112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself,
rather pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the 'lily
standard of liberal commerce.' But it might occur, and I hope did occur,
to some of you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had
changed colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to
red,) as a sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose.
113. I believe otherwise, however; and although the change itself was
for the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the
historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.
Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been
their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific
persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental
bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us
at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars
black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers
and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of
candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on
the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and their officers in
scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honour
or beauty; you give your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up
to his waist, because he is ashamed of it; and dress your pious rectors,
and your sisters of charity, in black, as if it were _their_ trade
instead of the soldier's to send people to hell, and their own destiny
to arrive there.
114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a
symbol,--unintentional, observe, but not the less notable,--of the
recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of
war was past; this was the sign of it;--the red glow, not now of the
Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco
nota." And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will
dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls
"in scarlet, with other delights," and "put on ornaments of gold upon
_their_ apparel;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the only
living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest
monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall be, at
least in some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these."
115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence herself, with her
new standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old
symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers
dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite
political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,--according to
the custom and Christianity of the time,--her hatefullest,
neighbours,--Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not
be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile
states also of those benighted towns! Besides, the death of the Emperor
had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement; and what was the
use of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo?
116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began
by ravaging the territory of Pistoja; then attacked the Pisans at
Pontadera, and took 3000 prisoners; and finished by traversing, and
eating up all that could be ate in, the country of Siena; besides
beating the Sienese under the castle of Montalcino. Returning in triumph
after these benevolent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece
of money in memory of them,--the golden Florin!
117. This coin I have placed in your room of study, to be the first
of the series of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not
chronologically, but for the various interest, whether as regards art or
history, which they should possess in your general studies. "The Florin
of Florence," (says Sismondi), "through all the monetary revolutions
of all neighbouring countries, and while the bad faith of governments
adulterated their coin from one end of Europe to the other, has always
remained the same; it is, to-day," (I don't know when, exactly, he wrote
this,--but it doesn't matter), "of the same weight, and bears the same
name and the same stamp, which it did when it was struck in 1252."
It was gold of the purest title (24 carats), weighed the eighth of
an ounce, and carried, as you see, on one side the image of St. John
Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It is the coin which Chaucer
takes for the best representation of beautiful money in the Pardoner's
Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask of Death. Villani's
relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis is worth
translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.
118. "And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world,
some of them got to Tunis, in Barbary; and the King of Tunis, who was
a worthy and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them
tested; and finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had
the legend on them interpreted to him,--to wit, on one side 'St. John
Baptist,' on the other 'Florentia.' So seeing they were pieces of
Christian money, he sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his
port, and much before the King (and also the Florentines traded in Tunis
through Pisan agents),--[see these hot little Pisans, how they are first
everywhere,]--and asked of them what city it was among the Christians
which made the said florins. And the Pisans answered in spite and envy,
'They are our land Arabs.' The King answered wisely, "It does not appear
to me Arab's money; you Pisans, what golden money have _you_ got?" Then
they were confused, and knew not what to answer. So he asked if there
was any Florentine among them. And there was found a merchant from the
other-side-Arno, by name Peter Balducci, discreet and wise. The King
asked him of the state and being of Florence, of which the Pisans
made their Arabs,--who answered him wisely, showing the power and
magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in comparison, was not, either
in land or people, the half of Florence; and that they had no golden
money; and that the gold of which those florins had been made was gained
by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many victories. Wherefore
the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both by reason of the
florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the Florentines
free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in Tunis,
and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a truth
from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office of
the Priors."
119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time:
the sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it being only
useful as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in
which many even of the best educated persons at the present day remain.
"Its value," he says always the same, "answers to eleven francs forty
centimes of France."
But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that
it contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins,
other metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day,
but from instant to instant.
120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the
Venetian zecchin; [1] but of it I can only thus give you account in
another place,--for I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I
find recorded, as being made by the Florentines of their new money.
[Footnote 1: In connection with the Pisans' insulting intention by their
term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 'zecca,' (mint) came from the
Arabic 'sehk,' the steel die used in coinage.]
They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of
peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so often, that the Pistojese
submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph
exiles, and admitting a Florentine garrison into Pistoja. Next they
attacked Monte Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese; and pressed
it so vigorously that Siena was fain to make peace too, on condition
of ceasing her alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the
territory of Volterra: the townspeople, confident in the strength of
their rock fortress, came out to give battle; the Florentines beat them
up the hill, and entered the town gates with the fugitives.
121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of
Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the
date 1254 underneath it; meaning that I was to remember that year as
the beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and
grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours' territories
may seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting
in absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own
ambition, and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of
battle, they have nevertheless, in this their "year of victories,"--so
they ever afterwards called it,--no occult or malignant purpose. At
least, whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious; not now in
cruel, but in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire
to communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new
artizan government, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are
justly proud of themselves; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change
they have made; true to each other for the time, and confident in the
future. No army ever fought in better cause, or with more united heart.
And accordingly they meet with no check, and commit no error; from
tower to tower of the field fortresses,--from gate to gate of the great
cities,--they march in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph,
yet in gentle and perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered
Volterra with her fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood
is shed, nor a single house pillaged, nor is any other condition
of peace required than the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may
remember, as a symbol of the influence of Christianity in this result,
that the Bishop of Volterra, with his clergy, came out in procession to
meet them as they began to run [1] the streets, and obtained this mercy;
else the old habits of pillage would have prevailed.
[Footnote 1: Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno."--_Villani._]
122. And from Volterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory
of Pisa; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent
ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission.
And the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the
Pisans should let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without
tax;--should use the same weights as Florence,--the same cloth
measure,--and the same alloy of money.
123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator
of the idea of free trade; and six hundred years have passed without
bringing Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as
to weights and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories.
The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor
Manfred; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again;
defeated them on the Serchio, near Lucca; entered the Pisan territory
by the Val di Serchio; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck
their florins on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of
the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the
difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines,
using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a
wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such
change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour,
popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events,
and easy in manipulution.
124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the
English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and
prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it
drops through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in
value.
125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines made
the noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever
recorded in any history; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal
of them. You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th,
chapters 61, 62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but
without references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy,
using Villani's authority wherever it reaches; one or two points I have
farther to explain to you myself as I go on.
126. The first tale shows very curiously the mercenary and independent
character of warfare, as it now was carried on by the great chiefs,
whether Guelph or Ghibelline. The Florentines wanted to send a troop
of five hundred horse to assist Orvieto, a Guelph town, isolated on its
rock, and at present harrassed upon it. They gave command of this troop
to the Knight Guido Guerra de' Conti Guidi, and he and his riders set
out for Orvieto by the Umbrian road, through Arezzo, which was at peace
with Florence, though a Ghibelline town. The Guelph party within the
town asked help from the passing Florentine battalion; and Guido Guerra,
without any authority for such action, used the troop of which he was
in command in their favour, and drove out the Ghibellines. Sismondi does
not notice what is quite one of the main points in the matter, that
this troop of horse must have been mainly composed of Count Guido's own
retainers, and not of Florentine citizens, who would not have cared to
leave their business on such a far-off quest as this help to Orvieto.
However, Arezzo is thus brought over to the Florentine interest; and
any other Italian state would have been sure, while it disclaimed
the Count's independent action, to keep the advantage of it. Not so
Florence. She is entirely resolved, in these years of victory, to do
justice to all men so far she understands it; and in this case it will
give her some trouble to do it, and worse,--cost her some of her fine
new florins. For her counter-mandate is quite powerless with Guido
Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men, and means to stay
there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do not abet him, will
take no practical steps against him. But he does not know this newly
risen clan of military merchants, who quite clearly understand what
honesty means, and will put themselves out of their way to keep their
faith. Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules, a dragon
vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up the Val
d'Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master Guido
de' Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most curious
part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had given
them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under of
getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of
his; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable
one; and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelphic
principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims
twelve thousand lire,--roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at
present value,--from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and
the Guelphs, having got no good of it, owing to this Florentine
interference, object to paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them
the money,--and are never paid a farthing of it back.
127. There is a beautiful "investment of capital" for your modern
merchant to study! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever
getting back the principal. And yet you will find that there were no
mercantile "panics," in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers,
[1] nor "clearings out of this establishment--any reasonable offer
accepted."
[Footnote: Some account of the state of modern British business in this
kind will be given, I hope, in some number of "Fors Clavigera" for this
year, 1874.]
128. But the second story, of a private Florentine citizen, is better
still.
In that campaign against Pisa in which the florins were struck on the
root of pine, the conditions of peace had been ratified by the surrender
to Florence of the Pisan fortress of Mutrona, which commanded a tract
of seaboard below Pisa, of great importance for the Tuscan trade. The
Florentines had stipulated for the right not only of holding, but of
destroying it, if they chose; and in their Council of Ancients, after
long debate, it was determined to raze it, the cost of its garrison
being troublesome, and the freedom of seaboard all that the city wanted.
But the Pisans feeling the power that the fortress had against them in
case of future war, and doubtful of the issue of council at Florence,
sent a private negotiator to the member of the Council of Ancients who
was known to have most influence, though one of the poorest of them,
Aldobrandino Ottobuoni; and offered him four thousand golden florins if
he would get the vote passed to raze Mutrona. The vote _had_ passed the
evening before. Aldobrandino dismissed the Pisan ambassador in silence,
returned instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the
offer that had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and
showed them such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the
vote for its destruction was rescinded. "And note thou, oh reader,"
says Villani, "the virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in
substance, had yet such continence and loyalty for his state."
129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me detaining you needlessly
with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed,
on the subject of art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree
persuaded that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood
without knowing these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You
remember I first begun this large digression when it became a question
with us why some of Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed
at Perugia. And now we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter,
finding similar operations carried on in Florence. For a little while
after this speech in the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and
the people, at public cost, built him a tomb of marble, "higher than any
other" in the church of Santa Reparata, engraving on it these verses,
which I leave you to construe, for I cannot:--
Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus.
Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus.
Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the
delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love,
more, even, than their gratitude.
130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind.
For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again
their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three
years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged
it--by such tenure as it might still possess--through the city, and
threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to
the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed
it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man,
that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have
spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity
which can so be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of
princes, the most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
[Greek: "_oide plitai anton emisoun anton_."
131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was
beginning to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable
side. It is perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of
Correggio, that in 1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the
Podesta of Florence, the Florentines determined to destroy the castle
and walls of Poggibonzi, suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the
Poggibonzi people came with "coregge in collo," leathern straps
round their necks, to ask that their cattle might be spared. And the
heartburnings between the two parties went on, smouldering hotter
and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having discovered secret
dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and the Uberti
refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades ran to
arms, attacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people, took
prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind
of the Bright-minds, with 'Mangia degl' Infangati, ('Gobbler [1] of
the dirty ones' this knight's name sounds like,)--and after they had
confessed their guilt, beheaded them in St. Michael's corn-market; and
all the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of
Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena
built with the stones of them; and two months afterwards, the people
suspecting the Abbot of Vallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines,
took him, and tortured him; and he confessing under torture, "at the cry
of the people, they beheaded him in the square of St. Apollinare."
For which unexpected piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were
excommunicated, besides drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of
Pavia, the Abbot's native town; "and indeed people say the Abbot was
innocent, though he belonged to a great Ghibelline house. And for this
sin, and for many others done by the wicked people, many wise persons
say that God, for Divine judgment, permitted upon the said people the
revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti."
[Footnote: At least, the compound 'Mangia-pane,' 'munch-bread,' stands
still for a good-for-nothing fellow.]
132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once
have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of
the Ghibellines as infidel, or impious; and for the most part they
represent, indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in
this action of Florence, we have the rise of another force against
the Church, in the end to be much more fatal to it, that of popular
intelligence and popular passion. I must for the present, however,
return to our immediate business; and ask you to take note of the
effect, on actually existing Florentine architecture, of the political
movements of the ten years we have been studying.
133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines
throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces.
And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down
_all_ the Ghibelline palaces.
Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down
the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.
And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia,
to throw down Florence altogether.
134. You think at first that this is remarkably like the course
of republican reformations in the present day? But there is a wide
difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not
thrown down in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite
experience of their danger to the State, and positive dejection of
boiling lead and wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads
below. In the second place, nothing is thrown down without complete
certainty on the part of the overthrowers that they are able, and
willing, to build as good or better things instead; which, if any
like conviction exist in the minds of modern republicans, is a wofully
ill-founded one: and lastly, these abolitions of private wealth were
coincident with a widely spreading disposition to undertake, as I have
above noticed, works of public utility, _from which no dividends were to
be received by any of the shareholders_; and for the execution of which
the _builders received no commission on the cost_, but payment at the
rate of so much a day, carefully adjusted to the exertion of real power
and intelligence.
135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may
profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century.
The architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained
examples of the most beautiful round-arched work that had been developed
by the Norman schools; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric
splendour, and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can
conjecture the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have
presented some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever
existent among civil societies.
136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confusion of
following the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in
this place, my history of the city by some inquiry into technical points
relating to the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style
is familiar to us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to
believe the early date,--the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of
it are of the twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of
Pisa and Lucca, as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St.
Niccol, at Pisa, (though this was built in continuation of the older
style by Niccola himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched
condition, the general manner of buidling in palaces of the Norman
period in Val d'Arno. That of the Tosinghi, above the old market in
Florence, is especially mentioned by Villani, as more than a hundred
feet in height, entirely built with little pillars, (colonnelli,) of
marble. On their splendid masonry was founded the exquisiteness of that
which immediately succeeded them, of which the date is fixed by definite
examples both in Verona and Florence, and which still exists in noble
masses in the retired streets and courts of either city; too soon
superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate and monotonous
luxury of Venetian renaissance, or by the heaps of quarried stone
which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti and
Strozzi palaces.