Renaissance in Italy Volume I Part 10

The year 1300, which Dante chose for the date of his descent with Virgil to the nether world, and which marked the beginning of Villani's 'Chronicle,' is also mentioned by Dino Compagni in the first sentence of the preface to his work. 'The recollections of ancient histories,' he says, 'have a long while stirred my mind to writing the perilous and ill-fated events, which the n.o.ble city, daughter of Rome, has suffered many years, and especially at the time of the jubilee in the year 1300.'

Dino Compagni, whose 'Chronicle' embraces the period between 1280 and 1312, took the popular side in the struggles of 1282, sat as Prior in 1289, and in 1301, and was chosen Gonfalonier of Justice in 1293. He was therefore a prominent actor in the drama of those troublous times. He died in 1324, two years and four months after the date of Dante's death, and was buried in the church of Santa Trinita. He was a man of the same stamp as Dante;[1] burning with love for his country, but still more a lover of the truth; severe in judgment, but beyond suspicion of mere partisanship; brief in utterance, but weighty with personal experience, profound conviction, prophetic intensity of feeling, sincerity, and justice. As a historian, he narrowed his labors to the field of one small but highly finished picture. He undertook to narrate the civic quarrels of his times, and to show how the commonwealth of Florence was brought to ruin by the selfishness of her own citizens; nor can his 'Chronicle,' although it is by no means a masterpiece of historical accuracy or of lucid arrangement, be surpa.s.sed for the liveliness of its delineation, the graphic clearness of its characters, the earnestness of its patriotic spirit, and the acute a.n.a.lysis which lays bare the political situation of a republic torn by factions, during the memorable period which embraced the revolution of Giano della Bella and the struggles of the Neri and Bianchi. The comparison of Dino Compagni with any contemporary annalist in Italy shows that here again, in these pages, a new spirit has arisen. Muratori, proud to print them for the first time in 1726, put them on a level with the 'Commentaries of Caesar'; Giordani welcomed their author as a second Sall.u.s.t. The political sagacity and scientific penetration, possessed in so high a degree by the Florentines, appear in full maturity. Compagni's 'Chronicle' heads a long list of similar monographs, unique in the literature of a single city.[2]

[1] The apostrophes to the citizens of Florence at large, and the imprecations on some of the worst offenders among the party-leaders (especially in book ii. on the occasion of the calamities of 1301) are conceived and uttered in the style of Dante.

[2] Among these I may here mention Gino Capponi's history of the Ciompi Rebellion, Giovanni Cavalcanti's memoirs of the period between 1420 and 1452, Leo Battista Alberti's narrative of Porcari's attempt upon the life of Nicholas V., Vespasiano's 'Biographies,'

and Poliziano's 'Essay on the Pazzi Conspiracy.' Gino Capponi, born about 1350, was Prior in 1396, and Gonfalonier of Justice in 1401 and 1418; he died in 1421. Giovanni Cavalcanti was a zealous admirer of Cosimo de' Medici; he composed his 'Chronicle' in the prison of the Stinche, where he was unjustly incarcerated for a debt to the Commune of Florence. Vespasiano da Bisticci contributed a series of most valuable portraits to the literature of Italy: all the great men of his time are there delineated with a simplicity that is the sign of absolute sincerity, Poliziano was present at the murder of Giuliano de' Medici in the Florentine Duomo. The historians of the sixteenth century will be noticed together further on.

The arguments against the authenticity of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle'

may be arranged in three groups. The _first_ concerns the man himself.

It is urged that, with the exception of his offices as Prior and Gonfalonier, we have no evidence of his political activity, beyond what is furnished by the disputed 'Chronicle.' According to his own account, Dino played a part of the first importance in the complicated events of 1280-1312. Yet he is not mentioned by Giovanni Villani, by Filippo Vallani, or by Dante. There is no record of his death, except a MS. note in the Magliabecchian Codex of his 'Chronicle' of the date 1514.[1] He is known in literature as the author of a few lyrics and an oration to Pope John XXII., the style of which is so rough and mediaeval as to make it incredible that the same writer should have composed the masterly paragraphs of the 'Chronicle.'[2] The _second_ group of arguments affects the substance of the 'Chronicle' itself. Though Dino was Prior when Charles of Valois entered Florence, he records that event under the date of Sunday the fourth of November, whereas Charles arrived on the first of November, and the first Sunday of the month was the fifth. He differs from the concurrent testimony of other historians in making the affianced bride of Buondelmonte dei Buondelmonti a Giantruffetti instead of an Amidei, and the Bishop of Arezzo a Pazzi instead of an Ubertini.

He reckons the Arti at twenty-four, whereas they numbered twenty-one. He places the Coronation of Henry VII. in August, instead of in June, 1312.

He seems to refer to the Palace of the Signory, which could not have been built at the date in question. He a.s.serts that a member of the Benivieni family was killed by one of the Galligai, whereas the murderer was of the blood of the Galli. He represents himself as having been the first Gonfalonier of Justice who destroyed the houses of rebellious n.o.bles, while Baldo de' Ruffoli, who held the office before him, had previously carried out the Ordinances. Speaking of Guido Cavalcanti about the year 1300, he calls him 'uno giovane gentile'; and yet Guido had married the daughter of Farinata degli Uberti in 1266, and certainly did not survive 1300 more than a few months. The peace with Pisa, which was concluded during Compagni's tenure of the Gonfalonierate, is not mentioned, though this must have been one of the most important public events with which he was concerned. Chronology is hopelessly and inextricably confused; while inaccuracies and difficulties of the kind described abound on every page of the 'Chronicle,' rendering the labor of its last commentator and defender one of no small difficulty. The _third_ group of arguments a.s.sails the language of the 'Chronicle' and its MS. authority. Fanfani, who showed more zeal than courtesy in his destructive criticism, undertook to prove that Dino's style in general is not distinguished for the 'purity, simplicity, and propriety' of the trecento[3]; that it abounds in expressions of a later period, such as _armata_ for _oste_, _marciare_ for _andare_, _acci_ for _acciocche_, _onde_ for _affinche_; that numerous imitations of Dante can be traced in it; and that to an acute student of early Italian prose its palpable _quattrocentismo_ is only slightly veiled by a persistent affectation of fourteenth-century archaism. This argument from style seems the strongest that can be brought against the genuineness of the 'Chronicle'; for while it is possible that Dino may have made innumerable blunders about the events in which he took a part, it is incredible that he should have antic.i.p.ated the growth of Italian by at least a century. Yet judges no less competent than Fanfani in this matter of style, and far more trustworthy as witnesses, Vincenzo Nannucci, Gino Capponi, Isidoro del Lungo, are of opinion that Dino's 'Chronicle' is a masterpiece of Italian fourteenth-century prose; and till Italian experts are agreed, foreign critics must suspend their judgment. The a.n.a.lysis of style receives a different development from Scheffer-Boichorst. In his last essay he undertakes to show that many pa.s.sages of the 'Chronicle,' especially the important one which refers to the _Ordinamenti della Giustizia_, have been borrowed from Villani.[4] This critical weapon is difficult to handle, for it almost always cuts both ways. Yet the German historian has made out an undoubtedly good case by proving Villani's language closer to the original _Ordinamenti_ than Compagni's. With regard to MS. authority, the codices of Dino's 'Chronicle' extant in Italy are all of them derived from a MS. transcribed by Noferi Busini and given by him to Giovanni Mazzuoli, surnamed Lo Stradino, who was a member of the Florentine Academy and a greedy collector of antiquities. This MS. bears the date 1514. The recent origin of this parent codex, and the questionable character of Lo Stradino, gave rise to not unreasonable suspicions. Fanfani roundly a.s.serted that the 'Chronicle' must have been fabricated as a hoax upon the uncritical antiquary, since it suddenly appeared without a pedigree, at a moment when such forgeries were not uncommon. Scheffer-Boichorst, in his most recent pamphlet, committed himself to the opinion that either Lo Stradino himself, nicknamed _Cronaca Scorretta_ by his Florentine cronies, or one of his contemporaries, was the forger.[5] An Italian impugner of the 'Chronicle,' Giusto Grion of Verona, declared for Antonfrancesco Doni as the fabricator.[6] These hypotheses, however, are, to say the least, unlucky for their suggestors, and really serve to weaken rather than to strengthen the destructive line of argument. There exists an elder codex of which Fanfani and his followers were ignorant. It is a MS. of perhaps the middle of the fifteenth century, which was purchased for the Ashburnham Library in 1846. This MS. has been minutely described by Professor Paul Meyer; and Isidoro del Lungo publishes a fac-simile specimen of one of its pages.[7] By some unaccountable negligence this latest and most determined defender of Compagni has failed to examine the MS. with his own eyes.

[1] This is Isidoro del Lungo's Codex A. The note occurs also in the Ashburnham MS. which Del Lungo refers to the fifteenth century.

[2] On this point it is worth mentioning that some good critics refer the poems to an elder Dino Compagni, who sat as Ancient in 1251. See the discussion of this question, as also of the authorship of the _Intelligenza_, claimed by Isidoro del Lungo for the writer of the 'Chronicle,' in Borgognini's Essays (_Scritti Vari_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1877, vol. i.). With regard to the oration to Pope John XXII. date 1326, it must be noted that this performance was first printed by Anton Francesco Doni in 1547, and that its genuineness may be disputed. See Carl Hegel, op. cit. pp. 18-22.

[3] The most important of Fanfani's numerous essays on the Compagni controversy, together with minor notes by his supporters, are collected in the book quoted above, Note to p. 241. Fanfani exceeds all bounds of decency in the language he uses, and in his arrogant claims to be considered an unique judge of fourteenth-century style.

These claims he bases in some measure upon the fact that he deceived the Della Crusca by a forgery of his own making, which was actually accepted for the _Archivio Storico_. See op. cit. p. 181.

[4] _Die Chronik_, etc., pp. 53-57.

[5] _Die Chronik_, etc., p. 39.

[6] See Hegel's op. cit. p. 6.

[7] See Del Lungo, op. cit. vol. ii. pp. 19-23, and fac-simile, to face p. 1. This MS. was bought by G. Libri from the Pucci family in 1840, and sold to Lord Ashburnham. Del Lungo identifies it with a MS. which Braccio Compagni in the seventeenth century spoke of as 'la copia piu antica, appresso il Signor senatore Pandolfini.'

Thus stands the question of Dino Compagni's 'Chronicle.' The defenders of its authenticity, forced to admit Compagni's glaring inaccuracies, fall back upon arguments deduced from the internal spirit of the author, from the difficulties of fabricating a personal narrative instinct with the spirit of the fourteenth century, from the hypotheses of a copyist's errors or of a thorough-going literary process of rewriting at a later date, from the absence of any positive evidence of forgery, and from general considerations affecting the validity of destructive criticism.

One thing has been clearly proved in the course of the controversy, that the book can have but little historical value when not corroborated.

Still there is a wide gap between inaccuracy and willful fabrication.

Until the best judges of Italian style are agreed that the 'Chronicle'

could not have been written in the second decade of the fourteenth century, the arguments adduced from an examination of the facts recorded in it are not strong enough to demonstrate a forgery. There is the further question of _cui bono?_ which in all problems of literary forgery must first receive some probable solution. What proof is there that the vanity or the cupidity of any parties was satisfied by its production? A book exists in a MS. of about 1450, acquires some notice in a MS. of 1514, but is not published to the world until 1726.

Supposing it to have been a forgery, the labor of concocting it must have been enormous. With all its defects, the 'Chronicle' would still remain a masterpiece of historical research, imagination, sympathy with bygone modes of feeling, dramatic vigor, and antiquarian command of language. But who profited by that labor? Not the author of the forgery, since he was dead or buried more than two centuries before his fabrication became famous. Not the Compagni family; for there is no evidence to show that they had piqued themselves upon being the depositaries of their ancestors masterpiece, nor did they make any effort, at a period when the printing-press was very active, to give this jewel of their archives to the public. If it be objected that, on the hypothesis of genuineness, the MS. of the 'Chronicle' must have been divulged before the beginning of the sixteenth century, we can adduce two plausible answers. In the first place, Dino was the partisan of a conquered cause; and his family had nothing to gain by publishing an acrimonious political pamphlet during the triumph of his antagonists. In the second place, MSS. of even greater literary importance disappeared in the course of the fourteenth century, to be reproduced when their subjects again excited interest in the literary world. The history of Dante's treatise _De Vulgari Eloquio_ is a case in point. With regard to style, no foreigner can pretend to be a competent judge. Reading the celebrated description of Florence at the opening of Dino's 'Chronicle,'

I seem indeed, for my own part, to discern a post-Boccaccian artificiality of phrase. Still there is nothing to render it impossible that the 'Chronicle,' as we possess it, in the texts of 1450(?) and 1514, may be a _rifacimento_ of an elder and simpler work. In that section of my history which deals with Italian literature of the fifteenth century, I shall have occasion to show that such remodeling of ancient texts to suit the fashion of the time was by no means unfrequent. The curious discrepancies between the _Trattato della Famiglia_ as written by Alberti and as ascribed to _Pandolfini_ can only be explained upon the hypothesis of such _rifacimento_. If the historical inaccuracies in which the 'Chronicle' abounds are adduced as convincing proof of its fabrication, it may be replied that the author of so masterly a romance would naturally have been anxious to preserve a strict accordance with doc.u.ments of acknowledged validity. Consequently, these very blunders might not unreasonably be used to combat the hypothesis of deliberate forgery. It is remarkable, in this connection, that only one meager reference is made to Dante by the Chronicler, who, had he been a literary forger, would scarcely have omitted to enlarge upon this theme. Without, therefore, venturing to express a decided opinion on a question which still divides the most competent Italian judges, I see no reason to despair of the problem being ultimately solved in a way less unfavorable to Dino Compagni than Scheffer-Boichorst and Fanfani would approve of. Considered as the fifteenth century _rifacimento_ of an elder doc.u.ment, the 'Chronicle'

would lose its historical authority, but would still remain an interesting monument of Florentine literature, and would certainly not deserve the unqualified names of 'forgery' and 'fabrication' that have been unhesitatingly showered upon it.[1]

[1] It is to be hoped that the completion of Del Lungo's work may put an end to the Compagni controversy, either by a solid vindication of the 'Chronicle,' or by so weak a defense as to render further partisanship impossible. So far as his book has. .h.i.therto appeared, it contains no signs of an ultimate triumph. The weightiest point contained in it is the discovery of the Ashburnham MS. If Del Lungo fails to prove his position, we shall be left to choose between Scheffer-Boichorst's absolute skepticism or the modified view adopted by me in the text.

The two chief Florentine historians of the fifteenth century are Lionardo Bruni of Arezzo, and Poggio Bracciolini, each of whom, in his capacity of Chancellor to the Republic, undertook to write the annals of the people of Florence from the earliest date to his own time. Lionardo Aretino wrote down to the year 1404, and Poggio Bracciolini to the year 1455. Their histories are composed in Latin, and savor much of the pedantic spirit of the age in which they were projected.[1] Both of them deserve the criticism of Machiavelli, that they filled their pages too exclusively with the wars and foreign affairs in which Florence was engaged, failing to perceive that the true object of the historian is to set forth the life of a commonwealth as a continuous whole, to draw the portrait of a state with due regard to its especial physiognomy.[2] To this critique we may add that both Lionardo and Poggio were led astray by the false taste of the earlier Renaissance. Their admiration for Livy and the pedantic proprieties of a labored Latinism made them pay more attention to rhetoric than to the substance of their work.[3] We meet with frigid imitations and bombastic generalities, where concise details and graphic touches would have been acceptable. In short, these works are rather studies of style in an age when the greatest stylists were but bunglers and beginners, than valuable histories. The Italians of the fifteenth century, striving to rival Cicero and Livy, succeeded only in becoming lifeless shadows of the past. History dictated under the inspiration of pedantic scholarship, and with the object of reproducing an obsolete style, by men of letters who had played no prominent part in the Commonwealth,[4] cannot pretend to the vigor and the freshness that we admire so much in the writings of men like the Villani, Gino Capponi, Giovanni Cavalcanti, and many others. Yet even after making these deductions, it may be a.s.serted with truth that no city of Italy at this period of the Renaissance, except Florence, could boast historiographers so competent. Vespasiano at the close of his biography of Poggio estimates their labor in sentences which deserve to be remembered: 'Among the other singular obligations which the city of Florence owes to Messer Lionardo and to Messer Poggio, is this, that except the Roman Commonwealth no republic or free state in Italy has been so distinguished as the town of Florence, in having had two such notable writers to record its doings as Messer Lionardo and Messer Poggio; for up to the time of their histories everything was in the greatest obscurity. If the republic of Venice, which can show so many wise citizens, had the deeds which they have done by sea and land committed to writing, it would be far more ill.u.s.trious even than it is now. And Galeazzo Maria, and Filippo Maria, and all the Visconti--their actions would also be more famous than they are. Nay, there is not any republic that ought not to give every reward to writers who should commemorate its doings. We see at Florence that from the foundation of the city to the days of Messer Lionardo and Messer Poggio there was no record of anything that the Florentines had done, in Latin, or history devoted to themselves. Messer Poggio follows after Messer Lionardo, and writes like him in Latin. Giovanni Villani, too, wrote an universal history in the vulgar tongue of whatsoever happened in every place, and introduces the affairs of Florence as they happened. The same did Messer Filippo Villani, following after Giovanni Villani. These are they alone who have distinguished Florence by the histories that they have written.'[5] The pride of the citizen and a just sense of the value of history, together with sound remarks upon Venice and Milan, mingle curiously in this pa.s.sage with the pedantry of a fifteenth-century scholar.

[1] Poggio's _Historia Populi Florentini_ is given in the XXth volume of Muratori's collection. Lionardo's _Istoria Fiorentina_, translated into Italian by Donato Acciajuoli, has been published by Le Monnier (Firenze, 1861). The high praise which Ugo Foscolo bestowed upon the latter seems due to a want of familiarity.

[2] See the preface to the _History of Florence_, by Machiavelli.

[3] Lionardo Bruni, for example, complains in the preface to his history that it is impossible to accommodate the rude names of his personages to a polished style.

[4] Both Poggio and Lionardo began life as Papal secretaries; the latter was not made a citizen of Florence till late in his career.

[5] _Vite di Uomini Ill.u.s.tri_. Barbera, 1859; p. 425.

The historians of the first half of the sixteenth century are a race apart. Three generations of pedantic erudition and of courtly or scholastic trifling had separated the men of letters from the men of action, and had made literature a thing of curiosity. Three generations of the masked Medicean despotism had destroyed the reality of freedom in Florence, and had corrupted her citizens to the core. Yet, strange to say, it was at the end of the fifteenth century that the genius of the thirteenth revived. Italian literature was cultivated for its own sake under the auspices of Lorenzo de' Medici. The year 1494 marks the resurrection of the spirit of old liberty beneath the trumpet-blast of Savonarola's oratory. Amid the universal corruption of public morals, from the depth of sloth and servitude, when the reality of liberty was lost, when fate and fortune had combined to render const.i.tutional reconstruction impossible for the shattered republics of Italy, the intellect of the Florentines displayed itself with more than its old vigor in a series of the most brilliant political writers who have ever ill.u.s.trated one short but eventful period in the life of a single nation. That period is marked by the years 1494 and 1537. It embraces the two final efforts of the Florentines to shake off the Medicean yoke, the disastrous siege at the end of which they fell a prey to the selfishness of their own party-leaders, the persecution of Savonarola by Pope Alexander, the Church-rule of Popes Leo and Clement, the extinction of the elder branch of the Medici in its two b.a.s.t.a.r.ds (Ippolito, poisoned by his brother Alessandro, and Alessandro poignarded by his cousin Lorenzino), and the final eclipse of liberty beneath the Spain-appointed dynasty of the younger Medicean line in Duke Cosimo. The names of the historians of this period are Niccolo Machiavelli, Jacopo Nardi, Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Nerli, Donato Giannotti, Benedetto Varchi, Bernardo Segni, and Jacopo Pitti.[1] In these men the mental qualities which we admire in the Villani, Dante, and Compagni reappear, combined, indeed, in different proportions, tempered with the new philosophy and scholarship of the Renaissance, and permeated with quite another morality. In the interval of two centuries freedom has been lost. It is only the desire for freedom that survives. But that, after the apathy of the fifteenth century, is still a pa.s.sion. The rect.i.tude of instinct and the intense convictions of the earlier age have been exchanged for a scientific clairvoyance, a 'stoic-epicurean acceptance' of the facts of vitiated civilization, which in men like Guicciardini and Machiavelli is absolutely appalling. Nearly all the authors of this period bear a double face. They write one set of memoirs for the public, and another set for their own delectation. In their inmost souls they burn with the zeal for liberty: yet they sell their abilities to the highest bidder--to Popes whom they despise, and to Dukes whom they revile in private. What makes the literary labors of these historians doubly interesting is that they were carried on for the most part independently; for though they lived at the same time, and in some cases held familiar conversation with each other, they gave expression to different shades of political opinion, and their histories remained in ma.n.u.script till some time after their death.[2] The student of the Renaissance has, therefore the advantage of comparing and confronting a whole band of independent witnesses to the same events.

Beside their own deliberate criticism of the drama in which all played some part as actors or spectators, we can use the not less important testimony they afford unconsciously, according to the bias of private or political interest by which they are severally swayed.

[1] The dates of these historians are as follows:--

BORN. DIED.

Machiavelli 1469 1527 Nardi 1476 1556 Guicciardini 1482 1540 Nerli 1485 1536 Giannotti 1492 1572 Varchi 1502 1565 Segni 1504 1558 Pitti 1519 1589

[2] Varchi, it is true, had Nardi's _History of Florence_ and Guicciardini's _History of Italy_ before him while he was compiling his _History of Florence_. But Segni and Nerli were given for the first time to the press in the last century; Pitti in 1842, and Guicciardini's _History of Florence_ in 1859.

The Storia Fiorentina of Varchi extends from the year 1527 to the year 1538; that of Segni from 1527 to 1555; that of Nardi from 1494 to 1552; that of Pitti from 1494 to 1529; that of Nerli from 1494 to 1537; that of Guicciardini from 1420 to 1509. The prefatory chapters, which in most cases introduce the special subject of each history, contain a series of retrospective surveys over the whole history of Florence extremely valuable for the detailed information they contain, as well as for the critical judgments of men whose ac.u.men had been sharpened to the utmost by their practical partic.i.p.ation in politics. It will not, perhaps, be superfluous to indicate the different parts played by these historians in the events of their own time. Guicciardini, it is well known, had governed Bologna and Romagna for the Medicean Popes. He too was instrumental in placing Duke Cosimo at the head of the republic in 1536.

At Naples, in 1535, he pleaded the cause of Duke Alessandro against the exiles before Charles V. Nardi on this occasion acted as secretary and advocate for Filippo Strozzi and the exiles; his own history was composed in exile at Venice, where he died. Segni was nephew of the Gonfalonier Capponi, and shared the anxieties of the moderate liberals during the siege of Florence. Pitti was a member of the great house who contested the leadership of the republic with the Medici in the fifteenth century; his zeal for the popular party and his hatred of the Palleschi may still perhaps be tinctured with ancestral animosity.

Giannotti, in whose critique of the Florentine republic we trace a spirit no less democratic than Pitti's, was also an actor in the events of the siege, and afterwards appeared among the exiles. In the attempt made by the Cardinal Salviati (1537) to reconcile Duke Cosimo and the adherents of Filippo Strozzi, Giannotti was chosen as the spokesman for the latter. He wrote and died in exile at Venice. Nerli again took part in the events of those troublous times, but on the wrong side, by mixing himself up with the exiles and acting as a spy upon their projects. All the authors I have mentioned were citizens of Florence, and some of them were members of her most ill.u.s.trious families. Varchi, in whom the flame of Florentine patriotism burns brightest, and who is by far the most copious annalist of the period, was a native of Montevarchi. Yet, as often happens, he was more Florentine than the Florentines; and of the events which he describes, he had for the most part been witness.

Duke Cosimo employed him to write the history; it is a credit both to the prince and to the author that its chapters should be full of criticisms so outspoken, and of aspirations after liberty so vehement.

On the very first page of his preface Varchi dares to write these words respecting Florence--'divenne, dico, di stato piuttosto corrotto e licenzioso, tirannide, che di sana e moderata repubblica, princ.i.p.ato';[1] in which he deals blame with impartial justice all round. It must, however, be remembered that at the time when Varchi wrote, the younger branch of the Medici were firmly established on the throne of Florence. Between this branch and the elder line there had always been a coldness. Moreover, all parties had agreed to accept the duchy as a divinely appointed instrument for rescuing the city from her factions and reducing her to tranquillity.[2]

[1] 'It pa.s.sed, I say, from the condition of a corrupt and ill-conducted commonwealth to tyranny, rather than from a healthy and well-tempered republic to princ.i.p.ality.'

[2] See _Arch. Stor._ vol. i. p. x.x.xv.

It would be beyond the purpose of this chapter to enter into the details of the history of Florence between 1527 and 1531--those years of her last struggle for freedom, which have been so admirably depicted by her great political annalists. It is rather my object to ill.u.s.trate the intellectual qualities of philosophical a.n.a.lysis and acute observation for which her citizens were eminent. Yet a sketch of the situation is necessary in order to bring into relief the different points of view maintained by Segni, Nardi, Varchi, Pitti, and Nerli respectively.

At the period in question Florence was, according to the universal testimony of these authors, too corrupt for real liberty and too turbulent for the tranquil acceptance of a despotism. The yoke of the Medici had destroyed the sense of honor and the pride of the old n.o.ble families; while the policy pursued by Lorenzo and the Popes had created a cla.s.s of greedy professional politicians. The city was not content with slavery; but the burghers, eminent for wealth or ability, were egotistical, vain, and mutually jealous. Each man sought advantage for himself. Common action seemed impossible. The Medicean party, or Palleschi, were either extreme in their devotion to the ruling house, and desirous of establishing a tyranny; or else they were moderate and anxious to retain the Medici as the chiefs of a dominant oligarchy. The point of union between these two divisions of the party was a prejudice in favor of cla.s.s rule, a hope to get power and wealth for themselves through the elevation of the princely family The popular faction on the other hand agreed in wishing to place the government of the city upon a broad republican basis. But the leaders of this section of the citizens favored the plebeian cause from different motives. Some sought only a way to riches and authority, which they could never have opened for them under the oligarchy contemplated by the Palleschi. Others, styled Frateschi or Piagnoni, clung to the ideas of liberty which were a.s.sociated with the high morality and impa.s.sioned creed of Savonarola.

These were really the backbone of the nation, the cla.s.s which might have saved the state if salvation had been possible. Another section, steeped in the study of ancient authors and imbued with memories of Roman patriotism, thought it still possible to secure the freedom of the state by liberal inst.i.tutions. These men we may call the Doctrinaires. Their panacea was the establishment of a mixed form of government, such as that which Giannotti so learnedly ill.u.s.trated. To these parties must be added the red republicans, or Arrabbiati--a name originally reserved for the worst adherents of the Medici, but now applied to fanatics of Jacobin complexion--and the Libertines, who only cared for such a form of government as should permit them to indulge their pa.s.sions.

Amid this medley of interests there resulted, as a matter of fact, two policies at the moment when the affairs of Florence, threatened by Pope and Emperor in combination, and deserted by France and the rest of Italy, grew desperate. One was that of the Gonfalonier Capponi, who advocated moderate counsels and an accommodation with Clement VII. The other was that of the Gonfalonier Carducci, who pushed things to extremities and used the enthusiasm of the Frateschi for sustaining the spirit of the people in the siege.[1] The latter policy triumphed over the former. Its principles were an obstinate belief in Francis, though he had clearly turned a deaf ear to Florence; confidence in the generals, Baglioni and Colonna, who were privately traitors to the cause they professed to defend; and reliance on the prophecies of Savonarola, supported by the preaching of the Friars Foiano, Bartolommeo, and Zaccaria. Ill-founded as it was in fact, the policy of Carducci had on its side all that was left of n.o.bility, patriotism, and the fire of liberty among the Florentines. In spite of the hopelessness of the attempt, we cannot now read without emotion how bravely and desperately those last champions of freedom fought, to maintain the independence of their city at any cost, and in the teeth of overwhelming opposition. The memory of Savonarola was the inspiration of this policy. Ferrucci was its hero. It failed. It was in vain that the Florentines had laid waste Valdarno, destroyed their beautiful suburbs, and leveled their crown of towers. It was in vain that they had poured forth their treasures to the uttermost farthing, had borne plague and famine without a murmur, and had turned themselves at the call of their country into a nation of soldiers, Charles, Clement, the Palleschi, and Malatesta Baglioni--enemies without the city walls and traitors within its gates--were too powerful for the resistance of burghers who had learned but yesterday to handle arms and to conduct a war on their own account.[2] Florence had to capitulate. The venomous Palleschi, Francesco Guicciardini and Baccio Valori, by proscription, exile, and taxation, drained the strength and broke the spirit of the state. Caesar and Christ's Vicar, a new Herod and a new Pilate, embraced and made friends over the prostrate corpse of sold and slaughtered liberty.

Florence was paid as compensation for the insult offered to the Pontiff in the sack of Rome.

[1] Guicciardini, writing his _Ricordi_ during the first months of the siege, remarks upon the power of faith (_Op. Ined._ vol. i. p.

83. Compare p. 134): 'Esemplo a' d nostri ne e grandissimo questa ostin.a.z.ione de' Fiorentini, che essendosi contro a ogni ragione del mondo messi a aspettare la guerra del papa e imperadore, senza speranza di alcuno soccorso di altri, disuniti e con mille difficulta, hanno sostenuto in quelle mura gia sette mesi gli e serciti, e quali non s sarebbe creduto che avessino sostenuti sette d; e condotto le cose in luogo che se vincessino, nessuno piu se ne maraviglierebbe, dove prima da tutti erano giudicati perduti; e questa ostin.a.z.ione ha causata in gran parte la fede di non potere perire, secondo le predicazioni di Fra Jeronimo da Ferrara.'

[2] See above, p. 238, for what Giannotti says of the heroic Ferrucci.

The part played by Filippo Strozzi in this last drama of the liberties of Florence is feeble and discreditable, but at the same time historically instructive, since it shows to what a point the n.o.blest of the Florentines had fallen. All Pitti's invectives against the Ottimati, bitter as they may be, are justified by the unvarnished narrative we read upon the pages of Varchi and Segni concerning this most vicious, selfish, vain, and brilliant hero of historical romance.

Married to Clarice de' Medici, by whom he had a splendid family of handsome and vigorous sons, he was more than the rival of his wife's princely relatives by his wealth. Yet though he made a profession of patriotism, Filippo failed to use this great influence consistently as a counterpoise to the Medicean authority. It was he, for instance, who advised Lorenzo the younger to make himself Duke of Florence.

Distinguished, as he was, above all men of his time for wit, urbanity, accomplishments, and splendid living, his want of character neutralized these radiant gifts of nature. His private morals were infamous. He encouraged by precept and example the worst vices of his age and nation, consorting with young men whom he instructed in the arts of dissolute living, and to whom he communicated his own selfish Epicureanism. To him in a great measure may be attributed the corruption of the Florentine aristocracy in the sixteenth century. In his public action he was no less vacillating than unprincipled in private life. After prevailing upon Ippolito and Alessandro de' Medici to leave Florence in 1527, he failed to execute his trust of getting Pisa from their grasp (moved, it is said, by a guilty fondness for the young and handsome Ippolito), nor did he afterwards share any of the hardships and responsibilities of the siege. Indeed, he then found it necessary to retire into exile in France, on the excuse of superintending his vast commercial affairs at Lyons. After the restoration of the Medici he returned to Florence as the courtier of Duke Alessandro, whom he aided and abetted in his juvenile debaucheries. Quarreling with Alessandro on the occasion of an insult offered to his daughter Luisa, and the accusation of murder brought against his son Piero, he went into opposition and exile, less for political than for private reasons. After the murder of Alessandro, he received Lorenzo de' Medici, the fratricide, with the t.i.tle of 'Second Brutus' at Venice. Meanwhile it was he who paid the dowry of Catherine de' Medici to the Duke of Orleans, helping thus to strengthen the house of princes against whom he was plotting, by that splendid foreign alliance which placed a descendant of the Florentine bill-brokers on the throne of France. After all these vicissitudes Filippo Strozzi headed an armed attack upon the dominions of Duke Cosimo, was taken in the battle of Montemurlo, and finally was murdered in that very fortress, outside the Porto a Faenza, which he had counseled Alessandro to construct for the intimidation of the Florentines.[1] The historians with the exception of Nerli agree in describing him as a pleasure-loving and self-seeking man, whose many changes of policy were due, not to conviction, but to the desire of gaining the utmost license of disorderly living. At the same time we cannot deny him the fame of brilliant mental qualities, a princely bearing, and great courage.

[1] See Varchi, vol. iii. p. 61, for the first stone laid of this castle. It should be said that accounts disagree about Filippo's death. Nerli very distinctly a.s.serts that he committed suicide.

Segni inclines to the belief that he was murdered by the creatures of Duke Cosimo.

The moral and political debility which proved the real source of the ruin of Florence is accounted for in different ways by the historians of the siege. Pitti, whose insight into the situation is perhaps the keenest, and who is by far the most outspoken, does not refer the failure of the Florentines to the cowardice or stupidity of the popular party, but to the malignity of the Palleschi, the double-dealing and egotism of the wealthy n.o.bles, who to suit their own interests favored now one and now another of the parties. These Ottimati--as he calls them, by a t.i.tle borrowed from cla.s.sical phraseology--whether they professed the Medicean or the popular cause, were always bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of the people or their princes.[1]

The sympathies of Pitti were on the side of the plebeians, whose policy during the siege was carried out by the Gonfalonier Carducci. At the same time he admitted the feebleness and insufficiency of many of these men, called from a low rank of life and from mechanical trades to the administration of the commonwealth. The state of Florence under Piero Soderini--that 'non mai abbastanza lodato cavaliere,' as he calls him--was the ideal to which he reverted with longing eyes. Segni, on the other hand, condemns the ambition of the plebeian leaders, and declares his opinion that the State could only have been saved by the more moderate among the influential citizens. He belonged in fact to that section of the Medicean party which Varchi styles the Neutrals. He had strong aristocratic leanings, and preferred a government of n.o.bles to the popular democracy which flourished under Francesco Carducci. While he desired the liberty of Florence, Segni saw that the republic could not hold its own against both Pope and Emperor, at a crisis when the King of France, who ought to have rendered a.s.sistance in the hour of need, was bound by the treaty of Cambray, and by the pledges he had given to Charles in the persons of his two sons. The policy of which Segni approved was that which Niccolo Capponi had prepared before his fall--a reconciliation with Clement through the intervention of the Emperor, according to the terms of which the Medici should have been restored as citizens of paramount authority, but not as sovereigns.

Varchi, while no less alive to the insecurity of Carducci's policy, was animated with a more democratic spirit. He had none of Segni's Whig leanings, but shared the patriotic enthusiasm which at that supreme moment made the whole state splendidly audacious in the face of insurmountable difficulties. Both Segni and Varchi discerned the exaggerated and therefore baneful influence of Savonarola's prophecies over the populace of Florence. In spite of continued failure, the people kept trusting to the monk's prediction that, after her chastis.e.m.e.nt, Florence would bloom forth with double l.u.s.ter, and that angels in the last resort would man her walls and repel the invaders. There is something pathetic in this delusion of a great city, trusting with infantine pertinacity to the promises of the man whom they had seen burned as an impostor, when all the while their statesmen and their generals were striking bargains with the foe. Nardi is more sincerely Piagnone than either Segni or Varchi. Yet, writing after the events of the siege, his faith is shaken; and while he records his conviction that Savonarola was an excellent Nomothetes, he questions his prophetic mission, and deplores the effect produced by his vain promises. Nerli, as might have been expected from a n.o.ble married to Caterina Salviati, the niece of Leo and the aunt of Cosimo, who had himself been courtier to Clement and privy councilor to Alessandro, sustains the Medicean note throughout his commentaries.

[1] He goes so far as to a.s.sert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished to give a liberal const.i.tution to Florence, but that their plans were frustrated by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be oligarchs. See _Arch. Stor_. vol. i. pp. 121,131. The pa.s.sages quoted from his 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' relative to Machiavelli, Filippo Strozzi, and Francesco Guicciardini (_Arch. Stor_. vol. i.

pp. x.x.xix. x.x.xviii.), are very instructive; with such greedy self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossible for the Medicean Popes to establish any government but a tyranny in Florence.

Thus from these five authors, writing from different points of view, we gain a complete insight into the complicated politics of Florence, at a period when her vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost all faculty for centralized or concerted action. In sagacity, in the power of a.n.a.lysis with which they pierce below the surface, trace effects to causes, discern character, and regard the facts of history as the proper subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they have much in common. He who has seen Rembrandt's painting of the dissecting-room might construct for himself another picture, in which the five grave faces of these patient observers should be bent above the dead and diseased body of their native city. Life is extinct. Nothing is left for science but, scalpel in hand, to lay bare the secret causes of dissolution. Each anatomist has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady.