THE ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY
The fourteenth century undoubtedly felt itself emancipated from the
limitations of the Middle Ages, and with justice, so far as the
classical revival was concerned, but it did little or nothing to free
itself from ills that were distinctly of a mediaeval character,--plague,
lawlessness, and tyranny. In that respect, the transition from the
Middle Ages to the Modern World was slow and made a striking contrast
with the rapid evolution of art.
The chief of these ills was the plague. Only in remote places of the
East, if at all, does the scourge of disease now fall as it then did in
the most civilized cities of the world, and it was from the East that
these plagues came, brought by sailors. One blasted Tuscany in 1340, one
Lombardy in 1361; but the worst was the awful Black Death of 1348, which
wrought havoc in various parts of Italy and then swept northward across
the Alps on its destructive path. It was this plague which Boccaccio
describes in the beginning of the "Decameron." It spread like fire among
dry wood which has been sprinkled with oil. At first swellings appeared
the size of an egg or an apple, then black and hard spots; on the third
day came death. Even animals caught the disease. Boccaccio saw two pigs
which had chewed the garment of a plague-stricken man die in
convulsions. Medicine was useless. Some thought the wisest course was to
live on the daintiest food and drink, and never speak of the plague;
others believed in carousing and jollity, and went about from tavern to
tavern seeking diversion, but always keeping sober enough to avoid the
sick. Private houses were deserted and lay open to anybody. Loyalty
disappeared. All who could fled into the country. Thousands fell sick
daily. In place of decent burial, dead bodies were tossed huggermugger
into trenches. Between March and July, Boccaccio says, more than 100,000
people died within the walls of Florence.
Florence was not singular. In Siena 80,000 people, three quarters of the
population, died; in Genoa, 40,000; in Pisa, seven out of ten, and so on
in Venice, Rome, Naples, and Sicily. These figures seem incredible; but
Petrarch says: "Posterity will not believe that there ever was a period
in which the world remained almost entirely depopulated, houses empty of
families, cities of inhabitants, the country of peasants. How will the
future believe it, when we ourselves can hardly credit our eyes? We go
outdoors, walk through street after street, and find them full of dead
and dying; when we get home again we find no live thing within the
house, all having perished within the brief interval of absence. Happy
posterity, to whom such calamities will seem imaginings and dreams."
Poor Petrarch! The lovely Laura, of whom he wrote so many perfect
sonnets, died of the Black Death in Avignon. Giovanni Villani, the
historian, died in Florence. This terrible calamity throws into high
relief the great classical impulse, to which the last chapter was
devoted. In earlier times men would have turned to religion and the
Church; but now Petrarch, a most devout Christian, and his disciples
continued to worship Cicero and the heroes of the Augustan age, and to
talk of Caesar and Pompey, Scylla and Charybdis, as the most important
and interesting of things.
Another great evil which rivalled the plague as a curse, was the host of
mercenary soldiers who swarmed over Italy like locusts. In the days of
Barbarossa, battles like that of Legnano had been fought between the
train-bands of the communes on one side and the feudal chivalry and
men-at-arms on the other. But since then a great change had come over
the methods of raising soldiers. Under the feudal system the term of
service in the field for the liegemen of the Emperor had been forty
days; but that time was too short for an effective campaign. When the
Emperor wished to cross the Alps and go to Rome in order to receive the
Imperial crown, he was obliged to hire soldiers; and, as years went on
and these Imperial descents became mere adventurous expeditions, the
character of the soldiers degenerated, until in Petrarch's time the
Imperial armies were made up of ruffians recruited anywhere. There were
also other reasons for establishing mercenaries in place of militia. The
despots of Northern Italy did not wish their subjects trained to arms.
The burghers of mercantile cities did not wish to leave their
counting-rooms, nor to have their employees mustered out, so they too
preferred hired soldiers to a native militia. Moreover, warfare had
changed; cavalry needed frequent manoeuvres, bowmen and pikemen
required drill and continuous discipline. Thus the old train-band system
of the communes, under which the militia hurried to their appointed
posts on the ringing of the bells, gave way to the system of mercenary
troops led by soldiers of fortune, _condottieri_, as the Italians call
them.
These soldiers, who had come down from the North to serve Emperors, or
despots like the Visconti, or perhaps had sailed from Spain to fight
under the House of Aragon in Sicily, as soon as the immediate war was
ended, having been left unpaid or having taken a liking to a trade in
which the labor was congenial, the risk small and booty enormous,
decided not to disband, but to continue to try their luck together. They
sold their services to whatever city or despot would pay them most, or
wandered about in a nomadic fashion, capturing a city if they could, if
not, living on the country-side. One can imagine these rogues among
unwarlike peasants, or in a pleasant little city like Lucca or Cremona.
They were very fickle, fought one another only upon compulsion, and then
most reluctantly and gently, and were very nearly as terrible to their
employers as to their adversaries. They were organized, sometimes very
well, in bands under a general or a council of officers, and had such
names as The Company of St. George, or The Great Company. Some of their
leaders became very famous, like Duke Werner, who proclaimed himself
"Lord of the Great Company, enemy to God, to Pity, and to Mercy." The
most interesting of these leaders, at least for us, is John Hawkwood, an
English adventurer, who began life as a London tailor, but dropped
scissors and needle to enlist for Edward III's French campaign, and
then, seeing fortune smile most sweetly from distraught Italy, crossed
the Alps and led his company all over the peninsula. There is a full
length fresco of him on horseback in the _Duomo_ at Florence, painted in
gratitude for his deeds in life or merely for his death.
For a hundred years and more these ruffians swaggered about Italy.
Petrarch finds in them one cause the more to hold out his arms toward
the mighty past. He writes in a letter: "Oh, would that you were alive,
Brutus, Great-heart, that I might turn to you. O Manlius--O Great
Pompey--O Julius Caesar [etc., etc., etc.], O Jesus, Lord of the world,
what has happened? Why do I moan and groan for grief? Oh! a vile handful
of robbers, spewed out of their nasty dens, walks and rides over the
ancient queen of the world, Italy. Christ Jesus, in tears and
supplication I turn to Thee. Oh, if we have abused Thy goodness more
than was right, if we have shown ourselves too proud in Thy aid and
favour, if we have borne ourselves ill towards Thee, well mayst Thou not
permit us to be free; but let not this slaughter, these sacrileges,
these robberies, these deeds of violence, these ravishings of wives and
maidens, find mercy in Thine eyes. Put an end to this evil. To the
wicked who have said in their hearts 'There is no God,' show that Thou
art; and to us however unworthy, show that we are Thy children. O
Almighty Father, help us; in Thee alone we put our hope, and in
supplication we invoke Thy name, weeping and confessing that there is
none who shall fight for us, unless Thou, our Lord, be he."
This strange mixture of classic enthusiasm and Christian piety, this odd
idea that the triumphant cause of the Roman Republic was due to the
favour of Christ, shows us that Petrarch had not yet got wholly clear of
mediaeval beliefs. But, as with Cola di Rienzo, everything Petrarch says
testifies to the power of the Roman tradition.
A third evil, yet not to be compared with the plague and the
_condottieri_, was the tyranny of the despots. The founders of
despotisms were men of vigour and political capacity, and gave to their
subjects in lieu of liberty greater security and order than they had
enjoyed before. Their descendants, like proverbial heirs, finding hard
work both distasteful and unnecessary, gave themselves up to dissipation
and cruelty; they dropped their ancestors' attitude of leading citizens
and treated the principalities as private property, intended for their
amusement. The Visconti, though they retained their family ability and
force of character longer than most princely houses, shall serve to
illustrate the general dynastic development, more especially as the
history of Milan, which had become the chief power in Italy, will be the
best thread to carry us to the end of the century.
Towards the middle of the century Archbishop Giovanni Visconti had
become the lord of Milan (1349-54). He was a clever, cultivated man,
interested in letters. He employed scholars to prepare a commentary on
the "Divine Comedy," and by urgent persuasion induced Petrarch to take
up his abode at Milan. On the archbishop's death his three nephews
succeeded jointly to the signory. As one of these three nephews, Bernabo
(1354-85), illustrates the moral degeneracy of the tyrant we will glance
at his habits. Bernabo was addicted to the chase. Nobody else was
allowed to keep a dog, but he kept five thousand. These he billeted on
the citizens of Milan. Every fortnight the masters of his kennels made
their rounds; if the dogs were too thin, a fine was imposed; if dead, a
general confiscation. If a man killed a wild boar or a hare, he was
maimed or hanged, or sometimes, in mercy, merely obliged to eat the
quarry raw. Bernabo was afraid of conspiracies and rebellion. No man
might go out into the street after dark for any cause whatever, under
pain of having a foot cut off. No man might utter the words "Guelf" or
"Ghibelline," under penalty of having his tongue cut out. Once Bernabo
shut up his two secretaries in a cage with a wild boar. On another
occasion a young man who had pulled a policeman's beard was condemned to
pay a small fine, but Bernabo ordered his right hand cut off. The
_podesta_ delayed execution of the sentence, so that the lad's parents
might have time to ask mercy. For this Bernabo caused the lad's two
hands to be cut off and also the _podesta's_ right hand. A sexton who
demanded too much for digging a grave was buried alive side by side
with the dead body. Two monks who came to remonstrate with Bernabo for
his cruelty were burnt alive. Nevertheless, Bernabo protested himself
devout; he fasted, built churches and monasteries. This amiable man had
thirty-two children. His brother, joint heir of the principality,
Galeazzo II, was of the same stuff, except that in place of piety he
substituted an interest in letters; he founded the University of Pavia,
and exchanged figs, flowers, and flattery with Petrarch. Galeazzo's son,
Gian Galeazzo (1378-1402), rose still higher in the world; he gave
300,000 sequins to the King of France, and in return received the king's
daughter in marriage. For a second wife he married his cousin, daughter
of his amiable uncle Bernabo, who thought that this marriage would bind
his nephew to him by bonds of filial affection. Gian Galeazzo however,
by means of a trick, got his father-in-law within his reach, arrested
him, accused him of witchcraft, put him in prison and poisoned him, and
so became sole lord of Milan. This worthy lord converted his
principality into a dukedom and became duke (1395); but as we have
followed the family to the end of the century, and long enough to make
ourselves acquainted with the habits of tyrants, we must leave them.
Poor Italy suffering from these three evils, plagues, _condottieri_, and
tyrants, naturally sought for a cure, and, with what seems to us a
singular lack of imagination, turned to the old remedies, Emperor and
Pope. From time to time Emperors came into Italy, but the Hapsburgs were
very different from the Hohenstaufens, and their trips to Rome were
mere money-getting excursions. They sold privileges and honours, imposed
what taxes they could collect, and sneaked back to Germany. Obviously
there was no hope from Emperors. Then rose the cry for the return of the
Papacy. Every Italian, however he might hate or despise the Popes, felt
proud that the Papacy was an Italian institution, and believed that
every Pope, good or bad, should live in Rome and sit on his throne at
St. Peter's. Sentiment grew strong, especially among the women; Petrarch
thundered, St. Catherine of Siena pleaded. Moreover, the sharper
argument was urged with great practical effect, that the Papal State
might shake off the papal dominion if the Pontiffs did not look after it
themselves. The Popes began to stir uneasily. The cardinals indeed,
accustomed to the safe city of Avignon, did not care to go to turbulent
Rome, or perhaps, as Petrarch said, they could not bear to leave their
Burgundian wines. But finally Gregory XI (1370-78) raised his courage to
the sticking point. He returned to Rome in 1377, and the Babylonish
Captivity of seventy years ended.