Legends Of Florence Part 24

"One day a young man, who had been gaming and lost, threw some dirt at an image of the Virgin in one of the numerous shrines in the city, blaming her for his bad luck. He was observed by a boy, who reported it to the authorities, and was soon arrested. Having confessed that he did it in a rage at having lost, he was hanged the same night from one of the windows of the Bargello." {164}

Thereby adding another ghost or _folletto_ to those who already haunt the place. It should be noted that according to Italian witch-lore a ghost is never simply the spirit of the departed as he _was_, but a spirit transformed. A witch becomes a _fata_, good or bad, and all men something more than they were.

Among other small legends or tales in which the Bargello is referred to, I find the following, of which I must first mention that _debito_ in Italian means not only debt but duty, and that _fare un debito_ is not only to get into debt, but to do what is just, upright, and honourable.

"It happened once, long ago, that a certain good fellow was being escorted, truly not by a guard of honour, but by several b.u.m-bailiffs, to the Bargello, and met a friend who asked him why he was in custody. To which he replied, 'Other men are arrested and punished for crime or villainy, but I am treated thus for having acted honourably, _per aver fatto il debito mio_.'

"And it happened to this same man that after he had been entertained for a time at the public expense in that _gran albergo_, or great hotel, the Bargello, that the Council of Eight, or the public magistracy, gave him a hearing, and told him that he must promptly pay the debt which he owed, which was one of fifty _scudi_ or crowns.

To which he replied that he could not. Then the chief of the Eight said, 'We will find out a way to make you pay it, be sure of that.'

To which he answered, '_De gratia_, _Signore_, while you are about it, then, make it a hundred, for I have great need just now of another fifty crowns.'"

Prisoners in the Bargello, as elsewhere, were subject to the most appalling injustice and cruelty. Thus we are told of Cosimo di Medici, when he was doing all in his power to a.s.sa.s.sinate or poison Piero Strozzi, that he was always very circ.u.mspect as regarded the venom, "and did not use it till he had studied the effects and doses on condemned prisoners in the Bargello." But "condemned prisoners" here means doubtless those who were simply condemned to be made the subjects of such experiments, as may be supposed, when we learn that Cosimo obtained the recipe of making up a poison from Messer Apollino, secretary of Piero Luigi, by _torturing_ him. It was thus they did in good old pious times.

Poisoning, as a most familiar and frequent thing, even in England, did not pa.s.s out of practice, even in politics, until that great beginning of a moral era, the Reformation.

"_Haec fabula docet_," wrote the good and wise Flaxius on the revise, "that as a _Zoccolone_ friar is the best priest for a peasant, so even a _buon diavolo_, or jolly devil, or a boon blackguard who knows his men, is, perhaps, generally the best guide for certain kinds of rough sinners, often setting them aright in life where a holy saint would be _inter sacrem et saxum_, or in despair. As for poisoning, I fear _that_ cup, far from pa.s.sing away, is, under another form, pa.s.sed round far more frequently now than it ever was. For Francois Villon declared that lying gossip, t.i.ttle-tattle, and second-hand slander were worse than poison (which simply kills the body), and this with infinite refinement prevails far more in modern society (being aided by newspapers) than it ever did of yore anywhere. _This_ is the poison of the present day, which has more _veneficae_ to spread it than the Locustan or Borgian venoms ever found. Now for a merrier tale!"

"If all that's written, talked or sunge Must be of the follies of menne, 'Twere better that no one moved his tongue, Or that none could use a penne.

"Jog on, jog on the footpath-waye, And cheerily jump the stile; A merry heart goes all the daye, A sad one tires in a mile!"

LEGENDS OF SAN LORENZO THE CANON AND THE DEBTOR, AND THE CATS IN THE CLOISTER

"Pazienza, paziendum!

Disse il diavolo a Sant Antonium."

"A scratching he heard and a horrible groan, As of hundreds of cats with mollrowing and moan: 'Oh!' said he to himself, 'sure the devil is come.'"

-_Mr. Jones and the Cats_.

The celebrated Church of San Lorenzo is a grand museum of art, even among the many of its kind in Florence. It was originally a Roman Christian basilica, built by the matron Giuliana, which edifice was consecrated A.D. 373 by Saint Ambrose, and called the Basilica Ambrosiana. It was partially rebuilt by Brunelleschi in 1435, and completed with sad alteration, and finished by Antonio Manetti. As is well known, or has been made known by many great poets, it contains the grandest statuary by Michael Angelo in its monuments of Lorenzo de' Medici and his uncle Giuliano.

This church served as a sanctuary in the olden time, and of this there is a tale told in the old collections of facetiae, which, though trifling, is worth recalling as connected with it.

IL DEBITORE.

"Messer Paolo dell' Ottonaio, a Canon of San Lorenzo in Florence, a cheerful and facetious man, found a certain citizen one of his friends, who had taken refuge as a debtor in the church; and the latter stood in sorrowful and pensive att.i.tude, having in no wise the appearance of one who had found a treasure, or who was going to be married, or to dine with the Duke, or anything of the kind.

"'Man, what aileth thee?' cried the Canon. 'Has thy wife beaten thee, or the cat broken thy best crockery, or thy favourite housemaid run away?'

"'What I have,' replied the poor man, 'is ten times worse than all that put together.' And so, _havendo caro di sfogarsi_, being glad to relieve himself, he told Messer Paolo all his sorrows, wailing that his creditors, having taken all his property, threatened his person, swearing that they would put him in the _Stinche_, which was so horrible a prison that it was infamous even then all the world over as an _inferno_ where every one confined at once became _infermo_, or a h.e.l.l which made men ill, and that, being in despair, he would have taken his own life had he not come across a charming book on patience which had consoled him.

"Messer Paolo asked him whether the creditors had been paid in full.

"'Alas, no!' replied the debtor; 'not one half; nor will they ever get the rest, for I have naught.'

"'In that case,' answered the Canon, 'it seems to me that it is your creditors and not you who should read that charming book, since it is evident that, as they are to have nothing till the Greek Kalends, or on Saint Never's day, that they must have patience whether they will or no.'

"Well, as the saying is, _Pazienza vince scienza_ (Patience beats knowledge), and _Chi ha pazienza vede le sue vendette_ (Wait long enough and you'll get your revenges), the Canon got for the poor man money enough to make a composition with his creditors, and he, having expectations which they knew not of, compounded with them for five per cent., on conditions written, that he should pay all up 'as he earned more money.'

"And so he was set free, and it befell on a day that some relation died and left him a fortune, whereupon his creditors summoned him to pay his old debts, which he refused to do. Then they cited him before the Council as a fraudulent debtor, but he replied by showing his quittance or agreement, and declared that he was only obliged to pay out of his _earnings_, and that he had inherited his money and not earned it.

Whereupon there was great dispute, and one of the creditors who had shown himself most unfeeling and inhuman protested that to get money in any way whatever was to _guadagnare_ (a gain by labour), since it was labour even to put it in one's pocket. Now, this man had a handsome wife, who, it was generally known, greatly enriched her husband by dishonouring him, at which he willingly winked.

"Whereupon the debtor asked the magistrate if an ox carried off a bundle of hay on his horns, which had by chance been stuck into it, he could be said to have earned it by honest labour? At which there was such a roar of laughter, and so many cries of 'No! no! no!' that the court went no further, and acquitted the culprit."

There is an odd bit of folklore attached to this church. As may be supposed, and as I have frequently verified, "the idle repet.i.tion of vain words," as the heathen do, or prayers in a language which people do not understand, generally lead to most ridiculous perversions of the unknown tongue. A popular specimen of this is the _Salve Regina delle Ciane Fiorentine di San Lorenzo_, or the "_Salve Regina_ of the Florentine women of the lower cla.s.s, as given in San Lorenzo." _Ciana_ is given by Barretti as a specially Florentine word.

LA SALVE REGINA.

"Sarvia della Regina, dreco la Misericordia, vita d'un cieco, spezia nostra, sarvia tua, te chiamao esule, fili e vacche!

"Ate sospirao, i' gemeo fetente in barca e lacrima la valle.

"L' la eggo educata nostra, _illons in tus_.

"Misericordia se' cieli e in ossi e coperte, e lesine benedette, frutti, ventri, tubi, novi, posti cocche, esilio e tende!

"O crema, o pia, o dorce virgola Maria!-Ammenne!"

This is perfectly in the spirit of the Middle Ages, of which so much is still found in the cheapest popular Italian literature. I have elsewhere mentioned that it was long before the Reformation, when the Church was at the height of her power, that blasphemies, travesties of religious services, and scathing sarcasms of monkish life reached their extreme, and were never equalled afterwards, even by Protestant satirists. The _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_ of Hutten and Reuchlin was an avowed caricature by an enemy. The revelations of monkish life by Boccaccio, Cintio, Arlotto, and a hundred other good Catholics, were a thousand times more damaging than the _Epistolae_, because they were the unconscious betrayals of friends.

Since writing the foregoing, I have obtained the following, ent.i.tled, _The Pater Noster of the Country People in the Old Market_, or,

IL PATER NOSTER DEI BECERI DI MERCATO.

"Pate nostro quisin celi sanctifice tuore nome tumme; avvenia regno tumme; fia te volunta stua, in celo en terra.

"Pane nostro cotediano da n.o.bis sodie, e dimitti n.o.bis debita nostra, sicutte ette nos dimittimus debitori nostri, sette ananossie in due ca.s.se, intenzione sedie nosse e mulo.-Amenne!"

There is, however, this great difference in the two prayers here given, that the _Salve Regina_ is intended for a jest, while the paternoster is given as actually taken down from a _ciana_, and is rather a specimen of dialect than a _jeu d'esprit_. The following _Ave Maria_ is also serious, and simply a curiosity of language:-

L'AVE MARIA.

"Avemmaria grazia piena, domin teco beneditta e frustris, e mulieri busse e benedetti fruttus ventris tui eiusse!

"Santa Maria Materdei, ora pro n.o.bisse, pecatoribusse, tinche, tinona, mortis nostrisse.-Ammenne!"