When Count Guido Vecchio died in the year 1213, the family split into five branches, each of his sons taking the name of count of the chief stronghold which fell to his share. Poppi in the first instance fell to Count Guido Magnifico of Bagno, then to his sons Guido Novello and Simone. The acts of these brothers, and the enmity which arose between them, take us into the very thick of the contentions which agitated Florence in the thirteenth century.
The terms Guelf and Ghibelline were used in Florence since 1215, marking the different tendencies of the citizens. The Guidi, like most other rural nobles, were Ghibellines; they wished to see the power of the city kept within certain limits, and in this they were opposed to the Guelf or patriotic party. Guido Novello and Simone, with other Ghibellines, left Florence for a time in 1248; ten years later they were altogether banished from the city. Shortly afterwards they fought at the battle of Montaperti, when the Florentines were beaten and the river Arbia, as Dante has it, ran red with blood. It was then that Count Guido Novello made the proposal that the city of Florence should be razed from the face of the earth, an insult which the Florentine patriotic party never forgave him. Farinate degli Uberti, also a Ghibelline, but one who felt some affection for the city, successfully opposed him; he is represented by Dante in Hell recalling this fact to the poet’s mind. Florence remained standing, but for the next six years it was at the mercy of the Ghibellines. Guido Novello, supported by the troops of King Manfred, ruled in a spirit which was little calculated to soften the acrimony of the Florentines against him. He caused Poppi to be fortified by a new wall in 1260; he then built the Porta Ghibellina at Florence, and constructed a new road out of it so as to be in direct communication with the Casentino. This road (the paved path which leads over the Consuma and along the valley of the Solano) he used to convey to Poppi crossbows, bucklers and armour which he abstracted from the arsenal at Florence. Villani tells how he showed his castle and these weapons to his uncle Tegrimo, Count of Modigliana and Porciano, asking him what he thought of them. Tegrimo replied that he liked them well enough, but that he knew the Florentines only “lent at a high rate of usury.” Subsequent events proved the truth of the remark. When King Manfred was overthrown, Guido Novello lost his support and was obliged to leave Florence. He did so without much dignity, and stones were thrown at him as he left the city. Twenty years later, at the instigation of the Bishop of Arezzo, he and other Ghibellines collected an army in the Casentino to march upon Florence. The Florentines came over the mountains and defeated them and ravaged the territory which belonged to the Guidi. And in the following year they came back and made an assault on Poppi, and finding the arms there which the Count had abstracted, they carried them back to Florence in triumph.
The battle in which the Florentines fought the Ghibellines in the plain of Campaldino below Poppi on June 11, 1289, is memorable since Dante, at the time a youth of twenty-four, fought in the ranks of the victorious Guelfs. He referred to the fact himself in a letter, in which he said how he found himself “no mere child in the practice of arms, and was in great fear, and in the end rejoiced greatly through the varying fortunes of the battle.” For luck at first went against the Florentines; the Ghibellines gained an advantage, but they did not follow it up. Guido Novello, who was now an old man, backed upon Poppi, the Bishop of Arezzo fell fighting, and Buonconte, another Ghibelline leader, was wounded and fled. In the Divine Comedy Buonconte is represented giving an account of his flight to Dante—how with pierced and bleeding throat he reached the point where the Archiano falls into the Arno, and how the waters carried him away and his final resting-place was never known.
STATUE OF COUNT GUIDO,
CASTLE OF POPPI
Guido Novello, who backed upon Poppi, cannot have stayed there, as the place was no longer his and no longer a stronghold of the Ghibellines. It had passed to his brother Simone and his son Guido of Battifolle, and Simone and his son, according to Villani, went over to the Guelfs because of Guido Novello’s cruelty. When therefore the Florentines made an assault on Poppi, they were damaging the property of a Guelf and an ally. Guido of Battifolle, sometimes also called Guido Novello, the son of Simone, pleaded in Florence for damage done to his property, and he received the sum of twelve hundred lire, which he spent in re-building his castle.
It is owing to this sequence of events that the remote little town of Poppi came to boast of its remarkable castle. Vasari in his Lives of the Painters and Architects tells us that Jacopo Lapo, called il Tedesco, “built many buildings in the Gothic style in Tuscany, among them the palace at Poppi in the Casentino.” And in the life of Arnolfo, whom Vasari wrongly called the son of Jacopo (he was his pupil), he adds that Arnolfo built the palace of the Signory at Florence on the plan of what his father had constructed at Poppi.
As one emerged from the streets and entered the open space before the castle the contrast was striking between our peace-loving, law-abiding age and that period when life was bound up with warfare. Trees veiled in spring foliage cast a fitful shadow over what was formerly an open ground for free fighting; near the ruined castle walls children played and old people loitered in the sun. We entered the courtyard without let or hindrance, and then the sound of a tinkling bell brought out a Government custode. With him we ascended to the first floor by the skilfully-constructed open-air staircase which leads from floor to floor round the four sides of the court. He led the way into the large hall, a beautiful room with carved and coloured beams and double arched windows set high in the thickness of the wall. We wandered from room to room and from storey to storey. Fragments of partitions taken down, of glaring wall-papers torn from the walls, of brick and mortar, lay about here and there—disfigurements of a later date which are now in course of being removed. After centuries of concealment the ceiling construction and the old fresco decorations of the walls were being bared to the light of day, for the castle is now in the hands of the Government and is in course of restoration as a national monument. The palace chapel contained curious frescoes attributed to Spinello Aretino and Jacopo del Casentino. Remains of old wall-painting in curious patterns and of earlier date decorated the dining and other halls. We ascended to the uppermost storey, and there in the way of a caryatide supporting a leafy volute, on which rested the inner cornice of the roof, stood the figure of Count Guido of Battifolle, the son of Simone, carved in stone. It is a beautiful youthful figure, the uncovered head full of clustering curls, the face strong and somewhat defiant in expression, the body clad in plate-mail, with the one hand holding a short dagger, and the other resting on the hilt of a long sword. Whose the thought thus to place the owner of the palace, who the artist to carry it out, are not recorded, but as it stands the figure may well have delighted him who made it and him whom it represents.
ARMS OF THE GUIDI