Villani's Chronicle Part 5

[Sidenote: Inf. xxvii. 94, 95.]

[Sidenote: 320 A.D.]

[Sidenote: De Mon. iii. 10. Par. vi. 1-3; xx. 55-57.]

We find that our city of Florence remained under the government of the Roman Empire for about 350 years after its first foundation, observing pagan ways, and worshipping idols, albeit there were many Christians, after the fashion whereof I have spoken, but they remained concealed in divers hermitages and caverns without the city, and they which were within did not declare themselves as Christians for fear of the persecutions which the emperors of Rome and their vicars and ministers brought upon the Christians, until the time of the great Constantine, son of Constantine the Emperor, and of Helena his wife, daughter of the king of Britain, which was the first Christian emperor, and endowed the Church with all the possessions of Rome, and gave liberty to the Christians in the time of the blessed Pope Sylvester, who baptized him and made him a Christian, cleansing him from leprosy by the power of Christ, and this was in the year of Christ about 320. The said Constantine caused many churches to be built in Rome to the honour of Christ, and having destroyed all the temples of paganism and of the idols, and established Holy Church in her liberty and lordship, and having brought the temporal affairs of the Church under due system and order, he departed to Constantinople, which he caused to be thus named, after his own name (for before this it was called Byzantium), and he raised it to great state and lordship, and there he made his seat, leaving here in command of Rome his patricians or censors, that is, vicars, which defended Rome, and fought for her, and for the Empire. After the said Constantine, which reigned more than thirty years, first in command of Rome, and then in command of Constantinople, there were left three sons, Constantine, and Constantius, and Constans, which had war and contentions among themselves, and one of them, to wit, Constantine, was a Christian, and the next, Constantius, was a heretic, and persecuted the Christians by reason of his heresy, which was begun in Constantinople by one named Arius, and this heresy was called Arian, after his name, which spread much error throughout all the world, and throughout the Church of G.o.d.

These sons of Constantine by their dissensions greatly laid waste the Empire of Rome, and in a sense abandoned it, and henceforward it always seemed as if it were declining, and its sovereignty becoming less; and there began to be two and three emperors at one time, and one would be reigning in Constantinople, and another in the Empire of Rome, and one would be Christian, and another an Arian heretic, persecuting the Christians and the Church, and this endured long time, so that all Italy was infected thereby. Of the other emperors before and after, we shall make no ordered record, save of those which pertain to our subject; but he who desires to find them in order should read the Martinian Chronicle, and therein he will find the emperors and the popes which were in those times set forth in order.

-- 60.--_How the Christian faith first came to Florence._

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 47, 145, 146.]

[Sidenote: Inf. xiii. 143-150.]

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 25, 47.]

[Sidenote: Par. xvi. 42.]

[Sidenote: Inf. xix. 17-20. Par. xv. 134, 135.]

At the time that the said great Constantine became a Christian, and gave freedom and sovereignty to the Church, and S. Sylvester, the Pope, was openly established in the papacy in Rome, there spread through Tuscany, and throughout Italy, and afterwards through all the world, the true faith and belief of Jesus Christ. And in our city of Florence, the true faith began to be adopted, and paganism to be abolished, in the time of * * * * who was made bishop of Florence by Pope Sylvester; and from the n.o.ble and beautiful temple of the Florentines, of which mention has been made above, the Florentines removed their idol, which they called the G.o.d Mars, and placed it upon a high tower, by the river Arno, and would not break or destroy it, because in their ancient records they found that the said idol of Mars had been consecrated under the ascendant of such a planet, that if it were broken or set aside in a place of contempt, the city would suffer peril and injury, and undergo great changes. And although the Florentines had lately become Christians, they still observed many pagan customs, and long continued to observe them, and they still stood in awe of their ancient idol of Mars, so little were they perfected as yet in the holy faith; and this done, they consecrated their said temple in honour of G.o.d and of the blessed S. John the Baptist, and called it the Duomo of S. Giovanni; and they decreed that the feast on the day of his nativity should be celebrated with solemn sacrifices, and that a race should be run for a samite cloak, and this custom has been always observed by the Florentines on that day. And they had baptismal fonts erected in the middle of the temple, where people and children were and still are baptized; and on Holy Sat.u.r.day, when in the said fonts the baptismal water and fire were blessed, they ordered that the said holy fire should be carried through the city after the custom of Jerusalem, so that some one should enter into every house with a lighted torch, for them to kindle their fires from. And from this solemnity came the privilege of the "great torch,"

which pertained to the house of the Pazzi, from some hundred and seventy years before 1300; because one of their ancestors, named Pazzo, strong and tall in person, bore a larger torch than any other, and was the first to take the sacred fire, and then the others received it from him. The said duomo, after that it had been consecrated to Christ, was enlarged by the s.p.a.ce where to-day is the choir, and the altar of the blessed John; but at the time that the said duomo was the temple of Mars, this addition had not been made thereto, nor the turret and ball at the summit; and indeed it was open above after the fashion of Santa Maria Ritonda of Rome, to the intent their idol, the G.o.d Mars, which was in the midst of the temple, might be open to the sky. But after the second rebuilding of Florence, in the year of Christ 1150, the cupola was built upon columns, and the ball, and the golden cross which is at the top, by the consuls of the Art of Calimala, to which the commonwealth of Florence had committed the charge of the building of the said work in honour of S. John. And by many people which have journeyed through the world it is said to be the most beautiful temple or duomo of any that may be found; and in our times has been completed the work of the histories depicted within in mosaic. And we find, from ancient records, that the figure of the sun carved in mosaic, which says: "_En giro torte sol ciclos, et rotor igne_," was done by astronomy, and when the sun enters into the sign of Cancer, it shines at mid-day on that place through the opening above, where is the turret.

-- 61.--_Of the coming of the Goths and Vandals into Italy, and how they destroyed the country and besieged the city of Florence in the time of S. Zen.o.bius, bishop of Florence._

END OF SELECTIONS FROM BOOK I.

BOOK II.

_Here begins the Second Book: how the city of Florence was destroyed by Totila, the scourge of G.o.d, king of the Goths and Vandals._

[Sidenote: 440 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Inf. xv. 67.]

[Sidenote: 450 A.D.]

-- 1.--In the year of Christ 440, in the time of S. Leo the Pope, and of Theodosius and Valentinian emperors, in the northern parts there was a king of the Vandals and of the Goths, which was called Bela, and surnamed Totila. This man was a barbarian and had no religion, and was cruel in customs and in all things, born of the province of Gothland and Sweden, and in his cruelty he slew his brother and subdued many divers nations of peoples by his might and lordship; and afterwards he was minded to destroy and take away the Empire of the Romans, and lay Rome waste; and thus by his sovereignty he gathered together innumerable people from his own country, and from Sweden and from Gothland, and afterwards from Pannonia, which is Hungary, and from Denmark, to enter into Italy. And when he desired to pa.s.s into Italy, he was opposed by the Romans and Burgundians and French, and a great battle was fought against him in the district of Lunina, that is to say of Friuli and Aquilea, with the greatest number of slain that had ever been in any battle, both on one side and on the other; and the king of Burgundy was slain. And Totila, being discomfited, returned to his own country with the followers which were left to him. But afterwards, desiring to carry out his purpose of destroying the Empire of Rome, he gathered a larger army than before, and came into Italy.

And first he laid siege to the city of Aquilea; so it continued three years, and then he took it, and burnt and destroyed it with all the inhabitants; and when he had entered into Italy, after the same manner he destroyed Vicenza, and Brescia, and Bergamo, and Milan, and Ticino, and well-nigh all the cities of Lombardy, save Modena, for the merits of S. Gemignano, which was bishop thereof; for when he was pa.s.sing through this city with his people, by a divine miracle he did not see it save when he was without the city, and by reason of the miracle he pa.s.sed it by, and did not destroy it: and he destroyed Bologna and put to martyrdom S. Proculus, bishop of Bologna, and thus he destroyed well-nigh all the cities of Romagna. And afterwards pa.s.sing through Tuscany he found the city of Florence strong and powerful. Hearing the fame thereof, and how it had been built by the n.o.blest Romans, and was the treasure-house of the Empire and of Rome, and how in this country had been slain Radagasius, king of the Goths, his predecessor, with so great a mult.i.tude of Goths, as before has been narrated, he commanded that it should be besieged, and long time he sat before it in vain.

And seeing that he could not obtain it by siege, inasmuch as it was very strong in towers and in walls and in many good soldiers, he set about to gain it by deceit and by flattery and by treachery. Now the Florentines had continual war with the city of Pistoia; and Totila ceased laying waste the country around the city, and sent to the Florentines that he desired to be their friend, and in their service would destroy the city of Pistoia, promising and making show of great love, and to give them privileges with very generous covenants. The imprudent Florentines (and for this cause they were ever afterwards called _blind_ in the proverb) believed his false flatteries and vain promises; they opened the gates to him, and admitted him and his followers into the city, and lodged him in the Capitol. And when the cruel tyrant was within the city with all his forces, under false seeming he showed love to the citizens, and one day he invited to his council the greatest and most powerful chiefs of the city in great numbers; and when they came to the Capitol, as they pa.s.sed one by one through an entry, he caused them to be slain and ma.s.sacred, none perceiving ought of the fate of the other; and afterwards he had them thrown into the ducts of the Capitol, to wit, the conduit of the Arno which flows underground by the Capitol, to the end that no man might know thereof. And thus he put them to death in great numbers, and nought was perceived thereof in the city of Florence save that at the exit from the city where the said aqueduct or conduit issued forth and flowed back into the Arno, the water was seen to be all red and b.l.o.o.d.y. Then the people perceived the deceit and treachery; but it was in vain and too late, seeing that Totila had armed all his followers; and when he perceived that his cruelty was discovered, he commanded them to overrun the city and slay both great and small, men and women, and from this there was no escape, forasmuch as the city was unarmed and unprepared, and we find that at that time there were in the city of Florence 22,000 men-at-arms, beside the aged and children. When the people of the city perceived that they were come to such sorrow and destruction, they escaped who could, fleeing into the country and hiding themselves in strongholds, and in woods and in caves; but the most part of the citizens were slain, or wounded, or taken, and the city was all despoiled of substance and riches by the said Goths, Vandals, and Hungarians. And after that Totila had thus wasted it of inhabitants and of goods, he commanded that it should be destroyed and burnt, and laid waste, and that there should not remain one stone upon another, and this was done; save that in the west there remained one of the towers which Gneus Pompey had built, and on the north and on the south one of the gates, and within the city near to the gate the "casa" or "domo," which we take to be the duomo of S. Giovanni, called of yore the "casa" [house] of Mars. And verily it never was entirely destroyed, nor shall be destroyed to eternity, save at the day of judgment, even as is written on the cement of the said duomo. And there were also left standing certain lofty towers or temples, indicated in the ancient chronicles by letters of the alphabet, the which we cannot interpret, to wit S, and casa P, and casa F. The city had four gates and six posterns, and there were towers marvellous strong over the gates. And the idol of the G.o.d Mars which the Florentines took from the temple and set upon a pillar, then fell into the Arno, and abode there as long as the city remained in ruins. And thus was destroyed the n.o.ble city of Florence by the infamous Totila on the 28th day of June, in the year of Christ 450, to wit 520 years after its foundation; and in the said city the blessed Maurice, bishop of Florence, was put to death with great torments by the followers of Totila, and his body lies in Santa Reparata.

-- 2.--_How Totila caused the city of Fiesole to be rebuilt._

After that the city of Florence was destroyed, Totila went into the hill where had been the ancient city of Fiesole, and encamped there with his banners and tents and booths, and commanded that the said city should be rebuilt, and issued a proclamation that whosoever desired to return and dwell there, swearing to him to oppose the Romans, should abide in safety and freedom, and this in order that the city of Florence should never be rebuilt. For the which thing many which were descended from of old from Fiesole, returned to dwell thither, and of the Florentines themselves which had escaped, which did not know where to dwell or whither to go; and thus in a short time the city of Fiesole was restored and rebuilt, and made strong by walls and by inhabitants, and afterwards, as before so now, it continually rebelled against Rome.

-- 3.--_How Totila departed from Fiesole to go towards Rome, and destroyed many cities, and died an evil death._

-- 4.--_How the Goths remained lords of Italy after the death of Totila._

[Sidenote: Circ. 470 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Cf. Inf. x.x.xii. 62. De Vulg. El. i. 10: 18, 19.]

* * * * And the King Theodoric held the Empire of Rome for the said Zeno, the Emperor, doing him homage therefor and paying him tribute.

In these times, about the year of Christ 470, while Leo, Emperor of Rome, was reigning in Constantinople, was born in Great Britain, which is now called England, Merlin the prophet (of a virgin, they say, by conception or machination of a devil), which wrought in that country many marvels by necromancy, and ordained the Round Table of Knights Errant in the time when Uther Pendragon reigned in Britain, which was descended from Brutus, grandson of aeneas, the first inhabitant of that land, as afore we made mention; and afterwards the Round Table was restored by the good King Arthur, his son, which was a lord of great power and valour, and more gracious and knightly than all other lords, and he reigned long time in happy state, as the Romances of the Britons make mention, and whereof the Martinian Chronicle is not silent when treating of those times.

-- 5.--_How the Goths were driven the first time out of Italy, and how they recovered their sovereignty by means of the young Theodoric, their king._ -- 6.--_How the Goths were entirely driven out of Italy by Belisarius, patrician of the Romans._ -- 7.--_Of the coming of the Lombards into Italy._ -- 8.--_Of the beginning of the religion and sect of the Saracens, inst.i.tuted by Mahomet._ -- 9.--_Of the successors of Rotharis, king of the Lombards._

-- 10.--_How Charles Martel came from France to Italy at the summons of the Church against the Lombards; and of the origin of the city of Siena._

[Sidenote: 735 A.D.]

[Sidenote: 740 A.D.]

In the time of the said Eliprando [Liutprand], albeit he was a Christian, yet by reason of avarice, and of desire to usurp the rights of Holy Church, and by the counsel of the emperor of Constantinople, he began war against the Romans and against Pope Gregory III., and came with all his forces to besiege the said Pope in Rome, he by way of Lombardy, and Grimoald, king of the Samnites and of the Apulians, with his troops from Apulia, in the year of Christ 735. For the which thing, after a council had been held in Rome, the Church with the Romans sent to France for aid from Charles Martel, which Charles was son to Pepin, a great baron of France, and was of the Twelve Peers, and governed all the realm and the king himself; and the said Charles Martel did likewise, forasmuch as the king which then was, called Chilperic, had the name only, but Charles had the strength and lordship; and he was the son of the sister of Dodon, king of Aquitania, and afterwards was father of the good King Pepin, which was father of Charles the Great, and he had the surname of Martel, because he bore a hammer as his arms. And in truth he was a hammer, forasmuch as by his prowess he struck at all Germany, Saxony, Suabia, Bavaria, and Denmark as far as Norway, at England, Aquitania, and Navarre and Spain, and Burgundy and Provence, and became ruler over them all, and they became his tributaries. Then, at the summons of the said Pope, he pa.s.sed into Italy as far as Apulia, and freed Rome and the Church from the encroachments of the Lombards. And it is said that at that time, about the year of Christ 740, was the place first inhabited where is now the city of Siena, by the aged and sick [non sana] people which came in with Charles Martel, and remained in that place as has been told afore concerning the building of Siena.

-- 11.--_How Eraco [Rachis], the Lombard king of Apulia, returned to obedience to Holy Church._

-- 12.--_How Telofre [Astolf], king of the Lombards, persecuted Holy Church, and how King Pepin at the summons of Pope Stephen came from France and defeated him, and took him prisoner._

[Sidenote: Cf. Purg. xx. 53 and the Commentators.]

[Sidenote: 755 A.D.]

After King Rachis there succeeded to the realm of Lombardy, and to that of Apulia, Astolf, called in Latin Telofre, brother of the said Rachis. He was a lord of great power, and cruel, and an enemy of Holy Church and of the Romans; and by the counsel of evil and rebellious Romans, he took Tuscany and the valley of Spoleto, and devastated them, and claimed tribute on every man's head; and made a conspiracy with Leo, and Constantine, his son, emperors of Constantinople, and at his request they came to Rome, and together with Telofre they took it, and sacked it, and burnt the churches and holy places, and carried to Constantinople the riches of Rome, and all the images from the churches in Rome, and in contempt of the Pope and of the Church and to the shame of the Christians he burnt them all with fire, and many faithful Christians they destroyed and consumed in Rome and in all Italy. For which thing Pope Stephen II. excommunicated them, and as a punishment for the misdeed took away from the emperor the kingdom of Apulia and of Sicily, and established by a decree that it should pertain to Holy Church for ever. And afterwards, not being able to resist the force of the said tyrants and so much affliction, he went in person into France to Pepin, prince and governor of the French, to require and pray him to come into Italy to defend Holy Church against Telofre, king of the Lombards, and he gave to the said Pepin many privileges and graces, and made and confirmed him king of France, and deposed Childeric, the king which was of the first race, forasmuch as he was a man of no account, and he became a monk. Which Pepin, a faithful and loving son of Holy Church, received him with great honour, and afterwards with all his forces with the said Pope Stephen came into Italy, in the year of Christ 755, and fought great battles with the said Telofre, king of the Lombards. In the end, by force of arms and of his folk, the said Telofre was overcome and defeated by the good King Pepin, and he obeyed the command of the Pope and of Holy Church, and made all amends, just as he and his cardinals chose to devise; and he left to the Church by compact and privilege the realm of Apulia and of Sicily, and the patrimony of S. Peter. And when the said Pepin was come to Rome with the said Pope, they were received with great honour by the Romans; and the said Pepin was made patrician, that is, vicar of Rome, and father of the Roman Republic.

And when Rome and Holy Church were restored to their liberty and good estate, he returned into France, and ended his life with great honour, and Charles the Great, his son, succeeded him as king of France.

-- 13.--_How Desiderius, son of Telofre, began war again with Holy Church, for the which thing Charles the Great pa.s.sed into Italy, and defeated him, and took away and destroyed the lordship of the Lombards._

[Sidenote: De Mon. iii. (11) 1-6.]

[Sidenote: 775 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Par. vi. 94-96.]