Prisoners in the Bargello, as elsewhere, were subject to the most appalling injustice and cruelty. Thus we are told of Cosimo di Medici, when he was doing all in his power to assassinate or poison Piero Strozzi, that he was always very circumspect as regarded the venom, “and did not use it till he had studied the effects and doses on condemned prisoners in the Bargello.” But “condemned prisoners” here means doubtless those who were simply condemned to be made the subjects of such experiments, as may be supposed, when we learn that Cosimo obtained the recipe of making up a poison from Messer Apollino, secretary of Piero Luigi, by torturing him. It was thus they did in good old pious times. Poisoning, as a most familiar and frequent thing, even in England, did not pass
out of practice, even in politics, until that great beginning of a moral era, the Reformation.
“Hæc fabula docet,” wrote the good and wise Flaxius on the revise, “that as a Zoccolone friar is the best priest for a peasant, so even a buon diavolo, or jolly devil, or a boon blackguard who knows his men, is, perhaps, generally the best guide for certain kinds of rough sinners, often setting them aright in life where a holy saint would be inter sacrem et saxum, or in despair. As for poisoning, I fear that cup, far from passing away, is, under another form, passed round far more frequently now than it ever was. For François Villon declared that lying gossip, tittle-tattle, and second-hand slander were worse than poison (which simply kills the body), and this with infinite refinement prevails far more in modern society (being aided by newspapers) than it ever did of yore anywhere. This is the poison of the present day, which has more veneficæ to spread it than the Locustan or Borgian venoms ever found. Now for a merrier tale!”
“If all that’s written, talked or sunge
Must be of the follies of menne,
’Twere better that no one moved his tongue,
Or that none could use a penne.“Jog on, jog on the footpath-waye,
And cheerily jump the stile;
A merry heart goes all the daye,
A sad one tires in a mile!”
LEGENDS OF SAN LORENZO
the canon and the debtor, and the cats in the cloister
“Pazienza, paziendum!
Disse il diavolo a Sant Antonium.”“A scratching he heard and a horrible groan,
As of hundreds of cats with mollrowing and moan:
‘Oh!’ said he to himself, ‘sure the devil is come.’”—Mr. Jones and the Cats.
The celebrated Church of San Lorenzo is a grand museum of art, even among the many of its kind in Florence. It was originally a Roman Christian basilica, built by the matron Giuliana, which edifice was consecrated a.d. 373 by Saint Ambrose, and called the Basilica Ambrosiana. It was partially rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1435, and completed with sad alteration, and finished by Antonio Manetti. As is well known, or has been made known by many great poets, it contains the grandest statuary by Michael Angelo in its monuments of Lorenzo de’ Medici and his uncle Giuliano.
This church served as a sanctuary in the olden time, and of this there is a tale told in the old collections of facetiæ, which, though trifling, is worth recalling as connected with it.
Il Debitore.
“Messer Paolo dell’ Ottonaio, a Canon of San Lorenzo in Florence, a cheerful and facetious man, found a certain citizen one of his friends, who had taken refuge as a debtor in the church; and the latter stood in sorrowful and pensive attitude, having in no wise the appearance of one who had found