Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus.
Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus.
Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love, more, even, than their gratitude.
130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind. For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again their own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three years, they beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged it—by such tenure as it might still possess—through the city, and threw the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to the treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed it seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man, that his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have spent his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity which can so be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of princes, the most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
{Greek: "oide plitai anton emisoun anton."
131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was beginning to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable side. It is perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of Correggio, that in 1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the Podesta of Florence, the Florentines determined to destroy the castle and walls of Poggibonzi, suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the Poggibonzi people came with "coregge in collo," leathern straps round their necks, to ask that their cattle might be spared. And the heartburnings between the two parties went on, smouldering hotter and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having discovered secret dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and the Uberti refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades ran to arms, attacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people, took prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind of the Bright-minds, with 'Mangia degl' Infangati, ('Gobbler {1} of the dirty ones' this knight's name sounds like,)—and after they had confessed their guilt, beheaded them in St. Michael's corn-market; and all the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena built with the stones of them; and two months afterwards, the people suspecting the Abbot of Vallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines, took him, and tortured him; and he confessing under torture, "at the cry of the people, they beheaded him in the square of St. Apollinare." For which unexpected piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were excommunicated, besides drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of Pavia, the Abbot's native town; "and indeed people say the Abbot was innocent, though he belonged to a great Ghibelline house. And for this sin, and for many others done by the wicked people, many wise persons say that God, for Divine judgment, permitted upon the said people the revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti."
{Footnote: At least, the compound 'Mangia-pane,' 'munch-bread,' stands still for a good-for-nothing fellow.}
132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of the Ghibellines as infidel, or impious; and for the most part they represent, indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in this action of Florence, we have the rise of another force against the Church, in the end to be much more fatal to it, that of popular intelligence and popular passion. I must for the present, however, return to our immediate business; and ask you to take note of the effect, on actually existing Florentine architecture, of the political movements of the ten years we have been studying.
133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces.
And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down all the Ghibelline palaces.
Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.