signoria, probably
on Dante's initiative, put under bounds a certain number of factious
magnates, chosen impartially from both parties, including Corso Donati
and Guido Cavalcanti. From his place of banishment at Sarzana, Guido,
sick to death, wrote the most pathetic of all his lyrics:--
"Because I think not ever to return,
Ballad, to Tuscany,--
Go therefore thou for me
Straight to my lady's face,
Who, of her noble grace,
Shall show thee courtesy.
* * * * *
"Surely thou knowest, Ballad, how that Death
Assails me, till my life is almost sped:
Thou knowest how my heart still travaileth
Through the sore pangs which in my soul are bred:--
My body being now so nearly dead,
It cannot suffer more.
Then, going, I implore
That this my soul thou take
(Nay, do so for my sake),
When my heart sets it free."[10]
[10] Rossetti's translation of the _ripresa_ and second stanza of the
Ballata _Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai_.
And at the end of August, when Dante had left office, Guido returned
to Florence with the rest of the Bianchi, only to die. For more than a
year the "white" burghers were supreme, not only in Florence, but
throughout a greater part of Tuscany; and in the following May they
procured the expulsion of the Blacks from Pistoia. But Corso Donati at
Rome was biding his time; and, on November 1st, 1301, Charles of
Valois, brother of King Philip of France, entered Florence with some
1200 horsemen, partly French and partly Italian,--ostensibly as papal
peacemaker, but preparing to "joust with the lance of Judas." In Santa
Maria Novella he solemnly swore, as the son of a king, to preserve the
peace and well-being of the city; and at once armed his followers.
Magnates and burghers alike, seeing themselves betrayed, began to
barricade their houses and streets. On the same day (November 5th)
Corso Donati, acting in unison with the French, appeared in the
suburbs, entered the city by a postern gate in the second walls, near
S. Piero Maggiore, and swept through the streets with an armed force,
burst open the prisons, and drove the Priors out of their new Palace.
For days the French and the Neri sacked the city and the contrada at
their will, Charles being only intent upon securing a large share of
the spoils for himself. But even he did not dare to alter the popular
constitution, and was forced to content himself with substituting
"black" for "white" burghers in the Signoria, and establishing a
Podesta of his own following, Cante de' Gabbrielli of Gubbio, in the
Palace of the Commune. An apparently genuine attempt on the part of
the Pope, by a second "peacemaker," to undo the harm that his first
had done, came to nothing; and the work of proscription commenced,
under the direction of the new Podesta. Dante was one of the first
victims. The two sentences against him (in each case with a few other
names) are dated January 27th, 1302, and March 10th--and there were to
be others later. It is the second decree that contains the famous
clause, condemning him to be burned to death, if ever he fall into the
power of the Commune. At the beginning of April all the leaders of the
"white" faction, who had not already fled or turned "black," with
their chief followers, magnates and burghers alike, were hounded into
exile; and Charles left Florence to enter upon an almost equally
shameful campaign in Sicily.
[Illustration: ACROSS THE PONTE VECCHIO]
Dante is believed to have been absent from Florence on an embassy to
the Pope when Charles of Valois came, and to have heard the news of
his ruin at Siena as he hurried homewards--though both embassy and
absence have been questioned by Dante scholars of repute. His
ancestor, Cacciaguida, tells him in the _Paradiso_:--
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
piu caramente, e questo e quello strale
che l'arco dello esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai si come sa di sale
lo pane altrui, e com'e duro calle
lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale."[11]
[11] "Thou shall abandon everything beloved most dearly; this is the
arrow which the bow of exile shall first shoot.
"Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste another's bread, and how
hard the path to descend and mount upon another's stair."
Wicksteed's translation.
The rest of Dante's life was passed in exile, and only touches the
story of Florence indirectly at certain points. "Since it was the
pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and most famous
daughter of Rome, Florence," he tells us in his _Convivio_, "to cast
me forth from her most sweet bosom (in which I was born and nourished
up to the summit of my life, and in which, with her good will, I
desire with all my heart to rest my weary soul and end the time given
me), I have gone through almost all the parts to which this language
extends, a pilgrim, almost a beggar, showing against my will the wound
of fortune, which is wont unjustly to be ofttimes reputed to the
wounded."
Attempts of the exiles to win their return to Florence by force of
arms, with aid from the Ubaldini and the Tuscan Ghibellines, were
easily repressed. But the victorious Neri themselves now split into
two factions; the one, headed by Corso Donati and composed mainly of
magnates, had a kind of doubtful support in the favour of the
populace; the other, led by Rosso della Tosa, inclined to the Signoria
and the _popolo grosso_. It was something like the old contest between
Messer Corso and Vieri dei Cerchi, but with more entirely selfish
ends; and there was evidently going to be a hard tussle between Messer
Corso and Messer Rosso for the possession of the State. Civil war was
renewed in the city, and the confusion was heightened by the
restoration of a certain number of Bianchi, who were reconciled to the
Government. The new Pope, Benedict XI., was ardently striving to
pacify Florence and all Italy; and his legate, the Cardinal Niccolo da
Prato, took up the cause of the exiles. Pompous peace-meetings were
held in the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, for the friars of St
Dominic--to which order the new Pope belonged--had the welfare of the
city deeply at heart; and at one of these meetings the exiled lawyer,
Ser Petracco dall'Ancisa (in a few days to be the father of Italy's
second poet), acted as the representative of his party. Attempts were
made to revive the May-day pageants of brighter days--but they only
resulted in a horrible disaster on the Ponte alla Carraia, of which
more presently. The fiends of faction broke loose again; and in order
to annihilate the Cavalcanti, who were still rich and powerful round
about the Mercato Nuovo, the leaders of the Neri deliberately burned a
large portion of the city. On July 20th, 1304, an attempt by the now
allied Bianchi and Ghibellines to surprise the city proved a
disastrous failure; and, on that very day (Dante being now far away at
Verona, forming a party by himself), Francesco di Petracco--who was to
call himself Petrarca and is called by us Petrarch--was born in exile
at Arezzo.
[Illustration: MERCATO NUOVO, THE FLOWER MARKET]
This miserable chapter of Florentine history ended tragically in 1308,
with the death of Corso Donati. In his old age he had married a
daughter of Florence's deadliest foe, the great Ghibelline champion,
Uguccione della Faggiuola; and, in secret understanding with Uguccione
and the Cardinal Napoleone degli Orsini (Pope Clement V. had already
transferred the papal chair to Avignon and commenced the Babylonian
captivity), he was preparing to overthrow the Signoria, abolish the
Ordinances, and make himself Lord of Florence. But the people
anticipated him. On Sunday morning, October 16th, the Priors ordered
their great bell to be sounded; Corso was accused, condemned as a
traitor and rebel, and sentence pronounced in less than an hour; and
with the great Gonfalon of the People displayed, the forces of the
Commune, supported by the swordsmen of the Della Tosa and a band of
Catalan mercenaries in the service of the King of Naples, marched upon
the Piazza di San Piero Maggiore. Over the Corbizzi tower floated the
banner of the Donati, but only a handful of men gathered round the
fierce old noble who, himself unable by reason of his gout to bear
arms, encouraged them by his fiery words to hold out to the last. But
the soldiery of Uguccione never came, and not a single magnate in the
city stirred to aid him. Corso, forced at last to abandon his
position, broke through his enemies, and, hotly pursued, fled through
the Porta alla Croce. He was overtaken, captured, and barbarously
slain by the lances of the hireling soldiery, near the Badia di San
Salvi, at the instigation, as it was whispered, of Rosso della Tosa
and Pazzino dei Pazzi. The monks carried him, as he lay dying, into
the Abbey, where they gave him humble sepulchre for fear of the
people. With all his crimes, there was nothing small in anything that
Messer Corso did; he was a great spirit, one who could have
accomplished mighty things in other circumstances, but who could not
breathe freely in the atmosphere of a mercantile republic. "His life
was perilous," says Dino Compagni sententiously, "and his death was
blame-worthy."
A brief but glorious chapter follows, though denounced in Dante's
bitterest words. Hardly was Corso dead when, after their long
silence, the imperial trumpets were again heard in the Garden of the
Empire. Henry of Luxemburg, the last hero of the Middle Ages, elected
Emperor as Henry VII., crossed the Alps in September 1310, resolved to
heal the wounds of Italy, and to revive the fading mediaeval dream of
the Holy Roman Empire. In three wild and terrible letters, Dante
announced to the princes and peoples of Italy the advent of this
"peaceful king," this "new Moses"; threatened the Florentines with the
vengeance of the Imperial Eagle; urged Caesar on against the city--"the
sick sheep that infecteth all the flock of the Lord with her
contagion." But the Florentines rose to the occasion, and with the aid
of their ally, the King of Naples, formed what was practically an
Italian confederation to oppose the imperial invader. "It was at this
moment," writes Professor Villari, "that the small merchant republic
initiated a truly national policy, and became a great power in Italy."
From the middle of September till the end of October, 1312, the
imperial army lay round Florence. The Emperor, sick with fever, had
his head-quarters in San Salvi. But he dared not venture upon an
attack, although the fortifications were unfinished; and, in the
following August, the Signoria of Florence could write exultantly to
their allies, and announce "the blessed tidings" that "the most savage
tyrant, Henry, late Count of Luxemburg, whom the rebellious
persecutors of the Church, and treacherous foes of ourselves and you,
called King of the Romans and Emperor of Germany," had died at
Buonconvento.
But in the Empyrean Heaven of Heavens, in the mystical convent of
white stoles, Beatrice shows Dante the throne of glory prepared for
the soul of the noble-hearted Caesar:--
"In quel gran seggio, a che tu gli occhi tieni
per la corona che gia v'e su posta,
prima che tu a queste nozze ceni,
sedera l'alma, che fia giu agosta,
dell'alto Enrico, ch'a drizzare Italia
verra in prima che ella sia disposta." [12]
[12] "On that great seat where thou dost fix thine eyes, for the
crown's sake already placed above it, ere at this wedding feast
thyself do sup,
"Shall sit the soul (on earth 'twill be imperial) of the lofty Henry,
who shall come to straighten Italy ere she be ready for it."
After this, darker days fell upon Florence. Dante, with a renewed
sentence of death upon his head, was finishing his _Divina Commedia_
at Verona and Ravenna,--until, on September 14th, 1321, he passed away
in the latter city, with the music of the pine-forest in his ears and
the monuments of dead emperors before his dying eyes. Petrarch, after
a childhood spent at Carpentras, was studying law at Montpellier and
Bologna--until, on that famous April morning in Santa Chiara at
Avignon, he saw the golden-haired girl who made him the greatest
lyrist of the Middle Ages. It was in the year 1327 that Laura--if such
was really her name--thus crossed his path. Boccaccio, born at
Certaldo in 1313, the year of the Emperor Henry's death, was growing
up in Florence, a sharp and precocious boy. But the city was in a
woeful plight; harassed still by factious magnates and burghers,
plundered by foreign adventurers, who pretended to serve her, heavily
taxed by the Angevin sovereigns--the _Reali_--of Naples. Florence had
taken first King Robert, and then his son, Charles of Calabria, as
overlord, for defence against external foes (first Henry VII., then
Uguccione della Faggiuola, and then Castruccio Interminelli); and the
vicars of these Neapolitan princes replaced for a while the Podestas;
their marshals robbed and corrupted; their Catalan soldiers clamoured
for pay. The wars with Uguccione and Castruccio were most disastrous
to the Republic; and the fortunate coincidence of the deaths of
Castruccio and Charles of Calabria, in 1328, gave Florence back her
liberty at the very moment when she no longer needed a defender.
Although the Florentines professed to regard this suzerainty of the
Reali di Napoli as an alliance rather than a subjection,--_compagnia e
non servitu_ as Machiavelli puts it--it was an undoubted relief when
it ended. The State was reorganised, and a new constitution confirmed
in a solemn Parliament held in the Piazza. Henceforth the nomination
of the Priors and Gonfaloniere was effected by lot, and controlled by
a complicated process of scrutiny; the old councils were all annulled;
and in future there were to be only two chief councils--the Council of
the People, composed of 300 _popolani_, presided over by the Captain,
and the Council of the Commune, of 250, presided over by the Podesta,
in which latter (as in former councils of the kind) both _popolani_
and _grandi_ could sit. Measures proposed by the Government were
submitted first to the Council of the People, and then, if approved,
to that of the Commune.
Within the next few years, in spite of famine, disease, and a terrible
inundation of the Arno in 1333, the Republic largely extended its
sway. Pistoia, Arezzo, and other places of less account owned its
signory; but an attempt to get possession of Lucca--with the
incongruous aid of the Germans--failed. After the flood, the work of
restoration was first directed by Giotto; and to this epoch we owe the
most beautiful building in Florence, the Campanile. The discontent,
excited by the mismanagement of the war against Lucca, threw the
Republic into the arms of a new and peculiarly atrocious tyrant,
Walter de Brienne, Duke of Athens, a French soldier of fortune,
connected by blood with the _Reali_ of Naples. Elected first as war
captain and chief justice, he acquired credit with the populace and
the magnates by his executions of unpopular burghers; and finally, on
September 8th, 1342, in the Piazza della Signoria, he was appointed
Lord of Florence for life, amidst the acclamations of the lowest
sections of the mob and the paid retainers of the treacherous nobles.
The Priors were driven from their palace, the books of the Ordinances
destroyed, and the Duke's banner erected upon the People's tower,
while the church bells rang out the _Te Deum_. Arezzo, Pistoia, Colle
di Val d'Elsa, San Gemignano, and Volterra acknowledged his rule; and
with a curious mixture of hypocrisy, immorality, and revolting
cruelty, he reigned as absolute lord until the following summer,
backed by French and Burgundian soldiers who flocked to him from all
quarters. By that time he had utterly disgusted all classes in the
State, even the magnates by whose favour he had won his throne and the
populace who had acclaimed him; and on the Feast of St. Anne, July
26th, 1343, there was a general rising. The instruments of his cruelty
were literally torn to pieces by the people, and he was besieged in
the Palazzo Vecchio, which he had transformed into a fortress, and at
length capitulated on August 3rd. The Sienese and Count Simone de'
Conti Guidi, who had come to mediate, took him over the Ponte
Rubaconte, through the Porta San Niccolo and thence into the
Casentino, where they made him solemnly ratify his abdication.
"Note," says Giovanni Villani, who was present at most of these things
and has given us a most vivid picture of them, "that even as the Duke
with fraud and treason took away the liberty of the Republic of
Florence on the day of Our Lady in September,[13] not regarding the
reverence due to her, so, as it were in divine vengeance, God
permitted that the free citizens with armed hand should win it back on
the day of her mother, Madonna Santa Anna, on the 26th day of July
1343; and for this grace it was ordained by the Commune that the Feast
of St. Anne should ever be kept like Easter in Florence, and that
there should be celebrated a solemn office and great offerings by the
Commune and all the Arts of Florence." St. Anne henceforth became the
chief patroness and protectoress of the Republic, as Fra Bartolommeo
painted her in his great unfinished picture in the Uffizi; and the
solemn office and offerings were duly paid and celebrated in Or San
Michele. One of Villani's minor grievances against the Duke is that he
introduced frivolous French fashions of dress into the city, instead
of the stately old Florentine costume, which the republicans
considered to be the authentic garb of ancient Rome. That there was
some ground for this complaint will readily be seen, by comparing the
figure of a French cavalier in the Allegory of the Church in the
Spanish Chapel at Santa Maria Novella (the figure formerly called
Cimabue and now sometimes said to represent Walter de Brienne
himself), with the simple grandeur and dignity of the dress worn by
the burghers on their tombs in Santa Croce, or by Dante in the Duomo
portrait.
[13] _i.e._ The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin.
Only two months after the expulsion of the Duke of Athens, the great
quarrel between the magnates and the people was fought to a finish, in
September 1343. On the northern side of the Arno, the magnates made
head at the houses of the Adimari near San Giovanni, at the opening of
the present Via Calzaioli, where one of their towers still stands, at
the houses of the Pazzi and Donati in the Piazza di San Pier Maggiore,
and round those of the Cavalcanti in Mercato Nuovo. The people under
their great gonfalon and the standards of the companies, led by the
Medici and Rondinelli, stormed one position after another, forcing the
defenders to surrender. On the other side of the Arno, the magnates
and their retainers held the bridges and the narrow streets beyond.
The Porta San Giorgio was in their hands, and, through it,
reinforcements were hurried up from the country. Repulsed at the Ponte
Vecchio and the Ponte Rubaconte, the forces of the people with their
victorious standards at last carried the Ponte alla Carraia, which was
held by the Nerli; and next, joined by the populace of the Oltrarno,
forced the Rossi and Frescobaldi to yield. The Bardi alone remained;
and, in that narrow street which still bears their name, and on the
Ponte Vecchio and the Ponte Rubaconte, they withstood single-handed
the onslaught of the whole might of the people, until they were
assailed in the rear from the direction of the Via Romana. The
infuriated populace sacked their houses, destroyed and burned the
greater part of their palaces and towers. The long struggle between
_grandi_ and _popolani_ was thus ended at last. "This was the cause,"
says Machiavelli, "that Florence was stripped not only of all martial
skill, but also of all generosity." The government was again reformed,
and the minor arts admitted to a larger share; between the _popolo
grosso_ and them, between burghers and populace, lay the struggle now,
which was to end in the Medicean rule.
But on all these perpetual changes in the form of the government of
Florence the last word had, perhaps, been said in Dante's sarcastic
outburst a quarter of a century before:--
"Atene e Lacedemone, che fenno
l'antiche leggi, e furon si civili,
fecero al viver bene un picciol cenno
verso di te, che fai tanto sottili
provvedimenti, che a mezzo novembre
non giunge quel che tu d'ottobre fili.
Quante volte del tempo che rimembre,
legge, moneta, offizio, e costume
hai tu mutato, e rinnovato membre?
E se ben ti ricordi, e vedi lume,
vedrai te simigliante a quella inferma,
che non puo trovar posa in su le piume,
ma con dar volta suo dolore scherma."[14]
[14] _Purg. VI._--
"Athens and Lacedaemon, they who made
The ancient laws, and were so civilised,
Made towards living well a little sign
Compared with thee, who makest such fine-spun
Provisions, that to middle of November
Reaches not what thou in October spinnest.
How oft, within the time of thy remembrance,
Laws, money, offices and usages
Hast thou remodelled, and renewed thy members?
And if thou mind thee well, and see the light,
Thou shalt behold thyself like a sick woman,
Who cannot find repose upon her down,
But by her tossing wardeth off her pain."
--_Longfellow._
The terrible pestilence, known as the Black Death, swept over Europe
in 1348. During the five months in which it devastated Florence
three-fifths of the population perished, all civic life was suspended,
and the gayest and most beautiful of cities seemed for a while to be
transformed into the dim valley of disease and sin that lies
outstretched at the bottom of Dante's Malebolge. It has been
described, in all its horrors, in one of the most famous passages of
modern prose--that appalling introduction to Boccaccio's _Decameron_.
From the city in her agony, Boccaccio's three noble youths and seven
"honest ladies" fled to the villas of Settignano and Fiesole, where
they strove to drown the horror of the time by their music and
dancing, their feasting and too often sadly obscene stories. Giovanni
Villani was among the victims in Florence, and Petrarch's Laura at
Avignon. The first canto of Petrarch's _Triumph of Death_ appears to
be, in part, an allegorical representation--written many years
later--of this fearful year.
During the third quarter of this fourteenth century--the years which
still saw the Popes remaining in their Babylonian exile at
Avignon--the Florentines gradually regained their lost supremacy over
the cities of Tuscany: Colle di Val d'Elsa, San Gemignano, Prato,
Pistoia, Volterra, San Miniato dei Tedeschi. They carried on a war
with the formidable tyrant of Milan, the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti,
whose growing power was a perpetual menace to the liberties of the
Tuscan communes. They made good use of the descent of the feeble
emperor, Charles IV., into Italy; waged a new war with their old
rival, Pisa; and readily accommodated themselves to the baser
conditions of warfare that prevailed, now that Italy was the prey of
the companies of mercenaries, ready to be hired by whatever prince or
republic could afford the largest pay, or to fall upon whatever city
seemed most likely to yield the heaviest ransom. Within the State
itself the _popolo minuto_ and the Minor Guilds were advancing in
power; Florence was now divided into four quarters (San Giovanni,
Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito), instead of the old
Sesti; and the Signoria was now composed of the Gonfaloniere and
_eight_ Priors, two from each quarter (instead of the former six), of
whom two belonged to the Minor Arts. These, of course, still held
office for only two months. Next came the twelve Buonuomini, who were
the counsellors of the Signoria, and held office for three months;
and the sixteen Gonfaloniers of the city companies, four from each
quarter, holding office for four months. And there were, as before,
the two great Councils of the People and the Commune; and still the
three great officers who carried out their decrees, the Podesta, the
Captain, the Executor of Justice. The feuds of Ricci and Albizzi kept
up the inevitable factions, much as the Buondelmonti and Uberti,
Cerchi and Donati had done of old; and an iniquitous system of
"admonishing" those who were suspected of Ghibelline descent (the
_ammoniti_ being excluded from office under heavy penalties) threw
much power into the hands of the captains of the Parte Guelfa, whose
oppressive conduct earned them deadly hatred. "To such arrogance,"
says Machiavelli, "did the captains of the Party mount, that they were
feared more than the members of the Signoria, and less reverence was
paid to the latter than to the former; the palace of the Party was
more esteemed than that of the Signoria, so that no ambassador came to
Florence without having commissions to the captains."
[Illustration: THE CAMPANILE]
Pope Gregory XI preceded his return to Rome by an attempted reconquest
of the States of the Church, by means of foreign legates and hireling
soldiers, of whom the worst were Bretons and English; although St.
Catherine of Siena implored him, in the name of Christ, to come with
the Cross in hand, like a meek lamb, and not with armed bands. The
horrible atrocities committed in Romagna by these mercenaries,
especially at Faenza and Cesena, stained what might have been a noble
pontificate. Against Pope Gregory and his legates, the Florentines
carried on a long and disastrous war; round the Otto della Guerra, the
eight magistrates to whom the management of the war was intrusted,
rallied those who hated the Parte Guelfa. The return of Gregory to
Rome in 1377 opens a new epoch in Italian history. Echoes of this
unnatural struggle between Florence and the Pope reach us in the
letters of St Catherine and the canzoni of Franco Sacchetti; in the
latter is some faint sound of Dante's _saeva indignatio_ against the
unworthy pastors of the Church, but in the former we are lifted far
above the miserable realities of a conflict carried on by political
intrigue and foreign mercenaries, into the mystical realms of pure
faith and divine charity.
In 1376, the Loggia dei Priori, now less pleasantly known as the
Loggia dei Lanzi, was founded; and in 1378 the bulk of the Duomo was
practically completed. This may be taken as the close of the first or
"heroic" epoch of Florentine Art, which runs simultaneously with the
great democratic period of Florentine history, represented in
literature by Dante and Boccaccio. The Duomo, the Palace of the
Podesta, the Palace of the Priors, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce,
Or San Michele, the Loggia of the Bigallo, and the Third Walls of the
City (of which, on the northern side of the Arno, the gates alone
remain), are its supreme monuments in architecture. Its heroes of
greatest name are Arnolfo di Cambio, Giotto di Bondone, Andrea Pisano,
Andrea di Cione or Orcagna (the "Archangel"), and, lastly and but
recently recognised, Francesco Talenti.
"No Italian architect," says Addington Symonds, "has enjoyed the proud
privilege of stamping his own individuality more strongly on his
native city than Arnolfo." At present, the walls of the city (or what
remains of them)--_le mura di Fiorenza_ which Lapo Gianni would fain
see _inargentate_--and the bulk of the Palazzo Vecchio and Santa
Croce, alone represent Arnolfo's work. But the Duomo (mainly, in its
present form, due to Francesco Talenti) probably still retains in
part his design; and the glorious Church of Or San Michele, of which
the actual architect is not certainly known, stands on the site of his
Loggia.
Giovanni Cimabue, the father of Florentine painting as Arnolfo of
Florentine architecture, survives only as a name in Dante's immortal
verse. Not a single authentic work remains from his hand in Florence.
His supposed portrait in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella is now
held to be that of a French knight; the famous picture of the Madonna
and Child with her angelic ministers, in the Rucellai Chapel, is shown
to be the work of a Sienese master; and the other paintings once
ascribed to him have absolutely no claims to bear his name. But the
Borgo Allegro still bears its title from the rejoicings that hailed
his masterpiece, and perhaps it is best that his achievement should
thus live, only as a holy memory:--
"Credette Cimabue nella pittura
tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
si che la fama di colui e oscura."[15]
[15] "In painting Cimabue thought that he
Should hold the field, now Giotto has the cry,
So that the other's fame is growing dim."
Of Cimabue's great pupil, Dante's friend and contemporary, Giotto, we
know and possess much more. Through him mediaeval Italy first spoke out
through painting, and with no uncertain sound. He was born some ten
years later than Dante. Cimabue--or so the legend runs, which is told
by Leonardo da Vinci amongst others--found him among the mountains,
guarding his father's flocks and drawing upon the stones the movements
of the goats committed to his care. He was a typical Florentine
craftsman; favoured by popes, admitted to the familiarity of kings, he
remained to the end the same unspoilt shepherd whom Cimabue had found.
Many choice and piquant tales are told by the novelists about his
ugly presence and rare personality, his perpetual good humour, his
sharp and witty answers to king and rustic alike, his hatred of all
pretentiousness, carried to such an extent that he conceived a rooted
objection to hearing himself called _maestro_. Padua and Assisi
possess some of his very best work; but Florence can still show much.
Two chapels in Santa Croce are painted by his hand; of the smaller
pictures ascribed to him in churches and galleries, there is one
authentic--the Madonna in the Accademia; and, perhaps most beautiful
of all, the Campanile which he designed and commenced still rises in
the midst of the city. Giotto died in 1336; his work was carried on by
Andrea Pisano and practically finished by Francesco Talenti.
Andrea di Ugolino Pisano (1270-1348), usually simply called Andrea
Pisano, is similarly the father of Florentine sculpture. Vasari's
curiously inaccurate account of him has somewhat blurred his real
figure in the history of art. His great achievements are the casting
of the first gate of the Baptistery in bronze, his work--apparently
from Giotto's designs--in the lower series of marble reliefs round the
Campanile, and his continuation of the Campanile itself after Giotto's
death. He is said by Vasari to have built the Porta di San Frediano.
There is little individuality in the followers of Giotto, who carried
on his tradition and worked in his manner. They are very much below
their master, and are often surpassed by the contemporary painters of
Siena, such as Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Taddeo Gaddi
and his son, Agnolo, Giovanni di Milano, Bernardo Daddi, are their
leaders; the chief title to fame of the first-named being the renowned
Ponte Vecchio. But their total achievement, in conjunction with the
Sienese, was of heroic magnitude. They covered the walls of churches
and chapels, especially those connected with the Franciscans and
Dominicans, with the scenes of Scripture, with the lives of Madonna
and her saints; they set forth in all its fullness the whole Gospel
story, for those who could neither read nor write; they conceived vast
allegories of human life and human destinies; they filled the palaces
of the republics with painted parables of good government. "By the
grace of God," says a statute of Sienese painters, "we are the men who
make manifest to the ignorant and unlettered the miraculous things
achieved by the power and virtue of the Faith." At Siena, at Pisa and
at Assisi, are perhaps the greatest works of this school; but here, in
Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, there is much, and of a very
noble and characteristic kind. Spinello Aretino (1333-1410) may be
regarded as the last of the Giotteschi; you may see his best series of
frescoes in San Miniato, setting forth with much skill and power the
life of the great Italian monk, whose face Dante so earnestly prayed
to behold unveiled in Paradise.
This heroic age of sculpture and painting culminated in Andrea Orcagna
(1308-1368), Andrea Pisano's great pupil. Painter and sculptor,
architect and poet, Orcagna is at once the inheritor of Niccolo and
Giovanni Pisano, and of Giotto. The famous frescoes in the Pisan Campo
Santo are now known to be the work of some other hand; his paintings
in Santa Croce, with their priceless portraits, have perished; and,
although frequently consulted in the construction of the Duomo, it is
tolerably certain that he was not the architect of any of the
Florentine buildings once ascribed to him. The Strozzi chapel of St
Thomas in Santa Maria Novella, the oratory of the Madonna in San
Michele in Orto, contain all his extant works; and they are
sufficient to prove him, next to Giotto, the greatest painter of his
century, with a feeling for grace and beauty even above Giotto's, and
only less excellent in marble. Several of his poems have been
preserved, mostly of a slightly satirical character; one, a sonnet on
the nature of love, _Molti volendo dir che fosse Amore_, has had the
honour of being ascribed to Dante.
With the third quarter of the century, the first great epoch of
Italian letters closes also. On the overthrow of the House of Suabia
at Benevento, the centre of culture had shifted from Sicily to
Tuscany, from Palermo to Florence. The prose and poetry of this epoch
is almost entirely Tuscan, although the second of its greatest poets,
Francesco Petrarca, comparatively seldom set foot within its
boundaries. "My old nest is restored to me," he wrote to the Signoria,
when they sent Boccaccio to invite his friend to return to Florence,
"I can fly back to it, and I can fold there my wandering wings." But,
save for a few flying visits, Petrarch had little inclination to
attach himself to one city, when he felt that all Italy was his
country.
Dante had set forth all that was noblest in mediaeval thought in
imperishable form, supremely in his _Divina Commedia_, but appreciably
and nobly in his various minor works as well, both verse and prose.
Villani had started historical Italian prose on its triumphant course.
Petrarch and Boccaccio, besides their great gifts to Italian
literature, in the ethereal poetry of the one, painting every varying
mood of the human soul, and the licentious prose of the other, hymning
the triumph of the flesh, stand on the threshold of the Renaissance.
Other names crowd in upon us at each stage of this epoch. Apart from
his rare personality, Guido Cavalcanti's _ballate_ are his chief title
to poetic fame, but, even so, less than the monument of glory that
Dante has reared to him in the _Vita Nuova_, in the _De Vulgari
Eloquentia_, in the _Divina Commedia_. Dino Compagni, the chronicler
of the Whites and Blacks, was only less admirable as a patriot than as
a historian. Matteo Villani, the brother of Giovanni, and Matteo's
son, Filippo, carried on the great chronicler's work. Fra Jacopo
Passavanti, the Dominican prior of Santa Maria Novella, in the middle
of the century, showed how the purest Florentine vernacular could be
used for the purpose of simple religious edification. Franco
Sacchetti, politician, novelist and poet, may be taken as the last
Florentine writer of this period; he anticipates the popular lyrism of
the Quattrocento, rather in the same way as a group of scholars who at
the same time gathered round the Augustinian, Luigi Marsili, in his
cell at Santo Spirito heralds the coming of the humanists. It fell to
Franco Sacchetti to sing the dirge of this heroic period of art and
letters, in his elegiac canzoni on the deaths of Petrarch and
Boccaccio:--
"Sonati sono i corni
d'ogni parte a ricolta;
la stagione e rivolta:
se tornera non so, ma credo tardi."
[Illustration: CROSS OF THE FLORENTINE PEOPLE (FROM OLD HOUSE ON NORTH
SIDE OF DUOMO)]