A STORY OF VENICE
A Follower of the Condottieri—The Raw Recruit—Division of
the Dukedom of Milan—Carmagnola’s Turn—Growth in Wealth and
Power—Disaffection—Venice Acquires His Services—War with Milan—A
Leisurely Campaign—Carmagnola at the Height of His Glory—Fortune
Turns Against the Venetians—Stirrings of Suspicion—Reception in
Venice—The Senate Chamber—Growing Dusk—The Attack—End of His Part
in the World—Another Story of the North—St. Raniero, the Patron of
Pisa—The Power of Temperance.
Here is a story of Venice. In the early part of the Fifteenth Century
a Northern soldier, riding home through the sweet-smelling summer
twilight, dreaming in all probability of some dusky-eyed maiden of
the border states, stopped by the side of a field to look about him
for a shelter for the night. That he would be welcome at any inn, he
was sure, for he was returning from the wars to spend his not very
hard-earned prize money, of which his saddlebags were full.
One can imagine him, pushing back his helmet and regarding the fair
countryside with the appreciative eye of the professional marauder,
smacking his dusty lips at the thought of the weeks of hilarious
wickedness that his loot would buy for him. The picture is not
overdrawn, I can assure the reader, for they were little more than wild
beasts, those followers of the great Condottieri, brought under an iron
discipline, the yoke of which they were willing to bear, for a time,
in return for the ample pay and the opportunities, which their service
afforded them, of sacking unoffending towns and robbing and spearing
harmless and unarmed citizens and ravishing their wives and daughters.
Here and there, stray flowers in those acres of weeds, a fairly decent
character appeared among them, but, from such accounts as can be found,
these latter never seem to have stayed long in their ranks.
As it has been said, the rival bands that infested Italy and Southern
France in those merry days never made any serious attempt to injure
each other, unless driven to such unpleasant measures by the sternest
necessity—or, to be sure, unless some particularly rich bit of loot
was between them. As a general thing, though, they do not seem to have
displayed even the common courage of the wolf. The longer a campaign
could be dragged out the better for all concerned, was their motto, and
they lived up to it, even to the point of punctiliously letting loose
all the prisoners they took from each other after every engagement. A
safer and more care-free life than theirs would be difficult, if not
impossible, to imagine. The people who hired them were, of course,
utterly unable to cope with their enemies—with their enemies’ bravos,
that is to say—by themselves, and were as completely helpless against
their own servants; it was altogether an ideal state of things.
To return to our trooper, breathing his horse and, probably, smacking
his lips over the prospect of the cheer with which his blood-spotted
loot would provide him for the next month or so. Looking around in the
early dusk, he noticed a boy, working desultorily in the fields, and,
while his horse rested, he studied him. There was something in the way
in which he carried his head, and the set of his chin and jaw, which
sounded a sympathetic echo in the trooper’s breast. This was no common
peasant, he told himself, and called out to the boy to come over and
speak to him. Nothing loath, the youth obeyed, and the upshot of this
conversation was that the boy elected to take the trooper’s advice and
follow him.
The trooper, one imagines, must have been in the service of Facino
Cane, a grizzled, deaf old soldier with a high reputation, as
reputations went in those days, and it did not take the new recruit
long to show his worth. Even when he was still young, Cane seems to
have recognised in him an equal if not a superior and refused flatly to
promote him, swearing that, if he was given one step, he would take all
the rest for himself.
Francesco Bussone, better known as Carmagnola, retired into himself,
and bided his time. Cane was great, and with Cane there was always
profitable employment in plenty. So he decided to remain where he
was; but, if Facino Cane continued to behave as he had been doing of
late, it was not likely that he would last for very long, and in the
happy and quite possible event of his being assassinated before long,
Carmagnola would take his place. There would be no one, he felt sure,
who would wish to oppose him, and, if there were, he thought he knew
how to overcome their opposition. Cane had a splendid force under
him—and they would need a leader, to be of any use to themselves. They
would choose him for themselves. One can almost hear him saying to
himself, as he leaves the chief’s presence and looks back at the door:
“Eh! chì va piano va sano—chì va sano va lontano!” (“Who goes slowly,
goes safely—who goes safely, goes far!”)
Cane, for his part, was neither going slowly nor safely. Giovanni, Duke
of Milan, had but recently died. He had been as good a soldier as any
Condottiere that ever drew sword and he had held his Dukedom together
with his own good right arm. But now, in the hands of his eldest son,
Gian Maria, the inheritance was falling to pieces. Gian Maria was a
degenerate—a lunatic—it is even said that he fed his hounds with human
flesh; and, in a very short time, the cities of the Dukedom—Piacenza,
Parma, Cremona, Lodi—revolted, and the several Condottieri, who had
formerly served Giovanni, seized the opportunity of realising their
ambition, which was to become independent rulers themselves. There was
no great difficulty about this, once a division of the spoil was agreed
upon, for each had a small army at his back and the ability to use it.
The inhabitants, helpless in the face of trained fighters, put forward
no opposition, so that, in six months or less, six or seven Dukes
existed where only one had existed before.
Cane seized upon Pavia, the younger son’s portion, and kept the heir a
prisoner in his own court. Not long afterwards he dethroned the elder
son, and, it is to be supposed, arranged his end for him at the hands
of the Milanese. He, himself, died in Pavia within a day of the Duke’s
assassination. No remark is made by historians on the subject of his
death save that he died, but where the character of his ducal prisoner
is considered and the excellent reasons he had for wishing his gaoler
dead are taken into account, the latter’s end may, I think, be safely
laid at Filippo Maria’s door.
So that, in the end, Carmagnola was right in his determination to wait
upon events. Now his turn came. The soldiers were left leaderless,
and Carmagnola seized the captainship instantly—at the age of
twenty-two—while Filippo Maria as instantly married Cane’s widow,
in order to get the old soldier’s estates, and, these being secured,
brought a false accusation against her and had her executed.
This worthy couple then joined hands, to recover the lost cities, and
Carmagnola began to show something of his quality. He recaptured Milan,
killing the usurper, and, one by one, brought back the other cities to
his employer, as a reward for which he was made Count of Castelmuro and
married to a daughter of Giovanni Galleazzo, one Antonia.
It seemed as though Fortunatus’ purse had been emptied over him, in the
years that followed; wealth, honour, position all were his, and so rich
and powerful did he become that he was even permitted to invest in the
bonded debt of Venice.
He must have grown careless, after a while, for his enemies—and they
were numbered by the score—continued to get the Duke’s ear and to
poison his mind. They probably used Carmagnola’s popularity with his
men as an instrument, and played upon Filippo’s morbid pride and his
unhealthy nerves, until he saw in his great general a Frankenstein
of his own creation, which, if it were not itself destroyed, would
presently destroy him.
One cannot think that Carmagnola was anything but careless, for when
Philip demanded some of his bodyguard from him for a special purpose
he protested with honest vigour against this taking of a weapon from
one who knew how to use it and handing it to one who did not. Getting
no reply, he became impatient, and sought one in person, by forcing his
way into Philip’s presence, but he was stopped at the gate and then his
temper left him.
His remarks were few and incisive, his opinions of the courtiers about
Philip’s person plain as the tower at which he shouted them, and he
wound up with an open threat directed at both. That done, he turned and
rode off with his half-dozen attendants, and one brave gentleman who
had ridden out to pursue him was so terrified at the sight of him, as
he galloped across the marshy fields, his head on his chest, rage like
an embodied spirit beside him, that he thought better of his intention
and made back into the safe shelter of Abbiti. Carmagnola pursued his
way without pausing until he came to the Court of Amadeus of Savoy, who
was his own liege lord, and here he immediately offered his services,
explaining at the same time what had just happened to him.
Filippo, in the meanwhile, confiscated his estates and seized his wife
and daughter as hostages. That Antonia was his own sister—or, at least,
had always passed as such—made not the slightest difference to the
scoundrelly Filippo, and Carmagnola does not seem to have so much as
troubled his head about the women.
Yet, for some reason, he seems to have excused Filippo’s
conduct—openly, at least—and to have placed the blame where most of
it belonged—on his surroundings. Then, casually, as though the idea
had only just occurred to him, he spoke of various and choice pieces
of territory, whose ownership, though nominally Filippo’s, was, he
averred, doubtful.
To his disappointment, Amadeus refused to be drawn into the affair,
and Carmagnola presently set off for Venice, always a safe resort for
warriors of any quality.
He arrived at an auspicious moment, for Venice was hesitating as to
the worth-whileness of an alliance which had been proposed to her by
Florence for the purpose of attacking Carmagnola’s late master, Filippo
of Milan.
The Venetians, living as they did, in an almost continuous state of
war with one or other of their neighbours, were only too glad of the
opportunity of gaining the services of the famous free-lance and gave
him the command of their land army, within a very few weeks of his
arrival—Foscari, the Procurator of St. Mark, in the meantime, pushing
forward the alliance with Florence, in season and out of season. In
this he was opposed by Mocenigo, the Doge, who, in spite of his eighty
years, and even on his deathbed, in the presence of senators and
ministers, uttered a solemn and prophetic warning against the war. He
must have been a truly wonderful old man, for in that farewell speech
of his, delivered from the edge of the grave, he gave a complete and
accurate account of the State’s finances, and of its employés’, down
to the ship’s caulkers and the manufacturers of fustian, besides
remembering the number of gentlemen with incomes between seven hundred
and four thousand ducats. At the end of it, he told his hearers that,
if they rejected his advice and quarrelled with Milan, in a very short
while they would find themselves under the heel of a military despotism
which would take the very coats from their backs—all of which presently
came to pass. Finally he warned them against Foscari, whose election to
the Dogeship some of them, as he knew, favoured.
But his warnings were in vain, for Foscari was elected over Loredano,
in a conclave the account of which is curiously like that of a
political convention of to-day—the holding of a number of votes
in reserve, the speeches on both sides, the trick by which Foscari
irritated his noble old opponent into losing his temper and abusing
his adversaries. There is nothing new, of course, under the sun, but it
gives one a queer thrill when one comes upon things like these.
Soon afterwards, Carmagnola was offered the command already referred
to, and Filippo, on hearing the news, made an attempt to have his old
comrade poisoned, but the agents were caught and executed after having
been thoroughly and soundly tortured.
There followed visits and embassies from Milan and Florence—the
Milanese gay, careless, assured; the Florentines grave and soberly
clad, leaving no stone unturned, no mine of favour unworked. Carmagnola
stalked through the Milanese Masque, like a shadow through a field
of poppies, and when the Senators, torn between the pleadings of the
Florentine Ambassador and the easy, somewhat scornful reply of the
Milanese envoy, hesitated, the Condottiere, enraged by the attempt just
made upon his life, presented his side of the case, pointing out that
Filippo’s apparent strength was only the result of his, Carmagnola’s,
victories, and that of his own he had none at all, and openly
proclaiming his hatred and scorn, both of the Duke and his soldiers.
That settled the matter, and the league with Florence, which presently
embraced Ferrara, Mantua, the Sienese, Amadeus VIII of Savoy, and King
Alphonso of Naples, was formed.
It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to discover the true
character of Carmagnola at this time of day. Some speak of him as being
a double-faced villain, some—Sismondi, for instance—as of a demigod.
Great he was, talented in many directions, and all but invincible; like
others, he may have had several sides to his nature, and each of these,
as it met for the moment the sun of events, may have represented the
whole man for the time being.
The Duke of Milan now began to feel the weight of the hand he had
turned against himself, although, at the outset of the war, Carmagnola
does not appear to have exerted himself greatly. Brescia fell—whether
to the Florentine commander or to the Venetian, is a matter of opinion.
Probably the Florentine siege works and the effect of Carmagnola’s
reputation were equally responsible—and the Duke ceded the conquest on
the 30th of December; not, however, before he had made an attempt to
burn down the Venetian arsenal and another of his several agents had
been caught by the Venetians and carefully tortured to death.
Carmagnola, from all accounts, seems still to have been divided between
the desire of earning his pay from the Venetians and an unwillingness,
even now and in spite of everything, to push his old employer more
than was necessary to accomplish the ends he had in mind. This
was difficult, for the Venetians, having paid like the hard-headed
merchants they were, wanted plenty of blood and destruction for their
money, and the amicable habit which time and practice had crystallised
into a precedent, of returning prisoners after an engagement, in order
to keep the good work going on, was not at all to their minds.
It was not long before Filippo began to tire of the almost monotonous
series of defeats which overtook his leaders, and, though breathing
fire against Carmagnola, and complaining bitterly of what he was
pleased to call the “bad faith” of the poor Florentines (whom he had
been bullying so heartily and for so long), he was forced to sue for
the good offices of Pope Martin V, who, although none too pleased at
being dragged into such company, yet helped him, for the sake of the
smudged name he bore.
Of course such a peace could not last for any length of time. No one
of the parties to it trusted any of the others in the slightest, and
Venice had, so far, swallowed up all the profits of the campaign which
included Brescia and all its castles and territory up to the Lago di
Garda, and a portion of Cremona besides.
This peace was concluded on the 30th of December, 1426, and Carmagnola
went into winter quarters, under the admiring eyes of his temporary
fellow-citizens.
His family had contrived to join him, by now, and the time passed
pleasantly away for the grizzled and somewhat war-worn captain. He
had punished Filippo, and had besides secured what promised to be the
most profitable employment upon which he had ever entered. He knew the
Visconti; he must have been quite sure that Filippo had no intention of
giving up the struggle as tamely as that, and when it recommenced he
would, he imagined, be able to dictate the terms under which he could
condescend to serve.
He was right in both conjectures. No sooner was the peace signed than
Filippo turned his energies to the accumulation of a force with which
to open a campaign in the spring. Besides this, he assembled a fleet
for the purpose of attacking Mantua and Ferrara. This the Venetians
destroyed near Cremona on the 21st of May, 1427.
Filippo, who had up till now taken small thought of anything except
numbers and talent, soon began to feel, as so many others have done
before and since, the extreme difficulty of getting any cohesive
action from a force which, split up into many small bodies, gave its
allegiance to six or seven separate commanders, all of equal merit,
and all claiming, on their records, the right to administer the whole.
Carmagnola, on the other hand, being a Condottiere himself, allowed no
one, however distinguished his birth or his position, even to approach
his throne, much less share it. The Venetian authorities themselves he
handled as roughly as he dared, and they, as Mocenigo had prophesied,
found themselves under a despotism which made the rule of the dreaded
“Ten” a kindergarten affair in comparison.
Filippo, exercising a purely imaginary authority, gave the command of
his troops to Nicolo Piccino, a pupil of the celebrated Braccio, and
he attacked Carmagnola at Casalecco on the 12th of July, but so thick
was the dust under foot that before they had well engaged they became
invisible and separated without shock.
It was a leisurely campaign. Whatever might be the anxiety of the
principals to settle the quarrel, their defenders were not to be
hurried, and it was not until the 11th of October that Carmagnola was
called upon to fight a pitched battle. He had been spending most of his
time in the interval at the baths of Albano, where he took a cure for
rheumatism.
Suspicion is a disease among some people, and, though its workings are
not by any means confined to one class, it must be owned that power
of any kind has always been a happy breeding ground for it. With the
rulers of Venice it was hereditary, and, since it was unsafe openly to
suspect each other, they invariably lavished their venomous mistrust
upon their servants and instruments. But, true to their Latinity, they
gave their victim no chance of feeling it or even of defending himself.
In silence they judged, in silence they acted, and always with such a
wealth of deception, cunning, and falsehood as to proclaim their own
cowardice and meanness from the housetops.
The battle of the 11th of October took place in a marsh near Macalo,
and Carmagnola having lured his adversary, Carlo Malastata, into the
swamps—with which he himself was perfectly familiar—turned upon and
beat him soundly, capturing, it is said, upwards of five thousand,
including Malastata himself.
He made no attempt to pursue, and immediately released all of his
prisoners, thereby giving the Venetian Senate a solid handle for the
blade of calumny which they had been forging. When the protests of
the Venetians reached him, he refused to discuss the matter, merely
replying that it was the custom of war and, further, that it was his
wish. His contempt for his employers was a little too open, and they,
though apparently acquiescing and praising his skill, were already
plotting his end. The gentle habit of executing a defeated general,
wherever possible, was in vogue then and for many years afterwards. As
long as Carmagnola could continue to win cities and provinces for them,
so long could he continue to live, but no longer.
A new peace was signed on the 18th of April, 1428, and peace descended
upon Venice for nearly three years. Carmagnola passed the time in
Venice with his family around him; treated with all honour and respect
to his face, laughed at, as he knew, for his low birth and rough ways,
behind his back. Disliked, but courted, under pressure, for no one
could say how long this new peace would last, and Venice, in the field,
was Carmagnola. Without him, Filippo’s men—Piccino, Tonelli, and the
rest—would strip her to the waterfront.
The Florentines, grown confident and aggressive, now took the
opportunity to attack the Lord of Lucca, Paolo Quinigi, a one-time ally
of Filippo’s, and the Lucchesi, revolting, deposed Quinigi and sent him
to Milan as a prisoner. The Florentines were, soon afterwards, attacked
and routed by Piccino at Sarchio on the 2d of December, 1430; and once
again the old flame broke out.
Carmagnola, to everybody’s surprise, resigned his commission—or,
rather, attempted to resign it—and the Senate, in a panic, offered
him such terms for another campaign as were never offered to any
Condottiere before or since.
Carmagnola, who was then, or had been but a short while before, in
communication with Filippo, finally accepted the command, though with
reluctance. Perhaps he had the prophetic depression which so often
seizes commanders before a disaster; perhaps he had tired of Venice and
her service.
Fortune had turned against the Venetians. First their admiral,
Trevisano, was caught napping at Cremona and his fleet destroyed under
Carmagnola’s furious eyes. His remarks to the admiral afterwards and
to the Venetian Senate were so mixed and incoherent with rage that the
Senate hurriedly sent down special Commissioners to assure him of their
confidence and love.
Piccino wandered about picking up odds and ends, a castle here, a town
there, but Carmagnola refused to move. Filippo, wild with delight,
hovered in his neighbourhood, sending taunts and insults to him on
every opportunity, but the old tiger lay in his lair.
He had been defeated at Soncino, and, though that was a small and
unimportant event in itself, yet taken in conjunction with the disaster
to the fleet, it became a disaster, too. A distemper arose among the
horses that year in Italy, which accounts, in a large degree, for
Carmagnola’s inaction, and, though he roused himself sufficiently to
defeat the Hungarians at Friuli, he relapsed again afterwards into
inactivity.
No signs of impatience or mistrust escaped the Senate, however.
Instead, they sent a splendid deputation, begging him to give himself
the trouble of returning to Venice for a while to consult with the
Signoria as to the conduct of the coming campaign; and he, never
doubting that his position was unchanged and that, surrounded by
enemies, Venice still looked to him as the one man who could save
her, rode through Lombardy in April, 1432, accompanied by Gonzaga,
the Lord of Mantua, and embarked on the Brenta, hailed by the populace
and loaded with marks of deference and confidence by the great men of
the Senate who went out to meet him. All along the waterway, crowds
turned out to greet the hope of Venice, and the rich and noble, whose
country houses stood along the banks of the river, turned out likewise,
decorating their homes and making festas as he passed.
A gay people they were, with their satins and their music and their
dancing and their love-making. April in Venice is made for kissing, it
is the only suitable occupation for any one with a spark of life in his
soul, and one can imagine the boats on the slow-moving river, as the
evening came on, and the lovers’ moon came out over the water—music,
love—youth and fire.
It was through this that the great Captain journeyed, leisurely, as
became his dignity. At Mestre he was met by some gentlemen of his
acquaintance, all smiles and bows and compliments, in whose company he
crossed the shadowy lagoons and disembarked.
Nine Senators—red-robed, capped, monuments of the dignity of the
State—were waiting for him here, and his progress to the Palace of
the Doge was almost regal in its splendour. With all formality he
was introduced into the presence of the Senate, and given a chair of
honour. He was welcomed, praised, and listened to with deferential
attention. It was growing late, by now, and the Senate Chamber was
becoming too dim to distinguish the faces of those about him. But no
lights were called for, and he, dreaming no doubt, of seeing his wife
and children again that night, sat on, while one Senator after another
rose and spoke and sat down again.
He had other things upon his mind, too. Filippo—old days—old triumphs;
the promise that had been made him, that if he could but extinguish
the Visconti for ever, his old estates were to be given back to him,
besides new ones here in Venice. It had even been hinted and hinted
strongly that the only obstacle to his becoming Duke of Milan himself,
was the man who called himself the Duke—Filippo Visconti. There seemed
to be no bar to his advancement to any position he might choose—he, the
son of a peasant, picked up at dusk by a wandering trooper in Savoy!
Dusk! It was getting towards dark now!
He stirred in his chair and looked about him. The place seemed less
crowded than it had been when he had last observed it, and, thinking
that the moment had arrived when he could at last fling aside the world
and return to his family, he rose to depart.
What were those dark shapes hovering near his chair? Those were
no Senators! He peered at them as he passed, but they paid him no
attention and he moved on towards the door.
Instantly he felt himself seized from behind and the dark shapes
materialised into Sbirri—soldier police—as he struck out right and
left, bellowing and roaring in his fury. But he was only one, and there
were twenty or thirty of them, and he was chained hand and foot before
he had recovered from his first amazement.
The place was deserted now, save for them, and in the gloom he was
hurried along, pushed and hustled, down, down, until a door creaked
open and he was flung into a cell, pitch-black and damp. The door
slammed to behind him, and his little part in the world was played.
The next day he was “put to the question,” but no records remain, none
being kept, of what passed in the little cell during the dread ordeal;
and twenty days later, gagged and chained, he was led out to the
Piazza, and there, between the pillars, beheaded.
His grave is in the great Church of St. Francis, in Milan, beside his
wife.
While we are still in the North, the story of the Patron of Pisa, St.
Raniero, may interest my readers.
He was a Scacciari, born in Pisa about the year 1100, and grew up with
the other noble children of the place, cheerful and pleasure-loving
as were they—and as, it may be noticed in passing, were several of the
greatest Saints in the Calendar.
His conversion came about through a holy man, whose name has not
survived. Raniero, one day, was playing and dancing with some damsels
in the shade of a great tree, outside the city, when he noticed a man
standing near who seemed to be studying him intently; after a while,
he laid his lyre down on the grass and returned the gaze, with the
intention of bringing home to the stranger the annoyance which the look
was causing him. But the stranger continued to stare, and presently the
boy arose to approach him.
But, although he had risen to his feet, he made no attempt to
advance, for something in the stern, yet gently pitying, eyes of the
other arrested his movement, and, before he could recover from the
half-hypnotised condition, the stranger was moving off himself.
Then the boy came to life, and ran after the man of God, flinging
himself upon his knees, and catching at the hem of his garment, and
crying out his sorrow for his sins; the other lifted him up, and bade
him be of good cheer, but Raniero, by now, was half blind with weeping
and it was some time before he could see or hear clearly.
He did not turn back again towards Pisa, but made his way, by slow
stages, to the Holy Land—no very safe harbourage in the middle of the
Twelfth Century. On arriving, he took off his own clothes, and received
from a priest the shirt of a slave, which, for the proper humiliation
of the flesh, he continued to wear until he died.
Now it is the habit, even of the most broad-minded of our Protesting
brethren deliberately to close every avenue by which information might
reach their intelligences, and to seal them up tightly, before they
embark upon any study of the Saints, or of the Church. In parenthesis,
it must be said of the Germans, doubtless true to the Teutonic passion
for accuracy, that as a general rule they will and do search after and
transcribe the true facts of a happening, at whatever cost to their
own private feelings—as Haeckel found to his cost. Not so with the
English. They glory in incredulity—and prune their belief daily until
nothing more than the bare tree is left. So that one is not in the
least astonished to find in the middle of an Englishman’s otherwise
fairly faithful tale a shocked horror—indeed, it cannot be described in
any other terms—at the thought of the desert’s being an abiding-place
for devils. People, on the other hand, find that people with any real
experience of the desert are quite ready to believe that anything
horrible might he found there. If ever there was a proper ballroom for
Satan, says one, it is the desert!
St. Raniero found them there, aplenty—so did St. Anthony—and St.
Ephrem—and St. Procopius and St. Jerome, and many, many more.
St. Raniero vowed himself to abstinence, and a hard struggle he found
it to be until one morning, very early, when after a night of tossing
and turning and praying, he fell asleep and dreamed that a wonderfully
wrought vessel of gold, covered with the most beautiful gems, stood
beside him. It was full of pitch and sulphur, and these presently
ignited, burning fiercely, and threatening the destruction of the vase.
But, just as it seemed to be on the point of destruction, a little
phial containing a few drops of water appeared, and he was bidden to
sprinkle some upon the fire; he did so with some difficulty, since it
was burning so fiercely, and, behold! the fire was extinguished in a
moment.
On awakening he considered the dream for some time, trying to read
some meaning into it, and presently it was borne in upon him that the
vessel was his body, the pitch and sulphur his passions and appetites,
and that the water was temperance, which would quench these. From
that time onward he lived altogether upon bread and water, even
performing the most of his miracles with water, for which he had an
especial reverence, so that he came to be known in Pisa as “San Domini
dell’Acqua.”
That he was a water-drinker himself did not affect his detestation
of dishonesty in the matter of wine, however. Being at one time in
Messina, he stayed one night at an inn there, and, after watching the
innkeeper for a little while, became persuaded that he was mixing water
into the wine which he was selling. Beckoning to him, Raniero told
him to cease, but the host first laughed and then grew angry, telling
him to mind his own business. Then the Saint took him by the shoulder
and turned him round, and pointed to a cask which was set in a distant
corner.
“See there,” he said. Every one by now was looking in the same
direction, and to their terror and amazement there appeared upon the
cask a huge black cat with enormous wings. The host flung himself at
the Saint’s feet, howling, and the rest of the company began to crowd
and push out of the place, but the Saint directed them to remain, and
dismissed the demon swiftly.
He returned afterwards to Pisa, where he lived for many years, and
performed many wonders, healings, and conversions before he died, and
his tomb is in the wall of the Duomo, where an altar has been erected
to his memory.