But the German writers are clear that the disease did not originate on Italian soil, at the siege of Naples or elsewhere. Thus Brant in his poem of 1496 assigns to it an origin in France, and a dispersion within a year or two over all Europe[858]:
“Pestiferum in Lygures transvexit Francia morbum,
Quem mala de Franzos Romula lingua vocat.
Hic Latium atque Italos invasit, ab Alpibus extra
Serpens, Germanos Istricolasque premit;
Grassatur mediis jam Thracibus atque Bohemis
Et morbi genus id Sarmata quisque timet.
Nec satis extremo tutantur in orbe Britanni
Quos refluum cingit succiduumque fretum.
Quin etiam fama est, Aphros penetrasse Getasque
Vigue sua utrumque depopulare polum.”
Grünbeck, who wrote briefly on the disease in 1496, returned to the subject at much greater length in 1503, when he was secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, his later treatise, De Mentulagra, alias Morbo Gallico, being, indeed, among the best that the epidemic called forth. Hensler doubts whether Grünbeck was himself in Italy, so as to observe the ravages of the disease among the troops of the Emperor (including Venetians and Milanese) at the sieges of Pisa and Leghorn in the summer of 1496, and among the opposing troops of Charles VIII. Be that as it may, the following is from Grünbeck’s description[859]:
“O! quid unquam terribilius et abominabilius humanis sensibus occurrit! Difficile est dictu, creditu fere impossibile, quanta foeditatis, putredinis et sordium colluvione, quantisque dolorum anxietatibus nonnullorum militum corpora involuerit. Aliqui etiam a vertice ad usque genua quodam horrido, squalido, continuo, foedo et nigro scabiei genere, nulla parte faciei, (solis oculis exemtis), nec colli, cervicis, pectoris vel pubis immuni relicta, percussi, ita sordidi abominabilesque effecti sunt, qui ab omnibus commilitonibus derelicti, ac etiam in plano et nudo campo sub dio emarescentes, nihil magis quam mortem expetiverunt.... At his omnibus nihil vel parum proficientibus, et morbo ipso non contento hoc hominum numero, ut eos solos tantis passionum cruciatibus afficeret, venenum contagiosum in multos spectantes Italos, Teutones, Helveticos, Vindelicos, Rhaetos, Noricos, Batavos, Morinos, Anglicos, Hispanos, et alios quos belli occasio in copias conscripserat, transfudit.... Interea temporis, per clandestinam Gallorum abitionem, exercitus fuerunt dissoluti,”—Grünbeck himself proceeding with some merchants to Hungary and thence to Poland[860].
How came this terrible infection to be among the troops of all nations on Italian soil in the years 1494, 1495 and 1496? Sebastian Brant clearly states that the French brought it with them, and that it spread first over Liguria. Grünbeck says that it was seen primo super Insubriam, or the Milanese, on which it rested like a dense cloud, until it was scattered by the winds over the whole of Liguria, and so found its way into the armies in Italy. Beniveni, of Florence, who wrote in 1498, says that it came to Italy from Spain, and from Italy was carried to France. Thus we have a theory of a Spanish origin, of a French origin, and perhaps also of a native Italian origin—all agreeing that Italy during the state of war from 1494 to 1496 was the theatre of its first ravages on the great scale, and the source from which the disease was brought to all the countries of Europe by the returning soldiery.
The solution of the difficulty is to be looked for in the inquiries after still earlier notices of the lues venerea. It is beyond the purpose of this book to enter upon that large subject, farther than has already been done with the object of proving the generic use of the medieval term lepra. It is now accepted by competent students of medical history that the same disease, with all varieties or modes of primary, secondary or tertiary, existed in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, although secondaries and tertiaries may not have been ascribed to their primary source. But what specially concerns us here is the question whether the malady was anywhere beginning to be more noticeable in the years immediately preceding the great military explosion on Italian soil. On that point there is some evidence from more than one source, that the malady was sufficiently prevalent in the south of France to be a subject of remark previous to the French expedition to Italy, that it had found its way to the ports of Spain (Barcelona and Valencia), and that the troops of Charles VIII., if not also that youthful monarch himself, carried it across the Alps into Liguria, and so gave it that start on Italian soil which the state of war for the next two years raised to the power of a virulent and diffusive epidemic[861].
The best piece of evidence of its prevalence in Languedoc and its spreading thence to the adjoining coast of Spain is found in a letter of the 18th April, 1494 (four months before Charles VIII. entered Italy), written by Nicolas Scyllatius just after arriving at Barcelona[862]. The province of Narbonne, he says, a part of France adjoining Spain, now sent forth another vice. Women felt it most; it infected neighbours by contact; it has lately invaded Spain, hitherto untouched by it. “I was horrified,” he continues, “on first landing at Barcelona; for I met with many of the inhabitants who were seized by that contagion. On my inquiring of the physicians (for with these I held converse during nearly all that journey), they assured me that the new lues had been derived from truculent France.” In keeping with this entirely credible testimony is the statement of Torella, a native of Valencia, who wrote one of the earlier essays on the new disease (“De Pudendagra”) in November, 1497. The disease first broke out, he says, in Auvergne in 1493 (incepit, ut aiunt, haec maligna aegritudo anno 1493 in Alervnia), and so came in the way of contagion to Spain and the Islands [to Sardinia, where he was bishop, and to Corsica], and to Italy, creeping in the end over all Europe, and, if one may so speak, over the whole globe[863].
Torella thus confirms the Barcelona traveller so far as regards importations from the south of France to the neighbouring ports, the former writer naming Auvergne as the endemic seat of the malady, whereas the latter gives Narbonne. Another piece of evidence, that the pox was in Valencia, as well as in Barcelona, before the expedition of Charles VIII., is found in a story told by Manardus of Ferrara (1500), a story which is wholly improbable so far as concerns the origin of syphilis, at a stated time and place, out of a case of leprosy, but is entirely credible so far as regards the grossness of its circumstances:
“Coepisse hunc morbum per id tempus, dicunt, quo Carolus, Francorum rex, expeditionem Italicam parabat: coepisse, autem, in Valentia, Hispaniae Taraconensis insigni civitate, a nobili quodam scorto, cujus noctem elephantiosus quidam, ex equestri ordine miles, quinquaginta aureis emit; et cum ad mulieris concubitum frequens juventus accurreret, intra paucos dies supra quadringentos infectos; e quorum numero nonnulli, Carolum Italiam petentem sequuti, praeter alia quae adhuc vigent importata mala et hoc addiderunt[864].”
The evidence that follows is not so explicit, but it has strong probability. The progress of Charles VIII. from France to Italy in the autumn of 1494 has been told by Philip de Comines in his Cronique du Roy Charles VIII., first printed at Paris in 1528, nineteen years after the author’s death. De Comines accompanied his master, the French king, as far as Asti; he was then sent on a mission to Venice, and rejoined the king at Florence. But De Comines, who was no gossip, omits one interesting fact near the beginning of the journey to Italy, which has been preserved for us in a contemporary work (1503) called La Cronique Martiniane, or chronicle of all the popes down to Alexander Borgia lately deceased[865]. This chronicle relates as follows concerning Charles VIII.’s journey:—“Il se arresta premierement aucuns jours a Lyon, doubteux s’il passeroit les mons, car il y estoit detenu pour les delices et plaisances de la cité et pour les folles amours de aucunes gorrieres lyonnoises. Mais quant l’air devint pestilent, il s’en tyra à Vienne, citè de Daulphinè.” His great army had already passed the Alps and arrived in the country of Asti: it is said to have consisted, in round numbers, of 3600 men-at-arms, 6000 bowmen, 8000 pikemen, and 8000 with arquebuses, halberds, two-handed swords, or other arms, together with a heavy artillery train of 8000 horses. A large part of this force were Swiss; another part were Gascons[866].