A Short History of Italy Part 9

[15] _Rome in the Middle Ages_, Gregorovius, vol. vi, p. 295, note 1 (translated).

CHAPTER XXII

THE ILLS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

The fourteenth century undoubtedly felt itself emanc.i.p.ated from the limitations of the Middle Ages, and with justice, so far as the cla.s.sical revival was concerned, but it did little or nothing to free itself from ills that were distinctly of a medival character,--plague, lawlessness, and tyranny. In that respect, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World was slow and made a striking contrast with the rapid evolution of art.

The chief of these ills was the plague. Only in remote places of the East, if at all, does the scourge of disease now fall as it then did in the most civilized cities of the world, and it was from the East that these plagues came, brought by sailors. One blasted Tuscany in 1340, one Lombardy in 1361; but the worst was the awful Black Death of 1348, which wrought havoc in various parts of Italy and then swept northward across the Alps on its destructive path. It was this plague which Boccaccio describes in the beginning of the "Decameron." It spread like fire among dry wood which has been sprinkled with oil. At first swellings appeared the size of an egg or an apple, then black and hard spots; on the third day came death. Even animals caught the disease. Boccaccio saw two pigs which had chewed the garment of a plague-stricken man die in convulsions. Medicine was useless. Some thought the wisest course was to live on the daintiest food and drink, and never speak of the plague; others believed in carousing and jollity, and went about from tavern to tavern seeking diversion, but always keeping sober enough to avoid the sick. Private houses were deserted and lay open to anybody. Loyalty disappeared. All who could fled into the country. Thousands fell sick daily. In place of decent burial, dead bodies were tossed huggermugger into trenches. Between March and July, Boccaccio says, more than 100,000 people died within the walls of Florence.

Florence was not singular. In Siena 80,000 people, three quarters of the population, died; in Genoa, 40,000; in Pisa, seven out of ten, and so on in Venice, Rome, Naples, and Sicily. These figures seem incredible; but Petrarch says: "Posterity will not believe that there ever was a period in which the world remained almost entirely depopulated, houses empty of families, cities of inhabitants, the country of peasants. How will the future believe it, when we ourselves can hardly credit our eyes? We go outdoors, walk through street after street, and find them full of dead and dying; when we get home again we find no live thing within the house, all having perished within the brief interval of absence. Happy posterity, to whom such calamities will seem imaginings and dreams."

Poor Petrarch! The lovely Laura, of whom he wrote so many perfect sonnets, died of the Black Death in Avignon. Giovanni Villani, the historian, died in Florence. This terrible calamity throws into high relief the great cla.s.sical impulse, to which the last chapter was devoted. In earlier times men would have turned to religion and the Church; but now Petrarch, a most devout Christian, and his disciples continued to wors.h.i.+p Cicero and the heroes of the Augustan age, and to talk of Csar and Pompey, Scylla and Charybdis, as the most important and interesting of things.

Another great evil which rivalled the plague as a curse, was the host of mercenary soldiers who swarmed over Italy like locusts. In the days of Barbarossa, battles like that of Legnano had been fought between the train-bands of the communes on one side and the feudal chivalry and men-at-arms on the other. But since then a great change had come over the methods of raising soldiers. Under the feudal system the term of service in the field for the liegemen of the Emperor had been forty days; but that time was too short for an effective campaign. When the Emperor wished to cross the Alps and go to Rome in order to receive the Imperial crown, he was obliged to hire soldiers; and, as years went on and these Imperial descents became mere adventurous expeditions, the character of the soldiers degenerated, until in Petrarch's time the Imperial armies were made up of ruffians recruited anywhere. There were also other reasons for establis.h.i.+ng mercenaries in place of militia. The despots of Northern Italy did not wish their subjects trained to arms.

The burghers of mercantile cities did not wish to leave their counting-rooms, nor to have their employees mustered out, so they too preferred hired soldiers to a native militia. Moreover, warfare had changed; cavalry needed frequent manoeuvres, bowmen and pikemen required drill and continuous discipline. Thus the old train-band system of the communes, under which the militia hurried to their appointed posts on the ringing of the bells, gave way to the system of mercenary troops led by soldiers of fortune, _condottieri_, as the Italians call them.

These soldiers, who had come down from the North to serve Emperors, or despots like the Visconti, or perhaps had sailed from Spain to fight under the House of Aragon in Sicily, as soon as the immediate war was ended, having been left unpaid or having taken a liking to a trade in which the labor was congenial, the risk small and booty enormous, decided not to disband, but to continue to try their luck together. They sold their services to whatever city or despot would pay them most, or wandered about in a nomadic fas.h.i.+on, capturing a city if they could, if not, living on the country-side. One can imagine these rogues among unwarlike peasants, or in a pleasant little city like Lucca or Cremona.

They were very fickle, fought one another only upon compulsion, and then most reluctantly and gently, and were very nearly as terrible to their employers as to their adversaries. They were organized, sometimes very well, in bands under a general or a council of officers, and had such names as The Company of St. George, or The Great Company. Some of their leaders became very famous, like Duke Werner, who proclaimed himself "Lord of the Great Company, enemy to G.o.d, to Pity, and to Mercy." The most interesting of these leaders, at least for us, is John Hawkwood, an English adventurer, who began life as a London tailor, but dropped scissors and needle to enlist for Edward III's French campaign, and then, seeing fortune smile most sweetly from distraught Italy, crossed the Alps and led his company all over the peninsula. There is a full length fresco of him on horseback in the _Duomo_ at Florence, painted in grat.i.tude for his deeds in life or merely for his death.

For a hundred years and more these ruffians swaggered about Italy.

Petrarch finds in them one cause the more to hold out his arms toward the mighty past. He writes in a letter: "Oh, would that you were alive, Brutus, Great-heart, that I might turn to you. O Manlius--O Great Pompey--O Julius Csar [etc., etc., etc.], O Jesus, Lord of the world, what has happened? Why do I moan and groan for grief? Oh! a vile handful of robbers, spewed out of their nasty dens, walks and rides over the ancient queen of the world, Italy. Christ Jesus, in tears and supplication I turn to Thee. Oh, if we have abused Thy goodness more than was right, if we have shown ourselves too proud in Thy aid and favour, if we have borne ourselves ill towards Thee, well mayst Thou not permit us to be free; but let not this slaughter, these sacrileges, these robberies, these deeds of violence, these ravis.h.i.+ngs of wives and maidens, find mercy in Thine eyes. Put an end to this evil. To the wicked who have said in their hearts 'There is no G.o.d,' show that Thou art; and to us however unworthy, show that we are Thy children. O Almighty Father, help us; in Thee alone we put our hope, and in supplication we invoke Thy name, weeping and confessing that there is none who shall fight for us, unless Thou, our Lord, be he."

This strange mixture of cla.s.sic enthusiasm and Christian piety, this odd idea that the triumphant cause of the Roman Republic was due to the favour of Christ, shows us that Petrarch had not yet got wholly clear of medival beliefs. But, as with Cola di Rienzo, everything Petrarch says testifies to the power of the Roman tradition.

A third evil, yet not to be compared with the plague and the _condottieri_, was the tyranny of the despots. The founders of despotisms were men of vigour and political capacity, and gave to their subjects in lieu of liberty greater security and order than they had enjoyed before. Their descendants, like proverbial heirs, finding hard work both distasteful and unnecessary, gave themselves up to dissipation and cruelty; they dropped their ancestors' att.i.tude of leading citizens and treated the princ.i.p.alities as private property, intended for their amus.e.m.e.nt. The Visconti, though they retained their family ability and force of character longer than most princely houses, shall serve to ill.u.s.trate the general dynastic development, more especially as the history of Milan, which had become the chief power in Italy, will be the best thread to carry us to the end of the century.

Towards the middle of the century Archbishop Giovanni Visconti had become the lord of Milan (1349-54). He was a clever, cultivated man, interested in letters. He employed scholars to prepare a commentary on the "Divine Comedy," and by urgent persuasion induced Petrarch to take up his abode at Milan. On the archbishop's death his three nephews succeeded jointly to the signory. As one of these three nephews, Bernab (1354-85), ill.u.s.trates the moral degeneracy of the tyrant we will glance at his habits. Bernab was addicted to the chase. n.o.body else was allowed to keep a dog, but he kept five thousand. These he billeted on the citizens of Milan. Every fortnight the masters of his kennels made their rounds; if the dogs were too thin, a fine was imposed; if dead, a general confiscation. If a man killed a wild boar or a hare, he was maimed or hanged, or sometimes, in mercy, merely obliged to eat the quarry raw. Bernab was afraid of conspiracies and rebellion. No man might go out into the street after dark for any cause whatever, under pain of having a foot cut off. No man might utter the words "Guelf" or "Ghibelline," under penalty of having his tongue cut out. Once Bernab shut up his two secretaries in a cage with a wild boar. On another occasion a young man who had pulled a policeman's beard was condemned to pay a small fine, but Bernab ordered his right hand cut off. The _podest_ delayed execution of the sentence, so that the lad's parents might have time to ask mercy. For this Bernab caused the lad's two hands to be cut off and also the _podest's_ right hand. A s.e.xton who demanded too much for digging a grave was buried alive side by side with the dead body. Two monks who came to remonstrate with Bernab for his cruelty were burnt alive. Nevertheless, Bernab protested himself devout; he fasted, built churches and monasteries. This amiable man had thirty-two children. His brother, joint heir of the princ.i.p.ality, Galeazzo II, was of the same stuff, except that in place of piety he subst.i.tuted an interest in letters; he founded the University of Pavia, and exchanged figs, flowers, and flattery with Petrarch. Galeazzo's son, Gian Galeazzo (1378-1402), rose still higher in the world; he gave 300,000 sequins to the King of France, and in return received the king's daughter in marriage. For a second wife he married his cousin, daughter of his amiable uncle Bernab, who thought that this marriage would bind his nephew to him by bonds of filial affection. Gian Galeazzo however, by means of a trick, got his father-in-law within his reach, arrested him, accused him of witchcraft, put him in prison and poisoned him, and so became sole lord of Milan. This worthy lord converted his princ.i.p.ality into a dukedom and became duke (1395); but as we have followed the family to the end of the century, and long enough to make ourselves acquainted with the habits of tyrants, we must leave them.

Poor Italy suffering from these three evils, plagues, _condottieri_, and tyrants, naturally sought for a cure, and, with what seems to us a singular lack of imagination, turned to the old remedies, Emperor and Pope. From time to time Emperors came into Italy, but the Hapsburgs were very different from the Hohenstaufens, and their trips to Rome were mere money-getting excursions. They sold privileges and honours, imposed what taxes they could collect, and sneaked back to Germany. Obviously there was no hope from Emperors. Then rose the cry for the return of the Papacy. Every Italian, however he might hate or despise the Popes, felt proud that the Papacy was an Italian inst.i.tution, and believed that every Pope, good or bad, should live in Rome and sit on his throne at St. Peter's. Sentiment grew strong, especially among the women; Petrarch thundered, St. Catherine of Siena pleaded. Moreover, the sharper argument was urged with great practical effect, that the Papal State might shake off the papal dominion if the Pontiffs did not look after it themselves. The Popes began to stir uneasily. The cardinals indeed, accustomed to the safe city of Avignon, did not care to go to turbulent Rome, or perhaps, as Petrarch said, they could not bear to leave their Burgundian wines. But finally Gregory XI (1370-78) raised his courage to the sticking point. He returned to Rome in 1377, and the Babylonish Captivity of seventy years ended.

CHAPTER XXIII

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW (1350-1450)

The return of the Papacy to Rome was an event of importance both for Italy and the Catholic Church. Had it remained in France, it must have dwindled and shrunk, like Antus, kept away from its source of strength.

Nevertheless, the Papacy was no longer what it once had been; it cannot serve us now as a central channel for the course of Italian history, and will rank no higher than the first of half-a-dozen little channels, which we must pursue separately.

The returning Pope found his territory in greater obedience than he deserved; for a brilliant Spanish cardinal, Albornoz who had been sent some time before had reduced almost all the cities to subjection (1353-67); even Bologna, successfully disputed with the Visconti, acknowledged papal dominion. But there was neither peace nor tranquillity. Everywhere turbulence and murmurous threatenings rumbled; and worse was to come. The very year after the return from the Babylonish Captivity the _Great Schism_ rent the Church asunder for forty years. There were two parties in the College of Cardinals, the French and the Italian, with little love lost between them. The Italians were in control and elected Urban VI (1378-89), a domineering, cruel, most unpastoral person, who insulted the foreign cardinals, and so angered them that they left Rome, declared his election illegal, and elected one of themselves as Pope in his stead. This anti-pope, attended by his troop of cardinals, returned to Avignon. Christian Europe divided in two: some countries recognized Urban, others recognized the anti-pope. Thus the schism began, and prepared the way for the next great split of Christian Europe into Catholics and Protestants. There were now two sources of apostolic succession, two supreme rulers, and two systems of taxation. Misbehaviour and confusion at the top lowered the moral tone of the whole Church. The Curia in Rome was scandalously venal. Indulgences were sold; offices were bestowed for money. n.o.body in Rome respected the Pope, hardly anybody respected the clergy.

All Christendom felt that reformation was necessary, and that, first of all, the schism must be closed. Thereupon some outward deference was paid to public opinion; the Roman Pope went so far as to make ostensible overtures to his rival at Avignon, and he of Avignon bowed and smiled most politely in return. Friendly greetings went to and fro, and a meeting was talked of. It became obvious, however, after a time, that neither Pope had the slightest intention of abdicating in the other's favour. Christendom remained insistent, and the two batches of cardinals took the matter into their own hands. They held a Council at Pisa, which deposed both Popes, and elected a third (1409), but, as the other two Popes refused to acknowledge their deposition, matters were worse than before. The situation recalled the old days when a German Emperor had come down to Rome and had deposed three rival Popes together. The need seemed to revive the past. The Emperor Sigismund (1410-37) a.s.sumed to speak as the head of Christendom. He summoned an Ec.u.menical Council to meet at the city of Constance, on the Lake of Constance, to judge the schismatic quarrel and to consider the general state of the Church.

Other troubles besides schism had begun to appear. The failure of Rome to satisfy the conscience of Europe had borne fruit. Heresy had appeared. In England, Wyclif (1327-84) had denounced the higher clergy for greed and arrogance; he had disavowed allegiance to the divided Papacy, and had opposed the doctrine of transubstantiation. In Bohemia, Jerome of Prague rejected the temporal jurisdiction of priests, and John Huss a.s.serted that Constantine had done great wrong when he endowed Pope Silvester with lands and temporal power.

Christendom responded to the Emperor's call. Prelates and scholars of the highest character and standing a.s.sembled at Constance (1414). It was a great occasion, and belongs to the history of Europe. This Council, the seventeenth Ec.u.menical Council of the Christian Church (1414-18), deposed all three Popes, and elected a Roman, of the House of Colonna, Martin V (1417-31), and so closed the schism and restored unity to the Church. The more difficult matter of crus.h.i.+ng heresy was not so readily dealt with. The two reformers, Jerome of Prague and John Huss, refused to recant or modify their views. They were condemned and handed over to the secular arm for punishment; and the Emperor, heedless of the safe-conduct he had given, burnt them at the stake (1415-16).

To follow the proceedings of this interesting Council more fully would take us too far into papal affairs. It must suffice to say that the Reformation can be sniffed in the air. Rome had not done its elementary duties as head of Christendom, and Christendom insisted on a change and on reform; but Rome was powerful and would not submit. Two parties appear, the reformers and the papists. The former wished to purify the Roman Curia and the whole Church, and to give the Papacy a republican character,--to make the Pope a president, as it were, and the College of Cardinals a senate. The latter liked the old easy ways and wished the Pope to be absolute monarch. The papal party by dexterous politics foiled the plans of the reformers and prevented change of any kind, although no doubt it acted less from desire to obstruct reform than to prevent the anti-monarchical party from getting control of the Church and using the prestige of reform to attack the papal autocracy. From this time on the papal party consistently pursued this course, and therefore reformation came not from Rome, but from Germany, and instead of being a reform from within, came practically as an attack from without, and caused the permanent schism of the Reformation. We must now leave the Papacy, which follows its wilful course--via Babylonish Absenteeism, Schism, and refusal to reform--and steers directly towards the rocks of the Reformation, and betake ourselves to the other parts of Italy.

The Kingdom of Naples would have been badly off at best under its light-mannered queen, Joan I (1343-81), but it became involved in the papal schism, and got into a wretched plight. The queen rashly took sides with the Avignon Pope, and the irascible Roman Pope vowed vengeance. He set her cousin, Charles, who belonged to the Durazzo branch of the House of Anjou, on the throne in her stead. The story is a miserable mixture of treasons, battles, and vulgar crimes. Charles got possession of the unfortunate queen and strangled her, and he and his heirs fought her adopted heirs for years. Each side hired mercenaries.

John Hawkwood was there, and other notable leaders. Poor Naples, taxed, robbed, and ravaged by rival kings, their favourites, and mistresses, rolled rapidly from bad to worse. Exception must be made in favour of Charles's son Ladislaus (1390-1414), a bold, enterprising soldier, who played a part in the affairs of Italy like that of his ancestor, Charles of Anjou. But he failed in not leaving a son to inherit the crown, and was succeeded by his sister, another Queen Joan (1414-35), likewise light-mannered. There is nothing memorable to grace her career, except the presence of a soldier of fortune, once a Romagnol peasant, Muzio Attendolo, better known as Attendolo Sforza (strength). His son was Francesco Sforza, destined to a brilliant career in Milan. The queen did one thing, however, for which we, who clutch at any unification of Italian history, must thank her. She adopted, not wholly of her free will, Alfonso of Aragon, King of Sicily, and so brought about, though for a few years only, the reunion of the Two Sicilies.

With regard to Sicily we need say nothing except that the royal House, which still had a strain of Hohenstaufen-Norman blood, died out, and that Sicily pa.s.sed as a marriage portion to the crown of Aragon, and became a mere appanage of that kingdom (1409). Finally, as I have said, King Alfonso was adopted as heir to the second Queen Joan, and took part in the civil wars that devastated Naples. Then began the long struggle of Spaniard against Frenchman (the Neapolitan House of Anjou was still French), which was destined to be so disastrous to Italy. Alfonso conquered and was acknowledged King of the Two Sicilies by his suzerain the Pope (1443). Thus for a time the Southern Kingdom was united and at peace. It is a happy moment to leave it and go northward, in the hope of finding greater moral and intellectual activity, if not greater tranquillity and order.

To the northeast, Venice had been growing in power; but with the growth of her power the number of her enemies and their bitterness towards her had grown. Her possessions on the mainland, wrested from Verona, brought her into hostility with Padua; her Adriatic possessions, Istria and Dalmatia, made her an enemy of Hungary; her coastwise empire and trade in the Levant made Genoa her deadly rival; and her imperial expansion entangled her in war after war. Both the war with Padua and that with Hungary told upon her, but the struggle with Genoa was far worse. During the last grapple, known as the war of Chioggia (1378-81), Venice was reduced to narrow straits, and but for her great admirals, Vettor Pisani and Carlo Zeno, would have been defeated. Genoa never recovered from the losses she sustained; but Venice regained her strength, and renewed her conquests on the mainland. She conquered Padua (1404) and strangled the last heirs of the House of Carrara, though they were prisoners of war; she seized Verona, and set a price on the heads of the last of the Scaligers, though they had been her allies. Her chief expansion on the mainland of Italy was under the Doge Francesco Foscari (1423-57), when she annexed Bergamo and Brescia, and carried her western boundary to the river Adda. For the sake of convenience we may divide the life of Venice into four stages: first, her l.u.s.ty youth, which closed with the profligate capture of Constantinople and the piratical dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire (1204); second, her vigorous prime, which lasted till she annexed Italian territory, threw in her lot with Italy, and from being almost an Oriental outsider became an Italian state (1338); third, her glorious maturity, which continued till the League of Cambrai, when almost all Europe united to destroy her (1508); and fourth, her long period of ebbing fortune, during which she slipped slowly into decrepitude. In the present chapter we deal with the earlier part of her maturity, when Venice was contesting with Milan for primacy in power and importance.

During all this period the oligarchy had been tightening its hold on the government, and was now absolute and secure. One last attempt had been made to overthrow it, but had easily been put down. No one knows exactly what led to the conspiracy, or what was the exact purpose of the conspirators. The ringleader was the Doge himself, Marino Faliero, one of the old n.o.bility. The story is that he wished to revenge himself for a gross insult from a young n.o.bleman, and it seems likely that a personal quarrel had some connection with a general plot which aimed to overthrow the oligarchy, and subst.i.tute a government of the old n.o.bility supported by the people. The plot was betrayed. Nine of the conspirators were hanged from the windows of the Ducal Palace. Faliero's head was cut off, his portrait in the hall of the Ducal Palace was painted out, and in the blank s.p.a.ce was written: "This is the place of Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes."

The oligarchy did not fail in its duty to itself, but neither did it fail in its duty to the state. Commerce was the life of Venice; and the oligarchy tended it with the utmost care. The famous Venetian a.r.s.enal was the foster-mother of that commerce. There the money-getting s.h.i.+ps were built and equipped: caracks with three decks and great depth of hold, gallea.s.ses with high forecastle and p.o.o.p, galleys with long rows of oars and lateen sails, all of different builds to suit the rough Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, or the safer Adriatic.

Riches, a firm rule, and the security of an island home, showed visibly in Venice. Instead of fortresses with ma.s.sive walls and solid towers, light, elegant palaces, decked with gay balconies and incrusting marbles, lined the ca.n.a.ls. All revealed tranquillity and prosperity; and the adoption of Gothic architecture in place of Byzantine, and in especial the long Gothic arcades of the Ducal Palace (1300-40), testified how Venice had turned her face from the East to the West. In contrast with Sicily and Naples, rolling down hill separately or together, and with the troubled Papal States, Venice appears altogether happy and successful as she pa.s.ses from the fourteenth into the fifteenth century.

Milan we have brought to the dignity of a dukedom, for which Gian Galeazzo Visconti (1378-1402), the amiable nephew of the too-confiding Bernab, paid the price of 100,000 sequins to the fount of honour, the ultramontane Emperor. This nephew, despite a moral inadequacy in his family relations, was in many respects an excellent ruler. He reduced the more burdensome taxes (in one city, it is said, he cut them down from 12,000 florins to 400), and abolished others altogether. He corrected abuses, reorganized the administration of justice, and enacted wise laws. He understood the pride of the Milanese in their city, and laid the foundations of the great Gothic cathedral on a scale to gratify that pride; he began the beautiful church of the Cistercian monks, the _Certosa_, at Pavia; he completed the palace at Pavia, whither he transported his famous collection of books and an equally famous collection of holy bones. He had the family ambition, and annexed Vicenza, Verona, Padua, Siena, a.s.sisi, Perugia, Pisa, and Bologna.

Rumour said that he aspired to a kingdom of Lombardy, and even of all Italy. But Venice and Florence were too powerful for the success of his plans. Venice, perhaps, might have regarded herself as still too much detached from Italy to care to oppose him single-handed; but the doughty burghers of Florence were zealously democratic and would not endure any suggestion of foreign dominion. They had fought the Pope, when they suspected him of designs on their city, and now they organized a league against Gian Galeazzo. Perhaps it would have been a most fortunate thing for Italy if the Duke of Milan had been able to consolidate all Italy, or even all the North, in one kingdom. Centuries of suffering, of ignominy, of foreign domination might have been avoided; but then, perhaps, the great intellectual harvest, that gave Italy for the third time primacy over Europe, would not have attained its full growth. These are idle speculations, for Gian Galeazzo died in his prime (1402), and the universal dominion of Milan became an academic question.

Nevertheless, one cannot withhold a sensation of regret. There was undoubted brilliance in Gian Galeazzo; whatever he did was done royally.

His ambitions were high, planned always on a large scale. His purchases of the French king's daughter and of the ducal t.i.tle were splendidly prodigal. The design of the cathedral was n.o.ble and bold. It was an endeavour to give the Gothic style an Italian character. In this it is easy to find symbolism. The Gothic style represented the Ghibelline cause, as well as Teutonic blood and influence, whereas the Italian represented the Guelf cause and also Latin blood. The high-aspiring Gian Galeazzo wished to use both Teutonic and Italian elements as the materials for his kingdom. In view of his intellectual gifts, one readily slurs over his moral inadequacy, if that term may be applied to traits which would have done honour to Iago; in fact, prior to Csar Borgia, he was the most distinguished example of the type of intellectual, murderous Italian, which exercised so powerful an attraction over the wild fancy of the Elizabethan dramatists.

Gian Galeazzo's death left his dukedom in a chaotic condition. A widow, a regent committee, and three boys were left to see the state, built up with so much care and astuteness, fall away piecemeal into the hands of the petty despots, who had been dispossessed during the process of integration. Venice took Verona, Padua, and other cities near by; the Papacy got back Bologna, Florence managed to secure Pisa. Thus the dukedom was carved up. The eldest son died soon, leaving behind him a memory of the pleasure he took in watching mastiffs tear his prisoners to pieces; but the second son, Filippo Maria (1412-47), inherited his father's craft and much of his ability. By means of two famous _condottieri_, Carmagnola, best remembered as the victim of Venetian anger, and Francesco Sforza, of whom we have heard in the Neapolitan service, he gradually restored the dukedom very nearly to its boundaries under his father. Filippo Maria was the last of his race, and we will leave him, engaged in speculation as to the best political use of his marriageable daughter Bianca Maria.

We must pa.s.s over the Counts of Savoy, now become dukes (1416), the marquesses of Monferrat and Saluzzo, and the lords of other petty territories, and turn our attention to Florence. Florence was always in a state of struggle, always engaged in exiling, deposing, or in some way suppressing aristocrats. Forced, in days of peril, to receive foreign lords as military leaders, she had managed to expel the last of them, one Walter of Brienne, a clever knave, who bore the odd t.i.tle of Duke of Athens, which he had inherited from his grandfather, one of the gentlemen adventurers who had gone to the East. His father had been expelled from Athens, and the son was happily driven out of Florence.

The burghers followed up their victory (1343) with new laws against the aristocrats, and held the government for a generation. Then first appears the name of Medici. One Salvestro dei Medici, as _Gonfaloniere_ of Justice, the supreme officer in Florence under the existing const.i.tution, proposed further laws in favour of the people. The lower cla.s.ses, with whetted appet.i.tes, wanted more. The mechanics and artisans of the lower guilds, and more particularly the wool carders and combers (the _Ciompi_) of the great wool guilds, rose in riot, overturned the government, and put a wool-carder, Michele di Lando, at the head of the city (1378). Florence was democratic, but not so democratic as to submit to the rule of a wool-carder. The rich burghers would not stomach a plebeian any more than they would a king. A reaction set in, and the government pa.s.sed into the very competent hands of an oligarchy of distinguished citizens. This oligarchy governed well. Its leaders, Maso degli Albizzi, and Niccol da Uzzano, acted patriotically and wisely.

They resisted the aggressions of Milan from the north, and of Naples (under that exceptional king Ladislaus) from the south, and made it their policy to maintain the balance of power in Italy. Under this oligarchy began the great development of art, known as the Renaissance, or, to be more exact in quoting the textbooks, the First or Early Renaissance. To that subject, which shall give us for a time at least a centre, and save us from these puzzling political subdivisions, we joyfully proceed; only remembering that at this period Italy has these main political divisions,--the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples (the two temporarily reunited), the Papal States, the city of Florence, the duchy of Milan, and the city of Venice.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE EARLY RENAISSANCE (1400-1450)

By Renaissance, new birth, we mean the rapid, many-sided, intellectual development which started forward in Italy at this time. It was really a stage in the movement which began a hundred years earlier, but the textbooks confine the term Renaissance to the period which began at the opening of the fifteenth century; and just as the first beginning took place in Florence, so this fresh start, like a stream of energy issuing at a divine touch, also burst out of the city of Florence. The simplest way to get an idea of this period, known as the Early Renaissance, will be to notice a few of the men, leaders in their several spheres, in whom that energy became incarnate.

We must not let ourselves think that the Renaissance was a merely artistic movement. A few men are known to us, and we think of them as wandering about in artistic isolation, as if they were hermits in a Thebaid. But, in reality, only a slight fraction of even the deeper feelings and interests take artistic or literary form; the great majority are put into life. The celebrated Florentine artists of those days were merely representative of their fellows; they were surrounded by crowds of neighbours, all crammed full with ardour for living, for expression, for discussion, for money-making, for glorifying their city. In recognition of this fact, and of the great service rendered to the arts throughout the Renaissance by men who were not artists, but potent signors of wealth and cultivation, whether merchants, dukes, or cardinals, I take Cosimo dei Medici (1389-1464) as the first figure in this brief account of the Early Renaissance.

Cosimo's father, the richest banker in Italy, and one of the chief citizens of Florence, had been active in politics, and chief of the party which was opposed to the ruling oligarchy. Cosimo succeeded to his father's position, and when the oligarchy fell became the actual head of the city, though he always affected the rle of private citizen. His quick intelligence and his broad cultivation gave him keen sympathy with the fermenting intellectual life about him, and his great wealth enabled him to express that sympathy in most substantial ways. He got his first schooling from a Florentine humanist, and then went abroad, travelled in Germany and France, and visited the Council of Constance then in session. After that his attention was devoted to business and to political affairs. His position in Florence during early manhood was always precarious, for the sharp-witted Florentines were not easily hoodwinked and saw whither Cosimo's masterfulness was tending. For a time he was in exile, but after a tussle he won his place and banished his enemies. Wealth was his great instrument. He lent and gave lavishly.

In later life he used to say that his chief error had been that he had not begun to spend money ten years sooner than he did. He was a serious man, given to intellectual matters, and averse to buffoons and strolling players, so popular then; by virtue of wide experience in the conduct of large affairs, of extensive reading, of a retentive memory, and a natural gift for language, he was both an interesting talker and good company. He talked literature with men of letters, but he was equally ready to talk divinity, in which he was well read, or philosophy, or astrology in which he believed although some men did not. He liked gardening, and enjoyed going out of town to his country-place; there he would prune the vines for two hours in the morning, and then go indoors to read. His connection with the arts of the Renaissance, however, is our chief concern. He employed the famous architect Michelozzo to build his palace, now known as Palazzo Riccardi, his villa, and also the Dominican convent of San Marco. He employed the still more famous Brunelleschi to rebuild the abbey of Fiesole. He was fond of sculptors, especially of Donatello, and had statues by the best masters of the day in his palace. He employed Fra Angelico to paint in the convent of San Marco, and Benozzo Gozzoli in his private chapel. Benozzo painted a procession of the Three Wise Men, with Cosimo, his son, and his grandson, young Lorenzo the Magnificent, riding in their train. Cosimo's greatest interest, however, was in the humanities. He built several buildings for libraries in Florence, and one in Venice, and interested himself greatly in the preservation and increase of the libraries themselves. For the library in the abbey at Fiesole he employed a man of letters (Vespasiano da Bisticci, his biographer), who hired forty-five copyists, and in twenty-two months finished the two hundred volumes deemed necessary for a good library. His list included the Bible and concordances and commentaries, beginning with that by Origen; the works of St. Ignatius, St. Basil, St. Gregory n.a.z.ianzen, St. John Chrysostom, and all the works of the Greek fathers which had been translated into Latin; St. Cyprian, Tertullian, and the four doctors of the Latin Church; the medival masters St. Bernard, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Anselm, St. Isidore of Spain; the scholastic philosophers, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura; Aristotle, and commentaries; books of canon law; the Latin prose cla.s.sics, Livy, Csar, Suetonius, Plutarch, Sall.u.s.t, Quintus Curtius, Valerius Maximus, Cicero, Seneca; the Latin poets, Virgil, Terence, Ovid, Lucan, Statius, Plautus; and "all the other books necessary to a library." One wonders if this clause includes Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, or whether the humanists did not regard them as necessary or appropriate to culture.

Taken altogether Cosimo may stand as an heroic model of the Florentine burgher, such as one sees in the frescoes of the time, shrewd, prudent, thoughtful, cautious in plan and prompt in action, interested in the best things of this world, and in a measure generous, but wholly without romance, chivalry, or idealism. At the close of his life he used to stay hours at a time, wrapt in thought, without speaking a word. One of the women of the house asked him the reason of this. He answered: "When you have to go out of town, you spend a fortnight all agog to prepare for going; and now that I have to go from this life to another, doesn't it seem to you that I have something to think about?" The last book he is reported by his biographer to have read was the "Ethics" of Aristotle.

Cosimo was named _Pater Patri_, though his real work was the foundation of the House of the Medici, which ruled in Tuscany for centuries and mingled its blood with the royalties of Europe; but for us he is the patron of the arts, the friend of artists, and serves as the central figure round which to group the men of artistic genius.

In architecture the greatest name is that of Brunelleschi (1377-1446).

His biography by Vasari opens with these words: "Many men are created by nature little in person and features, who have their souls so full of greatness and their hearts so full of the inordinate fury of genius, that, unless they are at work on things difficult to impossibility, and unless they finish them to the astonishment of the spectator, they never give themselves any rest all their lives; and whatever things chance puts into their hands, no matter how mean and cheap, they bring to worth and dignity.... Such was Brunelleschi, no less insignificant in person than Giotto, but of so lofty genius, that it may be said he was endowed by heaven to give new form to architecture, which for hundreds of years had gone astray [such was the Renaissance view of the Gothic and Romanesque]. Moreover, Brunelleschi was adorned with the greatest virtues; among which was friends.h.i.+p to such a degree, that there never was a man more kind or more loving than he. His judgment was wholly free from pa.s.sion; wherever he saw the worth of another man's merits, he totally disregarded any advantage to himself or to his friends. He knew himself; he inspired others with his own n.o.ble qualities, and he always succoured his neighbour in time of need. He declared himself a deadly enemy of the vices, and a lover of those who practised virtue. He never wasted time, for he was always busy with his own affairs or with the affairs of others when they had need of him, and when out walking he used to stop and see his friends and always lent them a hand."

Brunelleschi was no scholar, but, being a Florentine, he was very fond of talking, and did not hesitate to take part in conversation with learned men, especially when the talk ran on Holy Writ, and then, as a friend said, he talked like a second St. Paul.