BIBBIENA MARKET-PLACE
various trades were plied. The main streets of the place were lined with vaulted cavernous shops, the doors of which were thrown open, and in the deep, shady recesses men were busy at work. As usual in hill cities, blacksmiths’ shops were numerous, and the owners of all seemed well employed. And as one passed along the street—those narrow, stony Italian streets—one’s attention was arrested by the sound of hammering. Presently the hammering ceased, the bellows stirred up a rush of sparks, and for a moment a ruddy light fell on the bending cyclopean figures at work, or perhaps on the bellows themselves, a panting monster couchant on the hearth. From the braziers’ shops sounded the din of the strokes falling on the metal. These shops too were numerous, and their roofs could hardly be seen for the number of large-bellied copper water pots hanging there. The roof too of the shop of smoked wares was almost invisible from rows upon rows of suspended sausages and hams, each tightly confined in a close network of string. There was the weaver’s workshop, from which sounded the regular thud of the beam thrown back on the woof, and there was the wheelwright’s, with its smell of stored timber and its floor strewn with crisp shavings as they were taken off by the plane. The greengrocer’s store was but a poor one as yet; there were lumps of boiled spinage and bunches of young artichokes, no other green-meats, but there were lemons, oranges, nuts and dried figs in plenty. There was the drug store too, with its clean, cool, deserted look. The apothecary and a friend were sitting down to a game of cards one day when we passed, and looked up in surprise as we entered in the hope of coming upon some pots of Savona ware—a desire for which was strong in the new-fledged M.D. Then there was the barber’s shop, with its nimble master, who could be seen operating on a customer, and the small window with panes of glass behind which the watchmaker sat bending over his work.
On market-days the town assumed a look of greater liveliness. Two-wheeled country carts came toiling up the hill. They were left on the terrace below or on one side of the market-place, and their inmates stood about in groups with the men of the town who had stopped work for the day. A number of stalls were set up on the market-place and wares of many kinds were displayed. There were stalls of butchers’ meat, loaded with the tiniest of lambkins, a sorry sight; there were stalls with a show of ribbons and laces, all of the cheapest; stalls with bales of homespun; stalls with hats and caps of felt. And on the ground brown and yellow and red earthenware was heaped up or spread about, jars and platters, and pots and pans, in the plainest of forms but most decorative in colour.
On such a day selling extended down the side streets. And the vendor of cheap literature was seen suspending tracts and booklets in rows by means of bits of string, while the hawker of cheap jewellery took advantage of a projecting window-ledge to set out his little trays. The display of outlandish wares invariably causes one’s money to burn, and one of us was tempted to buy a silver finger-ring with a crucified Christ—a pattern peculiar to Tuscany, I believe—while the other, from a mass of twopenny romances and stories of the saints, picked out the romance of Pia dei Tolomei, the story of a faithful wife’s cruel treatment and violent death. This was she, unforgotten in popular literature as it seemed, who started up before Dante in Purgatory and prayed him to recall her memory on earth.
But it was at night, when the dark of the evening filled the streets with gloom, when the last carts had rattled down the steep streets and were speeding away along the white country roads in the darkness, when men passed along the walls like shadows, and silence had laid her hold on the concerns of this world, that fancy began to stir and breathe more freely, and stepped forth to take her pleasure with the figures of the past.
One evening I had stayed in the Franciscan church looking at the altar-pieces of the Della Robbias, the Nativity and the Deposition—the latter a gift to the church from Cardinal Bibbiena—till the twilight drove me out and I went to walk on the terrace of the town, which commanded a view of the panorama of the hills. There had been a thunderstorm, and heavy rain-clouds hung over the Apennines. Their lower slopes were shrouded in mist, but spanned from side to side by a rainbow. Towards the south the skyline above the valley of the Arno was piled with masses upon masses of clouds. Further yet, towards the west, the sun had just set behind a rocky height, but its reflection was caught by the white vapour that filled the undulating plain and extended upwards into the numerous branching valleys beneath the snow-capped heights of the Pratomagno, revealing line upon line of rocky crag and sloping hillside. It was a sight that stirred emotion and roused the imagination. And wandering back through the dark, solitary streets, I seemed to see some of the figures of the shadowy past, whose mortal remains long ago had fallen to dust and decay, nay, for aught we knew, had gone to build up new forms of life again and again under the transforming agency of time.
Had they not all walked and talked here, the Etruscan potter, cunning of hand, worthy forerunner of the Tuscan painter of the Quattrocento?—The Roman centurion, proud of a system of government which embraced the known world, never equalled before, never since?—The Langobard hunter—the soft-treading monk—the sister of charity—had they not all walked and talked in sight of the surrounding hills? And had not these streets seen some of those feuds between commune and commune, very thorns in the eyes of Italian liberty in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the hope of national unification was shattered, and that for centuries to come, by the rise of the condottieri, those upstart rulers, spoilt children of fortune, to whom Italian history owes some of its most sombre and also some of its brightest pages? There is no English equivalent for the word condottiere, the thing and the term for it are unknown outside Italy. For in Italy alone a combination of peculiar circumstances made it possible for men, who were gifted with unlimited determination, to watch their opportunity inside the separate townships and to snatch at the reins of independent government by the help of mercenary troops, a tool, dangerous in itself, which they handled with consummate ability.
The development of communal life in the cities of northern Italy had been early. But placed between Emperor and Pope the citizens of different towns split into factions; some preferred allegiance to an Emperor who was on the other side of the Alps, others, more national in feeling, sided with the Pope. But when the respective authority of Pope and Emperor became a matter of dispute, and each sought to support his claims by introducing foreign armies into Italy, all alike were thrown off their balance.
Under these circumstances the joint action of citizens was inconceivable, much more the joint action of different cities, to the common end of national consolidation. Worn out by party conflicts, townships at last succumbed to the high-handed government of a military leader who brought security if nothing else, and the Republican Government of city after city fell a prey to men whose attitude recalled that of the tyrants of classical antiquity. For among the condottieri also there were men famous for their misdeeds, yet whose despotism was relieved by a trait of grandeur. Among them also there were men who held the prosperity of their subjects dear at heart and who made their courts into centres of learning and polite intercourse. A stormy period was followed by comparative quiet, and the arts of peace found their best patrons among parvenu princes.
The town of Bibbiena had experienced her share of these vicissitudes. Subject at one time to the Prince Bishop of Arezzo, the town was besieged and appropriated by the Republic of Florence, snatched back by members of the powerful Tarlati family, and reconquered by Florence thirty years later. For its vicinity to Florence, combined with its comparative remoteness, made Bibbiena a dangerous neighbour in times of warfare. This was especially the case after the expulsion from Florence of the Medici in 1494, when Piero, the eldest son and successor of Lorenzo the Magnificent, with his brothers and others, sought the help of Venice. An army of Venetians invaded the Casentino, and made Bibbiena its headquarters. The Florentines, having secured the help of the Sforza of Milan, in their turn invaded the Casentino, laying siege to Bibbiena, and the Venetian army was caught as in a trap. Bibbiena fell, and all possibility of her harbouring the enemies of Florence in the future was removed by the entire demolition of her town walls.