Florence expects a Guest.
It was the 17th of November 1494: more than eighteen months since Tito
and Romola had been finally united in the joyous Easter time, and had
had a rainbow-tinted shower of comfits thrown over them, after the
ancient Greek fashion, in token that the heavens would shower sweets on
them through all their double life.
Since that Easter a great change had come over the prospects of
Florence; and as in the tree that bears a myriad of blossoms, each
single bud with its fruit is dependent on the primary circulation of
the sap, so the fortunes of Tito and Romola were dependent on certain
grand political and social conditions which made an epoch in the
history of Italy.
In this very November, little more than a week ago, the spirit of the
old centuries seemed to have re-entered the breasts of Florentines. The
great bell in the palace tower had rung out the hammer-sound of alarm,
and the people had mustered with their rusty arms, their tools and
impromptu cudgels, to drive out the Medici. The gate of San Gallo had
been fairly shut on the arrogant, exasperating Piero, galloping away
towards Bologna with his hired horsemen frightened behind him, and shut
on his keener young brother, the cardinal, escaping in the disguise of
a Franciscan monk: a price had been set on both their heads. After
that, there had been some sacking of houses, according to old
precedent; the ignominious images, painted on the public buildings, of
the men who had conspired against the Medici in days gone by, were
effaced; the exiled enemies of the Medici were invited home. The
half-fledged tyrants were fairly out of their splendid nest in the Via
Larga, and the Republic had recovered the use of its will again.
But now, a week later, the great palace in the Via Larga had been
prepared for the reception of another tenant; and if drapery roofing
the streets with unwonted colour, if banners and hangings pouring out
of the windows, if carpets and tapestry stretched over all steps and
pavement on which exceptional feet might tread, were an unquestionable
proof of joy, Florence was very joyful in the expectation of its new
guest. The stream of colour flowed from the palace in the Via Larga
round by the Cathedral, then by the great Piazza della Signoria, and
across the Ponte Vecchio to the Porta San Frediano—the gate that looks
towards Pisa. There, near the gate, a platform and canopy had been
erected for the Signoria; and Messer Luca Corsini, doctor of law, felt
his heart palpitating a little with the sense that he had a Latin
oration to read; and every chief elder in Florence had to make himself
ready, with smooth chin and well-lined silk lucco, to walk in
procession; and the well-born youths were looking at their rich new
tunics after the French mode which was to impress the stranger as
having a peculiar grace when worn by Florentines; and a large body of
the clergy, from the archbishop in his effulgence to the train of
monks, black, white, and grey, were consulting betimes in the morning
how they should marshal themselves, with their burden of relics and
sacred banners and consecrated jewels, that their movements might be
adjusted to the expected arrival of the illustrious visitor, at three
o’clock in the afternoon.
An unexampled visitor! For he had come through the passes of the Alps
with such an army as Italy had not seen before: with thousands of
terrible Swiss, well used to fight for love and hatred as well as for
hire; with a host of gallant cavaliers proud of a name; with an
unprecedented infantry, in which every man in a hundred carried an
arquebus; nay, with cannon of bronze, shooting not stones but iron
balls, drawn not by bullocks but by horses, and capable of firing a
second time before a city could mend the breach made by the first ball.
Some compared the new-comer to Charlemagne, reputed rebuilder of
Florence, welcome conqueror of degenerate kings, regulator and
benefactor of the Church; some preferred the comparison to Cyrus,
liberator of the chosen people, restorer of the Temple. For he had come
across the Alps with the most glorious projects: he was to march
through Italy amidst the jubilees of a grateful and admiring people; he
was to satisfy all conflicting complaints at Rome; he was to take
possession, by virtue of hereditary right and a little fighting, of the
kingdom of Naples; and from that convenient starting-point he was to
set out on the conquest of the Turks, who were partly to be cut to
pieces and partly converted to the faith of Christ. It was a scheme
that seemed to befit the Most Christian King, head of a nation which,
thanks to the devices of a subtle Louis the Eleventh who had died in
much fright as to his personal prospects ten years before, had become
the strongest of Christian monarchies; and this antitype of Cyrus and
Charlemagne was no other than the son of that subtle Louis—the young
Charles the Eighth of France.
Surely, on a general statement, hardly anything could seem more
grandiose, or fitter to revive in the breasts of men the memory of
great dispensations by which new strata had been laid in the history of
mankind. And there was a very widely spread conviction that the advent
of the French king and his army into Italy was one of those events at
which marble statues might well be believed to perspire, phantasmal
fiery warriors to fight in the air, and quadrupeds to bring forth
monstrous births—that it did not belong to the usual order of
Providence, but was in a peculiar sense the work of God. It was a
conviction that rested less on the necessarily momentous character of a
powerful foreign invasion than on certain moral emotions to which the
aspect of the times gave the form of presentiments: emotions which had
found a very remarkable utterance in the voice of a single man.
That man was Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Prior of the Dominican convent of
San Marco in Florence. On a September morning, when men’s ears were
ringing with the news that the French army had entered Italy, he had
preached in the Cathedral of Florence from the text, “Behold I, even I,
do bring a flood of waters upon the earth.” He believed it was by
supreme guidance that he had reached just so far in his exposition of
Genesis the previous Lent; and he believed the “flood of water”—emblem
at once of avenging wrath and purifying mercy—to be the
divinely—indicated symbol of the French army. His audience, some of
whom were held to be among the choicest spirits of the age—the most
cultivated men in the most cultivated of Italian cities—believed it
too, and listened with shuddering awe. For this man had a power rarely
paralleled, of impressing his beliefs on others, and of swaying very
various minds. And as long as four years ago he had proclaimed from the
chief pulpit of Florence that a scourge was about to descend on Italy,
and that by this scourge the Church was to be purified. Savonarola
appeared to believe, and his hearers more or less waveringly believed,
that he had a mission like that of the Hebrew prophets, and that the
Florentines amongst whom his message was delivered were in some sense a
second chosen people. The idea of prophetic gifts was not a remote one
in that age: seers of visions, circumstantial heralds of things to be,
were far from uncommon either outside or inside the cloister; but this
very fact made Savonarola stand out the more conspicuously as a grand
exception. While in others the gift of prophecy was very much like a
farthing candle illuminating small corners of human destiny with
prophetic gossip, in Savonarola it was like a mighty beacon shining far
out for the warning and guidance of men. And to some of the soberest
minds the supernatural character of his insight into the future
gathered a strong attestation from the peculiar conditions of the age.
At the close of 1492, the year in which Lorenzo de’ Medici died and
Tito Melema came as a wanderer to Florence, Italy was enjoying a peace
and prosperity unthreatened by any near and definite danger. There was
no fear of famine, for the seasons had been plenteous in corn, and
wine, and oil; new palaces had been rising in all fair cities, new
villas on pleasant slopes and summits; and the men who had more than
their share of these good things were in no fear of the larger number
who had less. For the citizens’ armour was getting rusty, and
populations seemed to have become tame, licking the hands of masters
who paid for a ready-made army when they wanted it, as they paid for
goods of Smyrna. Even the fear of the Turk had ceased to be active, and
the Pope found it more immediately profitable to accept bribes from him
for a little prospective poisoning than to form plans either for
conquering or for converting him.
Altogether this world, with its partitioned empire and its roomy
universal Church, seemed to be a handsome establishment for the few who
were lucky or wise enough to reap the advantages of human folly: a
world in which lust and obscenity, lying and treachery, oppression and
murder, were pleasant, useful, and when properly managed, not
dangerous. And as a sort of fringe or adornment to the substantial
delights of tyranny, avarice, and lasciviousness, there was the
patronage of polite learning and the fine arts, so that flattery could
always be had in the choicest Latin to be commanded at that time, and
sublime artists were at hand to paint the holy and the unclean with
impartial skill. The Church, it was said, had never been so disgraced
in its head, had never shown so few signs of renovating, vital belief
in its lower members; nevertheless it was much more prosperous than in
some past days. The heavens were fair and smiling above; and below
there were no signs of earthquake.
Yet at that time, as we have seen, there was a man in Florence who for
two years and more had been preaching that a scourge was at hand; that
the world was certainly not framed for the lasting convenience of
hypocrites, libertines, and oppressors. From the midst of those smiling
heavens he had seen a sword hanging—the sword of God’s justice—which
was speedily to descend with purifying punishment on the Church and the
world. In brilliant Ferrara, seventeen years before, the contradiction
between men’s lives and their professed beliefs had pressed upon him
with a force that had been enough to destroy his appetite for the
world, and at the age of twenty-three had driven him into the cloister.
He believed that God had committed to the Church the sacred lamp of
truth for the guidance and salvation of men, and he saw that the
Church, in its corruption, had become a sepulchre to hide the lamp. As
the years went on scandals increased and multiplied, and hypocrisy
seemed to have given place to impudence. Had the world, then, ceased to
have a righteous Ruler? Was the Church finally forsaken? No, assuredly:
in the Sacred Book there was a record of the past in which might be
seen as in a glass what would be in the days to come, and the book
showed that when the wickedness of the chosen people, type of the
Christian Church, had become crying, the judgments of God had descended
on them. Nay, reason itself declared that vengeance was imminent, for
what else would suffice to turn men from their obstinacy in evil? And
unless the Church were reclaimed, how could the promises be fulfilled,
that the heathens should be converted and the whole world become
subject to the one true law? He had seen his belief reflected in
visions—a mode of seeing which had been frequent with him from his
youth up.
But the real force of demonstration for Girolamo Savonarola lay in his
own burning indignation at the sight of wrong; in his fervent belief in
an Unseen Justice that would put an end to the wrong, and in an Unseen
Purity to which lying and uncleanness were an abomination. To his
ardent, power-loving soul, believing in great ends, and longing to
achieve those ends by the exertion of its own strong will, the faith in
a supreme and righteous Ruler became one with the faith in a speedy
divine interposition that would punish and reclaim.
Meanwhile, under that splendid masquerade of dignities sacred and
secular which seemed to make the life of lucky Churchmen and princely
families so luxurious and amusing, there were certain conditions at
work which slowly tended to disturb the general festivity. Ludovico
Sforza—copious in gallantry, splendid patron of an incomparable
Leonardo da Vinci—holding the ducal crown of Milan in his grasp, and
wanting to put it on his own head rather than let it rest on that of a
feeble nephew who would take very little to poison him, was much afraid
of the Spanish-born old King Ferdinand and the Crown Prince Alfonso of
Naples, who, not liking cruelty and treachery which were useless to
themselves, objected to the poisoning of a near relative for the
advantage of a Lombard usurper; the royalties of Naples again were
afraid of their suzerain, Pope Alexander Borgia; all three were
anxiously watching Florence, lest with its midway territory it should
determine the game by underhand backing; and all four, with every small
state in Italy, were afraid of Venice—Venice the cautious, the stable,
and the strong, that wanted to stretch its arms not only along both
sides of the Adriatic but across to the ports of the western coast.
Lorenzo de’ Medici, it was thought, did much to prevent the fatal
outbreak of such jealousies, keeping up the old Florentine alliance
with Naples and the Pope, and yet persuading Milan that the alliance
was for the general advantage. But young Piero de’ Medici’s rash vanity
had quickly nullified the effect of his father’s wary policy, and
Ludovico Sforza, roused to suspicion of a league against him, thought
of a move which would checkmate his adversaries: he determined to
invite the French king to march into Italy, and, as heir of the house
of Anjou, take possession of Naples. Ambassadors—“orators,” as they
were called in those haranguing times—went and came; a recusant
cardinal, determined not to acknowledge a Pope elected by bribery (and
his own particular enemy), went and came also, and seconded the
invitation with hot rhetoric; and the young king seemed to lend a
willing ear. So that in 1493 the rumour spread and became louder and
louder that Charles the Eighth of France was about to cross the Alps
with a mighty army; and the Italian populations, accustomed, since
Italy had ceased to be the heart of the Roman empire, to look for an
arbitrator from afar, began vaguely to regard his coming as a means of
avenging their wrongs and redressing their grievances.
And in that rumour Savonarola had heard the assurance that his prophecy
was being verified. What was it that filled the ears of the prophets of
old but the distant tread of foreign armies, coming to do the work of
justice? He no longer looked vaguely to the horizon for the coming
storm: he pointed to the rising cloud. The French army was that new
deluge which was to purify the earth from iniquity; the French king,
Charles the Eighth, was the instrument elected by God, as Cyrus had
been of old, and all men who desired good rather than evil were to
rejoice in his coming. For the scourge would fall destructively on the
impenitent alone. Let any city of Italy, let Florence above
all—Florence beloved of God, since to its ear the warning voice had
been specially sent—repent and turn from its ways, like Nineveh of old,
and the storm-cloud would roll over it and leave only refreshing
raindrops.
Fra Girolamo’s word was powerful; yet now that the new Cyrus had
already been three months in Italy, and was not far from the gates of
Florence, his presence was expected there with mixed feelings, in which
fear and distrust certainly predominated. At present it was not
understood that he had redressed any grievances; and the Florentines
clearly had nothing to thank him for. He held their strong frontier
fortresses, which Piero de’ Medici had given up to him without securing
any honourable terms in return; he had done nothing to quell the
alarming revolt of Pisa, which had been encouraged by his presence to
throw off the Florentine yoke; and “orators,” even with a prophet at
their head, could win no assurance from him, except that he would
settle everything when he was once within the walls of Florence. Still,
there was the satisfaction of knowing that the exasperating Piero de’
Medici had been fairly pelted out for the ignominious surrender of the
fortresses, and in that act of energy the spirit of the Republic had
recovered some of its old fire.
The preparations for the equivocal guest were not entirely those of a
city resigned to submission. Behind the bright drapery and banners
symbolical of joy, there were preparations of another sort made with
common accord by government and people. Well hidden within walls there
were hired soldiers of the Republic, hastily called in from the
surrounding districts; there were old arms duly furbished, and sharp
tools and heavy cudgels laid carefully at hand, to be snatched up on
short notice; there were excellent boards and stakes to form barricades
upon occasion, and a good supply of stones to make a surprising hail
from the upper windows. Above all, there were people very strongly in
the humour for fighting any personage who might be supposed to have
designs of hectoring over them, they having lately tasted that new
pleasure with much relish. This humour was not diminished by the sight
of occasional parties of Frenchmen, coming beforehand to choose their
quarters, with a hawk, perhaps, on their left wrist, and,
metaphorically speaking, a piece of chalk in their right-hand to mark
Italian doors withal; especially as creditable historians imply that
many sons of France were at that time characterised by something
approaching to a swagger, which must have whetted the Florentine
appetite for a little stone-throwing.
And this was the temper of Florence on the morning of the 17th of
November 1494.