V. A RIVEDERLA
Slowly, as the summer waned, I made my way up through the Casentino, once more past the strongholds and the little towns. Now and then on my way I met the herds, already setting out for the winter pastures of Maremma. The grapes were plucking or gathered in, and everywhere there were songs.
"Come volete faccia che non pianga,
Sapendo che da voi devo partire?
E tu, bello, in Maremma, ed io 'n montagna!
Chesta partenza mi farà morire."
So I came once more over Falterona, down to Castagno, that mountain village where Andrea del Castagno, the follower of Masaccio, was born, to S. Godenzo, between two streams, where Dante knew the castle of the Guidi, and where Conte Tegrimo of Porciano received Henry VII. Here, at last, I was in the very footsteps of Dante; for in the church there, in the choir set high above the old crypt, he signed the deed of alliance between the Guidi and the Ubaldini on 8th June 1302, "Actum in choro Sancti Gaudentii de pede Alpium."
Nothing remains of the place as it was in those days, I suppose, save the church, and that has been for the most part rebuilt; but the choir stands, so that we may say here, on 8th June 1302, Dante took quill and signed and spoke with his fellow-exiles.
Thence I followed the way to Dicomano by Sieve, at the foot of the Consuma, and then up stream to Borgo S. Lorenzo, the capital of the Mugello, and so by the winding road above the valley under the hills to Fiesole, to Florence, wrapped in rain, through which an evening sun was breaking.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [132] ] Now in S. Trinità in Firenze.
[ [133] ] Mr. Montgomery Carmichael (On the Old Road, etc., p. 293), quoting from Don Diego de' Franchi (Historia del Patriarcha S. Giovangualberto, p. 77: Firenze, 1640), says that S. Romuald and S. Giovanni Gualberto vowed eternal friendship between their Orders, "and for a long time, if a Camaldolese was visiting Vallombrosa, he would take off his own and put on a Vallombrosan habit as a symbol that the monks of the two Orders were brothers."
[ [134] ] Guida Illustrata del Casentino da C. Beni: Firenze, 1889. This perhaps the best guide-book in the Tuscan language, is certainly the best for the Casentino. Those who cannot read it must fall back on the charming and delightful book by Miss Noyes, The Casentino and its Story: Dent, 1905. It is too good a book to be left useless in its heavy bulky form. Perhaps Miss Noyes will give us a pocket edition.
XXVII. PRATO
Prato is like a flower that has fallen by the wayside that has faded in the dust of the way. She is a little rosy city, scarcely more than a castello, full of ruined churches; and in the churches are ruined frescoes, ruined statues, broken pillars, spoiled altars. You pass from one church to another—from S. Francesco, with its façade of green and white, its pleasant cloister and old frescoes, to La Madonna delle Carceri, to S. Niccolò da Tolentino, to S. Domenico—and you ask yourself, as you pass from one to another, what you have come to see: only this flower fallen by the wayside.
But in truth Prato is the child of Florence, a rosy child among the flowers—in the country, too, as children should be. Her churches are small. What could be more like a child's dream of a church than La Madonna delle Carceri? And the Palazzo Pretorio—it is a toy palace wonderfully carved and contrived, a toy that has been thrown aside. In the Palazzo Comunale the little daughter of Florence has gathered all her broken treasures: here a discarded Madonna, there a Bambino long since forgotten; flowers, too, flowers of the wayside, faded now, such as a little country girl will gather and toss into your vettura at any village corner in Tuscany; a terra-cotta of Luca della Robbia, and that would be a lily; a Madonna by Nero di Bicci, and that might have been a rose; a few panels by Lippo Lippi, and they were from the convent garden. In Via S. Margherita you come still upon a nosegay of such country blossoms, growing still by the wayside—Madonna with St. Anthony, S. Margherita, S. Costanza, and S. Stefano about her, painted by Filippino Lippo, a very lovely shrine, such as you cannot find in Florence, but which Prato seems glad to possess, on the way to the country itself.
And since Prato is a child, there are about her many children; mischievous, shy, joyful little people, who lurk round the coppersmiths, or play in the old churches, or hide about the corridors of Palazzo Comunale. And so it is not surprising that the greatest treasures of Prato are either the work of children—the frescoes, for instance, of Lippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti in the Duomo—or the presentment of them, yes, in their happiest moments; some dancing, while others play on pipes, or with cymbals full of surprising sweetness, in the open-air pulpit of Donatello; a pulpit from which five times every year a delightful and wonderful thing is shown, not without its significance, too, in this child-city of children—Madonna's Girdle, the Girdle of the Mother of them all, shown in the open air, so that even the tiniest may see.
The Duomo itself, simple and small, so that you may not lose your way there, however little you may be, was built in 1317, though a church has stood there apparently since about 750, while the façade, all in ivory and green, is a work of the fifteenth century. Donatello's pulpit, for which a contract was made in 1425 which named Michelozzo with him as one of those industriosi maestri intent on the work, is built into the south-west corner of the church overlooking the Piazza. Almost a complete circle in form, it is separated, unfortunately we may think, into seven panels divided by twin pilasters, where on a mosaic ground groups, crowds almost, of children dance and play and sing. It is the very spirit of childhood you see there, a naïve impetuosity that occasionally almost stumbles or forgets which way to turn; and if these panels have not the subtler rhythm of the Cantoria at Florence, they are more frankly just children's work, so that any day you may see some little maid of Prato gazing at those laughing babies, babies who dance really not without a certain awkwardness and simplicity, as though they were her own brothers, as indeed they are. Under the pulpit, Michelozzo has forged in bronze a relief of one face of a capital, where other children gaze with all the serious innocence of childhood at the pleasant world of the Piazza.
Passing under the terra-cotta of Madonna with St. Stephen and St. Laurence, made by Andrea della Robbia in 1489, you enter the church itself, a little dim and mysterious, and full of wonderful or precious things, those pillars, for instance, of green serpentine or the Sacra Cintola, the very Girdle of Madonna herself, in its own chapel there on the left behind the beautiful bronze screen of Bruno di Ser Lapo. There, too, you will always find a group of children, and surely it was for them that Agnolo Gaddi painted those frescoes of the life of Madonna and the gift of her Girdle to St. Thomas. For it seems that doubting Thomas was doubting to the last; he alone of all the saints was the least a child. How they wonder at him now, for first he could not believe that Jesus was risen from the dead, when the flowers rise, when the spring like Mary wanders to-day in tears in the garden. Was she not, indeed, the spring, who at break of day stood trembling on the verge of the garden, looking for the sun, the sun that had been dead all winter long? "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him." After all, is it not the cry of our very hearts often enough at Easter, when the summer for which we have waited too long seems never to be coming at all? It came at last, and St. Thomas, like to us maybe, but unlike the children, would not believe it till he had touched the very dayspring with his hands, and felt the old sweetness of the sunshine. And so, when the sun was set and the world desolate, Madonna too came to die, and was received into heaven amid a great company of angels, and they were the flowers, and there she is eternally. Now, when all this came to pass, St. Thomas was not by, and when he came and saw Winter in the world he would not believe that Madonna was dead, nor would he be persuaded that she was crowned Queen of Angels in heaven. And Mary, in pity of his sorrow, sent him by the hands of children "the girdle with which her body was girt,"—just a strip of the blue sky sprinkled with stars,—"and therefore he understood that she was assumpt into heaven." And if you ask how comes this precious thing in Prato, I ask where else, then, could it be but in this little city among the children, where the promise of Spring abides continually, and the Sun is ever in their hearts. Ah, Rose of the world, dear Lily of the fields, you will return; like Spring you will come from that heaven where you are, and in every valley the flowers will run before you and the poppies will stray among the corn, and the proud gladiolus will bow its violet head; then on the hillside I shall hear again the silver laughter of the olives, and in the wide valleys I shall hear all the rivers running to the sea, and the sweet wind will wander in the villages, and in the walled cities I shall find the flowers, and I too, with the children, shall wait on the hills at dawn to see you pass by with the Sun in your arms because it is spring—Stella Matutina, Causa nostrae laetitiae.
It was a certain lad of Prato, Michele by name, who, wandering in the wake of the great army in Palestine in 1096 at evening, by one of the wells of the desert, kissed the little daughter of a great priest, who gave him the Girdle of Madonna for love. Returning to Prato with this precious thing, and having nowhere to hide it, he put it, as a child might do, under his bed, and every night the angels for fear mounted guard about it. He died, and it came into the hands of a certain Uberto, a priest of the city; then, one tried to steal it, but he was put to death, and after, the Girdle was placed in the Duomo in a casket of ivory in a chapel of marble between the pillars of serpentine and lamps of gold. And Andrea Pisano carved a statue of Madonna, and they dressed her in silk and placed her on an altar, in which lay hidden the promise of spring. Then Ridolfo Ghirlandajo painted a fresco over the west door, of Madonna with her Girdle, and indeed they did all they knew in honour of their treasure: so that Mino da Fiesole and Rossellino made a pulpit and set it there in the nave, and there, too, you may see Madonna giving her Girdle to St. Thomas, and St. Stephen, the boy martyr, stoned to death, and other remembrances. In the south transept Benedetto da Maiano carved a Madonna and Child, while his brothers carved a Pietà; but it is not such work as this which calls you to the Duomo to-day, but certainly the Girdle itself, which, however, you can only see on certain occasions. [ [135] ] And then there is the work of those two children, Fra Lippo Lippi and the little girl who ran away from her convent for love of him, Lucrezia Buti; for though it was Lippo Lippi who painted, it was Lucrezia who served him for model, and since with him painting, for the first time perhaps, came to need life to inspire it, Lucrezia has her part in his work which it would be ungenerous to ignore.
Filippo Lippi was born in 1406 in a by-street of Florence called Ardiglione, behind the convent of the Carmelites, where he painted his first frescoes. His mother, poor soul, died in giving him life, and his father died too before he was three years old. For some time he lived in the care of a certain Mona Lapaccia, his aunt, who hardly brought him up till he was eight years old, when, as Vasari tells us, no longer able to support the burden of his maintenance, she took him to the Carmelites, who promised to make a friar of him. Florence was at the moment of its all too brief spring, in which painting and sculpture were to grow almost like flowers at every street corner, with a delicate beauty that is characteristic of wild flowers, which yet are hardy enough in reality. Reality, it is just that which is so touching in the work of this naïve, observant painter, whose work has much of the beauty of a folk-song, one of those rispetti which on every Tuscan hill you may hear any summer day above the song of the cicale. He went about, like the child he was his whole life long, looking at things out of curiosity, and remembering them for love. His adventures, those marvellous adventures of his childhood so carefully related by Vasari,—his capture by pirates on the beach of Ancona, his sojourn in Barbary, his escape hardly won by the astonishment of his art, are tales which, whether true or not, have a real value for us because they are indicative of his life, his view of the world: his life was in itself so daring, so delightful an adventure, that nothing that could have happened to him can seem marvellous beside it. For he has for the first time in Italy seen the things we have seen, and loved them: the children at the street corner, the flowers by the wayside, the girls grouped in a doorway looking sideways up the street, a mother nursing her little struggling son. In 1421 he had taken the habit, and then Masaccio had come to the convent to paint in the Brancacci Chapel, and Fra Filippo watched him, helping him perhaps, certainly fired by his work, till he who had played in the streets of Florence decided that he must be a painter. It is characteristic of his whole method that from the very beginning the cloister was too strait for him; he had the passion for seeing things, people, the life of the city, of strange cities too, for we hear of him vaguely in Naples, but soon in Florence again, where he painted in S. Ambrogio for the nuns the Coronation of the Virgin, now in the Accademia. It was this picture which Cosimo came upon, and, finding the painter, took him into his house. And truly, it was something very different from the holy work of Angelico, a painter Cosimo loved so well, that he found in that picture of the Coronation. That Virgin, was she Queen of Angels or some Florentine girl?—and then those angels, are they not the very children of the City of Flowers? But Lippo was not content; he who had found the convent too narrow for him in his insatiable desire for life, was not likely to be content with any burgher's palace. Cosimo ordered pictures, Lippo laughed in the streets, so they locked him in, and he knotted the sheets of the bed together and let himself out of the window, and for days he lived in the streets. So Cosimo let him alone, "labouring to keep him at his work by kindness," understanding, perhaps that it was a child with whom he had to deal, a child full of the wayward impulses of children, the naïve genius of youth, the happiness of all that;—the passions, too, a passion, in Filippo's case, for kisses. He was never far from a girl's arms; and then how he has painted them, shy, roguish, wanton daughters of Florence, with their laughing, obstinate, kicking babies, half laughing, half smiling, altogether serious too, while Lippo paints them with a kiss for payment.
He spent some months in Prato with his friend Fra Diamante, who had been his companion in novitiate. The nuns of S. Margherita commissioned him to paint a picture for their high altar, and it was while at work there that he caught sight of Lucrezia Buti. "Fra Filippo," says Vasari, "having had a glance at the girl, who was very beautiful and graceful, so persuaded the nuns that he prevailed upon them to permit him to make a likeness of her for the figure of their Virgin." The picture, now in Paris, was finished, not before Filippo had fallen in love with Lucrezia and she with him, so that he led her away from the nuns; and on a certain day, when she had gone forth to do honour to the Cintola, he bore her from their keeping. "Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards; for our vineyards have tender grapes."
Vasari tells us that Lucrezia never returned, but remained with Filippo, bearing him a son,—that Filippino "who eventually became a most excellent and very famous painter like his father."
And it is said that not Lucrezia alone was involved in that adventure, for she had a sister not less lovely than herself, called Spinetta; she also fled away, and this again brought disgrace on the nuns, so that the Pope himself was compelled to interfere, for they were all living in Prato, not in disgrace but happily, children in a city of children. Cosimo, however, befriended them, and would laugh till the tears came in telling the tale, till Pius II, not altogether himself guiltless of the love of women, at his request unfrocked Filippo and authorised his union with Lucrezia. However this may be, and however strange it may seem, this wolf, who had stolen the lamb from the fold of Holy Church, was engaged by the Duomo authorities in this very city of the theft to paint in fresco there in the choir the story of St. John Baptist and of St. Stephen. It is a masterpiece. As we look to-day on the faded beauty of his work, it is with surprise we ask ourselves why he has signed the fresco of the death of St. Stephen, for instance, Frater Filippus; surely he was frater no longer, but Sponsus. He worked for four years at those frescoes, Fra Diamante coming from Florence to help him. He was a child, and the children of Prato understood him—the Medici too; for when the work in Prato was finished, Piero de' Medici roused himself to find him work, again in a church, the Duomo of Spoleto, where he has painted very sweetly the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Coronation of the Virgin. Could these things have happened in any other city save Prato, or to any other than a child in the days not so long before Savonarola was burned? No; Fra Lippo played among the children of Italy, and has told us of them with simplicity and sweetness,—little stumbling fellows of the house doors, the laughing children about the fountains, the slim, pale girls who walk arm-in-arm, smiling faintly, in every Tuscan city at sunset, the flowers by the wayside, the shepherds of the hills. And he has made Jesus in the image of his little son; and Madonna is but Lucrezia Buti, whom he kissed into the world. You may see them to-day if you will go to Prato.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [135] ] The occasions are Christmas Day, Easter Day, May 1, August 15, and September 8.
XXVIII. PISTOJA
If St. Francis of Assisi dreamed his whole life long of the resurrection of love among men, and in the valleys of Umbria went about like a second Jesus doing good, with an immense love in his heart singing his Laudes Creaturarum by the wayside; Dante Alighieri, the greatest poet of his country, might almost seem to have been overwhelmed with hatred, a hatred which is perhaps but the terrible reverse of an intolerable love, but which is an impeachment, nevertheless, not only of his own time, of the cities of his country, but of himself too, for while he thus sums up the Middle Age and judges it, he is himself its most marvellous child, losing himself at last in one of its ideals. St. Francis of Assisi, concerned only with humanity, has by love contrived the Renaissance of man, assured as he was by the love of God, His delight in us His creatures. But for Dante, bitter with loneliness, wandering in the Hell, the Purgatory, the Paradise of his own heart, any such wide and overwhelming love might seem to have been impossible. Imprisoned in the adamant of his personality, he has little but hatred and contempt for the world he knew so well. How scornful he is! Some secret sorrow seems to have burnt up the wells of sweetness in his nature, from which he once drew a love for all mankind. He seems to have gone about hating people, so that if he speaks of Florence it is with a passionate enmity, if of Siena with scorn, Pisa has only his contempt, Arezzo is to him abominable and beastly. He has judged his country as God Himself will not judge it, and he kept his anger for ever. And since the great Florentine can bring himself to bid Florence
"Godi, Fiorenza poi che sei si grande
Che per mare, e per terra batti l'ali,
E per l'Inferno il tuo nome si spande,"
it is not wonderful that Pistoja is lost in his scorn. Coming upon Vanni Fucci continually consumed by the adder, he hears him say
"Ahi Pistoja, Pistoja, chè non stanzi
D'incenerarti, si che più non duri
Poi che in mal far lo seme tuo avanzi?"
"O Giustizia di Dio, quanto è severa,..." yet Dante's will beggar it.
The origin of Pistoja is obscure. Some ascribe its foundation to the Boian Gauls, some to the Romans; however that may be, it was here in Pistoria, as the city was then called, that the army of the Republic came up with Cataline, and defeated him and slew him in B.C. 62. There follows an impenetrable silence, unbroken till, by the will of the Countess Matilda, Tuscany passed, not without protest as we know, to the Pope, when Pistoja seems to have vindicated its liberty in 1117, its commune contriving her celebrated municipal statutes. In 1198 she made one of the Tuscan League against the empire, and in the first year of the thirteenth century she had extended her power over the neighbouring strongholds from Fucecchio to the Arno. After the death of Frederic II, in 1250, she became Guelph with the greater part of Tuscany, and in 1266 took part with Charles of Anjou and fought on his side at Benevento under the Pistojese captains, Giovanni and Corrado da Montemagno. About this time we first hear the name Cancellieri, Cialdo de' Cancellieri being Potestà. At Campaldino the Pistojese fought under Corso Donati, and turned the battle against the Aretines; and it was under the Potestà Giano della Bella in 1294 [ [136] ] that the Priore of the twelve anziani, established after Campaldino, was named Gonfaloniere of Justice. Villani gives us a vivid picture of Pistoja in 1300. "In these times," says the prince of Florentine chroniclers, "the city of Pistoja being in happy and great and good estate, among the other citizens there was one family very noble and puissant, not, however, of very ancient lineage, which was called Cancellieri, born of Ser Cancelliere, which was a merchant and gained much wealth, and by his two wives had many sons, which, by reason of their riches, all became knights and men of worth and substance, and from them were born many sons and grandsons, so that at this time they numbered more than one hundred men in arms, rich and puissant and of many affairs; and indeed, not only were they the leading citizens of Pistoja, but they were among the more puissant families of Tuscany. There arose among them, through their exceeding prosperity, and through the suggestion of the devil, contempt and enmity, between them which were born of one wife and them which were born of the other; and the one took the name of the Black Cancellieri, and the other of the White, and this grew until they fought together, but it was not any great affair. And one of those on the side of the White Cancellieri, having been wounded, they on the side of the Black Cancellieri, to the end they might be at peace and concord with them, sent him which had done the injury and handed him over to the mercy of them which had received it, that they should take amend, and vengeance for it at their will; they on the side of the White Cancellieri, ungrateful and proud, having neither pity nor love, cut off the hand of him which had been commended to their mercy on a horse-manger. By which sinful beginning not only was the house of Cancellieri divided, but many violent deaths arose thereupon, and all the city of Pistoja was divided, for some held with one part and some with the other, and they called themselves the Whites and the Blacks, forgetting among themselves the Guelph and Ghibelline parties; and many civil strifes and much peril and loss of life arose therefore in Pistoja...." The Whites seem to have been little more than Ghibellines, to which party they presently allied themselves, when Andrea Gherardini was captain. This party soon got the upper hand in Pistoja, thus bringing down the hatred of the Lucchesi and the Fiorentini; a cruel siege and pillage—touchingly described by Dino Campagni—following in 1305. Exiled, the Whites thronged to the banner of Uguccione, and helped to win the battle of Montecatini in 1305. This done, Uguccione became tyrant of Pistoja till Castruccio Castracani flung him out, and by the will of Lewis of Bavaria became himself tyrant of the city, defeating the Florentines again in 1325. In his absence the Florentines besieged Pistoja again three years later, and took it; the fortunate death of Castruccio confirming them in their conquest, which thus became the vassal of the Lily.
Such in brief is the story of Pistoja; but if we look a little more closely into the mere confusion of those wars, two facts will perhaps emerge clearly, and help us to understand the position.
Florence, a city of merchants, was the last power in Italy to make war for the pleasure of fighting, yet in turn she conquered every city in Tuscany, save Lucca alone. [ [137] ] What can have been the overmastering necessity that drove her on so bloody a path? Certainly not a love of empire, for she, who was so unfortunate in the art of government, was not likely to lust for dominion. Like all the Florentine wars, that which at last brought Pisa under her yoke was a war on behalf of the guilds of Florence, a war of merchants. Florence humbled Pisa because Pisa held the way to the sea, she brought Arezzo and Siena low and bought Cortona because they stood on the roads to Rome, whose banker she was. [ [138] ] And did not Pistoja guard the way to the north, to Bologna, to Milan, to Flanders, and England, whence came the wool that was her wealth? [ [139] ] Thus in those days as to-day, war was not a game which one might play or not as one pleased, but the inexorable result of the circumstances of life. When Bologna closed the passes, Florence was compelled to fight or to die; when Pisa taxed Florentine merchandise she signed her own death.
On the other hand, the passionate desire of Pistoja was to be free. Liberty—it was the dream of her life; not the liberty of the people, but the essential liberty of the State, of the city. So she was Ghibelline because Florence was Guelph. All her life long she feared lest Florence should eat her up: that death was ever before her eyes. This and this alone is the cause of the hate of the great Florentine: he hated Florence with an intolerable love because she thrust him out; he hated Pisa, Arezzo, Siena, and Pistoja because they feared or rivalled Florence, and would not be reconciled. His dream of an Italy united under a foreign Emperor, the ghost of the Roman Empire, remained a dream, noble and yet ignoble too. For it is for this that we may accuse him of a lack of clairvoyance, a real failure to appreciate the future, which in the innumerable variety of her cities gave Italy an intellectual life less sustained and clear than the intellectual life of Greece, but more spiritual and more various. In Italy Antiquity and Hebraism became friends, to our undoubted benefit, to the gain of the whole world.
But little is left in the smiling, gracious city to-day to recall those bitter quarrels so long ago. Pistoja, beyond any other Tuscan town perhaps, is full of grace, and gives one always, as it were, a smiling salutation. La Ferrignosa she was called of old, but it is the last title that fits her now, for the clank of her irons has long been silent, and nothing any longer disturbs the quiet of her days. S. Atto is her saint, and it is by his street that you enter the city, walled still, coming at last into the Piazza Cino, Cino da Pistoja, one of the sweetest and least fortunate of Tuscan poets. Turning thence into Via Cavour, you come to S. Giovanni Evangelista, once without the walls, but now not far from the middle of the city, really the earliest of her churches, a Lombard building of about 1160, the façade decorated somewhat in the Pisan manner with rows of pillars, while over the gates is a relief of the Last Supper, by Gruamonte, whom some have thought to be the architect of the church. Within is the beautiful pulpit of Fra Guglielmo, disciple of Niccolò Pisano, and there on the east he has carved the Annunciation and the Birth of Jesus; on the north, the Washing of the Disciples' Feet, the Crucifixion, the Deposition, and Christ in Hades; while on the west is the Ascension and the Death of the Virgin. And just as at Bologna, in the tomb of St. Dominic, Fra Guglielmo's work is but an inferior copy of the style of his master, so here in this pulpit, built most probably in 1270, we find just Niccolò's work spoiled, in a mere repetition, feeble, and without any of the devotional spirit we might expect in the work of a friar. Beside it, near the next altar, is a very beautiful group in glazed terra-cotta, in the manner of the della Robbia, by Fra Paolino. The holy water basin supported by figures of the Virtues is a much-injured work by Giovanni Pisano.
Following Via Cavour, past Palazzo Panciatichi-Cellesi, through Via Francesco Magni, into Piazza del Duomo, you are in the midst of all that was most splendid in Pistoja of old: the Duomo, with its old fortified tower, Torre del Potestà, which still carries the arms of those captains; the Baptistery, high above the way, designed by Andrea Pisano, with its open-air pulpit and broken sculptures; the magnificent Palazzo del Comune; and opposite, the not less splendid Palazzo Pretorio, the palace of the Podestà. Of old the Piazza was less spacious, but in 1312 it was enlarged, and later, too, the palace of the Capitano, on the north, was destroyed. Here every Wednesday they still hold the corn-market, and every Saturday a market of stuffs, silks, and tissues.
It was S. Romolo who first brought the gospel to Pistoja, and the tradition is that he converted a temple built by the Romans to the God Mars into a church, on the spot where now the Duomo stands, [ [140] ] and indeed in 1599 certain inscriptions were found, and the capitals of some Roman columns. It is generally thought that a church was built here in the early part of the fifth century, dedicated to St. Martin of Tours, on whose day Stilicho, that Roman general who was by birth a Vandal, gained a victory over Radaugasius and his army of some 400,000 Goths, who had ravaged the country as far as Florence in 406. However this may be, in 589 the church was finally rebuilt, and certainly re-dedicated to S. Zenone, the Bishop of Verona, who, so it was said, had saved the Pistojese from the floods by breaking through the Gonfolina Pass, that narrow defile beyond Signa through which the Arno flows, with the Ombrone in her bosom, into the Empolese. After being dedicated at various times to many saints, in 1443 it was given to S. Zenone, whose name it still bears. The present church is for the most part a work of the twelfth century, and certainly not the work of Niccolò Pisano. The façade, like the rest of the church, has suffered an unfortunate restoration. The marble loggia is a work of the fifteenth century, and the two statues are, one of S. Jacopo, by Scarpellino, the other of S. Zenone, by Andrea Vaccà. The beautiful terra-cotta over the great door of Madonna and Child with Angels, and the roof above, are the work of Andrea della Robbia. The frescoes of the story of S. Jacopo are fourteenth-century work of Giovanni Balducci the Pisan.
The splendid and fierce Campanile, still called Torre del Potestà, stood till about the year 1200, alone, a stronghold of the city. Giovanni Pisano converted it to its present form in 1301.
Within, the church has been greatly spoiled. The monument to Cino da Pistoja, poet and professor, was decreed in 1337 by the Popolo Pistojese, and was moved about the church from one place to another, till in 1839 it was erected in its present position. There you may see him lecturing to his students, and one of them is a woman; can it be that Selvaggia whom he loved?
"Ay me, alas! the beautiful bright hair ..."
"Weep, Pistoja," says Petrarch, in not the least musical of his perfect sonnets, in celebrating the death of his master—
"Pianga Pistoia e i cittadin perversi
Che perdut' hanno si dolce vicino;
E rallegres' il ciel or' ello è gito."
Dante, who exchanged sonnets with Cino and rallied him about his inconstancy, calls the Pistojese worthy of the Beast [ [141] ] who dwelt among them; Petrarch calls them i cittadin perversi; the truth being that the Neri were in power and had exiled "il nostro amoroso messer Cino."
Close by, against the west wall, is the great font of Andrea Ferrucci, the disciple of Bernardo Rossellino, with five reliefs of the story of St. John Baptist. Opposite Cino's monument is the tomb of Cardinal Fortiguerra. For long this disappointing monument, so full of gesticulation, passed as the work of Verrocchio; it is to-day attributed rather to Lorenzetto, his disciple.
Passing up the north aisle, we enter at last the Cappella del Sacramento, under whose altar St. Felix, the Pistojese, sleeps, while on the south wall hangs one of the best works of Lorenzo di Credi, Madonna with Jesus in her arms, and St. John Baptist and S. Zenone on either side. Opposite is the bust of Bishop Donato de' Medici, by Antonio Rossellino. The little crypt under the high altar is scarcely worth a visit, but the great treasure of the church, the silver frontal of the high altar, is now to be found in the Cappella della Città, and over it, in a chest within the reredos, is the body, still uncorrupted, of S. Atto, Bishop of Pistoja, who died in 1155. The silver frontal, certainly the finest in Italy, with its wings and reredos of silver and enamel, was removed from the high altar in 1786. It is the work of Andrea di Puccio di Ognibene, the Pistojese goldsmith: it was finished in 1316. It is carved with fifteen stories from the New Testament, and with many statues of prophets and pictures of saints. Of the two wings, that on the left, consisting of stories from the Old Testament, with the Nativity, the Presentation and the Marriage of the Virgin, is the work of Pietro of Florence—it was finished about 1357; that on the right, carved in 1371 by Leonardo di Ser Giovanni, consists of the story of St. James and the finding of his body at Campostella. All the guide-books tell you that it was this treasure that Vanni Fucci stole on Shrove Tuesday in 1292, but, as I suppose, since this altar was not begun till 1314, it must have been the earlier treasure which this replaced. Vanni Fucci is famous because of his encounter with Dante in Hell.
"Vanni Fucci am I called,
Not long since rained down from Tuscany
To this dire gullet. Me the bestial life
And not the human pleased, mule that I was,
Who in Pistoja found my worthy den."
Dante tell us—
"I did not mark
Through all the gloomy circles of the abyss,
Spirit that swelled so proudly 'gainst his God." [ [142] ]
It is in Pistoja better almost than anywhere else in Italy that these early sculptors—men who were at work here before Niccolò Pisano came from Apulia—may be studied. Rude enough as we may think, they are yet in their subtle beauty, if we will but look at them, the marvellous product of a time which many have thought altogether barbarous. Consider, then, the reliefs over the door of S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas, or the sculptures on the fagade of S. Bartolommeo in Pantano, the work of Rodolfinus and Guido Bigarelli of Como: they are all works of the twelfth century, and it is, as I think, no naïve beginning we see, but the last hours of an art that is already thousands of years old, about to be born again in the work of Pisano. And indeed we may trace very happily the rise of Tuscan sculpture in Pistoja. Though she possesses no work of Niccolò himself, his influence is supreme in the pulpit of S. Giovanni Fuorcivitas, and it is the beautiful work of his son Giovanni we see in the great pulpit of S. Andrea, where you enter by a door carved in 1166 by Gruamonte with the Adoration of the Magi. Unlike the work of Fra Guglielmo in S. Giovanni, the pulpit of S. Andrea is hexagonal, and there Giovanni has carved in high relief the Birth of Our Lord, the Adoration of the Magi, the Murder of the Innocents, the Crucifixion, and the Last Judgment. They were carved in 1301, before Giovanni began the Pisan pulpit now in the Museo in that city. And if we see here the first impulse of the Gothic, the Romantic spirit, in Italian art, as in Niccolò's work we have seen the classic inspiration, it is the far result of these panels that we may discover in the terra-cotta frieze on the vestibule of the Ospedale del Ceppo. That is a work of the sixteenth century, and thus the fifteenth-century work, ever present with us in Florence, is missing here. It is not, however, to any member of the della Robbia clan that we owe this beautiful work, I think, but to some unknown sculptor with whom Buglioni may have worked. For the seven reliefs representing works of Charity and divided by figures of the Virtues are of a surprising splendour, a really classic beauty, and Burckhardt wishes to compare them with the frescoes of Andrea del Sarto and his companions rather than with the sculpture of that time.
One wanders about this quiet, alluring city, where the sculptures are scattered like flowers on every church porch and municipal building, without the weariness of the sightseer. One day you go by chance to S. Francesco al Prato, a beautiful and spacious church in a wilderness of Piazza, built in 1294. And there suddenly you come upon the little flowers of St. Francis, faded and fallen—here a brown rose, there a withered petal; here a lily broken short, there a nosegay drooped and dead: and you realise that here you are face to face with something real which has passed away, and so it is with joy you hurry out into the sun, which will always shine with splendour and life, the one thing perhaps that, if these dead might rise from their tombs in S. Francesco, they would recognise as a friend, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.
Other churches too there are in Pistoja: S. Piero Maggiore, where, as in Florence, so here, the Bishop, coming to the city, was wedded in a lovely symbol to the Benedictine Abbess—there too are the works of Maestro Bono the sculptor; S. Salvadore, which stands in the place where, as it is said, they buried Cataline; S. Domenico, where you may find the beautiful tombs of Andrea Franchi and of Filippo Lazzeri the humanist—this made by Rossellino in 1494. Pistoja is a city of churches; one wanders into them and out again always with new delight; and indeed, they lend a sort of gravity to a place that is light-hearted and alluring beyond almost any other in this part of Tuscany certainly. Thinking thus of her present sweetness, one is glad to find that one poet at least has thought Dante too hard with men. It is strange that it should be Cino who sings—
"This book of Dante's, very sooth to say,
Is just a poet's lovely heresy,
Which by a lure as sweet as sweet can be
Draws other men's concerns beneath its sway;
While, among stars' and comets' dazzling play,
It beats the right down, let's the wrong go free,
Shows some abased, and others in great glee,
Much as with lovers is Love's ancient way.
Therefore his vain decrees, wherein he lied,
Fixing folks' nearness to the Fiend their foe,
Must be like empty nutshells flung aside.
Yet through the vast false witness set to grow,
French and Italian vengeance on such pride
May fall, like Antony's on Cicero." [ [143] ]
FOOTNOTES:
[ [136] ] Cf. Dino Campagni, Cronica Fiorentina, Book 1, p. 62. When appointed Podestà of Pistoja, Giano rather raised strife than pacified the factions. Cf. also Villari, History of Florence, p. 445.
[ [137] ] Strictly speaking, she never conquered Siena; Charles V did that.
[ [138] ] In the Middle Age, Cortona and Arezzo were not on the road to Rome, but so far as Florence was concerned, Siena, her holding that she acquired these cities to keep Via Aretina open. Cf. Repetti, v. 715.
[ [139] ] That Pistoja was not on the great Via Francesca goes for nothing, she threatened it.
[ [140] ] There is a most excellent little book, Nuova Guida di Pistoja, by Cav. Prof. Giuseppe Tigri (Pistoja, 1896), which I strongly recommend to the reader's notice. I wish to acknowledge my debt to it. Unlike so many guides, it is full of life itself, and makes the city live for us also.
[ [141] ] Bestia, probably a nickname of Vanni Fucci's; cf. Inferno, xxiv, 125.
[ [142] ] Inferno, xxiv. 125, 126; xxv. 13, 14.
[ [143] ] "Cino impugns the verdicts of Dante's Commedia," a sonnet translated by D.G. Rossetti.
Note.—No English writers have written well of Pistoja, for first they always write from a Florentine point of view, and then they quit too soon. I plead guilty too. The key-note to Pistoja is given in that saying of Macchiavelli's, that the Florentine people "per fuggire il nome di crudele lascio distruggere Pistoia." Il Principe, cap. xvii. Cf. also Discorsi iii. 27. It is, of course, all a matter of Panciatichi and Cancellieri. Cf. Zdekauer Statuti Pistoiesi dei Secoli xii. e xiii.
XXIX. LUCCA
Who that has ever seen the Pistojese the Val di Lima, the country of S. Marcello, the Val di Reno, the country about Pracchia, does not love it—the silent ways through the chestnut woods, the temperance of the hill country after the heat of the cities, the country ways after the ways of the town? And there are songs there too. But to-day my way lies through the valley, Val di Nievole, towards Lucca, lost in the plain at the gate of the Garfagnana. Serravalle, with its old gateway and high Rocca, which fell to Castruccio Castracani; Monsummano, far on the left, with its old church in the valley; Montecatini, with its mineral springs; Buggiano, and Pescia with its mulberries, where the Church of S. Francesco hides and keeps its marvellous portrait of S. Francesco—these are the towns at the foot of the mountains that I shall pass before I turn into the plain between the island hills and come at last to Lucca, Lucca l'Ombrosa, round whose high ramparts that have stood a thousand sieges now in whispering ranks there stand the cool planes of the valley, the shadowy trees that girdle the city with a cintola of green and gold.
Lucca is the city of a great soldier, of one of the most charming of Tuscan sculptors, and of Santa Zita. Lucca l'Ombrosa I call her, but she is the city of light too—Luce, light; it is the patriotic derivation of her name. For One came to her with a star in His bosom, the Star of Bethlehem, that heralded the sweet dawn which crept through the valleys and filled them with morning; so Lucca was the first city in Italy, as they say, to receive the light of the gospel.
The foundation of this city, which alone of all the cities of Tuscany was to keep in some sort her independence till Napoleon wrested it from her, is obscure. She was not Etruscan, but possibly a Ligurian settlement that came into the power of Rome about 200 B.C., and by 56 B.C. we have certain news of her, for it was here that Caesar, Pompeius, and Crassus formed the triumvirate. Overwhelmed by the disasters that befell the Empire, we hear something of her in the sixth century, when S. Frediano came from Ireland, from Galway, and after a sojourn in Rome became a hermit in the Monti Pisani, till in 565 John III made him Bishop of Lucca. It seems to have been about this time that Lucca began to be of importance, after the fall of the Lombard rule, governed by her own Dukes. And then the Bishops of Lucca, those Bishop Counts who governed her so long, had a jurisdiction which extended to the confines of the Patrimony of St. Peter. The same drama no doubt was played in Lucca as in Pisa or Florence, a struggle betwixt nobles of foreign descent and the young commune of the Latin population. We find Lucca on the papal side in 1064, but in 1081 she joins the Emperor with Siena and Ferrara; but for the most part after Pisa became Ghibelline Lucca was Guelph, for her friends were the enemies of Pisa. Thus the fight went on, a fight really of self-preservation, of civic liberty as it were, each city prizing its ego above every consideration of justice or unity.
It was the fourteenth century that gave Lucca her great captain, Castruccio Castracani, the hero of Machiavelli's remarkable sketch, the sketch perhaps for the Prince. It is strange that Machiavelli should have cared to write of the only two men who might in more favourable circumstances have forged a kingdom out of various Republics, Lordships, Duchies, and Marquisates of the peninsula, Castruccio degli Intelminelli and Cesare Borgia.
It seems, to follow the virile yet subtle tale of Machiavelli, that at the end of the thirteenth century there was born out of the family of Castracani one Antonio, who, entering himself into Orders, was made a Canon of S. Michele in Lucca, and was even called Messer Antonio. He had for sister a widow of Buonaccorso Cinami, who at the death of her husband had come to live with him, resolved to marry no more. Now behind the house where he lived, Messer Antonio, good man, had a vineyard, and it happened one morning about sunrise that Donna Dianora (for that was the sister's name) walking in the vineyard to gather herbs for a salad (as women frequently do), heard a rustling under the leaves, and turning toward it she fancied it cried, and going towards it she saw the hands and face of a child, which, tumbling up and down in the leaves, seemed to call for relief. Donna Dianora, partly astonished and partly afraid, took it up very tenderly, carried it home, washed it, and having put it in clean clothes, presented it to Messer Antonio. "Eccololi!" says she, "and what will Messere do with this?" "Dianora," says he, with a gasp, "Dianora...!" "No, it is not," says she, fluttering suddenly with rage, "and I'll thank you, Messer Antonio," and that she said for spite, "I'll thank you to keep your lewd thoughts to yourself," says she, "and for the fine ladies, fine ladies," says she, "that come to see you at S. Michele," and she fell to weeping, holding the child in her arms. "I that might have had little hands (manine) under my chin many's the time if Buonaccorso had not died so old." And she carried the child out of his sight. Then Messer Antonio later, when he understood the case, being no less affected with wonder and compassion than his sister before him, debated with himself what to do, and presently concluded to bring the little fellow up; for, as he said, "I, Antonio, am a priest, and my sister hath no children." So he christened the child Castruccio after his own father, and Dianora looked to him as carefully as if he had been her own. Now Castruccio's graces increased with his years, and therefore in his heart Messer Antonio designed him for a priest; but Dianora would not have it so, and indeed he showed as yet but little inclination to that kind of life, which was not to be wondered at, his natural disposition, as Dianora said, tending quite another way. For though he followed his studies, when he was scarce fourteen years old he began to run after the soldiers and knights, and always to be wrestling and running, and soon he troubled himself very little with reading, unless it were such things as might instruct him for war. And Messer Antonio was sore afflicted.
Now the great house in Lucca at that time was Guinigi, and Francesco was then head of it. Ah! a handsome gentleman, rich too, who had borne arms all his life long under the Visconti of Milan. With them he had fought for the Ghibellines till the Lucchesi looked upon him as the very life of that party. This Francesco was used to walk in Piazza S. Michele, where one day he watched Castruccio playing among his companions. Seeing his strength and confidence, he called him to him, and asked him if he did not prefer a gentleman's family, where he could learn to ride the great horse and exercise his arms, before the cloister of a churchman. Guinigi had only to look at him to see which way his heart jumped, so not long after he made a visit to Antonio and begged Castruccio of him in so pressing and yet so civil a manner, that Antonio, finding he could not master the natural inclinations of the lad, let him go.
Often after that, Dianora and Antonio too, seeing him ride by in attendance on Francesco, would admire with what address he sat his horse, with what grace he managed his lance, with what comeliness his sword; and indeed scarce any of his age dare meet him at the Barriere. He was about eighteen years old when he made his first campaign. For the Guelphs had driven the Ghibellines out of Pavia, and Visconti sought the help of his friends, among them of Francesco Guinigi. Francesco gave Castruccio a company of foot, and marched with him to help Visconti: and Castruccio won such reputation in that fight, that his name galloped through Lombardy, and when he returned to Lucca the whole city had him in respect.
Not long after, Guinigi fell sick; in truth he was about to die. Seeing, then, that he had a son scarcely thirteen years old, called Pagolo, he gave him into Castruccio's charge, begging him to show the same generosity to his son as he had received from him. And all this Castruccio promised.
Now the head of the Guelph party in Lucca was a certain Signor Giorgio Opizi, who hoped when Francesco was dead to get the city into his power, so that when he saw Castruccio so well thought of and so strong, he began to speak secretly of a new tyranny, by which he meant the growing favour of Castruccio. Pisa at this time was under the government of Uguccione della Faggiuola of Arezzo, whom the Pisans had chosen as their captain, but who had made himself their lord. He had befriended certain Ghibellines banished from Lucca, and therefore Castruccio entered into secret treaty with him in order that these exiles might be restored. So he furnished in Lucca the Tower of Honour, which was in his charge, in case he might have to defend it. He met Uguccione on the night appointed, between Lucca and the hills towards Pisa, and, agreeing with him, Uguccione marched on the city to St. Peter's Gate and set fire to it, while he attacked another on the other side of the town. Meanwhile, his friends within the city ran about in the night calling To your arms, and filled the streets with confusion; so that Uguccione easily entered, and, having seized the city, caused all the Opizi to be murdered as well as all the Guelphs he could find. Nor did he stop there, for he exiled one hundred of the best families, who immediately fled to Florence and Pistoja. The Florentines, seeing the Guelph power tottering, put an army in the field, and met the Pisans and Lucchesi at Montecatini. There followed the memorable battle called after that place, in which the Florentines lost some ten thousand men. [ [144] ] This was in 1315. Now whether, as Villani says, Uguccione won that battle, or, as Machiavelli asserts, was sick, so that the honour fell to Castruccio, there was already of necessity much jealousy between the two captains; for certainly Castruccio had not called on Uguccione to make him Lord of Lucca, nor had Uguccione obeyed that call for mere love of Castruccio. He therefore, being returned to Pisa, sent his son Nerli to seize Lucca and kill Castruccio, but the lad bungled it: when Uguccione himself set out to repair this, he found the city ready, demanding the release of Castruccio, whom Nerli had imprisoned. Seeing, then, the mood of the city, and that he had but four hundred horse with him, he was compelled to agree to this. And at once Castruccio, who was in no wise daunted, assembled his friends and flung Uguccione out of Lucca. Meantime the Pisans had themselves revolted, so that this tyrant was compelled to retire into Lombardy.
It was now that Castruccio saw his opportunity. He got himself chosen Captain-General of all the Lucchese forces for a twelvemonth, and began to reduce the surrounding places near and far which had come under the rule of Uguccione. The first of these to be attacked was Sarzana in Lunigiana. But first he agreed with Pisa, who in hatred of Uguccione sent him men and stores. Sarzana proved very strong, so that before he won it he was compelled to build a fortress beyond the walls, which we may see to this day. Thus Sarzana was taken, and later Massa, Carrara, and Avenza easily enough, until the whole of Lunigiana was in his power, even Fosdinovo, and later Remoli, and that was to secure his way to Lombardy. Then he returned to Lucca, and was received with every sort of joy.
About this time Ludovic of Bavaria came into Italy seeking the Imperial Crown, and Castruccio went to meet him with 500 horse, leaving Pagolo Guinigi his Deputy in Lucca. Ludovic received him with much kindness, making him Lord of Pisa and his vicar in all Tuscany: and thus Castruccio became the head of the Ghibelline party both in Lombardy and Tuscany. But Castruccio's aim went higher yet, for he hoped not only to be vicar but master indeed of Tuscany, and to this end he made a league with Matteo Visconti of Milan; and seeing that Lucca had five gates, he divided the country into five parts, and to every part he set a captain, so that presently he could march with 20,000 men beside the Pisans. Now the Florentines were already busy in Lombardy against Visconti, who besought Castruccio to make a diversion. This he readily did, taking Fucecchio and S. Miniato al Tedesco. Then hearing of trouble in Lucca, he returned and imprisoned the Poggi, who had risen against him; an old and notable family, but he spared them not. Meanwhile Florence retook S. Miniato; and Castruccio, not caring to fight while he was insecure at home, made a truce carefully enough, that lasted two years.
He now set himself first to make Lucca secure, and for this he built a fortress in the city; and then to possess himself of Pistoja—for he even thought thereby to gain a foothold in Florence herself—and for this he entered into correspondence secretly with both the Neri and the Bianchi there. These two factions did not hesitate to use the enemy of their city to help their ambitions, so that while the Bianchi expected him at one gate, the Neri waited at the other, the one receiving Guinigi and the other Castruccio himself with their men into the city. Not content with thus winning Pistoja, he thought to control the city of Rome also, which he did in the name of the Emperor, the Pope being in Avignon; and this done, he went through the city with two devices embroidered on his coat: the one before read, "He is as pleaseth God," and that behind, "And shall be what God will have him." Now the Florentines were furious at the cunning breach of their truce by which Castruccio had got himself Pistoja; so, while he was in Rome, they determined to capture the place: which they did one night by a ruse, destroying all Castruccio's party. And when he heard it, Castruccio came north in great anger. But at first the Florentines were too quick for him: they got together all of the Guelph league, and before Castruccio was back again, held Val di Nievole. Seeing their greatness—for they were 40,000 in number, while he on his return could muster but 12,000 men at most—he would not meet them in the plain, nor in the Val di Pescia, but resolved to draw that great army into the narrow ways of Serravalle, where he could deal with them. Now Serravalle is a Rocca not on the road but on the hillside above, and the way down into the valley is rather strait than steep till you come to the place where the waters divide: so strait that twenty men abreast take up all the way. That Rocca belonged to a German lord called Manfredi, whose throat Castruccio cheerfully cut. The Florentines, who were eager not only to hold all Val di Nievole but to carry the war away from Pistoja towards Lucca, knew nothing of Serravalle having fallen to Castruccio, so on they came in haste, and encamped above it, hoping to pass the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion. Horse and foot fell foul upon one another, and both upon the baggage. There was no way left for them but to run, which they did helter-skelter in the plain of Pistoja, where each man shifted for himself. But Castruccio followed them even to Peretola at the gates of Florence, carrying Pistoja and Prato on the way; there he coined money under their walls, [ [145] ] while his soldiers insulted over the conquered; and to make his triumph more remarkable, nothing would serve the turn but naked women must run Corsi on horseback under the very walls of the city. And to deliver their city from Castruccio, the Florentines were compelled to send to the King of Naples, and to pay him annual tribute.
But Castruccio's business was always spoiled by revolt, and this time it was Pistoja which rose, and later Pisa. Then the Guelphs raised a great army—30,000 foot and 10,000 horse it was—and after a little, while Castruccio was busy with Pisa, they seized Lastra, Signa, Montelupo, Empoli, and laid siege to S. Miniato: this in May 1328. Castruccio, in no wise discomposed, thought at last Tuscany was in his grasp; therefore he went to Fucecchio and entrenched himself with 20,000 foot and 4000 horse, leaving 5000 foot in Pisa with Guinigi. Fucecchio is a walled city on the other side of Arno opposite S. Miniato. There Castruccio waited; nor could he have chosen better, for the Florentines could not attack him without fording the river from S. Miniato, which they had taken, and dividing their forces. This they were compelled to do, and Castruccio fell upon and beat them, leaving some 20,000 of them dead in the field, while he lost but fifteen hundred. Nevertheless, that proved to be his last fight, for death found him at the top of his fortune; riding into Fucecchio after the battle, he waited a-horseback to greet his men at the great gate of the place which is still called after him. Heated as he was with the fight, it was the evening wind that slew him; for he fell into an ague, and, neglecting it, believing himself sufficiently hardened, it presently killed him, and Pagolo Guinigi ruled in his stead, but without his fortune.
Following that strangely successful career, that for Macchiavelli at any rate seemed like a promise of the Deliverer that was to come, the first of modern historians gives us many of Castruccio's sayings set down at haphazard, which bring the man vividly before us. Thus when a friend of his, seeing him engaged in an amour with a very pretty lass, blamed him that he suffered himself to be so taken by a woman—"You are deceived, signore," says Castruccio, "she is taken by me." Another desiring a favour of him with a thousand impertinent and superfluous words—"Hark you, friend," says Castruccio, "when you would have anything of me, for the future send another man to ask it." Something of his dream of dominion may be found in that saying of his when one asked him, seeing his ambition, how Caesar died, and he answered, "Would I might die like him!" Blamed for his severity, perhaps over the Poggi affair, one said to him that he dealt severely with an old friend—"No," says he, "you are mistaken; it was with a new foe." Something of his love for Uguccione—who certainly hated him, but whom he held in great veneration—may be found in his answer to that man who asked him if for the salvation of his soul he never thought to turn monk. "No," says he, "for to me it will be strange if Fra Nazarene should go to Paradise and Ugguccione della Faggiuola to Hell." And Macchiavelli says that what was most remarkable was that, "having equalled the great actions of Scipio and Philip, the father of Alexander, he died as they did, in the forty-fourth year of his age, and doubtless he would have surpassed them both had he found as favourable dispositions at Lucca as one of them did in Macedon and the other in Rome." Just there we seem to find the desire of the sixteenth century for unity that found expression in the deeds of Cesare Borgia, the Discorsi of Niccolò Macchiavelli.
THE TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARETTO
By Jacopo della Quercia. Duomo, Lucca
Brogi
The rest of the history of Lucca is a sort of unhappy silence, out of which from time to time rise the cry of Burlamacchi, a fool, yes, but a hero, the howling of the traitors, the whisper of feeble conspiracies, the purr of an ignoble prosperity, till in 1805 Napoleon came and made her his prey.