The Story of Florence

by Edmund G. Gardner

Beyond the Via del Proconsolo the Borgo, now called of the Albizzi, was originally the Borgo di San Piero–a suburb of the old city, but included in the second walls of the twelfth century. The present name records the brief, but not inglorious period of the rule of the oligarchy or Ottimati, before Cosimo dei Medici obtained complete possession of the State. It was formerly called the Corso di Por San Piero. The first palace on the right (De Rast or Quaratesi) was built for the Pazzi by Brunelleschi, and still shows their armorial bearings by Donatello. They had another palace further on, on the left, opposite the Via dell'Acqua. Still further on (past the Altoviti palace, with its caricatures) is the palace of the Albizzi family, on the left, as you approach the Piazza. Here Maso degli Albizzi, and then Rinaldo, lived and practically ruled the state. Giuliano dei Medici alighted here in 1512. At the end of the Borgo degli Albizzi is now the busy, rather picturesque little Piazza di San Piero Maggiore, usually full of stalls and trucks. St. Peter's Gate in Dante's time lay just beyond the church, to the left. In this Piazza also the Donati had houses; and it was through this gate that Corso Donati burst into Florence with his followers on the morning of November 5th, 1301; "and he entered into the city like a daring and bold cavalier," as Dino Compagni–who loves a strong personality even on the opposite side to his own–puts it. The Bianchi in the Sesto largely outnumbered his forces, but did not venture to attack him, while the populace bawled Viva il Barone to their hearts' content. He incontinently seized that tall tower of the Corbizzi that still rises opposite to the façade of the church, at the southern corner of the Piazza in the Via del Mercatino, and hung out his banner from it. Seven years later he made his last stand in this square and round this tower, as we have told in chapter ii. Of the church of San Piero Maggiore, only the seventeenth century façade remains; but of old it ranked as the third of the Florentine temples. According to the legend, it was on his way to this church that San Zenobio raised the French child to life in the Borgo degli Albizzi, opposite the spot where the Palazzo Altoviti now stands. It is said to have been the only church in Florence free from the taint of simony in the days of St. Giovanni Gualberto, and of old had the privilege of first receiving the new Archbishops when they entered Florence. The Archbishop went through a curious and beautiful ceremony of mystic marriage with the Abbess of the Benedictine convent attached to the church, who apparently personified the diocese of Florence. Every year on Easter Monday the canons of the Duomo came here in procession; and on St. Peter's day the captains of the Parte Guelfa entered the Piazza in state to make a solemn offering, and had a race run in the Piazza Santa Croce after the ceremony. The artists, Lorenzo di Credi, Mariotto Albertinelli, Piero di Cosimo and Luca della Robbia were buried here. Two of the best pictures that the church contained–a Coronation of the Madonna ascribed to Orcagna and the famous Assumption said by Vasari to have been painted by Botticelli for Matteo Palmieri (which was supposed to inculcate heretical neoplatonic doctrines concerning the human soul and the Angels in the spheres), are now in the National Gallery of London.

It was in this Piazza that the conspirators resolved to assassinate Maso degli Albizzi. Their spies watched him leave his palace, walk leisurely towards the church and then enter an apothecary's shop, close to San Piero. They hurried off to tell their associates, but when the would-be assassins arrived on the scene, they found that Maso had given them the slip and left the shop.

Turning down the Via del Mercatino and back to the Badia along the Via Pandolfini, we pass the palace which once belonged to Francesco Valori, Savonarola's formidable adherent. Here it was on that terrible Palm Sunday, 1498, when Hell broke loose, as Landucci puts it, that Valori's wife was shot dead at a window, while her husband in the street below, on his way to answer the summons of the Signoria, was murdered near San Procolo by the kinsmen of the men whom he had sent to the scaffold.

The Badia shares with the Baptistery and San Miniato the distinction of being the only Florentine churches mentioned by Dante. In Cacciaguida's days it was close to the old Roman wall; from its campanile even in Dante's time, Florence still "took tierce and nones "; and, at the sound of its bells, the craftsmen of the Arts went to and from their work. Originally founded by the Countess Willa in the tenth century, the Badia di San Stefano (as it was called) that Dante and Boccaccio knew was the work of Arnolfo di Cambio; but it was entirely rebuilt in the seventeenth century, with consequent destruction of priceless frescoes by Giotto and Masaccio. The present graceful campanile is of the fourteenth century. The relief in the lunette over the chief door, rather in the manner of Andrea della Robbia, is by Benedetto Buglione. In the left transept is the monument by Mino da Fiesole of Willa's son Hugo, Margrave of Tuscany, who died on St. Thomas' day, 1006. Dante calls him the great baron; his anniversary was solemnly celebrated here, and he was supposed to have conferred knighthood and nobility upon the Della Bella and other Florentine families. "Each one," says Cacciaguida, "who beareth aught of the fair arms of the great baron, whose name and worth the festival of Thomas keepeth living, from him derived knighthood and privilege" (Paradiso xvi.). In a chapel to the left of this monument is Filippino Lippi's picture of the Madonna appearing to St. Bernard, painted in 1480, one of the most beautiful renderings of an exceedingly poetical subject. For Dante, Bernard is colui ch'abbelliva di Maria, come del sole stella mattutina, "he who drew light from Mary, as the morning star from the sun." Filippino has introduced the portrait of the donor, on the right, Francesco di Pugliese. The church contains two other works by Mino da Fiesole, a Madonna and (in the right transept) the sepulchral monument of Bernardo Giugni, who served the State as ambassador to Milan and Venice in the days of Cosimo and Piero dei Medici. At the entrance to the cloisters Francesco Valori is buried.

It was in the Badia (and not in the Church of San Stefano, near the Via Por Santa Maria, as usually stated) that Boccaccio lectured upon the Divina Commedia in 1373. Benvenuto da Imola came over from Bologna to attend his beloved master's readings, and was much edified. But the audience were not equally pleased, and Boccaccio had to defend himself in verse. One of the sonnets he wrote on this occasion, Se Dante piange, dove ch'el si sia, has been admirably translated by Dante Rossetti:–

If Dante mourns, there wheresoe'er he be,
That such high fancies of a soul so proud
Should be laid open to the vulgar crowd,
(As, touching my Discourse, I'm told by thee),

This were my grievous pain; and certainly
My proper blame should not be disavow'd;
Though hereof somewhat, I declare aloud
Were due to others, not alone to me.

False hopes, true poverty, and therewithal
The blinded judgment of a host of friends,
And their entreaties, made that I did thus.

But of all this there is no gain at all
Unto the thankless souls with whose base ends
Nothing agrees that's great or generous.