With Modena is connected much historical interest. The famous Countess Matilda, the church’s most pious benefactress, and the pope’s most attached adherent, was its sovereign in 1054, and in her strong castle of Canossa near Reggio, she received Pope Gregory the Seventh, yielding to him her powerful protection on the news that Henry the Fourth of Germany, the excommunicated emperor, was on his way to seek a personal interview with the pontiff, preferring so to do to awaiting the decision of his holiness the following year at the diet-general of the empire to be invoked at Augsburg for the purpose of his ban or absolution. There exists a village of the same name, where the impregnable fortress of Matilda arose at that time. The princes of the empire had obliged the unfortunate Henry to consent to abjure the marks of his rank as well as its power; to enter into no church, which, as a man condemned by the church, his presence might sully; and to travel without suite or dignity till such time as his fate should be decided.
Feeling that in the assembly of Augsburg that decision would be fatal, notwithstanding the danger of traversing the Alps at that season (Christmas), Henry the Fourth departed for Italy, accompanied by his empress, and by Prince Conrad, then a boy, and who, in after days, was to raise the standard of revolt against the father, whom Henry, his second and best beloved son, was also, when most trusted, to betray, usurp his empire, and imprison his person, and finally refuse to it the rites of burial. The emperor arrived at Canossa, and presented himself at the first gate, for the fortress was surrounded by a triple wall, and the ground then covered with snow. He was allowed to wait a long time and alone; the few who attended him being forbidden to approach; and the gate being at last opened to him, he was wholly at the mercy of his enemies, a consideration which did not subdue his courage or change his purpose, for it is said of him, that in the sixty-six battles he had fought, he had always, save when betrayed, come off victorious. Admitted within the second court-yard of Canossa, he was bidden to put off his shoes and the royal robes which he wore, assuming in their stead a plain woollen tunic; and the monarch having obeyed, he was allowed to remain in this court three days, though in the month of January and in the Appennines, exposed to the severity of the weather, and receiving food only late at night, as if forgotten by the proud pontiff. The fourth morning Matilda interceded, and Gregory the Seventh allowed himself to be softened, admitted the emperor to kiss his holy foot, and gave him absolution on such humiliating terms, that they were shortly after broken through, and Henry excommunicated once more.
Nicholas of Este, duke of Modena and Ferrara about 1400, was the injured husband who beheaded Parisina; and Alfonso of Este, whose reign commenced in 1505, was married to Lucretia Borgia, of infamous memory. It was his brother the Cardinal Ippolito who was Ariosto’s unworthy patron. Rival in a love-affair of his natural brother Don Giulio, Ippolito heard its object, who was a lady of Ferrara, praise the beauty of Don Giulio’s eyes, having preferred him for her lover. As his brother returned from a hunting party, he was surrounded by assassins guided to meet him by this unnatural relative, and the eyes, whose lustre the fair lady of Ferrara had praised, torn from their sockets in his presence.
Before arriving at Modena, and on the river Secchia, we rode through the wretched town, and beneath the strong stern towers of the fortress of Rubiera, within whose walls died Ottobon Terzi, who, from a condottiere, striving to rise to be an independent sovereign, seized successively on Parma, Reggio, and Modena, pillaged Placentia, beheaded sixty-five citizens of Parma, but at last, desirous of peace, as the Marquis of Este opposed to him the brave Attendolo Sforza, consented to a conference at Rubiera. The chief and the noble arrived, each followed by a few chosen knights, and among those of the latter was Attendolo. Excited by sudden passion, or perhaps obeying a command unworthy of him, in the midst of the peaceful discourse Sforza sprang forward and stabbed Ottobon Terzi. Those who accompanied him fled, and the corpse (transported thither and mutilated by the people’s fury) was dragged through the streets of Modena.
So much for the striking traits of her history, we shall know her features better on our return; for here, as at Parma, it has rained the livelong day, and we leave early to-morrow. It is the first time since I arrived on Italian ground, that the comfort of an inn has made me wish to stop for repose.
CHAPTER VIII.
Pic de la Mirandole—Castel Franco—Bologna—A bad inn left for La Pace—Its mistress—Statue of Pope Julius the Second—St. Petronio—Mistake of a learned man—Charles the Fifth—Here crowned King of Lombardy—King Enzio—His peasant-love—His twenty years’ captivity—The origin of a name—The towers—Accademmia—St. Cecilia—The cathedral—Temple dedicated to Isis—Papal troops—A capitulation—Cholera—An Italian hospital—French soldiers—The procession barefoot—The well-attested miracle—The Appennines—Lojano—The Pellegrino—Filigare—Pietra Mala—Strange properties of its fire and cold spring—Fruit—Montecarelli—St. Antonio’s grapes—Palazzo Borghese—Hôtel du Nord—Jerome Bonaparte’s cook—Piazza della Santa Trinità—Spot occupied by the Palazzo degl’ Uberti left vacant—Recording escutcheons—The Saviour, king of Florence—The Loggia—Galleria de’ Medici—Piazza del Duomo—The Baptistery—Work of Ghiberti at twenty years old—Chains of the gates of Pisa—A funeral.
6th October.
Mirandola is not on our road although at no great distance, on the Secchia, and forming part of the duchy of Modena; near it are two other villages, called Concordia and Quarantola. It is said that Euridice, grand-daughter of the Emperor Constantine, and wife of Mainfroy the Saxon baron, in the first of the three became mother at a birth of three noble boys, from which strange fact it was named Miranda. Growing up in perfect harmony, the place which they inhabited was called Concordia; and years after, when their descendants, increased in number, in a neighbouring town mustered forty knights, it took from them the name of Quarantola. This legend you may doubt or believe in; but the family of Pio and Pic, sprung from Euridice, produced in 1463 the phœnix, Pic de la Mirandole, who, at ten years of age, held the first place among the poets and orators of his day; and in 1486, at Rome, published a list of nine hundred propositions on “all that is or can be known,” offering to argue their truth with any such learned personages as could be induced to meet him there, proposing to defray the expenses of their journey and their sojourn. The envy of these denouncing him as dangerous and a heretic, he endured persecution for a time and fled to France, but justifying himself, returned to Florence and died there the day that Charles the Eighth made his entry, and having known him in France, sent his physicians, who strove vainly to save his life. He left large legacies to his domestics, and the remainder of his possessions to the poor, and was not thirty-two when he died.