But from the heart in a more romantic sense the most learned atmosphere
is not safe, and I am reminded of another University affair of the heart
which I stumbled upon in Bologna.
As we know from old coins, _Bononia docet_. But somewhere about 1320
Bologna ceased to teach. For there was a strike of students. An old
stone relief in the Museo Civico, representing a crowned figure holding
a little scholar in his lap and stretching his hands to a kneeling
group, celebrates the reconciliation of the Rector with his scholars and
sets down in Latin a record of the episode. “The scholars of our
University being reconciled with the city, from which they had departed
in resentment at the capital punishment inflicted upon their colleague
Giacomo da Valenza, for the ravishing of Constanzia Zagnoni, by him
beloved, the Church of Peace was erected in the year 1322, in the Via S.
Mamolo and this memorial was placed there.”
What a tragic romance! What a story for a novelist, the Church, the
World, and the University all intermingled, what a riot of young blood
all stilled six hundred years ago!
The Doctors of that day still sit in carven state beside this memorial;
learned petrifactions, holding their stone chairs for a term of
centuries, Bartoluzzo de’ Preti, Reader of Civil Law, who died in 1318,
and Bonandrea de’ Bonandrei, Reader of Decretals, who died in 1333. The
“pleasant” Doctor this Bonandrea is styled; seasoning, no doubt, his
erudition with graces of style. I figure him deeply versed in the
decisions published by Gregory IX in 1234, and a profound expounder of
the Isidorian Decretals.