Lives of the early Medici

by Unknown

Thy Lucrezia.[111]

The long journey and the damp told on Lucrezia who was never strong, and at Foligno she fell seriously ill.

Lucrezia de’ Medici to her husband Piero

I know not, she writes, whether it is thanks to these doctors or to thy letter received last night, but this morning I felt so well that I hope to set forth in three days. Maestro Girolamo will tell thee exactly the state of my health, which I think will content thee. I only lament the many annoyances I have caused thee on my journey. But believe me, wherever I might have been I should have been ill, for I have brought up much phlegm and nastiness which must have been there for a long time. Commend me to Mona Contessina and beg her to have patience, for soon, as soon as it pleases these doctors, I shall return to her and maybe she will take better care of me, though here, thanks be to God, I have wanted for nothing. I know not whether I should even have had such conveniences at home, certainly not at Rome. If it seems good to thee that I should send back Messer Gentile for Giuliano let me know before we start.[112] I shall wait to get quite well as thou sayest, and to recoup. Meanwhile and always I commend myself to thee and beg thee to be patient with me.—In Foligno, May 4, 1467, at 1 o’clock.

Thy Lucrezia.

Yesterday and last night I slept, as the Maestro will have told thee, as though quite well.[113]

After her return to Florence the doctors sent Lucrezia early in September to Bagno a Morba, a place already mentioned in earlier pages. But here, where several letters are given written by Lucrezia from that celebrated spring, a few words may be added on the bathing habits of the fifteenth century to show how large a part they played in the social life of the time. For it is a delusion to think that the frequent use of water, cold or hot, is a modern virtue. It is true that from the middle of the sixteenth century till the end of the eighteenth men and women washed but sparingly. Marguerite de Valois could say to her lover, “See these fair hands. Though they have not been washed for eight days, they are cleaner than yours.” Manuals of Etiquette, published in 1667 and in 1782, recommend ladies and gentlemen to clean their faces with a dry white linen cloth, because to wash the face with water makes it more susceptible to cold in winter and to tan in summer. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the use of water was nearly as common as it is now. The whole population, whether north or south of the Alps, rejoiced in bathing. They used cold baths, hot baths, and steam baths; they gathered to bathe in mineral water; above all they delighted in baths when the water came from hot springs, and those were most prized which were strongly impregnated with sulphur, as was the case at Morba. The site of many an Italian monastery was selected simply because it was near enough a hot spring for the monks to enjoy what was looked on almost as necessary to healthy living. Indeed one of the punishments inflicted on unruly members of the community was a prohibition to use the bath. The Italian doctors distinguished between Stupha, or hot air, and Balneum, or hot water baths. Rubbing and even scratching whilst bathing was recommended, and Arnaldo di Villa Nuova (1300-1366) ordered his elderly patients to be well rubbed when in the water, and to take a herb-bath four times a month. Soap, and sometimes lye, was used, and Italian soap was in great request, particularly in Germany.

The hot sulphur springs of Morba had been known for centuries, and belonged to the Commune of Volterra, as is mentioned in a document of 1297. They lie some ten miles south of the old Etruscan city, in that part of the Apennines dominated by the imposing Monte Cerbole, in a region which then and now produced borax and alum. The wild desolate scenery gave rise to legends. It was said that on stormy nights a fiery chariot drawn by fiery horses rushes along the mountain side, and then with a terrific noise which drowns thunder and wind, dashes down into the valley leading to the lagoons of Larderello, which were supposed to be the mouths of hell, and disappears. After the apparition of the chariot, the jets of white sulphureous smoke which always rise more or less from the grey soil are more dense and hiss like great serpents as they curl upwards to the sky. It is altogether an uncanny place. Here and there the black mud bubbles and boils, rising up in small cones which subside with a strange rumbling noise like the hoarse barking or growling of a distant watchdog. The ground sounds hollow under foot, and shakes if you walk near any of the blowholes, while the smell of rotten eggs, so characteristic of sulphur springs, is overpowering, particularly after rain.

The famous baths are not far off. They had been largely deserted, conduits broken, bathing-houses tumbling down, everything neglected and falling to ruin. The sulphureous springs, left to find their way through the rocks and the soil, were wasted and produced nothing but evil-smelling ooze. When the Florentines became masters of Volterra they sent Doctor Ugolino da Montecatini with their Chancellor Colucci da Salutati to report on the virtues of the waters in 1388. Something was done to render the baths useful and productive. The village with its small castle was rebuilt and surrounded with a sheltering wall. Visitors were protected from the sudden assaults of the robber nobles whose castles crowned neighbouring heights, and who swooped down on the bathers in hopes of plunder and ransom. The baths regained some of their old prosperity, and gouty or rheumatic Florentines braved the discomforts of the road to make use of the waters. Cosimo Pater Patriæ visited them frequently, and on a memorable occasion a favourite pair of scissors were left in his lodgings, which Contessina tells her son Giovanni to send back to Florence (p. [55]). The probability is, however, that the arrangements were anything but luxurious when Lucrezia first tried and found the benefits of the healing springs.

She soon saw the advantages of the position, and after buying the village and baths of Morba in 1477 from the Commune of Florence, in true Florentine fashion at once made plans which would benefit the place, its visitors, her own health, and her pocket. The valuable water was largely wasted; cisterns were needed; more springs might be discovered. Accordingly experts were engaged, the ground was investigated, and work was carefully planned. The known springs were cleared, the water was carefully collected and brought into a great covered cistern built of well-burnt bricks and covered with tiles according to the most approved pattern of the day. Search was made for other springs; the streamlets were followed back to their sources in neighbouring rocks. Soon the supply of water was more than doubled. Meanwhile the bathing-houses with their twelve separate baths were rebuilt. Old engravings enable us to form some idea of these Italian baths, which were made much more luxurious than those north of the Alps. There is no trace of that promiscuous bathing so common in Germany. Either the sexes had separate bathing-houses or, what is more probable, used the same baths at different hours. We see a room with one or more oblong baths set in the floor, and to each bathroom was attached a smaller apartment with a bed for the hour of repose enjoined after bathing. The bathing establishment was a long row of such bathrooms completely separate from each other. At first the same stream of water served all the baths at Morba, but it was found that those nearest the cisterns were too hot, while those furthest from them were too cold. The defect was remedied by an ingenious system of conduits. Provision was made in each bathroom for shower or douche baths, the water being conducted along the walls in open gutters pierced with holes above each wooden tub. Lucrezia also built a large house which served as an hotel and, as at Cauterets—the favourite bathing resort of Marguerite d’Angoulême, the Queen of Navarre, where there was a Maison du Roi, while the other bathers lived in cabanes et logis—there was a “small palace” for her own use and that of her family. It must have been a thorough holiday for the energetic and busy woman, for, as the Queen of Navarre said, “while at the baths one must live as free from care as a child.”