[784] Inferno, xxi. 7; Purgat. xiii. 61.
[785] We must not take it too seriously, if we read (in Platina, Vitae Pontiff. p. 310) that he kept at his court a sort of buffoon, the Florentine Greco, ‘hominem certe cujusvis mores, naturam, linguam cum maximo omnium qui audiebant risu facile exprimentem.’
[786] Pii. II. Comment. viii. p. 391.
[787] Two tournaments must be distinguished, Lorenzo’s in 1468 and Guiliano’s in 1475 (a third in 1481?). See Reumont, L. M. i. 264 sqq. 361, 267, note 1; ii. 55, 67, and the works there quoted, which settle the old dispute on these points. The first tournament is treated in the poem of Luca Pulci, ed. Ciriffo Calvaneo di Luca Pulci Gentilhuomo Fiorentino, con la Giostra del Magnifico Lorenzo de’ Medici. Florence, 1572, pp. 75, 91; the second in an unfinished poem of Ang. Poliziano, best ed. Carducci, Le Stanze, l’Orfeo e le Rime di M. A. P. Florence, 1863. The description of Politian breaks off at the setting out of Guiliano for the tournament. Pulci gives a detailed account of the combatants and the manner of fighting. The description of Lorenzo is particularly good ([p. 82]).
[788] This so-called ‘Caccia’ is printed in the Commentary to Castiglione’s Eclogue from a Roman MS. Lettere del conte B. Castiglione, ed. Pierantonio Lerassi (Padua, 1771), ii. p. 269.
[789] See the Serventese of Giannozzo of Florence, in Trucchi, Poesie italiane inedite, ii. p. 99. The words are many of them quite unintelligible, borrowed really or apparently from the languages of the foreign mercenaries. Macchiavelli’s description of Florence during the plague of 1527 belongs, to certain extent, to this class of works. It is a series of living, speaking pictures of a frightful calamity.
[790] According to Boccaccio (Vita di Dante, p. 77), Dante was the author of two eclogues, probably written in Latin. They are addressed to Joh. de Virgiliis. Comp. Fraticelli, Opp. min. di Dante, i. 417. Petrarch’s bucolic poem in P. Carmina minora, ed. Bossetti, i. Comp. L. Geiger, Petr. 120-122 and 270, note 6, especially A. Hortis, Scritti inediti di F. P. Triest, 1874.
[791] Boccaccio gives in his Ameto (above, p. 344) a kind of mythical Decameron, and sometimes fails ludicrously to keep up the character. One of his nymphs is a good Catholic, and prelates shoot glances of unholy love at her in Rome. Another marries. In the Ninfale fiesolano the nymph Mensola, who finds herself pregnant, takes counsel of an ‘old and wise nymph.’
[792] In general the prosperity of the Italian peasants was greater then than that of the peasantry anywhere else in Europe. Comp. Sacchetti, nov. 88 and 222; L. Pulci in the Beca da Dicamano (Villari, Macchiavelli, i. 198, note 2).
[793] ‘Nullum est hominum genus aptius urbi,’ says Battista Mantovano (Ecl. viii.) of the inhabitants of the Monte Baldo and the Val. Cassina, who could turn their hands to anything. Some country populations, as is well known, have even now privileges with regard to certain occupations in the great cities.