Paradiso

Canto XVI

Cacciaguida’s discourse of the great Florentines.

O thou our poor nobility of blood,¹If thou dost make the people glory in theeDown here where our affection languishes,A marvellous thing it ne’er will be to me;For there where appetite is not perverted,I say in Heaven, of thee I made a boast!Truly thou art a cloak that quickly shortens,So that unless we piece thee day by dayTime goeth round about thee with his shears!With You, which Rome was first to tolerate,²(Wherein her family less perseveres,)Yet once again my words beginning made;Whence Beatrice, who stood somewhat apart,Smiling, appeared like unto her who coughed³At the first failing writ of Guenever.And I began: “You are my ancestor,You give to me all hardihood to speak,You lift me so that I am more than I.So many rivulets with gladness fillMy mind, that of itself it makes a joy⁴Because it can endure this and not burst.Then tell me, my beloved root ancestral,Who were your ancestors, and what the yearsThat in your boyhood chronicled themselves?Tell me about the sheepfold of Saint John,⁵How large it was, and who the people wereWithin it worthy of the highest seats.”As at the blowing of the winds a coalQuickens to flame, so I beheld that lightBecome resplendent at my blandishments.And as unto mine eyes it grew more fair,With voice more sweet and tender, but not inThis modern dialect, it said to me:⁶“From uttering of the Ave, till the birth⁷In which my mother, who is now a saint,Of me was lightened who had been her burden,Unto its Lion had this fire returnedFive hundred fifty times and thirty more,To reinflame itself beneath his paw.My ancestors and I our birthplace hadWhere first is found the last ward of the city⁸By him who runneth in your annual game.⁹Suffice it of my elders to hear this;But who they were, and whence they thither came,Silence is more considerate than speech.All those who at that time were there betweenMars and the Baptist, fit for bearing arms,¹⁰Were a fifth part of those who now are living;But the community, that now is mixedWith Campi and Certaldo and Figghine,¹¹Pure in the lowest artisan was seen.O how much better ’twere to have as neighborsThe folk of whom I speak, and at Galluzzo¹²And at Trespiano have your boundary,Than have them in the town, and bear the stenchOf Aguglione’s churl, and him of Signa¹³Who has sharp eyes for trickery already.Had not the folk, which most of all the world¹⁴Degenerates, been a step-dame unto Caesar,But as a mother to her son benignant,Some who turn Florentines, and trade and discount,Would have gone back again to Simifonte¹⁵There where their grandsires went about as beggars.At Montemurlo still would be the Counts,¹⁶The Cerchi in the parish of Acone,¹⁷Perhaps in Valdigrieve the Buondelmonti.¹⁸Ever the intermingling of the peopleHas been the source of malady in cities,As in the body food it surfeits on;And a blind bull more headlong plunges down¹⁹Than a blind lamb; and very often cutsBetter and more a single sword than five.²⁰If Luni thou regard, and Urbisaglia,²¹How they have passed away, and how are passingChiusi and Sinigaglia after them,²²To hear how races waste themselves away,²³Will seem to thee no novel thing nor hard,Seeing that even cities have an end.²⁴All things of yours have their mortality,²⁵Even as yourselves; but it is hidden in someThat a long while endure, and lives are short;²⁶And as the turning of the lunar heavenCovers and bares the shores without a pause,In the like manner fortune does with Florence.Therefore should not appear a marvellous thingWhat I shall say of the great Florentines²⁷Of whom the fame is hidden in the Past.I saw the Ughi, saw the Catellini,Filippi, Greci, Ormanni, and Alberichi,Even in their fall illustrious citizens;And saw, as mighty as they ancient were,With him of La Sannella him of Arca,And Soldanier, Ardinghi, and Bostichi.²⁸Near to the gate that is at present ladenWith a new felony of so much weight²⁹That soon it shall be jetsam from the bark,The Ravignani were, from whom descendedThe County Guido, and whoe’er the name³⁰Of the great Bellincione since hath taken.³¹He of La Pressa knew the art of rulingAlready, and already GaligajoHad hilt and pommel gilded in his house.³²Mighty already was the Column Vair,³³Sacchetti, Giuochi, Fifant, and Barucci,And Galli, and they who for the bushel blush.³⁴The stock from which were the Calfucci bornWas great already, and already chosenTo curule chairs the Sizii and Arrigucci.O how beheld I those who are undone³⁵By their own pride! and how the Balls of Gold³⁶Florence enflowered in all their mighty deeds!So likewise did the ancestors of those³⁷Who evermore, when vacant is your church,Fatten by staying in consistory.The insolent race, that like a dragon follows³⁸Whoever flees, and unto him that showsHis teeth or purse is gentle as a lamb,Already rising was, but from low people;So that it pleased not Ubertin Donato³⁹That his wife’s father should make him their kin.Already had Caponsacco to the Market⁴⁰From Fesole descended, and alreadyGiuda and Infangato were good burghers.I’ll tell a thing incredible, but true;⁴¹One entered the small circuit by a gateWhich from the Della Pera took its name!Each one that bears the beautiful escutcheon⁴²Of the great baron whose renown and nameThe festival of Thomas keepeth fresh,Knighthood and privilege from him received;⁴³Though with the populace unites himselfToday the man who binds it with a border.Already were Gualterotti and Importuni;And still more quiet would the Borgo be⁴⁴If with new neighbors it remained unfed.The house from which is born your lamentation,⁴⁵Through just disdain that death among you broughtAnd put an end unto your joyous life,Was honored in itself and its companions.O Buondelmonte, how in evil hour⁴⁶Thou fled’st the bridal at another’s promptings!Many would be rejoicing who are sad,⁴⁷If God had thee surrendered to the EmaThe first time that thou camest to the city.But it behoved the mutilated stone⁴⁸Which guards the bridge, that Florence should provideA victim in her latest hour of peace.With all these families, and others with them,Florence beheld I in so great repose,That no occasion had she whence to weep;With all these families beheld so justAnd glorious her people, that the lilyNever upon the spear was placed reversed,⁴⁹Nor by division was vermilion made.”⁵⁰

The Heaven of Mars continued. Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book III Prosa 6, Ridpath’s Tr.:— “But who is there that does not perceive the emptiness and futility of what men dignify with the name of high extraction, or nobility of birth? The splendor you attribute to this is quite foreign to you: for nobility of descent is nothing else but the credit derived from the merit of your ancestors. If it is the applause of mankind, and nothing besides, that illustrates and confers fame upon a person, no others can be celebrated and famous, but such as are universally applauded. If you are not therefore esteemed illustrious from your own worth, you can derive no real splendor from the merits of others: so that, in my opinion, nobility is in no other respect good, than as it imposes an obligation upon its possessors not to degenerate from the merit of their ancestors.” ↩
The use of You for Thou, the plural for the singular, is said to have been introduced in the time of Julius Caesar. Lucan, V, Rowe’s Tr.:— “Then was the time when sycophants began / To heap all titles on one lordly man.” Dante uses it by way of compliment to his ancestor; though he says the descendants of the Romans were not so persevering in its use as other Italians. ↩
Beatrice smiled to give notice to Dante that she observed his flattering style of address; as the Lady of Malehault coughed when she saw Launcelot kiss Queen Guinevere, as related in the old romance of Launcelot of the Lake. ↩
Rejoiced within itself that it can endure so much joy. ↩
The city of Florence, which, in Canto XXV 5, Dante calls “the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered.” It will be remembered that St. John the Baptist is the patron saint of Florence. ↩
Not in Italian, but in Latin, which was the language of cultivated people in Cacciaguida’s time. ↩
From the Incarnation of Christ down to his own birth, the planet Mars had returned to the sign of the Lion five hundred and eighty times, or made this number of revolutions in its orbit. Brunetto Latini, Dante’s schoolmaster, Tresor, I Ch. CXI, says, that Mars “goes through all the signs in II years and I month and XXX days.” This would make Cacciaguida born long after the crusade in which he died. But Dante, who had perhaps seen the astronomical tables of King Alfonso of Castile, knew more of the matter than his schoolmaster, and was aware that the period of a revolution of Mars is less than two years. Witte, who cites these tables in his notes to this canto, says they give “686 days 22 hours and 24 minutes”; and continues: “Five hundred and eighty such revolutions give then (due regard being had to the leap-years) 1090 years and not quite four months. Cacciaguida, therefore, at the time of the Second Crusade, was in his fifty-seventh year.” Pietro di Dante (the poet’s son and commentator, and who, as Biagioli, with rather gratuitous harshness, says, was “smaller compared to his father than a point is to the universe”) assumed two years as a revolution of Mars; but as this made Cacciaguida born in 1160, twelve years after his death, he suggested the reading of “three,” instead of “thirty,” in the text, which reading was adopted by the Cruscan Academy, and makes the year of Cacciaguida’s birth 1106. But that Dante computed the revolution of Mars at less than two years is evident from a passage in the Convito, II 15, referred to by Philalethes, where he speaks of half a revolution of this planet as un anno quasi, almost a year. The common reading of “thirty” is undoubtedly then the true one. In Astrology, the Lion is the House of the Sun; but Mars, as well as the Sun and Jupiter, is a Lord of the Lion; and hence Dante says “its Lion.” ↩
The house in which Cacciaguida was born stood in the Mercato Vecchio, or Old Market, at the beginning of the last ward or sesto of Florence toward the east, called the Porta San Pietro. The city of Florence was originally divided into Quarters or Gates, which were, San Pancrazio on the west, San Pietro on the east, the Duomo on the north, and Santa Maria on the south. Afterwards, when the new walls were built and the city enlarged, these Quarters were changed to Sesti, or Sixths, by dividing Santa Maria into the Borgo and San Pietro Scheraggio, and adding the Oltrarno (beyond the Arno) on the southern bank. ↩
The annual races of Florence on the 24th of June, the festival of St. John the Baptist. The prize was the Pallio, or mantle of “crimson silk velvet,” as Villani says; and the race was run from San Pancrazio, the western ward of the city, through the Mercato Vecchio, to the eastern ward of San Piero. According to Benvenuto, the Florentine races were horse-races; but the Pallio of Verona, where the prize was the “Green Mantle,” was manifestly a footrace. See Inferno XV 122. ↩
Between the Ponte Vecchio, where once stood the statue of Mars, and the church of St. John the Baptist. ↩
Campi is a village between Prato and Florence, in “The valley whence Bisenzio descends.” Certaldo is in the Val d’ Elsa, and is chiefly celebrated as being the birth place of Boccaccio, “true Bocca d’ Oro, or Mouth of Gold,” says Benvenuto, with enthusiasm, “my venerated master, and a most diligent and familiar student of Dante, and who wrote a certain book that greatly helps us to understand him.” Figghine, or Figline, is a town in the Val d’Arno, some twelve miles distant from Florence; and hateful to Dante as the birthplace of the “ribald lawyer, Ser Dego,” as Campi was of another ribald lawyer, Ser Fozio; and Certaldo of a certain Giacomo, who thrust the Podestà of Florence from his seat, and undertook to govern the city. These men, mingling with the old Florentines, corrupted the simple manners of the town. ↩
Galluzzo lies to the south of Florence on the road to Siena, and Trespiano about the same distance to the north, on the road to Bologna. ↩
Aguglione and Signa are also Tuscan towns in the neighborhood of Florence. According to Covino, Descriz. Geog. dell’ Italia, p. 18, it was a certain Baldo d Aguglione, who condemned Dante to be burned; and Bonifazio da Signa, according to Buti, “tyrannized over the city, and sold the favors and offices of the Commune.” ↩
The clergy. “Popes, cardinals, bishops, and archbishops, who govern the Holy Church,” says Buti; and continues: “If the Church had been a mother, instead of a stepmother to the Emperors, and had not excommunicated, and persecuted, and published them as heretics, Italy would have been well governed, and there would have been none of those civil wars, that dismantled and devastated the smaller towns, and drove their inhabitants into Florence, to trade and discount.” Napier, Florentine History, I 597, says:— “The Arte del Cambio, or moneytrade, in which Florence shone preeminent, soon made her bankers known and almost necessary to all Europe. … But amongst all foreign nations they were justly considered, according to the admission of their own countrymen, as hard, griping, and exacting; they were called Lombard dogs; hated and insulted by nations less acquainted with trade and certainly less civilized than themselves, when they may only have demanded a fair interest for money lent at a great risk to lawless men in a foreign country. … All countinghouses of Florentine bankers were confined to the old and new marketplaces, where alone they were allowed to transact business: before the door was placed a bench, and a table covered with carpet, on which stood their moneybags and account-book for the daily transactions of trade.” ↩
Simifonte, a village near Certaldo. It was captured by the Florentines, and made part of their territory, in 1202. ↩
In the valley of the Ombrone, east of Pistoia, are still to be seen the ruins of Montemurlo, once owned by the Counts Guidi, and by them sold to the Florentines in 1203, because they could not defend it against the Pistoians. ↩
The Pivier d’ Acone, or parish of Acone, is in the Val di Sieve, or Valley of the Sieve, one of the affluents of the Arno. Here the powerful family of the Cerchi had their castle of Monte di Croce, which was taken and destroyed by the Florentines in 1053, and the Cerchi and others came to live in Florence, where they became the leaders of the Parte Bianca. See note 95. ↩
The Buondelmonti were a wealthy and powerful family of Valdigrieve, or Valley of the Grieve, which, like the Sieve, is an affluent of the Arno. They too, like the Cerchi, came to Florence, when their lands were taken by the Florentines, and were in a certain sense the cause of Guelf and Ghibelline quarrels in the city. See note 137. ↩
The downfall of a great city is more swift and terrible than that of a smaller one; or, as Venturi interprets, “The size of the body and greater robustness of strength in a city and state are not helpful, but injurious to their preservation, unless men live in peace and without the blindness of the passions, and Florence, more poor and humble, would have flourished longer.” Perhaps the best commentary of all is that contained in the two lines of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cresseide, II 1385—aptly quoted by Mr. Gary:— “For swifter course cometh thing that is of wight, / Whan it descendeth, than done thinges light.” ↩
In this line we have in brief Dante’s political faith, which is given in detail in his treatise “De Monarchia.” ↩
Luni, an old Etruscan city in the Lunigiana; and Urbisaglia, a Roman city in the Marca d’ Ancona. ↩
Chiusi is in the Sienese territory, and Sinigaglia on the Adriatic, east of Rome. This latter place has somewhat revived since Dante’s time. ↩
Boccaccio seems to have caught something of the spirit of this canto, when, lamenting the desolation of Florence by the plague in 1348, he says in the Introduction to the Decameron:— “How many vast palaces, how many beautiful houses, how many noble dwellings, aforetime filled with lords and ladies and trains of servants, were now untenanted even by the lowest menial! How many memorable families, how many ample heritages, how many renowned possessions, were left without an heir! How many valiant men, how many beautiful women, how many gentle youths, breakfasted in the morning with their relatives, companions, and friends, and, when the evening came, supped with their ancestors in the other world!” ↩
Lowell, “To the Past”:— “Still as a city buried neath the sea, / Thy courts and temples stand; / Idle as forms on wind-waved tapestry / Of saints and heroes grand, / Thy phantasms grope and shiver, / Or watch the loose shores crumbling silently / Into Time’s gnawing river.” “Our fathers,” says Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial, V, “find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. … Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment.” ↩
Shirley, “Death’s Final Conquest”:— “The glories of our birth and state / Are shadows, not substantial things; / There is no armor against Fate; / Death lays his icy hand on kings; / Sceptre and crown / Must tumble down, / And in the dust be equal made / With the poor crooked scythe and spade.” ↩
The lives of men are too short for them to measure the decay of things around them. ↩
It would be an unprofitable task to repeat in notes the names of these “Great Florentines / Of whom the fame is hidden in the Past,” and who flourished in the days of Cacciaguida and the Emperor Conrad. It will be better to follow Villani, as he points out with a sigh their dwellings in the old town, and laments over their decay. In his Cronica, Book IV, he speaks as follows:— “Ch. X. As already mentioned, the first rebuilding of Little Florence was divided by Quarters, that is, by four gates; and that we may the better make known the noble races and houses, which in those times, after Fiesole was destroyed, were great and powerful in Florence, we will enumerate them by the quarters where they lived. “And first those of the Porta del Duomo, which was the first fold and habitation of the new Florence, and the place where all the noble citizens resorted and met together on Sunday, and where all marriages were made, and all reconciliations, and all pomps and solemnities of the Commune. … At the Porta del Duomo lived the descendants of the Giovanni and of the Guineldi, who were the first that rebuilt the city of Florence, and from whom descended many noble families in Mugello and in Valdarno, and many in the city, who now are common people, and almost come to an end. Such were the Barucci, who lived at Santa Maria Maggiore, who are now extinct; and of their race were the Scali and Palermini. In the same quarter were also the Arrigucci, the Sizii, and the sons of Delia Tosa; and the Delia Tosa were the same race as the Bisdomini, and custodians and defenders of the bishopric; but one of them left his family at the Porta San Piero, and took to wife a lady named Delia Tosa, who had the inheritance, whence the name was derived. And there were the Delia Pressa, who lived among the Chiavaiuoli, men of gentle birth. “Ch. XI. In the quarter of Porta San Piero were the Bisdomini, who, as above mentioned, were custodians of the bishopric; and the Alberighi, to whom belonged the church of Santa Maria Alberighi, of the house of the Donati, and now they are naught. The Rovignani were very great, and lived at the Porta San Pietro; and then came the houses of the Counts Guidi, and then of the Cerchi, and from them in the female line were born all the Counts Guidi, as before mentioned, of the daughter of good Messer Bellincion Berti; in our day all this race is extinct. The Galligari and Chiarmontesi and Ardinghi, who lived in the Orto San Michele, were very ancient; and so were the Giuochi, who now are popolani, living at Santa Margherita; the Elisei, who likewise are now popolani, living near the Mercato Vecchio. And in that place lived the Caponsacchi, who were nobles of Fiesole; the Donati, or Calfucci, for they were all one race, but the Calfucci are extinct; and the Delia Bella of San Martino, also become popolani; and the Adimari, who descended from the house of Cosi, who now live at Porta Rossa, and who built Santa Maria Nipotecosa; and although they are now the principal family of that ward of Florence, in those days they were not of the oldest. “Ch. XII. At the Porta San Pancrazio, of great rank and power were the Lamberti, descended from the Della Magna; the Ughi were very ancient, and built Santa Maria Ughi, and all the hill of Montughi belonged to them, and now they have died out; the Catellini were very ancient, and now they are forgotten. It is said that the Tieri were illegitimate descendants of theirs. The Pigli were great and noble in those times, and the Soldanieri and Vecchietti. Very ancient were the Dell’ Area, and now they are extinct; and the Migliorelli, who now are naught; and the Trinciavelli da Mosciano were very ancient. “Ch. XIII. In the quarter of Porta Santa Maria, which is now in the ward of San Piero Scheraggio and of Borgo, there were many powerful and ancient families. The greatest were the Uberti, whose ancestors were the Della Magna, and who lived where now stand the Piazza de’ Priori and the Palazzo del Popolo; the Fifanti, called Bogolesi, lived at the corner of Porta Santa Maria; the Galli, Cappiardi, Guidi, and Filippi, who now are nothing, were then great and powerful, and lived in the Mercato Nuovo. Likewise the Greci, to whom all the Borgo de’ Greci belonged, have now perished and passed away, except some of the race in Bologna; and the Ormanni, who lived where now stands the forementioned Palazzo del Popolo, and are now called Foraboschi. And behind San Piero Scheraggio, where are now the houses of the Petri, lived the Delia Pera, or Peruzza, and from them the postern gate there was called Porta Peruzza. Some say that the Peruzzi of the present day are of that family, but I do not affirm it. The Sacchetti, who lived in the Garbo, were very ancient; around the Mercato Nuovo the Bostichi were great people, and the Delia Sanella, and Giandonati and Infangati; great in Borgo Santi Apostoli were the Gualterotti and Importuni, who now are popolani. The Buondelmonti were noble and ancient citizens in the rural districts, and Montebuoni was their castle, and many others in Valdigrieve; at first they lived in Oltrarno, and then came to the Borgo. The Pulci, and the Counts of Gangalandi, Ciuffagni, and Nerli of Oltrarno were at one time great and powerful, together with the Giandonati and Della Bella, named above; and from the Marquis Hugo, who built the Abbey, or Badia, of Florence, received arms and knighthood, for they were very great around him.” To the better understanding of this extract from Villani, it must be borne in mind that, at the time when he wrote, the population of Florence was divided into three classes, the Nobles, the Popolani, or middle class, and the Plebeians. ↩
Gianni del Soldanier is put among the traitors “with Ganellon and Tebaldello,” Inferno XXXII 121. ↩
The Cerchi, who lived near the Porta San Piero, and produced dissension in the city with their White and Black factions;—such a cargo, that it must be thrown overboard to save the ship. See note 95. ↩
The County Guido, for Count Guido, as in Shakespeare the County Paris and County Palatine, and in the old song in Scott’s Quentin Durward:— “Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh, / The sun has left the lea.” ↩
Bellincion Berti. See Canto XV 112, and note 224. ↩
The insignia of knighthood. ↩
The Billi, or Pigli, family; their arms being “a Column Vair in a red field.” The Column Vair was the bar of the shield “variegated with argent and azure.” The vair, in Italian vajo, is a kind of squirrel; and the heraldic mingling of colors was taken from its spotted skin. ↩
The Chiaramontesi, one of whom, a certain Ser Durante, an officer in the customs, falsified the bushel, or stajo, of Florence, by having it made one stave less, so as to defraud in the measure. Dante alludes to this in Purgatorio XII 105. ↩
The Uberti, of whom was Farinata. See Inferno X 32. ↩
The Balls of Gold were the arms of the Lamberti family. Dante mentions them by their arms, says the Ottimo, “as who should say, as the ball is the symbol of the universe, and gold surpasses every other metal, so in goodness and valor these surpassed the other citizens.” Dante puts Mosca de’ Lamberti among the Schismatics in Inferno XXVIII 103, with both hands cut off, and “The stumps uplifting through the dusky air.” ↩
The Vidomini, Tosinghi, and Cortigiani, custodians and defenders of the Bishopric of Florence. Their fathers were honorable men, and, like the Lamberti, embellished the city with their good name and deeds; but they, when a bishop died, took possession of the episcopal palace, and, as custodians and defenders, feasted and slept there till his successor was appointed. ↩
The Adimari. One of this family, Boccaccio Adimari, got possession of Dante’s property in Florence when he was banished, and always bitterly opposed his return. ↩
Ubertin Donate, a gentleman of Florence, had married one of the Ravignani, and was offended that her sister should be given in marriage to one of the Adimari, who were of ignoble origin. ↩
The Caponsacchi lived in the Mercato Vecchio, or Old Market. One of the daughters was the wife of Folco Portinari and mother of Beatrice. ↩
The thing incredible is that there should have been so little jealousy among the citizens of Florence as to suffer one of the city gates, Porta Peruzza, to be named after a particular family. ↩
Five Florentine families, according to Benvenuto, bore the arms of the Marquis Hugo of Brandenburg, and received from him the titles and privileges of nobility. These were the Pulci, Nerli, Giandonati, Gangalandi, and Delia Bella. This Marquis Hugo, whom Dante here calls “the great baron,” was Viceroy of the Emperor Otho III in Tuscany. Villani, Cronica, IV, Ch. 2, relates the following story of him:— “It came to pass, as it pleased God, that, while hunting in the neighborhood of Bonsollazzo, he was lost in the forest, and came, as it seemed to him, to a smithy. Finding there men swarthy and hideous, who, instead of iron, seemed to be tormenting human beings with fire and hammers, he asked the meaning of it. He was told that these were lost souls, and that to a like punishment was condemned the soul of the Marquis Hugo, on account of his worldly life, unless he repented. In great terror he commended himself to the Virgin Mary; and, when the vision vanished, remained so contrite in spirit, that, having returned to Florence, he had all his patrimony in Germany sold, and ordered seven abbeys to be built; the first of which was the Badia of Florence, in honor of Santa Maria; the second, that of Bonsollazzo, where he saw the vision.” The Marquis Hugo died on St. Thomas’s day, December 31, 1006, and was buried in the Badia of Florence, where every year on that day the monks, in grateful memory of him, kept the anniversary of his death with great solemnity. ↩
Giano della Bella, who disguised the arms of Hugo, quartered in his own, with a fringe of gold. A nobleman by birth and education, he was by conviction a friend of the people, and espoused their cause against the nobles. By reforming the abuses of both parties, he gained the ill-will of both; and in 1294, after some popular tumult which he in vain strove to quell, went into voluntary exile, and died in France. Sismondi, Ital. Rep., p. 113 (Lardner’s Cyclopaedia), gives the following succinct account of the abuses which Giano strove to reform, and of his summary manner of doing it:— “The arrogance of the nobles, their quarrels, and the disturbance of the public peace by their frequent battles in the streets, had, in 1292, irritated the whole population against them. Giano della Bella, himself a noble, but sympathizing in the passions and resentment of the people, proposed to bring them to order by summary justice, and to confide the execution of it to the gonfalonier whom he caused to be elected. The Guelfs had been so long at the head of the republic, that their noble families, whose wealth had immensely increased, placed themselves above all law. Giano determined that their nobility itself should be a title of exclusion, and a commencement of punishment; a rigorous edict, bearing the title of ‘ordinance of justice,’ first designated thirty-seven Guelf families of Florence, whom it declared noble and great, and on this account excluded forever from the signoria; refusing them at the same time the privilege of renouncing their nobility, in order to place themselves on a footing with the other citizens. When these families troubled the public peace by battle or assassination, a summary information, or even common report, was sufficient to induce the gonfalonier to attack them at the head of the militia, raze their houses to the ground, and deliver their persons to the Podestà, to be punished according to their crimes. If other families committed the same disorders, if they troubled the state by their private feuds and outrages, the signoria was authorized to ennoble them, as a punishment of their crimes, in order to subject them to the same summary justice.” Dino Compagni, a contemporary of Giano, Cronica Fiorentina, Book I, says of him:— “He was a manly man, of great courage, and so bold that he defended those causes which others abandoned, and said those things which others kept silent, and did all in favor of justice against the guilty, and was so much feared by the magistrates that they were afraid to screen the evildoers. The great began to speak against him, threatening him, and they did it, not for the sake of justice, but to destroy their enemies, abominating him and the laws.” Villani, Cronica, VIII ch. 8, says:— “Giano della Bella was condemned and banished for contumacy, … and all his possessions confiscated, … whence great mischief accrued to our city, and chiefly to the people, for he was the most loyal and upright popolano and lover of the public good of any man in Florence.” And finally Macchiavelli, Istorie Fiorentine, Book II, calls him “a lover of the liberty of his country,” and says, “he was hated by the nobility for undermining their authority, and envied by the richer of the commonalty, who were jealous of his power”; and that he went into voluntary exile in order “to deprive his enemies of all opportunity of injuring him, and his friends of all opportunity of injuring the country”; and that “to free the citizens from the fear they had of him, he resolved to leave the city, which, at his own charge and danger, he had liberated from the servitude of the powerful.” ↩
The Borgo Santi Apostoli would be a quieter place, if the Buondelmonti had not moved into it from Oltrarno. ↩
The house of Amidei, whose quarrel with the Buondelmonti was the origin of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties in Florence, and put an end to the joyous life of her citizens. See note 137. ↩
See the story of Buondelmonte, as told by Giovanni Fiorentino in his Pecorone, and quoted note 137. ↩
Much sorrow and suffering would have been spared, if the first Buondelmonte that came from his castle of Montebuono to Florence had been drowned in the Ema, a small stream he had to cross on the way. ↩
Young Buondelmonte was murdered at the foot of the mutilated statue of Mars on the Ponte Vecchio, and after this Florence had no more peace. ↩
The banner of Florence had never been reversed in sign of defeat. ↩
The arms of Florence were a white lily in a field of red; after the expulsion of the Ghibellines, the Guelfs changed them to a red lily in a field of white. ↩