[1] Montaigne evidently refers to the Roman theatre situated between the Castello San Pietro and the river. Its destruction began early, as it is described as ruined in a decree of King Berengarius dated 895. Much of it remained up to the sixteenth century.
[2] Coryat, who saw it in 1608, describes it as greatly ruined and put to base uses. Much of the marble had been taken away to other buildings; but the damage was being repaired by the Veronese noblemen, who had already spent sixty-six thousand crowns over the restoration. To build it in England, he estimates, would cost two million pounds.
[3] Modern measurements are 502 feet by 401, and 98 feet high.
[4] Madonna di Campagna, one of the finest works of Sammicheli.
[5] Palladio had died a short time before Montaigne’s visit, i.e. August 19, 1580. Vicenza was at this time at the height of its beauty, all the noteworthy buildings, except the Teatro Olimpico, having been completed.
[6] The fairs of Vicenza were amongst the largest in Italy, and were instituted in the thirteenth century. During their continuance all the shops in the city had to be closed. Fairs were held up to the middle of the present century.
[7] The founder was the chief magistrate of the city, and is said to have been moved to religious enthusiasm by reading the life of S. Mary of Egypt. Montaigne is wrong in giving 1367 as the date of the foundation of the order; it was the year of Colombini’s death. The members of the order were originally laymen, and chiefly occupied in preparing drugs. Urban V. placed them under the Augustinian rule. In 1606 they were allowed to be ordained, and in 1660 were suppressed by Clement IX.
[8] It is singular that Montaigne makes no mention of the University. Italy was then the great school of fencing, as he notices in the Essais, ii. 27.
[9] Coryat notices this bust, and gives the inscription written by Paolo Giovio: “Petri Bembi Cardinalis imaginem Hieronymus Quirinus Ismerii filius in publico ponendam curavit: ut cujus ingenii monumenta æterna sint, ejus corporis quoque memoria ne a posteris desideretur. Vixit annos 76, M. 7, D. 29. Obiit 15 Calend. Februarii anno 1547.” Writing of the other tombs Coryat says: “Amongst others in the Cloyster I observed one that made me even lament, the monument of a certaine English Nobleman, namely, Edward Courtney, Earle of Devonshire, who was buried here in the time of Queen Mary; he died there in his youth, and was the sonne of Henry, Earle of Devonshire and Marquesse of Exceter, who was beheaded in the time of King Henry the Eighth. This Edward Courtney was afterward restored by Queen Mary. Truely it strooke great compassion and remorse in me to see an Englishman so ignobly buried, for his body lieth in a poore woodden Coffin placed upon another faire monument, having neither epitaph nor any other thing to preserve it from oblivion, so that I could not have knowne it for an Englishman’s Coffen, except an English gentleman, Mr. George Rooke, had told me of it.”—Crudities (1776), vol. i. p. 176.
[10] Coryat says: “He is represented according to his olde age: for his face is made very leane and shaved.” The inscription under it, “Ve T. Livius Liviæ I. F. Quartæl. Halys concordialis Patavi sibi et suis omnibus,” has probably no reference to Livy at all. It was discovered in 1363 near the church of San Giustina and removed to the Sala della Ragione. This is the one which Montaigne mistakes for Livy’s epitaph. Another inscription records the gift of Livy’s arm-bone to Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1450. Coryat mentions a second statue of Livy, made of freestone, and says that this was the effigy brought, together with an inscription underneath, “from Saint Gustinae’s Church.” The monument at the end of the hall was erected in 1547.