Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight

by Mathew Joseph Holt

"My savings amounted to more than eight thousand florins. The florin is a small gold coin with a lily on one side and the word 'Florentina' on the other.

"For sixty-five hundred florins I purchased a small but substantial house on Via Calimara, near the Arte della Lana, the guildhouse of the wool weavers. The armorial design of the art, embossed above the portal, is a lamb bearing a cross.

"Two of my friends, who lived on a side street in the neighborhood, were Michael di Lando, a wool-comber who had considerable influence with his guild, and Ser Nuto, a bailiff of the Signory.

"I had been in Florence six months and married more than a month when Sir John disposed of our services to the eight commissioners of war; when, with great unwillingness, I was forced to leave wife and home and resume command of my three hundred horsemen.

"After having been thus engaged for more than four months, I procured a furlough, expecting to have ten days of quiet at home. It was the month of May and the city at its loveliest. On the third night after my return, my wife and I were eating a late lunch, after a visit to her brother's palace, when the servant announced that a man was at the door with a message from Sir John, asking that I come at once to the inn of the Golden Hat on the Via de Bardi.

"Buckling on armor and sword, and telling the good wife not to wait up for me, I accompanied the messenger.

"When crossing the Ponte Vecchio in the darkness of its many butcher stalls, the messenger, walking behind, leaped upon my back, seeking to throw me to the floor. He was almost instantly aided by a half-dozen men wearing black robes and cowls covering the head, having eyeholes only; in other words, dressed as friars of the order of Misericordia. One of these struck me on the head with a heavy short sword, and when I regained consciousness I learned I was a prisoner in a dungeon under the cloisters of the monastery of Agnoli. My friend, Ser Nuto, had engineered the capture, which had been ordered by the Bologna legate for my gross insults to him and consequently to the church. My captors, who belonged to the Guelph faction, had cheerfully executed the commission because of my relationship by marriage with the Medici family.

"My dungeon was simply a cistern of huge stones beneath the floor of the cell of a friar of the order and the same size as his cell. The only aperture was in the floor of the cell above and closed by a heavy grating, the key to which, kept by the head of the order, was never entrusted to the friar, who was as powerless to open the grating as I.

"The walls of immense stone were made the more impervious by iron bars, which prevented contact with them, and made my prison an iron cage encased in a stone dungeon. Food was let down by a cord through the grating by a narrow copper bucket, and in the same manner each day the refuse of the cell was removed. The friar who occupied the cell above and who was my jailer was the only person I ever saw except when tortured.

"At the end of a week Ser Nuto came into the cell and, calling down through the grating, said; 'Climb up; you are to go before the holy tribunal.' The grating was opened, a ladder let down and I climbed up and was led across the open court through a long hall into a large room, where twelve men, laymen and ecclesiastics, sat, the prelate acting as presiding officer. It must have been near midnight. I remember when I crossed the court how brilliantly the stars shone.