I have enlarged upon the novella of Il Grasso, because it is typical of the genuinely popular literature, written to delight the folk of Florence, appealing to their subtlest as well as broadest sense of fun, and bringing on the scene two famous artists, Brunelleschi, whose cupola is "raised above the heavens," and Donatello, whose S. George seems stepping from his pedestal to challenge all the evil of the world and conquer it. Unfortunately, our published collections are not rich in novels of this date; and next to the anonymous tale of Il Grasso, Legnaiuolo it is difficult to cite one of at all equal value, till we come to Luigi Pulci's story of Messer Goro and Pius II. This is really a satire on the Sienese, whom Pulci represents with Florentine malice as almost inconceivably silly. The Tuscan style is piquant in the extreme, and the picture of manners very brilliant.[303]
From epical and narrative literature to poems written for the people upon contemporary events and public history, is not an unnatural transition. These compositions divide themselves into Storie and Lamenti. We have abundant examples of both kinds in lyric measures and also in octave stanzas and terza rima.[304] A few of their titles will suffice to indicate their scope. Il Lamento di Giuliano de' Medici relates the tragic ending of the Pazzi conspiracy; Il Lamento del Duca Galeazzo Maria tells how that Duke was murdered in the church of S. Stefano at Milan; El Lamento di Otranto is an echo of the disaster which shook all Italy to her foundations in the year 1480; El Lamento e la Discordia de Italia universale sounds the death-note of Italian freedom in the last years of the century. After that period the Pianti and Lamenti, attesting to the sorrows of a nation, increase in frequency until all voices from the people are hushed in the leaden sleep of Spanish despotism.[305] The Storie in like manner are more abundant between the years 1494 and 1530, when the wars of foreign invaders supplied the bards of the market-place with continual matter for improvisation. Among the earliest may be mentioned two poems on the Battle of Anghiari and the taking of Serezana.[306] Then the list proceeds with the tale of the Borgias, Guerre Orrende, Rotta di Ravenna, Mali deportamenti de Franciosi fato in Italia, and so forth, till it ends with La Presa di Roma and Rotta di Ferruccio. A last echo of these Storie and Lamenti—for alas! in Italy of the sixteenth century history and lamentation were all one—still sounds about the hillsides of Siena[307]:
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O Piero Strozzi, 'ndù sono i tuoi bravoni? Al Poggio delle Donne in que' burroni. O Piero Strozzi, 'ndù sono i tuoi soldati? Al Poggio delle Donne in quei fossati. O Piero Strozzi, 'ndù son le tue genti? Al Poggio delle Donne a côr le lenti. |
It may be well to say how these poems reached the people, before they were committed to writing or the press. There existed a professional class of rhymsters, usually blind men, if we may judge by the frequent affix of Cieco to their names, who tuned their guitar in the streets, and when a crowd had gathered round them, broke into some legend of romance, or told a tale of national misfortune. The Italian designation of these minstrels is Cantatore in Banca or Cantore di piazza. In the high tide of Florentine freedom the Cantore di piazza exercised a noble calling; for through his verse the voice of the common folk made itself heard beneath the very windows of the Signoria. In 1342, when the war with Pisa turned against the Florentines owing to the incompetence of their generals, Antonio Pucci, who was the most celebrated Cantatore of the day, took his lute and placed himself upon the steps beneath the Palazzo, and having invoked the Virgin Mary, struck up a Sermintese on the duty of making peace[308]:
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Signor, pognàm ch'i' sia di vil nascenza, I' pur nacqui nel corpo di Firenza, Come qual c'è di più sofficienza: Onde 'l mi duole Di lei, considerando che esser suole Tenuta più che madre da figliuole; Oggi ogni bestia soggiogar la vuole E occupare. |
Other poems of the same kind by Antonio Pucci belong to the year 1346, or celebrate the purchase of Lucca from Mastino della Scala, or the victory of Messer Piero Rosso at Padua, or the expulsion of the Duke of Athens from Florence in 1348. It must not be supposed that the Cantatori in Banca of the next century enjoyed so much liberty of censure or had so high a sense of their vocation as Antonio Pucci. Yet the people made their opinions freely heard in rhymes sung even by the children through the streets, as when they angered Martin V. in 1420 by crying beneath his very windows[309]:
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Papa Martino, Signor di Piombino, Conte de Urbino, non vale un quattrino. |
During the ascendency of Savonarola and the party-struggles of the Medici the rival cries of Palle and Viva Cristo Rè were turned into street songs[310]; but at last, after the siege and the victory of Clement, the voice of the people was finally stifled by authority.[311]
The element of satire in these ditties of the people leads me to speak of one very prominent poet of the fifteenth century—Domenico di Giovanni, called Il Burchiello, the rhyming barber.[312] He was born probably in 1403 at Florence, where his father, who was a Pisan, had acquired the rights of citizenship and followed the trade of a barber. Their shop was situated in Calimala, and formed a meeting-place for the wits, who carried Burchiello's verses over the town. The boy seems to have studied at Pisa, and acquired some slight knowledge of medicine.[313] At the age of four-and-twenty we find him married, with three children and no property.[314] Soon after this date, he separated from his wife; or else she left him on account of his irregular and dissolute habits. Peering through the obscurity of his somewhat sordid history, we see him getting into trouble with the Inquisition on account of profane speech, and then espousing the cause of the Albizzi against the Medicean faction. On the return of Cosimo de' Medici in 1434, Burchiello was obliged to leave Florence. He settled at Siena, and opened a shop in the Corso di Camollia, hoping to attract the Florentines whose business brought them to that quarter. Here he nearly ruined his health by debauchery, and narrowly escaped assassination at the hands of a certain Ser Rosello.[315] Leaving Siena about 1440, Burchiello spent the last years of his life in wandering through the cities of Italy. We hear of him at Venice entertained by one of the Alberti family, then at Naples, finally in Rome, where he died in 1448, poisoned probably by Robert, a bastard of Pandolfo Sigismondo Malatesta, at the instigation of his ancient enemy, Cosimo de' Medici.[316] Such long arms and such retentive memory had the merchant despot.
Burchiello's sonnets were collected some thirty years after his death and published simultaneously at various places.[317] They owed their popularity partly to their political subject-matter, but more to their strange humor. A foreigner can scarcely understand their language, far less appreciate their fun; for not only are they composed in Florentine slang of the fifteenth century, but this slang itself consists of detached phrases and burlesque allusions, chipped as it were from current speech, broken into splinters, and then wrought into a grotesque mosaic. That Burchiello had the merit of originality, and that he caught the very note of plebeian utterance, is manifest from the numerous editions and imitations of his sonnets.[318] His Muse was a volgivaga Venus bred among the taverns and low haunts of vulgar company, whose biting wit introduced her to the society of the learned. Yet her utterances, at this distance of time, are so obscure and their point has been so blunted that to profess an admiration for Burchiello savors of literary affectation.[319] He was a poet of the transition; and the burlesque style which he made popular was destined to be superseded by the more refined and subtle Bernesque manner. Il Lasca, writing in the sixteenth century, expressed himself strongly against those who still ventured to compare Burchiello with the author of Le Pesche. "Let no one talk to me of Burchiello; to rank him with Berni is no better than to couple the fiend Charon with the Angel Gabriel."[320]