The Story of Assisi

by Lina Duff Gordon

"Your illustrious Signory being well aware how that city has ever been the scandal of this one, and that now the time has come to take this beam from out of our eyes, we pray and supplicate your illustrious Signory, in the name of this city and of the State, that it may please you to act in such wise that this your city shall never again have reason to fear her; and so, as appears good to all the community, it will be well to raze her to the ground, saving only the churches. And this will be the most singular among other favours that your illustrious Signory has ever done to us."[11]

"Trust in my words and trust in my deeds," replied Piccinino to the bearers of this truly mediæval letter; but, adds the chronicler, he refused his consent to their cowardly scheme for the destruction of the town. It is believed that he was acting upon orders received from Eugenius IV, who appears as the benevolent genius of Assisi, until, as the local historians tell us with rage, the Pope offered to sell them to the Commune of Perugia, when his clemency seems due solely to the fact that the papal coffers were sadly empty. Luckily the Perugians, somewhat in debt owing to the late war, were unable to pay the price, and Assisi thus escaped being given "like a lamb to the butcher," while her enemy missed the chance "of removing that beam from out of her eye."

From this time onward Assisi remained in the possession of the Church, and many of the Popes, touched by the miserable condition of the town, supplied money to rebuild its ruined walls and palaces, and thus induce the citizens to return and inhabit the desolate city. But hardly had the Assisans succeeded in getting back some kind of order and prosperity than new wars appeared to ruffle the onward flow of things. This time the danger came from within, and in Assisi, as in so many of the cities of Italy, it was the feud between the nobles themselves that drenched the streets with blood and crushed the struggles of a people whose cries for liberty were now only faintly heard. All sank beneath the heavy hand of the despot. The Perugian citizens were being tyrannised over by the powerful family of the Baglioni, whose name brings up a picture of crime and bloodshed that has hardly been equalled in any town in Italy.[12] In Assisi the balance of power lay between the two families of Fiumi and Nepis, who, in the irregular fashion of the time, alternately ruled the city in opposition to the legal sovereignty of the Papacy. The city was sharply divided into the Upper town, where the Nepis had their palaces near the castle and San Rufino, and the Lower town, inhabited entirely by the Fiumi and their adherents, which clustered round the church of Santa Chiara and down to San Francesco. These two families sought perpetually to outshine each other, and such was the reputation they gained among the people in the country round that even the Perugian chroniclers speak of them as "most cultured and splendid citizens," praising their horsemanship and the magnificence of their dress. So great was the rivalry between the members of the two families Fiumi and Nepis that, when they met in the piazza of Assisi where the nobles often walked in the evening, they would provoke each other with scornful looks and words, and often this was a signal for a skirmish. The bravi would gather round them, and in an instant the whole town be roused to arms. After a sharp fight one party was driven to retire to its strongholds in the open country, while the victorious nobles seized the reins of government, and the weary citizens sank beneath the rule of the despots. Assisi presented a most melancholy spectacle at the end of one of these encounters. Most of the dwellings of the exiled nobles lay in ruins, the churches were shut in consequence of the perpetual bloodshed, and the palaces, barred and chained, with the gratings drawn up before the entrance, seemed to be inhabited by no living being. Franciscan friars stole along the streets on their errands of mercy among the distressed citizens, who, besides the horrors of the city feuds, suffered from the pestilence and famine which decimated nearly all the towns of Italy at this period. But this death-like silence within the town was never of long duration. The exiled party, ever on the alert to regain possession of their homes, would creep into the town at some unguarded moment and once more stir a people to fight who were beginning to chafe beneath the irksome rule of the rival despots.

A climax of evils came when, in addition to a hundred other ills, the Baglioni of Perugia took upon themselves to interfere.

In 1494 we find the Fiumi and the Nepis living peaceably in their palaces, dividing the power in Assisi, until at last the hot-headed Fiumi grew weary of the even balance of things, and determined at one stroke to rid themselves of every foe. In open combat they had attempted this and failed, so a treacherous plot was hatched. Jacopo Fiumi, head of the house, and his brother Alessandro, persuaded their friends, the Priors of the city, to prepare a great banquet in the Communal Palace and invite all the members of the rival family to be present. Unarmed, and not dreaming of danger, the Nepis entered the big hall. No sooner had they thrown off their cloaks than the Fiumi rushed upon them with drawn swords and knives. Angered by such wanton treachery, the citizens drove the murderers from the city; and the Priors, protected by the darkness of the night, fled into the open country to seek a refuge in some neighbouring town.

Now this event, like many others, might have subsided and been followed by a period of peace, only it happened that the Baglioni were allies of the Nepis and ready to avenge them in Assisi. They had, moreover, old scores to settle with Jacopo Fiumi, who, Matarazzo tells us, in pained surprise, "was a most cruel enemy of the house of Baglioni and of every Perugian, and studied day and night how he might injure those of Perugia, so that he was the cause of much trouble to the magnificent house of Baglioni."[13] This was therefore a good opportunity for the Baglioni to lay siege to Assisi, and perpetual skirmishes took place in the plain, which sapped the life-blood of the citizens and laid waste the Umbrian country for many miles around. The peasants, whose grain had been trampled down by the Baglioni, were driven half-naked into the woods, and watched the high roads from the heights above Assisi like birds of prey, swooping down to rob or kill travellers passing by. Badgers, wolves, and foxes roamed unmolested in the plain, and fed upon the unburied bodies of the murdered travellers and of those who fell in battle; while, in the dead of night, the friars of the Portiuncula stole out to bury what bones the wild beasts had left. Things had come to such a pass that the Assisans, as we are told, knew not what to say or do, so many of their number were dead or taken captive and the enemy was ever at their gates. Giovan Paolo, mounted on his black charger, "which did not run but flew," led the Perugians to storm the town and draw the citizens out to battle. He was one of the fiercest of the Baglioni brood and a famous soldier, and yet it was in vain he sought to inspire the Assisans with fear. "Indeed," says Matarazzo, "each one proved himself valiant on either side; for the Assisans had become warlike and inured to arms, and they were all iniquitous and desperate."[14] The foes were of equal strength and courage, and the war, which had already lasted three years, seemed likely to have no end. But one day the Assisans, watching from their ramparts, saw a large squadron of soldiers hurrying from Perugia to the aid of the Baglioni, and they began to ring the city bells as a signal that the moment had come for the final stand. Those who were skirmishing in the plain against Giovan Paolo began to lose heart when they heard the clanging of the bells, and the Perugians, perceiving their advantage, took new courage, so that "each one became as a lion." More than sixty Assisans were slain that day, while the prisoners suffered cruelly under the vengeance of those who took this opportunity of remembering offences of past years. "And thus did his lordship, the magnificent Giovan Paolo, return victorious and joyful from this great and dangerous battle."[15]

Once the gates of Assisi were forced open, the Baglioni and their bravi scoured the streets from end to end, killing all they encountered, and dragging from the churches the poor women who sought shelter and protection. The blood-thirsty brood did not even respect the Church of San Francesco; and the friars, in a letter to their patron Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, complain most bitterly of the crimes committed within the sacred edifice, even on the very steps of the altar. "The poor city of Assisi," the letter says, "has known only sorrow through the perpetual raids of the Baglioni, whose many crimes would be condemned even by the infidel Turks. They rebel against the holy Pontiff, and such is their ferocity that they have set fire to the gates of the city—even unto that of the Basilica of San Francesco. They do not shudder to murder men, cook their flesh, and give it to the relations of the slain to eat in their prison dungeons."[16] Matarazzo also dwells on the sad conditions of Assisi during her final struggle for independence. "So great was the pestilence and the famine within the walls that human tongue could not describe it, for great woe there was, and such scarcity and penury in Assisi as had never been known. I myself have talked to men who were in Assisi at that time, and who, on remembering those days of famine, pestilence, and war were bathed in tears; and, if the subject had come up a thousand times in a day, a thousand times would they have wept bitterly, so dark was the memory thereof. Not only did they weep, but those also who listened to them, for they would recount how they wandered by the walls of the town, and down to the hamlets, and in every place searching for herbs to eat; and how, forced by hunger, they ate all manner of cooked herbs, and many people sustained themselves with three or four cooked nuts dipped in wine, and with this they made good cheer."[17]

In reading the terrible chronicle of these years, one asks, "How did any life survive in the face of such ghastly suffering?" The strange fact remains that life not only survived, but that the Assisans even flourished during the period, and, like half-drowned birds, who, rising to the surface, bask for a while in the sunshine and then spread their wings for a fresh flight, they too arose and prospered. But the time was drawing near when these continual efforts were no longer needed. The rival factions had reached the summit of their savage strength, and the city despots were soon to be swept from the land by the whirlwind they themselves had raised.

In the year 1500, during one awful night of carnage at Perugia, the Baglioni were nearly all murdered through the treachery of some of their own family. The manner in which the clansmen sought out their victims and stabbed them in their sleep, driving their teeth into their hearts in savage fury, sent a thrill of horror throughout Italy. The downfall of this powerful house affected the destiny of Assisi, for Perugia was brought under the immediate dominion of the church, and with the advent of Paul III, she lost her independence, which she never again recovered. A mighty fortress was erected on the site of the Baglioni palaces, and the significant words "Ad coercendam Perusinorum audacam" were inscribed upon its walls. The Farnese Pope meant to warn, not only the citizens of that proud city which he had brought so successfully within his net, but also the Assisans and the other Umbrians who, with anxious eyes, were watching the storms that wrecked Perugia.

With this new order of things the last flicker of mediæval liberty was being extinguished, and when Paul III, ordered the cannons from the castle of Assisi to be transferred to his new fortress at Perugia, the Assisans felt that a crisis had been reached and that henceforth they must be guided by the menacing finger of an indomitable pontiff. One last effort she did indeed make to save her dignity: she begged to be governed independently of her old rival Perugia. To this the Pope agreed, and a Papal Legate came with great pomp and was met outside the gates by the Priors, nobles, and citizens of Assisi. With that great Farnese fortress looming in the distance they were forced to make some show of gladness as they followed him in solemn procession through the town and up the steep hill to the Rocca Maggiore. Here the Legate walked round the ramparts and through the spacious halls of the castle, taking possession of all in the name of the Church of Rome. Then the Castellano knelt down before him, and as he handed the keys over to his keeping, the history of war and strife in Assisi abruptly closed.