[676] Brunetti Latini, Tesor. (ed. Chabaille, Paris, 1863), lib. i. In Petrarch’s time there were no elephants in Italy. ‘Itaque et in Italia avorum memoria unum Frederico Romanorum principi fuisse et nunc Egyptio tyranno nonnisi unicum esse fama est.’ De rem. utr. fort. i. 60.
[677] The details which are most amusing, in Paul. Jov. Elogia, on Tristanus Acunius. On the porcupines and ostriches in the Pal. Strozzi, see Rabelais, Pantagruel, iv. chap. 11. Lorenzo the Magnificent received a giraffe from Egypt through some merchants, Baluz. Miscell. iv. 416. The elephant sent to Leo was greatly bewailed by the people when it died, its portrait was painted, and verses on it were written by the younger Beroaldus.
[678] Comp. Paul. Jov. Elogia, p. 234, speaking of Francesco Gonzaga. For the luxury at Milan in this respect, see Bandello, Parte II. Nov. 3 and 8. In the narrative poems we also sometimes hear the opinion of a judge of horses. Comp. Pulci, Morgante, xv. 105 sqq.
[679] Paul. Jov. Elogia, speaking of Hipp. Medices.
[680] At this point a few notices on slavery in Italy at the time of the Renaissance will not be out of place. A short, but important, passage in Jovian. Pontan. De obedientia, l. iii. cap. i.: ‘An homo, cum liber natura sit, domino parere debeat?’ In North Italy there were no slaves. Elsewhere, even Christians, as well as Circassians and Bulgarians, were bought from the Turks, and made to serve till they had earned their ransom. The negroes, on the contrary, remained slaves; but it was not permitted, at least in the kingdom of Naples, to emasculate them. The word ‘moro’ signifies any dark-skinned man; the negro was called ‘moro nero.’—Fabroni, Cosmos, Adn. 110: Document on the sale of a female Circassian slave (1427); Adn. 141: List of the female slaves of Cosimo.—Nantiporto, Murat. iii. ii. col. 1106: Innocent VIII. received 100 Moors as a present from Ferdinand the Catholic, and gave them to cardinals and other great men (1488).—Marsuccio, Novelle, 14: sale of slaves; do. 24 and 25: negro slaves who also (for the benefit of their owner?) work as ‘facchini,’ and gain the love of the women; do. 48 Moors from Tunis caught by Catalans and sold at Pisa.—Gaye, Carteggio, i. 360: manumission and reward of a negro slave in a Florentine will (1490).—Paul. Jov. Elogia, sub Franc. Sfortia; Porzio, Congiura, iii. 195; and Comines, Charles VIII. chap. 18: negroes as gaolers and executioners of the House of Aragon in Naples.—Paul. Jov. Elogia, sub Galeatio: negroes as followers of the prince on his excursions.—Æneæ Sylvii, Opera, p. 456: a negro slave as a musician.—Paul. Jov. De piscibus, cap 3: a (free?) negro as diver and swimming-master at Genoa.—Alex. Benedictus, De Carolo VIII. in Eccard, Scriptores, ii. col. 1608: a negro (Æthiops) as superior officer at Venice, according to which we are justified in thinking of Othello as a negro.—Bandello, Parte III. Nov. 21: when a slave at Genoa deserved punishment he was sold away to Iviza, one of the Balearic isles, to carry salt.
The foregoing remarks, although they make no claim to completeness, may be allowed to stand as they are in the new edition, on account of the excellent selection of instances they contain, and because they have not met with sufficient notice in the works upon the subject. Latterly a good deal has been written on the slave-trade in Italy. The very curious book of Filippo Zamboni: Gli Ezzelini, Dante e gli Schiavi, ossia Roma e la Schiavitù personale domestica. Con documenti inediti. Seconda edizione aumentata (Vienna, 1870), does not contain what the title promises, but gives, p. 241 sqq., valuable information on the slave-trade; p. 270, a remarkable document on the buying and selling of a female slave; p. 282, a list of various slaves (with the place were they were bought and sold, their home, age, and price) in the thirteenth and three following centuries. A treatise by Wattenbach: Sklavenhandel im Mittelalter (Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, 1874, pp. 37-40) refers only in part to Italy: Clement V. decides in 1309 that the Venetian prisoners should be made slaves of; in 1501, after the capture of Capua, many Capuan women were sold at Rome for a low price. In the Monum. historica Slavorum meridionalium, ed. Vinc. Macusceo, tom. i. Warsaw, 1874, we read at p. 199 a decision (Ancona, 1458) that the ‘Greci, Turci, Tartari, Sarraceni, Bossinenses, Burgari vel Albanenses,’ should be and always remain slaves, unless their masters freed them by a legal document. Egnatius, Exempl. ill. vir. Ven. fol. 246 a, praises Venice on the ground that ‘servorum Venetis ipsis nullum unquam usum extitisse;’ but, on the other hand, comp. Zamboni, p. 223, and especially Vincenzo Lazari: ‘Del traffico e delle condizioni degli schiavi, in Venezia nel tempo di mezzo,’ in Miscellanea di Stor. Ital. Torino, 1862, vol. i. 463-501.
[681] It is hardly necessary to refer the reader to the famous chapters on this subject in Humboldt’s Kosmos.
[682] See on this subject the observations of Wilhelm Grimm, quoted by Humboldt in the work referred to.
[683] Carmina Burana, p. 162, De Phyllide et Flora, str. 66.
[684] It would be hard to say what else he had to do at the top of the Bismantova in the province of Reggio, Purgat. iv. 26. The precision with which he brings before us all the parts of his supernatural world shows a remarkable sense of form and space. That there was a belief in the existence of hidden treasures on the tops of mountains, and that such spots were regarded with superstitious terror, may be clearly inferred from the Chron. Novaliciense, ii. 5, in Pertz, Script. vii., and Monum. hist. patriae, Script. iii.