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CHAUTAUQUA HOME READING SERIES \\ ,„ LORENZO DE' MEDICI P'>rtrait by Vasari Uffizi riallcTy, Florence Italian Cities DC BY CECIL FAIRFIELD ^AVELL, M. A. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BAfES COLLEGE. LEWISTON. MAINE; LATE STAFF LECTURER FOR THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SOCIETY. PHILADELPHIA; SOMETIME FELLOW OF QUEENS UNIVERSITY. KINGS- TON. CANADA. CHAUTAUQUA, N. Y. MCMV .laaterwr-' Copyright, iqos BY THE POPULAR lOUCATlON PUBLISHING COMPANY R. R DONNELLEY H SONS COMPANY CHICAGO ^ J) CONTENTS 1 CHAPTBR Preface ..... Introduction . . . . . I. From Naples to Pompeii II. Ancient Rome ..... III. Assisi AND the Italy of St. Francis IV. Genoa and Pisa . . . . . V. Siena ...... VI. Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio VII. The Florence of the Medici VIII. Renaissance Rome . . . . IX. Venice ...... X. Milan ...... XI. From Turin to Rome. The Regeneration OF Italy ...... Index ...... PACK V vii I 17 38 57 75 92 "3 136 >53 171 187 .tii 901 ii^-^mBfBPi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I f 1 i FACINO PAtiK Lorenzo i>e' Medici. (Portrait by V« ri, Uffizi Gal- lery, Florence) • - • Frontispiece Civic Forum. Pompeii - • - ii The Roman Forum, Looking towarl the Palatink AND THE Colosseum ..... St. Francis Casting Forth the Devils from Arez- zo. (Fresco by Giotto in Church of S. Francesco, Assisi) ...... Detail from thk "Triumph of Death." (Fresco by Andrea Orcagna in the Campo Santo of Pisa) - A Street in Siena, with the Mangia Towi ; Cloisters of Santa Maria Novella, Florence Angels in Paradise, from Fra Angelico's "Last Judgment." (Academy of Fine Arts, Florence) Lorenzo de' Medici at the Age of Fifteen. (De. tail from Benozzo Gozzoli's Fresco in the Riccardi Palace, Florence) ...... The "Primavera" of Botticelli. (Academy, Florence) "Madonna of the Rose GarF'SN." (Filippir "ippi(?), Pitti Palace, Florence) ... The Creation of Man. (Fresco by ^'ichelan„o.o, Ceil- ing of the Sistine Chapel, Rome) - The Madonna of tme Chaki. (Rap* •»!, Pitti Palace, Florence) - • - . . St. George and the Dra \ (Carpaccio, in church of S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice) .... Angel. (Detail from Bellini's Madonna and Saints, in the Church of S. Zaccaria, Venice) - - . . Mole and Piazzetta, Venice .... The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci, in old refectory of S. Maria delle Grazie, Milan) - . . - 184 «g 54 72 76 104 106 "3 •23 '23 142 M7 162 165 168 iiiinminfirffnMiiiMrmrTnnr '?t''';f1r-J1.-:'M.- PREFACE This little book is neither a history of Italy nor a record of travel. Tt is simply an introduction to the study of a great people. Countries like England or France may doubtless be better approached in some o* ^^r way. Their history is infinitely more unified and their genius far simpler than that of Italy. Indeed, so far is this true that the effort is seldom made to trace the fortunes and the development of the Italian people as a whole, infinite t J has been the time and energy spent on phases of that development, ancient Rome, the Empire, the Papacy, the Renaissance, the modern movement for unification — all of these have had devoted to them a whole literature. Yet innumerable reading and thinking people who would not dream of suggesting that Alfred the Great, John V/iclif, and Alfred Tennyson were not all Englishmen, never realize that Julius Cnesar, Innocent III., Raphael, and Garibaldi were all Italians. In the one case national growth has been so mighty, so uninterrupted, that all the world may see it. In the other case the genius of the race was thrown for centuries into directions other than national development, and missing the thread of continu- ous political history we lose sight of the real continuity of race and spirit. In these chapters the attempt is made to introduce the student to the spirit of Italy, past and present. Many pages are, of necessity, simply descriptive, for often a church, a picture, or a statue interprets the message and tmtmm wmm VI Preface '•^ life of an age as adequately as a revolution, a battle, or even a book. Many are directly historical. But whether in history or description the effort of the writer through- out is to prepare the reader for the study of any phase of Italian achievement that may be undertaken in future w'th a larger background, a truer understanding of the unity of Italian history in the broadest sense. My sole co-worker has been my wife, who has shared my Italian studies throughout in Italy and America, and whose assistance in suggestion, in criticism, and in the actual preparation of the book for the press I wish warmly to acknowledge. The friends who first interested me in the art of Italy, Mr. Edward Howard Griggs, Mr. Earl Barnes, and even more, Mr. John Nolen, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been too far away for consultation or direct aid, but I may at least salute them and very heartily acknowledge my debt. Cecil Fairfield Lavell. Lewiston, Maine, April 17, 1905. ■\ . '!=:^! .1 INTRODUCTION You are sitting on *he steps of an old Greek temple, looking across a little stretch of grass to a still older one, and thinking. Since that dawn, not many weeks ago, when you saw from your port-hole a mountain rearing its dark mass against the ruddy eastern sky, and knew that it was Vesuvius, you have been gaining your first bewildering impressions of Italy. Naples, odorous and noisy per- haps, but charged with picturesque life, — its bay and its hill, and even its streets, full of glorious color, — has been entirely the Italy of your dreams — joyous, sunny, and quite uncrushed by its too obvious poverty. At Baiae you have had the shock and thrill of your first per- sonal contact with Rome. And now you have come to Prestum. Before you, in a deserted field carpeted with grass and lovely flowers, stands a Doric temple, raised by Greeks in this Greater Greece ' before the Parthenon yet crowned the Acropolis of Athens. The bright stucco that once covered the rough, reddish stone is quite gone. There is no roof. Some of the columns are broken, and all are scarred by the weather of twenty-five centuries. There is no bright-colored frieze, and the lizard and the barbarian with like freedom may pass where once stood the image of earth-shaking Poseidon. Yet the scars seem to matter wonderfully little. It is not like an intri- cate piece of carving or painting, not like Leonardo's ■Southern Italy was called in Roman times Magna Greecia, Great or Greater Greece. The British Colonies have thus been called in modern times Greater Britain. vU Vlll Introduction f'M'' ■■'.'.'■■ m m ruined masterpiece,' where every stain and blotch is a dead loss. Here what is left is of infinitely greater significance than what is gone. The harmony, the simplicity, the perfect lines, the restfulness of all Greek work are still there untouched; the wrinkles and scars only add the quiet pathos of age; and before one's imagination easily rises the perfect temple as it was in its prime. In some ways, though, it is hard to believe that any- thing here can be really Greek — that this soil was as truly Hellas to the worshipers in the temple as Argos or Achaia. Greek stones they are — Greek stones bearing witness to Greek builders — and yet, had these worshipers of a Greek god no sons that Greek tradition and the Greek language have vanished so completely? Here, alas, as in Sicily, the race has disappeared. The tongue of Pythagoras and Thee ;itus has faded from memory long ages ago, and if Balaustion could now tell the story of Alcestis to the descendants of the people of Syracuse, they would listen in ignorant amazement to words that their fore- fathers spoke in Corinth. Indeed the decline must have begun here quite early. The decay of power in the mother cities, the drying up of the great parent streams of Hellenic life, the corrupting presence of masterful bar- barian neighbors, all helped to sap the vitality of the Greek cities of southern Italy. Athens, even though a shadow of her old self, might yet remain a center of light to the world, and Athene might be worshiped in the Parthenon by Greeks and Romans, side by side. But the Italian colonies were too far away. Italy became Rome, and though the Romans might themselves do reverence t.* the Greek spirit and turn to the study of Homer and > "The Last ?upper," at Milan. .. ■>-«m.' Introduction IX Sophocles, yet the impulse came from Corinth and Athens, not from Magna Graecia. Barbarian neighbors and alien soil proved too strong for the cities of Greater Greece, and Poseidon had to look sadly down from h's desolate fane over a world that had forgotten him. Greeks and gods are alike ghosts in this quiet plain where once was Poseidonia. But they were not always ghosts. It is perhaps just as well before going on to study the power and glory of Rome or the ideals and fruits of the Renaissance that you come here to contenplate these remains of a genius as mighty as the Roman, far greater indeed outside of the fields of law and politics, and even more subtle and potent in its message to us of to-day than that of Florence her- self. These offshoots in Italy cf the Greek race were an anticipation and a symbol of the ages to come. To every generation of Italians for twenty-five hundred years this temple has preached the Greek message of simplicity and harmony. To every generation of the civilized world during the same time have Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, and Plato been quietly teaching freedom and strength of thought, symmetry and beauty of character, Hobillty, balance, self-restraint in conduct, calm joy6ushess~and spontaneity in heart and outlook on life. All of us, from the Romans of Catb's day to the Arrie -leans of tTelwen- tieth century, look back to the Greeks as our teachers. Yet it is strange and tragic to see how fatally the one great defect of the Hellenic genius, its lack of moral sound- ness, seems to have corrupted the colonists and Hellenized Italians of Sicily and South Italy. Instead of carrying on tht message of their fathers, and expanding it to yet fur- ther grandeur, they gradually lost their hold on the great things of life. Instead of the Greek race — so famous and \ 1 ii ?i'*«iHc.£^ufe^i^vw' - •^^t.:'Sis:^wamr- .«- naS»«7niin3K;iv'*':i t.*-. From Naples to Pompeii 1 1 'Then what golden hours were for us I While we sate together there; How the white vests of the chorus Seemed to wave up a live air! How the cothums trod majestic Down the deep iambic lines; And the rolling anapestic Curled, like vapor over shrines! "Oh our iCschylus, the thunderous! How he drove the bolted breath Through the cloud to wedge it ponderous In the gnarlfed oak beneath. Oh our Sophocles, the royal. Who was bom to monarch's place— And who made the whole world loyal, Less by kingly power than grace. "Our Euripides, the human— With his droppings of warm tears; And his touches of things common, Till they rose to touch the spheres!" The bits of the city that you have found it hardest to reconstruct for yourself have been the ones you have seen most often in pictures-the civic Forum and the temples As you walked through them with your guide it was almost impossible for your imagination— unfortified by archeo- logical Ie?rning-to complete the broken columns, to roof over the shattered temples, to replace the statues on the empty pedestals, and to fill all with the busy life of a Roman city. If only you could have brought back from the great museum at Naples all the statues and pictures which have been taken there for preservation you could do better, perhaps. You saw them there of course, and you dimly remember one series of frescoes representing the life of the Forum, but walking about the corridors and .-^'I n 12 Italian Cities rooms of a museum, looking at faded frescoes and bronzes and marbles— duly mounted and numbered — is not like seeing them in place. There in Naples you politely gazed at each one, saw that this one was beautiful, that one well preserved, this other one woefully faded — and finally went away tired, but triumphantly conscious of duty done, with a chaotic mass of impressions in your mind that you scarcely dreamed of reducing to order. Indeed the best intentions in the world would have been baffled by the problem. These statues and frescoes once adorned the temples, the atria, the gardens, the dining-rooms of cul- tured gentlemen of the age of Augustus or Titus. When they were removed from their setting, half of their beauty and all of their meaning— their decorative effectiveness — were taken away. So as you meditate in your garden your memory halts very briefly at the impressive ruins of the Forum and the temples. You have really found more that interested you in the streets and houses. For here the echo of the old life is astonishingly real. The narrow little streets are most unmistakably streets, and you almost felt as you walked along them that curious Roman eyes might be watching you from the little windows,— that stately shades in purple-edged robes might be strolling on the other side of the road, scornfully eyeing you, barbarous Anglo-Saxon that you are. But meanwhile you in your new-world lordliness were marveling at the narrowness and lack of color in these Pompeian streets. Even the broadest can- not be much more than twenty-five feet wide, — just room enough for two chariots to pass abreast after you take off space for the narrow sidewalks,— and you remember only three of these spacious highways altogether. Th . rest ^■■'.- •'"••<'■. :.-r - f n '-* From NapJes to Pompeii »3 are surely no more than nine or ten feet wide, a few per- haps twelve or fifteen, and when you have allowed foTa narrow walk or curbstone on each side, there is only space enough for one chariot to go .long the roadway ' So stramed was its course, indeed, that the solid lava whet '";': ''''"'^^':'^^ «^"' ^^^ deep ruts of Z brinfh . ''"' '"°'''''" '^^"^' ^°°' *hich helped to i y o'f t aT r:'' t"^ ""^^""^ '^^''y -^ '^— ■ a font n f . "' °^ ^"^»'^^°"" on each side is often oot or a foot and a half high. . , that in time of heavy rain, the roadway would becon _ a rushing stream hemmed m by banks . d floor of stone. To pJZTo'r he comfort of pedestrians therefore, the "^^hought u authont.es placed broad stepping-stones, one or more a the breadth of the street demanded, arranged so tha the wheels of a vehicle could pass nicely on either side. You stood and noted the smoothness of the stones, where the pandas of bygone ages had worn them, and as you looked with a kmd of shiver over the worn edge of a fountain rubbed smooth by hands that might have Lched c" • ' you saw the lead pipes that carried pure water through streets and houses till the ashes fell in their vTither^^?!' and the fountains bubbled no more all ^tr ''"■' '^^'^-P'-°^«^'"g -gainst the grayness of it all. Stone was everywhere. Relentless pavement filled rom'r\^"' r ^^°"^ ^^"^ °^ ''^ ^-- -e" -th from the edge of the sidewalk. You will chafe at thi many a t.me m the months to come, for it is as charac te lonrJr ? . °' ^""^"^ ''^'y- «"^ y- ^-"d before long where the Pompeian looked for his color and for the flowers and green that would relieve his eye from the gl rl of sun on stone. For you turned mto a door-one of tl H Italian Cities doors that your guide had to unlock — and found an exquis- ite little Roman house lying before you. Vaguely you remembered in school-days having heard of the atrium of an ancient house, but you never had really imagined vividly what the word could mean. Well, one was before you now. You were standing in a little vestibule, and before you lay a wide hall. Several little rooms, — conceivably sleeping-rooms, though small to your eye, — opened from this hall, but they scarcely interested you as much as the atrium itself. It was evidently the room into which any one who passed the threshold entered at once, the general utility room, the reception-room for casual or business call- ers, the more public, less personal part of the house. In the middle of the floor you saw a square basin, and over it an opening in the roof that admitted rain, air, and light. Beyond, through a hallway closed once by draperies, your eye met the welcome rest of green. You moved forward to it eagerly, passed between two pillars, and instinct told you that the lovely little retrer ou were entering was the part of the little house where . aly the family and friends were admitted. A gentleman named Aulus Vettius lived here, they say, and indeed you were inclined to envy him. You were standing in the peristyle of the house — an open colonnade surrounding a beautiful little garden. Ex- quisite little statues stood on pedestals here and there, flow- ers and shrubs raised their heads to the open sky, and in the rooms opening upon the colonnade and garden you found frescoes that seemed to you both better preserved and infinitely more imeresting than any you saw at Naples. One room particularly delighted you. It was adorned on all sides with paintings, but your eye especially fell on black bands nine inches high encircling the walls in which ^^T »^rom Naples to Pompeii 15 were painted in bright harmonious joyous colors exquisite little Cupids and Psyches doing all manner of things- gathering flowers, making and selling oil, selling garlands of roses, playing games, working in metals, making cloth, gathering grapes and toiling at the wine-press, racing in the games of the circus with antelopes for horses— a glowing series of lovely shapes and colors, quaint and beautiful beyond belief. You turned from them to the panels, sparkling with dainty flying and dancing forms, and you stood in amazement. You came to Pompeii expect- ing ruins. You found them, certainly, but you found far more— a city forsaken and silent, but filled with eloquent voices that made the ancient past as yesterday, with bril- liant shapes of beauty, graceful columns inclosing flowers and entwined by ivy, figures in marble and bronze and rosy frescoes that seemed to smile in vivid life at you as they danced and played in tneir deathless youth. It is all fresh in your mind as you sit there in the garden by the little old shrine. And after you Iia/e pon- dered over it, you go out to stroll about and explore for yourself. Each open door you come to you enter and you take an unexpected pleasure in comparing diflferent houses, noting the varying shape of the atrium, .nd the number and size of the smaller rooms. You always look with especial interest for the peristyle with its garden, and you soon find that some householders were not able to afford one, that others had only one side adorned with a colonnade, and that still others had not only the com- plete peristyle, but an additional garden beyond at one side. In these open houses you do not find any frescoes that compare with those in the house of Vettius, and yet even the faded ones that you come upon are interesting, i6 Italian Cities and now and then on a wall you find a graceful head or an airy flying figure whose beauty penetrates even through the faded tints and defacing blotches. Some \dndows that you pass lead into darkness that you hesitate to pene- trate, so damp and uninviting are they within, but you lean in and pluck a little flower or maidenhair fern to send home. Up and down the quiet streets you wander aimlessly, thinking of Glaucus, whose house, one of the first you visited, you think you understand better than when you first read the "Last Days," and of blind Nydia and Sallust and old Pansa, but even more of the busy every- day life that once enlivened the streets, and of the men and women who slept in those narrow cells or reclined in cool luxury in the shadow of some white peristyle. You are walking in Roman streets, looking at Roman houses; it is Rome itself in miniature, net simply the insignificant pro- vincial city of Pompeii. The touch of Vesuvius, which to io many was the blast of debtruction, was, after all, a pre- serving hand, spread over this bit of the older world and lifted in our own day to give as one more glimpse of the Hfe of the past. The Imperial City herself has vanished. Only a few columns and arches and brick walls show us the city of the Caesars. But as you walk along the broad- est 5treet in Pompeii — the street of Mercury — and pass undc ^he Arch of Caligula, and stroll along through the Foruhi, and look up and down the narrow streets with their lines of gray silent houses., you catch your breath as you think what it all means. It is a vision of a city that died and was buried while St. John the Divine still walked the earth, while the helmets of the Roman legions were newly gleaming in the streets of Jerusalem and on the moors of Britain, over eighteen hundred years ago. CHAPTER II ANCIENT ROME y me via Appia, in a carriage that you could ancy was a chariot, with the echo in your bra^n o t, e tramp of armed legions behind you. But alaTfor th! reality of things, You will p^oblbly ent b" and u'Th To'df' TZ' ''' P'^"^^"^ gard'ens b;f:r . you, the modern Via Nazionale that you swin^ intn , .cm t ,,,er have little semblance to t'he RoTe^o Tou dreams. And you might look long for the Rome of your h Rome If """/"' '"^"^^"^ ^°'"'"-^-' P-«ence o' the Rome of yesterday. For Rome is bewildering Her r-ddle IS not to be read in one day or in th ee' The ZlTZ I ^"''' '°"'^ °' 'h^ P^^^ v°i^« even hat nil the world once listened to, do not compete with waitt rL^'°"" °^ ^^'"^^" ^"^ -"^-- Vou m" wait until the noise ceases or is as nothing to you and el'l^ed'^of^'v^ain' 7/°"^^ " ''' ""'^ ^.^ ^..'T'^^ pat ence ther ^ ^"'' '"' "^^'" '" '■^^— -d patience, there may appear to you her ancient sons Scipio and C^sar, the gentle Virgil and the grave Lucre! nus, and those men-consuls, emperors, and'^pes-who can murmur to you tales of Rome the Eternal Shocking and philistine as it sounds, a 'very ideal way m which to approach Rome would 'be b;Talll »7 vr-h-iafc.-' i8 Italian Cities riv> You are floating along, let us say, high above the highest trees and towers, sailing with a light breeze down the course of the Tiber. Before and below you lies the city Towenng to the right, quite near you, rises the great dome of St. Peters, and not far from it on the river bank you see the round tomb of Hadrian, the castle above which a destroying angel once sheathed his sword at the prayer of a pope.' Nearer you, on the left bank of the river, you see a city gate-the Porta del Popolo— and inside It a piazza from which three streets run off into the heart of the city. The central one is the Corso Umberto very nearly the old Via Flaminia, and your eye follows it until It IS lost in a labyrinth of houses in the distance Then your gaze goes on, leaps over the tangled mass of bmldings and streets, and catches a glimpse of a great pile which must surely be the Colosseum. From your lofty eyne you can see Rome as an eagle might see it,-not the city of Tarquin and Coriolanus, but the Rome of the emperors and popes, with the Hill of Gardens the Pincian. just inside the wall, and the city sweeping on before you over the old plain of the Campus Martius by the nver and over the higher ground of the Quirinal Hill. Then as your airy ship moves on over all this later city you distinguish those other hills which were for so many centuries as holy ground to the rulers of the world— the Capitoline and the Palatine, which with the Esquiline looked down upon the heart of ancient Rome. Now you can let the rest of the city go. St. Peter's the Pincian Hill, and the Corso gave you your bearings for the part of Rome that lies from the Quirinal towards the Porta del Popolo and the Vatican. Your eye caught > Hence called the Caslle of the Holy Angel, St. Angelo. •-- .?:• Hi ^. D , , 3i ;:: o 5 tl< V c X. 'C < a. o oc x: (i! U) E ■H H ?■ J S "^^-^msm-^^^. M^'i 15 I'^IS^ mm DC C ■.3 o o J Ancient Rome ,« tbe royal palace of Victor Emmanuel as you passed over U.e Qu.nnal atself . But now these are all put behind you. Modern Rome, ew -^apal Rome, is as if it were not, and oMh" PaCe ""' ^" ^°"' '-''' " '-' - ^'^ --^^ Before you lies one of the most famous bits of ground .n the whole world, covered with appalling ruin. Here are broken walls about a court, the house of the vestal v.rgms; just to the left three lonely columns, the Temple of Castor; further to the left under the shadow of the Capi- tohne. more groups of stately, ruined columns, the Tem- ples of Saturn and Vespasian; a great paved space with rows of broken stumps of columns, the Julian Basilica bu.lt by C..sar himself, to relieve the main Forum from some of ,ts congestion; everywhere mounds of bricks crumbhng walls, marble slabs, footworn paving-stones- pathenc relics of departed glory! Just a littl way to your left ,s the Capitoline Hill, where once gleamed the >ou ,s he low elevation of the Esquihne. Only a few mmutes' walk to your right is the sullen mass of the Colos seum It ,s all real enough, and yet your imagination is grapphng w.th a hard task. To rebuild the pafaces fro he crumb mg brick walls, to bid the lonely columns standmg there like skeleton sentries watching over t .; dead, spnng once more into shapely templesf to sweep way the heaps of broken brick and stone and re'ace them w,th statues and stately walls, and then to see in your mmd's eye the pulse of the world beating here the iT d':; ^";' ^"' ^'"^"'^^ °^ ^ -P'^^' that once rued and and sea from the Cheviot Hills to the Euphrates - this ,s the task that dazes you. Yet if it is only Jin to *9^®7?5S*aH 20 Italian Cities you, if you only look at it curiously with the superfit interest and momentary awe of the sight-seer, then it is not Rome. Some ruins are beautiful in themselves. These are not. They are simply all that the storms of centuries have left of the heart of a very great city, and we do not get their message of pathos and disaster unless we try to see the life and beauty and power that once were there. Fifteen hundred years ago, the last of the Roman poets, singing the praises of Honorius, stood here by the Imperial Palace on the Palatine and saw the Queen of the Worid, old and tottering to her fall, but still proud and glittering with the pomo of Empire. "Here power itsel< is prouder, feels the thrill Supreme of dominion. Here the palace lifts Its haughty head aloft and sees the shrines, Stern outposts of the gods, ranged there below A circling band of heavenly sentinels; And yonder 'neath the Thunderer's altars hang The giants to the rock Tarpeian. There Are seen the gleaming doors, the lofty fanes That fill the narrow air, o'ertopped with forms Th 't seem to fly into the enfolding clouds. The rostral columns clad with prows of ships, The stately walls and towers that men have raised On high as if to lift the hills themselves Nearer to heaven. And there, spanning the way, Arches innumerable glittering with spoils Dazzle the eye, that turns amazed and hurt From the gold, the gleam, the splendor, which is Rome." > This was in the later empire, nine hundred years after the indignant patricians had expelled from Rome the royal race of the Tarquins, and nearly eight hundred years since a foreign invader had set foot within the city walls. > Claudian, " Panegyric on the Sixth Consulship of Honorius." * 'MHi,J'V:MC .%:. ^^S? Ancient Rome 21 Now let us close our eyes and try to bring back that tre- mendous drama of the making of Rome. You look through the thick mist of centuries and see the clouds part for a moment at the year 500 before the coming of Christ. Rome is only a little city on the Tiber, clustered about its citadel on the Capitoline, with hostile enemies within a half-day's walk of her gates. She is a republic, and yet comparatively few of those whom you see walking her streets or trading in her markets or fight- ing her battles have any share in her government. Many of these traders and fighters are of the plebs— outsiders who have drifted in after the founding of the city— or freed slaves, or dependents of one kind or another, all consti- tuting a large proportion of the residents of the city, sometimes a wealthy and intelligent element too. The prouder groups that you see gathering to their assemblies in the Comitium across the Forum are the only true citi- zens of Rome. They are the patricians, and they alone bear the title of "Roman People." Among them you may see Caius Marcius Coriolanus, who is to be immor- talized two thousand years later by a descendant of savage Germans, and Marcus Junius Brutus, who had led the revolt against the kings nine years before, and who was further to become the type for all time of the savage sternness of the Roman conception of law by condemning his own sons to death for disobeying orders. It would be hard to find a Greek doing that, outside of Sparta at any rate, and if you could find such a case it would not be typical, but exceptional. What harmony, grace, mental feariessness were to a Greek, obedience and law were to a Roman, and the contrast between the two races was a radical one. Si73HIBV^fie<'> Tifia: '^;, vAiii'' "W-.'--, • ■ \'.^ -IS- ^5*^ 22 Italian Cities The mists close over this Rome of 500 B.C., and rise again a century later. It is still only a city, larger, but still facing a strong Etruria on the north across the Tiber, with Latin cities all about her and warlike Samnites a little distance away, and with rumors reaching her of fierce Gauls far north, above Etruria. But if there is little out- ward expansion there is a vital inward change. The patricians no longer have the monopoly of citizenship, of the proud name of Roman People. The outsiders, the plebs, cannot hold office yet in the republic, it is true, but they have obtained written laws, they have the right of voting on every matter affecting the public weal, of accepting or refusing laws, of electing magistrates, and of intermarriage with patricians.' And in addition to all this, they have a spokesman, an elected leader, whose per- son is sacred — the Tribune of the Plebs — to whom the patricians have conceded the power of annulling any act or law deemed injurious to the people by one word, "Veto," "I lorbid it." Rome is almost a democracy. Once more a century passes. It is the year 300 B.C., and we look again. The city has passed through periloui times since our last view. The fourth century was hardly begun when a horde of wild Gauls swept down from the north, broke the strength of Etruria, annihilated the forces of Rome at the river Allia, entered and sacked the city, and would have captured the citadel itself — the capitol — had not the stealthy night climbers startled a flock of geese whose cackling awoke a valiant officer, Marcus Manlius, and saved Rome. But the terrible tide of bar- 1 This side of Roman development is most luminously traced bv Warde Fowler in his little " City State of the Greeks and Romans." The facts are also be given clearly and accurately in the histories ol Rome by Sbuckburgb and Botstord. ^-_„„ Ancient Rome 23 barians was turned back, and the struggle for internal harmony went on until all the distinction between patri- cian and plebeian was done away with. Democracy was definitely achieved in ^ff B.C., or perhaps more safely still by 340 B.C., two years before Philip of Macedon was to defeat the Athenians and Thebans on the field of Chseroneia. So, as we look down on the city now we see a democracy — and an expanding power. Rome had often before had to wage desperate war against her neigh- bors, and she may even have risen to be the chief city in a Latin confederacy. But after four hundred years since her foundation,' and more than one hundred and fifty since the expulsion of the kings, she had remained only a city after all, influential and feared perhaps, and known to have hard-fighting and well-disciplined citizen-soldiers, but still only one of the central Italian city-states. Now the attainment of democracy seemed to mean an impulse to a new, aggressive vigor. During the last thirty or forty years of this fourth century, while Alexander and his generals were turning Asia upside down, Rome turned swiftly against one enemy after another, and as the cen- tury closes we see her no longer a colleague of the Latins, but their chief, and a power whose rapidly rising greatness is about to provoke a combination of the strongest states in Italy against her— Etruscans, Umbrians, and Samnites. So we almost expect what we shall see when the mist rises at the close of the third century and shows us Rome in the year 200 B.C. It has been a tremendous century. The combined powers of Italy have been crushed; a for- midable invader, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, kinsman to the ' I assume here for coavcnicncc that Rome was founded in 7i1 B C —the traditional date-and the kings expelled in 509 B.C. «■ 24 Italian Cities great Alexander, has been met and hurled back; Carthage, the great Phoenician city-state, ruler of the seas, daughter of Tyre, mistress of the Mediterranean trade, has been fought and beaten in two terrible duels. One of the greatest generals of whom history knows, after bringing Rome to deadly peril, and defeating her armies again and again, has been at last worn out and crushed, and all the prestige and influence of Carthage has passed to her con- queror, with Sicily, the islands of the western Mediter- ranean, and much of Spain. Rome is become the chief power of the Mediterranean woH, with only Macedon, Syria, and Egypt as possible rivals. It is the middle century of the five of republican Rome. The first two, from 500 to 300, are chiefly interesting from the point of view of internal development. Rome was then growing to mature statehood, developing her individuality, learning the arts of war and citizenship. The last two, from 200 B.C. to the establishment of the Empire at the beginning of our era, were centuries during which Rome was unquestionably the chief power in the Mediterranean world, steadily rising to absolute mastery. The turning-point in her career falls in that middle cen- tury of the five — 300 to 200 — the century that contains tiie conquest of central and southern Italy, the repulse of Pyrrhus, the life and death struggle with Carthage,* the rise of Rome as a naval and commercial state, and the passing of the governing power from the democracy to the Senate. You may grow to feel a certain dread and repulsion at this third-century Rome, with her fierce ' A most interestine acmunt of the war with Carthage is contained in R. Bosworth Smith's "Cartt. ■>' and the Carthaginians" or his "Rome and Carthage," in the Epochs of . cient HisCory series. Those who wish a true, but by no means attractive acco..rii of !':<.> in Carthage may liud it iu t'iaubert'b interesting but terrible novel, "Salimmbo." Ancient Rome ^5 energy, her merciless determination, her refusal to loosen her grip on an enemy until she has shaken out his life. You may see with horror, and even disgust, the cold, piti- less stamp with which she tramples the power to do further mischief out of a conquered foe. But it is not easy to refuse admiration. Terrible as she was, unlovable as she was, she was unquestionably great. Struck down in two great defeats by Pyrrhus and asked by him on what terms the Romans would make peace, they showed their claim to empire by their answer— //w/ the Romans would make no terms with an enemy on Italian soil. Well might the impressed envoy assure his master that the Roman Senate seemed an assembly of kings. And there is a distinct greatness in the consul's announcement to the people after the great defeat at Lak.- Trasimenus at the hands of Hannibal, "Romans, we have lost a great battle; our army is cut to pieces and Flaminius the consul is slain. Think, therefore, what is to be done for your safety." One expects so straightforward a proclamation to be worthily answered. A people who can hear such tidings — not unmoved, assuredly, but unterrified — can surely deliberate on it wisciy. Our sympathies may be with Hannibal in that struggle, but if so it is because our hearts go oui instinctively to a brave leader fighting so gallant a battle against a giant power, not because the better cause did not win. The victory of Carthage would have meant the supremacy of a Phoenician state, shrewd, ingenious, skilled in commerce, but cruel, hard, intolerant, with a degrading and brutal religion, and with no contribution to the Europe of the future but a pitiless commercial tyranny. No Roman general was produced in that struggle who at all equals Hannibal in the judgment of posterity. It 26 Italian Cities was not brilliant generalship that foiled his best efforts; it was stubborn courage, refusal to yield, and the pouring forth of valiant soldiers and steady, proud, resourceful commanders that wore him out. Indeed it is a curious and significant thing that during the whole rise of Rome to supremacy we are not greatly impressed by any single man, none to compare with this one enemy, Hannibal, in picturesqueness, gallantry, bold- ness of enterprise, and all-round genius. Back in the more legendary days there are some figures who stand immortalized by one deed as peculiarly Roman types — Brutus and Coriolanus, Horatius, who kept the bridge, Virginius, Camillus, the conqueror of Veii and of the Gauls, Cincinnatus, and a few others; but during the. long stru. for democracy and the achievement of Mediterraiivan supremacy, no one man rose to more than a tolerable or a momentary height. Many brave and wise leaders there were,' but none of pre-eminent boldness or genius. This remains true in the second century, through the conquests of Macedonia, Greece, and Syria, until we reach a strikingly important year, the fateful year 133 B.C. In that year the conquest of Spain was com- pleted by the fall of Numantia. In that year the kingdom of Pergamus in Asia Minor was bequeathed to Rome and accepted by her — her first province in Asia. And in that year Tiberius Gracchus was Tribune of the Plebs. ' To really get at a conception of what was meant in the second and third centuries by a good Roman, one might read Plutarch's "jKmilius Paulus." Or take this httle bit from his -Cato"; .. "As soon as the dawn of understanding appeared, Cato took upon himself the oftice of schpolmaster to his son He taught him not only how to tbrowa dart, tohght hand to hand, and to ride, but to box, to endure heat and cold, and to swim in the roughest and most rapid parts of the river. He wrote histories for him, he further acquaints us, with his own hand, in large char- acters, so that without stirring out of his father's house he might gain a knowl- edge of the illustrious actions o! the ancient Romans, and of the customs of bis country. \222.*Be"v^- j^-^^tx^enrTviec ^ESfrt/Rrjsflsaw'iniM*' w«i m,M^w^. ^mi "■'•SC^ Ancient Rome 27 Up to this year one's attention is absorbed by the marvelous sweep of conquest. It is easy at the first glance to lose track of the internal changes of the same period until we come to this year 133, and find one of the ablest and noblest of the Romans using his official position as spokesman and protector of the people to passionately advocate reform. His stern warnings are of no small evils, but of diseases that are consuming the life- blood of the Roman people. He denounces the creation of an official oligarchy, the destruction of the middle class by the enormous wealth of the Senators and their fami- lies, the destruction of the working-classes by the extension of slavery, the increase of vice and cor-uption with the increase of power and wealth. All these, he cries, must be remedied by radical surgery— the great estates must be cut up, the power restored to the people. But, you say, how is this? Did we not see the achievement of democ- racy two hundred years before the tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus,— before ever the career of conquest was fairly started. Just so, but one of the most interesting features of that conquest to us is the way in which it was taken by the people of Rome. They had, in fact, found it quite impossible to deal in full assembly with the intricate prob- lems of foreign affairs, provincial government, and the conduct of wars. The Athenians had found it difficult, too, in the fifth century, but they had confidently contin- ued the attempt without fear until they were ruined. The Roman, on the other hand, had too great an instinct for effectiveness, too little interest in theoretical equality and individual share in government to care to do work badly which a smaller group could do well. There was a little council which everybody respected, an ancient advisory '"^^ ^ F =J»Wi?' " •SKl V ""T^"^ '■-£. J-i. 28 Italian Cities and judicial body, called the Senate (senex, old), the Council of Elders. It was not elected by the people, but was chosen by grave and wise men, the censors, who were; and it was the custom of these censors in trying to select the wisest men in Rome . choose first those who had held responsible offices. You could therefore rely on finding in the Senate every ex-consul and ex-pr?etor in Rome, every general and statesman of approved experi- ence and wisdom. What body could be better fitted to advise the people? It is without doubt one of the most instructive and interesting lessons in the whole field of constitutional study to watch the slow change of the Senate from an advisory council to the sovereign ruler of the Romnn dominions. The people were willing enough. They saw that the work was done well. They reaped the fruit in splendid shows, in freedom from taxation, in frequent free donations of corn, and in the pride of being Romans, rulers of the world. The energy of the more restless and ambitious was easily trmed into war or even politics, for n the Senate was a virtual oligarchy, and a conservative one, it was never too exclusive. It is true, the Senators kept the prizes of politics and war in their own families if possible. The son of a consul was always preferred tr a new man. In some families— just as with the Russells, the Cavendishes, the Cecils in England — a political career was considered the obvious one, and the consulship the natural and simple goal of ambition. But if an outsider wished to take part in the glory and labor of governing, he had only to show his ability and energy to rank in time with the best of them. Cicero was a new man, yet once when he was exiled the Senators wore mourning until he Ancient Rome 29 was recalled. But the fact remained that power centered more and more in the senatorial class, and the people as a whole, content to follow their leaders, lost bit by bit both instinct and desire for self-government. So the wealth of the world poured in to pauperize them, slaves came by thousands from captured cities to do the work of Italy and degrade labor, and R ime definitely became an oligarchy, built on slavery and maintained through the degradation of the people. It was against this tendency of the times that Tiberius Gracchus hurled hin.Jf. But while he carried his laws he made "-.k.r;.u:w*=L''irMi=.ft' ■v-,ifr. -'t^- k^-^sm*?? ausr'T? Ancient Rome 33 ^ Rome for age after age. Caesar succeeded Csesar, sages and madmen, saints and brutes, soldiers and philosophers, and still Rome was mistress of the world. Christian- ity—founded in the reign of the first emperor— rose un- til it supplanted paganism; poetry, philosophy, and art waned,' old ideals of culture faded, east and west drifted apart once more, and yet if a rival to the city on the Tiber arose on the Bosphorus, the ruler of both was Caesar and Augustus, and Rome gave the pride of her name to the Empire still. Then the Goths came. The unconquered walls were pierced by an enemy and a barbarian. The barrier of the Rhine broke and the Ger- man flood swept over Europe. The Roman Peace uecame a memory. The Empire, having endured nearly five cen- turies since Julius, was at last in western Europe the shadow of a great name. To the ages that were to follow, Rome chiefly be- queathed four things,— an example of a highly centralized government, a consummate system of law, a body of literature which luminously set forth the deeds and ideals of classical times, and Latin Christianity. The first was to be obscured, but never forgotten, diring the trying ti -^ i of the early Middle Ages. The second was also to ust aside in a measure by the barbarians; but never i year or a day was Europe wholly without the guid- _, nfluence of the Roman law, and before many centuries it was triumphantly revived by Italian doctors to be made all-powerful in the courts of Europe. The third was almost wholly forgotten for centuries, Virgil, no longer a poet, was spoken of darkly as a wizard. The knowl- nf fhJw.* ■"««'. "loughtful and interestine account o( the culture and thou? .. ■ ■ rtff^v 'f-VKP-TTSSb •■Zr'^WL!^' tflt«K « md ignorance. But it is an age of strong faith, .c / ,i roic struggle for the suprei cy of truth and rigl;t .,vr t, forces of brute strength, an age in which the ■'Tluirch Mi .tant, summoning to its aid the whole force of f inarv. ious ',rga-ization, the devotion of its ministers, thu inyst. is power that it claimed .ver the soul's destin, beyond tlv grave, and the inevitable influence of the constant hold'. ^ up of ideals of goodness and justice, grappled with the forces of anarchy and became far and away the m^ t impressive and most powerful influence in medieval i urope. During those centuries tht Church is all-porvasive. It does not always win. Gigantic misdeeds, desperate mis- ery, and degradation exist in spite of it. Tl- corruption of the times terribly infects the very ministry of the Church, so that monasteries and cat cdrals become dens of thieves, foul with evil of ever)- de.-cripti. And yer not only does her effort never relax, but even where she fails to conquer her influence i- powerful and incessant as an upward-pulling force." But ti.e < .ntest was a terrible The age ot "chivalrv" proDt'rl\ fn'Is into ti.r nntnrio. hot,» .„ .1, ;n.":",h,"/'h "olHi.r"". i'°1 '" "'" ■' """ »"•"'»"*■■ "' 'he eleventl, or thirteen h centuries Soldiers » II always vary inhnitely .IS 1,. nobility 01 persona character and ?i ZmV'\'A'' '"'t^'^"' "^"'^ht. but li. wori whiU we trans lafe" knlSht He w ^t f. 'i 'Trn,: '' ^"' "'>-.""^; ' 'i ordinary Latin word for 'soX Pr^!^^fi'^^?„'°':,?,*:^H^'''A«^': .chapters 5. ,6. and • For ,1.. evil that 1"'!,':'^'*. ."'« ministry of the Church See esDcciaJlv oau lectual ilk- o! ihc mcaR,.., a.u.ch and lor medieval ^'-Q. For tht are generally read Assisi and tht- /taly of St. Francis u one. and many o( th > nohh.st spints of the Middle A|. -s longed lor release i om kores and hundreds, lo( k- ing upon their it, l.viduul labor as utterly v lin, and feel- ing that prayer and penanc would avail r -g with the Almighty to turn away his vrat i from humanit) , flc(. to desert--^, to fo-ests, t^ aves >1 apart from th evils u. -he w fastings with God. And ever n St think thet, , who a- pru in their monast( es, stay^ci in as prayed, l-ok^d upon ri-aUi mt ntajJis, and there, rested m prayer and ,er ones, as we SL St -or work! to rii-- rig^ ecus sorrov Pleasun was flesh , , sn, , f thf horror. Hell iod .^ai ff • the souls sif n- -n ' dene t that only God's an ippart success ful mvste. Con in me', tation, ii that those uttei cjanized as well The ale of of the >s, or ( * toi rek was .. ..-field- •'■ iin. Delight one, lo be turned fr )m with -^ere terribly real— reaching out iu a might and a horrible confi- emal strength could meet — with r was an inscrutable and sorrow- as only to be sought in prayer, IS o teaven. So it comes about of th Middle Ages which came from the inmost d . ps of r en's souls, and which have r fore .fruck mc .t deeply into the world's heart since, wvre solen varn ^s of judgment to come like the ''Die's ha irfs ii. — "Thai day i wrath, that dreadful day W>^ hea, en and earth shall pass away," or iweet thou^ and blessed con^ .he heaven that was to be the rest ion of the just after their earthly toils, ^•bcc tbc rcicrenceb m chapter iV. to the Irescoes in the Campo Santo of 44 Italian Cities like the hymn of Bernard of Cluny— still after so many centuries most precious to us in its English form: "Jerusalem the golden, With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice oppressed, I know not, oh I know not What joys await us there. What radiancy of glory, What bliss beyond compare. There is the throne of David; And there, from care released. The shout of them that triumph, The song of them that feast; And they who with their leader Have conquered in the fight Forever and forever Are clad in robes of white." It is the longing of the weary and wounded soldier for peace, of the wanderer for home, of the just man gazing indignantly at misery and wrong for the punish- ment of evil-doers and the comfort of the oppressed. The judgment-seat of Christ, the life beyond the grave, were the comfort and hope of those dark times. And so it is natural enough that the supreme voice of medieval Europe should sing of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. In the pleasant land of Umbria, perched high on the slope of a mountain, breeze-swept and sun-drenched, stands the old city of Assisi. And here, towards the end of the twelfth century, was bom a man who lived more nearly, so far as we can tell, after the pattern of Assisi and the Italy of St. Francis 45 Christ himself than any one else we know of during the last two thousand years. By virtue, too, of his effort to be true, to be simple, and to live out the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, he not only fulfilled the best ideals of medieval Christianity and won the reverence of his church, but sent a wave of new life into his own and suc- ceeding generations which formed one of the most tre- mendous vitalizing forces of the thirteenth century. Francis Bernardone," son of a wealthy Assisan mer- chant, grew up with much of the sunny nature of south- eastern France, the land of his mother. Not of noble blood himself, he was yet welcomed to the best circles of Assisi. His father'? money made possible a life of pleas- ure, and though there is no reason for charging him in these earlier years with degrading dissipation, it was undoubtedly for him a time of gayety rathor than serious- ness, and his unconquerable cheerfulness and gift of story and song made him one of the best loved men in the city. But just about as he was entering his twenty-first year there came a war between Assisi and the neighboring city of Perugia. Francis fought at the side of his compan- ions, and when the Assisans were defeated, went with them to a Perugian prison. Here, as in the banquets at home, he was the life of the company, and yet it must have been a hard and dreary year that he spent in Perugia, and he brought home with him the seeds of a long illness.' So with disease and weakness following the time of ira- 46 Julian Cities i. prisonment and exile, the darker, more senous side of life came to him in many hours of sober, lonely thinking. A certain definite consciousness of the change within him came one day during his convalescence, as with slow step he walked up the slope of a stone-paved street-the hard, gray walls rising straight and unbeautiful on either side-not a touch of softness or green about him-and passed through one of the frowning old city gates In an instant the hardness and dull monotone of the city street gave place to the lovely green of an Um- brian hillside. Away above him towered the gray old castle. La Rocca. Below him lay the exquisite valley that he knew so well, with garden and farm, meadow and woodland, the rippling silver of a little river curving its way there and adding its message of soft peace, and in the distance more hills, melting off in gray-blue haze. The double charm of nature's fairest aspect and the asso- ciations of home might surely comfort the tired heart of Francis. And yet no comfort came. Every quiver of a leaf, every odor of the field, every call of a bird had onc« brought instant response within him. But nothing now seemed vorth while, and he turned back to the city depressed and perplexed. As strength returned, his old friends sought him again, but he was quieter and more thoughtful at their feasts than in the o!d days, and if now and then his gayety returned for a moment, or if warlike ardor prompted him to seek the splendor and danger of a knightly career, the flame died quickly down, and again in quiet meditation he would continue his search for the source of lasting joy. Once life had been full of color and pleasure for him. Now it was weary and unprofit- able. But instead of hurling himself for consolation into r;Ai'^^(«ii>M"9,*":i:*^ik.,:JB':"^'^'?i\?rF^ Assisi and the Italy of St. Francis 47 dissipation and excitement, he simply went his way, neither weepiiig nor singing, earnestly seeking the pearl of great price. This very earnestness tended more and more to strengthen his relations with the Church and deepen his religious feeling. He made it one of his peculiar tasks to aid with his own hands in the repair of such broken down and neglected churches as he could find within reach, and would often hear mass and worship quietly and devoutly in peaceful little out-of-the-way places, where the priest or monk was accustomed to conduct his service alone or with but one or two humble worshipers. Reverence and deep feeling was far more possible in these nooks than in the city churches, and one day, as Francis prayed before a figure of his crucified Lord, the lips of Christ seemed to speak to him and give him comfort. He seemed to feel the Saviour's words to his disciples— read perfunc- torily enough by the priest, perhaps— burning into him and printing a command on his own heart. To go into all the world and preach the Gospel, to heal the sick and comfort the distressed, to follow in the footsteps of his Master, and do His work,— these things suddenly stood clearly before him as a divine commission. In joy of heart he seized on the message from heaven, and applied Christ's words to his disciples directly to himself. He must give himself up to absolute poverty and unwearied work, as Christ himself did— work for the simple and direct object of doing g-:H to humankind. His bride, to use the quaint parable t .; - ; referred to so often, was the Lady Pov- erty, for ; . juld own nothing, and his living from day to day must be such as his hands could bring to him or loving charity could give him. "Freely ye have received. 48 Italian Cities freely give!" No fee was required for the good tidings brought by Christ; none would be asked by Francis. Only alms would be asked, for this Christ had sanctioned. "Provide neither silver nor gold nor brass in your purses, neither scrip nor two coats, nor shoes nor staff, for the laborer is worthy of his hire." At once the divine message was obeyed. The sunny heart, the lovab'e personality, the gift of song, the spon- taneous joy in the life of nature— all of these came back when Francis gave back to his father all he had received from him, made for himself a little hut near a tiny old chapel down in the vaiLy, and devoted himself to his new life. His ideals were perfectly simple. There was sure to be always enough sin and misery :nd suffering to keep him busy. To help those who needed help, to own noth- ing, and so have no earthly cares, to accept his daily bread and nothing more from those who received the blessing of his help and teaching as from those who wished to assist him, to live and work as Christ had lived and worked— these simple but tremendous principles became the basis of the young Assisan's Hfe and loving toil. Some looked on with mockery, some with cynicism, some with grave and wistful admiration. But there could not long be doubt as to his single-minded devotion, his con- stancy, and the undoubted good that he did, and he soon had companions to share his ideals, his poverty, and his work. No care of the wretched was too repulsive or too wearisome for these men. To go into the foulest dens, to wash and anoint the sores of the leper, to face cold and hunger and fatigue for the Master's sake, to bring com- fort to the distressed, consolation to the sorrowing, loving advice to the sinner, help and encouragement— these were m^mf&:'\ u^mNsme^ ■%r4^^.^..- Assisi and the Italy of St. Francis 49 the care of the little band of brothers whose huts arose in a group about the oratory of Francis. To tell how the little company grew into an order— the Order of Friars Minor or Little Brothers— how it obtained the patronage of bishops and the sanction of a pope, how it grew beyond the control of its founder and became one of the greatest religious organizations that Europe had ever seen, how Francis delegated the organi- zation and discipline of the order to others-distrusting himself in such matters^and how at last, after watching with sadness and misgiving the pure ideals he had believed "1 becoming clouded by earthly aims and ambitions, he died and was canonized by Pope Gregory IX.-to tell all these things would not. perhaps, be to tell the essential message of St. Francis af.er all. That message can best be told in his deeds and words. And yet it is perplexing to know what deeds and words are peculiarly character! istic Not those relating to asceticism, certainly, for hardly as he treated himself, severely as he mortified his flesh, he was m this respect only carrying out the ideals of his age. Neither were his work and sacrifices for others his most essential characteristic, though they werp very nearly so. You remember how soon after his realization of his mission he met a leper, diseased and filthy, on the highroad, and how, in disgust and horror, he turned aside how ,n an mstant the question came to him, "Would Christ have turned away? Am I worthier than my Master/" and how, after a moment's struggle, he ran after the leper, tended him, and washed his sores, com- forting him with loving words. And when you think how this spirit became his habitual one, you are apt to say. Here is the real Francis, the comforter of the poor and . ^'m^mwt^j&g^i^-'-'- iT- 50 Italian Cities needy." And you are far from being entirely wrong. Possibly it is nearer the truth to say that even philan- thropy and care for others, carried out with a different spirit, would have been unavailing to do what Francis did; that it was rather his spontaneous joyousness, his oneness with Christ, that gave his life its power and its immortal- ity. The good he did was done with joy. His sacrifices were made with gladness for Christ '«^ sake. You love especially to dwell upon this triumphant open-heartedness of Francis, for in this and in his con- sciousness of a personal contact with Christ lay his gift of vitality, of individualism in religious life, of warmth and joy in the acceptance of the message of the Gospels. "Why showest thou," he says to a brother who bore a sorrowful countenance, "why showest thou outwardly this dolour and sadness on account of thine offenses? Keep this sadness to thyself and God only, and pray him of his mercy that he forgive thee and restore to thy soul the healthy joyance whereof it hath been deprived as a punish- ment for thy sin. But before me and others be heedful ever to have cheerfulness, for it becometh not a servant of God before his brother or any other to show sadness and a troubled countenance." So when he saw some of his zealous companions torturing their bodies unduly, he was able to see quite clearly the limitations of asceticism. "The servant of God in eating and drinking and sleeping, and supplying the other necessities of the body, ought to satisfy this body with discretion, in such sort as that brother body shall have no right to murmur, saying, 'I cannot stand upright and attend to prayer nor be cheerful in tribulations of the mind, nor work other good works, for that thou dost not satisfy my needs.' " In this spirit 1B^'KU:.t Assisi and the Italy of St. Francis 51 he reproved a brother who awoke one night in suffering and fear of death through insufficient nourishment. Brother Leo— the familiar friend of Francis— tells the story quaintly enough. "Then the blessed Francis forth- with had a table laid out, and, as a man full of charity and discretion, did eat with him (the starving one), lest he should be ashamed to eat alone; and by his will all the other brethren did eat likewise. For that brother and all the rest were newly converted to the Lord, and did afflict their bodies beyond measure. And after that they had eaten together, the blessed Francis said unto the rest of the brethren, 'My best beloved, I say unto you that each one of you ought to pay heed unto his own nature, for, albeit that some one of you may be strong enow to be sus- tained by less food than other some, yet it is my will that he which needeth more food shall not be bound to imitate that other herein, but paying heed to his own nature let him allow his IxKiy the necessity thereof, in such sort that he may be enough strong to serve the Spirit. For whereas, we be held to beware of superfluity of food, the which is a hindrance both to the body and the soul, so likewise and even more ought we to beware of too great abstinence, seeing that the Lord willeth mercy and not sacrifice.' " This sanity, this whole-hearted attitude to life, showed Itself just as clearly— perhaps to us even more delightfully — m his way of looking at the d-imb creatures of God animate and inanimate. Birds and animals were to him brothers and sisters. So were the trees, the flowers, the elements, the planets, evm the sun and moon. There are few lovelier incidents in the life of any saint than the ser- mon to the birds at Bevagna. And we may add to this ■m 52 Italian Cities from Brother Leo's jottings little touches just as signifi- cant of d love for all created things which is not easily paralleled. "Above all other birds," says Leo, "did he love the crested lark, and he would say of her, 'Sister Lark has a hood like the religious, and an humble bird is she, for she gladly goeth by the way to find her a few grains of corn, and so she findeth them even among the dung she taketh them therefrom and eateth them. When she soareth she doth praise God right sweetly, even as the good religious that doth look down on earthly things, whose conversation is evermore in heaven, and whose interest is always toward the praise of God.' And for that he did perceive these similitudes in them, he did most gladly look upon them. Therefore it pleased the Lord that these most holy birdies should show some token of the love they bore unto him, in the hour of his death. For on the Saturday evening after vespers before the night wherein he passed away unto the Lord, a great multitude of larks came above tiie roof of the house wherein he lay, a id flying a little way off did make a wheel after the man- n ?r of a circle round the rooi, and by their sweet singing did seem to be praising the Lord along with him." The gentle saint had great trouble with his eyes— a trouble which ended in blindness. It was considered necessary to cauterize his face, ano he who thought nothing of toil or sacrifice or exposure felt his flesh shrink from the fie>:y pain of the branding-iron. So after prayer he spoke to the fire: "Fire, my brother, noble and useful amongst other creatures, be thou gracious unt J me in this hour, seeing that of old have I loved thee, and yet will love thee for the love of Him that did create thee. Earnestly, moreover, do I pray the Creator that Assisi and the Italy of St. Francis ^^ did create both thee and me. that he will so temper thine heat as that I may be able to abide it." "And when he had ended his prayer," says Brother Leo. "he did sign the fire with the sign of the cross. But we that were with h,m at that time did all flee away for pity and com- passion toward him. and only the leech did remain with him. But when the cauteiy was made we returned unto him, who said. 'O feeble-hearted and of little faith wherefore did ye flee? In truth I say unto you that I feli neither pain nor any heat of the fire. Yea. and it be not now well seared, let him again sear it better!' Nor is it a marvel, that the fire and other creatures were at times obedient to him. for as we that were with him have full ofttimes seen he had so great affection toward them and did so greatly delight in them, and his spirit was moved with so great pity and compassion for them that he would not see them treated unfairly, and he would so talk with them with gladness both inward and outward as if they had reason, whence by occasion whereof he was ofttimes rapt up to God." In brief. Francis brought back religion to earth and humanity, idealized and beautiful. He made the name of Christ a comfort and a joy instead of a cold theological conception, real and terrible enough when associated with condemnation, but empty of love and pity. It was not that Francis rejected any of the distinctive medieval reli- gious Ideas. He was a faithful son of the Church He was obedient to the Pope. He was suspicious of bodily pleasures. He scorned the pursuit of learning, and never dreamed of questioning the doctrines of the Church But the colder, sterner, gloomier side of medieval Christianity Its insistence on human depravity, its steady contemplal 54 Italian Cities tion of i;e!l, its repression of natural human nature — from all this Francis quite unconsciously led a revolt. The world was beautiful to him, and the love of Christ made it more so. Naturalness, individualism, love of humanity — these were after all to be the basal ideas of the era that was coming. The inspiration that came from the renewed study of the ancient civilizations Francis never felt. And yet he stands out as clearly as Giotto and Dante as one who brought into life a new health, a new soundness of heart, a new capacity for happiness, and a personal sense of responsibility to God which heralds forth unmistakably the positive individualism of the Renaissance. As you look up at Assisi from the plain, you see the basilica which was built by the companions of St. Francis after his death. His body rests beneath it. Its walls are covered by Giotto's lovely frescoes, illustrating the life of the saint. You may look at them and hear them interpreted still by a little friar who loves the memory of St. Francis with a personal love, and to whom every tale of that life — the sermon to the birds, the casting forth of devils from Arezzo, the bringing forth of water from the rock by prayer— is sacred truth. And yet, if you wish to be near the very home of Francis and of his order, you must go rather to the little oratory, the Portiuncula, down in the valley. A great church has been built over it, St. Mary of the Angels, but the little stone hut in which St. Francis prayed is still untouched, and it stands in peace there protected by the sheltering walls of the later struc- ture. A brown-f rocked Franciscan will take you through a'passage to an open space where roses are growing, and will tell you a strange story. St. Francis, the tale runs, was one night sorely tempted of the Devil to moderate his ST. FRANCIS CASTING FORTH THE DEVILS FROM AREZZO Fresco by Giotto in the Church of S. Francesco, Assisi w>: ^'"m: *'■' >t'i .V'-tA .r'v.' '. . .V»- ~ r. • ''.'li X "'i'v: i. Assisi and the Italy of St. Francis 55 austerities. Longing came upon his tired mind and deli- cate frame to seek rest and comfort, and it seemed to him that these temptations came surely from the Evil One. So at last he rose from his couch in wrath, and though it was a cold night, he went ..-.t and threw himself naked into a bed of thorns. And as iie lay there praising God, a great light shone about him, and angels came to lead him tenderly to his hut again and there comfort him. And on the bushes roses grew with no thorns. To this day the miracle is wrought on the flowers of St. Francis. Every spring the roses still bloom on the thomless branches. Still they smile in soft radiance at the little fig-tree on whose branches a grasshopper was wont to come to sing with the saint. And every rose breathes with its perfume the sweet memory of the saint whose asceticism even is gentler than that of others— of St. Francis o, Assisi, this good frien ( :;!! the world, to whom birdb and insects and angel m.. lisr. -.d as to a brother And now close with his ow. . Hiii w hymn: Most high, almighty and most graciou L . Thine be the pr.;ises, and the glory, and the honor, and et'ery blessing, /or unto Thee ai'oiie, O most highest, do they belong, and no man is worthy to make mention of Thy name Praised be Thou, O Lord, of all thy creatures, and above all of Brother Sun, my Lord, that doth illumine us with the da,vning of the day. For fair is he and bright, and the brightness of his glory doth signify Thou, O Thou most highest. Praised be Thou, O my Lord, of Sister Moon and the stars that thou hast hapen in the heavens, bright and precious and comely. Praised be Thou, O n v Lord, of Brother Wind, and the air and of the clouds, and the ."ear, and of all the times of the sky whereby thou dost make provision for thy creatures. ^'P 56 Italian Cities Praised be Thou, O my Lord, of Sister Water, for manifold is her use, and humble is she, and precious and chaste. Praised be Thou, O my Lord, of Brother Fire, by whom thou dost lighten our darkness, and comely is he and joyful and masterful and strong. Praised be Thou, O my Lord, of Sister Earth, our mother that doth cherish us and hath us in keeping and doth bring forth fruit in abundance and flowers of many colors and the grass. Praised be Thou, O my Lord, of them that do show for- giveness unto others for love of Thee, and do endure sickness and tribulation. Vea, blessed be they that do endure in peace for of thee, O Thou most Highest, shall they be crowned. Praised be Thou, O my Lord, of Sister Death, the death of the body from whom no man living may escape, but woe unto hem that shall die in deadly sin, and blessed be they that shall walk according unto thy most holy will, for unto them shall the second death do no hurt. Praise ye and bless my Lord, and give thanks unto Him, and serve Him in all humbleness. CHAPTER IV GENOA AND PISA It is rather a shock to turn from Assisi to the maritime cities of the coast. Not that there is not much that is material and brutal and self-seeking enough in the story of Assisi if we choose to look for it. Only the memory of Francis and the brush of Giotto give us so much in Assisi that is better worth thinking about than war or pillage, and much more satisfying to ponder over than destruction and suffering, that the fiercer and more tur- bulent pages of the story are forgotten, and the name of the little city on the hill only brings to your mind the thought of the gentle apostle and the lovely frescoes that tell of his life. But it is not quite so with Genoa and Pisa. Pisa, indeed, is redeemed by her Campo Santo, her cathedral, her baptistery, and the achievements of the three great sculptors who began the revival of Italian art — Niccola, Giovanni, and Andrea. But "Genova Ic Stiperha" Genoa the proud — what has she to give us? Only the record of a brave, enterprising, shrewd, and unscrupulous race of sailors and merchants. One great r •o'^'ern name do we know and reverence in Genoa, that o. Giuseppe Mazzini, of whom more later, and one older one, Christopher Columbus, mariner in the service of Spain. But in the days of her independence no great artist or poet or prophet, no creations of permanent value or beauty, no gift to the world, beyond the one great sailor, that humanity would really miss. Take away 57 58 Italian Cities Rome, Venice, Florence, and we should feel at once a keen sense of vital loss. Take away the memory of Genoa, and there would only be blotted out a few pages of brilliant deeds in war, a record of shrewdness, boldness, and cunning in trade, a tale of marvelous city vitality choked, and at last overcome, by fierce factions. As you valk about the streets of Genoa, or look up from the harbor at the superb slope with its proud city — wealthy and beautiful once more — there is little to remind you of the old mistress of the Riviera except her beauty. A few churches and here and there a few squalid and half- hidden remnants, these are all that remain of the splendid palaces that once rivaled those of the Grand Canal. "Dost thou remember," wrote Petrarch, who saw the city as it was in the fourteenth century, "Dost thou remember that time when the Genoese were the happiest people upon earth, and their country appeared a celestial residence, even as the Elysi-'n fields are painted? From the side of the sea, v.'hat an aspect it presented! Towers which seemed to threaten the firmament, hills covered with olives and oranges, marble palaces perched on the summit of the rocks, with delicious retreats beneath them where art conquered nature, and at the sight of which the very sailors checked the splashing of their oars, all intent to regard. Whilst the traveler who approached by land with amazement beheld men and women right royally adorned, and luxuries abundant in mountain and in wood unknown elsewhere in royal courts. As the foot touched the threshold of the city, it Si^cmed as if it had reached the temple of happiness, of which it was said, as of Rome of old, 'This is the city of the kings.' " But this is all gone Jong ago. To find the tokens o' vhat Genoa once was !taHtir>i»r»r»Mt Genoa and Pisa 59 you must look out to sea, let your eye fall on the rocky point of the Porto Venere, and then let the annals of the city bring back to you some little echo of the vigorous old life that once filled these waters with the stir and storm of Ligurian energy and ambition. If we are to trust the great inscription over the archi- trave of the cathedral nave, Genoa is old indeed. "Janus," it tells us, "a Trojan prince, skilled in astrol- ogy, and seeking on his travels a healthy, strong, and secure place to dwell in, reached Janua, already founded by Janus, the great-grandson of Noah, and perceiving that it was well protected from the raging of the sea, increased it in power and renown. ' ' But whether its founding dates quite so far back or not, the city, when it first emerges to light after the dismemberment of the Roman empire, is hav- ing to fight hard for life. ' Like many another city that had flourished under Roman rule, Genoa had passed through deep and stormy waters after Rome's fall. For centuries darkness hides f.om us her struggles for existence. We only know that all of the towns along the Riviera were torn by internal strife and harried by Norman and Saracen raids until it seems marvelous that they survived at all. Yet life somel, >w remained, and the men of Genoa were trained to a fierce keenness, a rough hardiness, that gradually enabled them to resist attack, to compel their neighbors to submission, and to retaliate on the Saracens. They learned to make stout and swift galleys, and on the heights of Sarzano they built a citadel, a palace for their bishop, who for many generations was their guide and leader, and a church, St. Mary of the Castle, with strong n«H '« K""'* ',"'';ojl'"-"''on to Genoese history mnv be bouKht in Bent's "Genoa" and Ma.ltson's "btorics Ironi Genoese History." ^eaoa i 6o Italian Cities walls behind which they could successfully defy their ene- mies on shore. Soon they were able to send their ships farther and farther along the coast and out to sea, competing with the Saracens on their own ground, meeting them fearlessly in battle, and extending their influence and trade to Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic islands. But the great beginning of Genoese glory came with the Crusades, for the galleys and skilled mariners of Genoa were needed by the princes and warriors who were faring forth to the conquest of Jerusalem. Many a gallant knight stepped on board the great ships in that lovely harbor and paid good red gold for transportation of him- self and his men-at-arms to alien lands where their bones were soon to whiten in the desert. And the ships that bore the Crusaders to Egypt and Palestine came back with eastern wares. There was rich gain to the ship-own- ers m both voyages, and they eagerly built more galleys as more cross-bearing warriors came to seek passage, and as the trade with Egypt, Syria, and Constantinople brought more and more wealth to the city. Not only did the east- ern trade increase. The new wealth, the exhilaration of success, the larger knowledge of the Mediterranean world sent the Genoese fleets in all directions, seeking new goods and new markets. Along the coasts of Spain they ranged, bringing back rich booty from the sack of Almeria in 1 146, opening up trade where they could not rob, passing the pillars of Hercules and peering off into the unknown seas whose veil was to be lifted in time by one of their fellow-countrymen. Away at tlic other end of the Medi- terranean, too, in the Black Sea, Genoa, by a shrewd stroke, gained the favor of the Greek-Roman ruler of Genoa and Pisa 6i Constantinople. Gradually she established a supremacy in the coasts and waters of The Euxine which lasted until the conquering Turks came in the fifteenth century. Streets and quays were given her in Constantinople with \ immunity from tribute, and to her especial gratification the emperor gave her a Venetian monastery yclept Panto-^.- ■'^^ cratore. Rejoicing exceedingly over this sup^^nting of ' their great rival, the Genoese moved the building stone by stone to their home city, and built the materials into their famous bank-the Bank of St. George.' Soon the old town of Pera, across the Golden Horn, was given to the triumphant Ligurian merchants. Even before this a group of wealthy cides, colonies of Genoa, had been ris- ing in the Crimea, and as the mother city acquired the commercial control of the Bosphorus the peninsula became the great focus for merchandise brought by caravan from central Asia. Ali through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries this supremacy in the northern highway of Asiatic trade in the Bosphorus and the Black Sea, in the '' Caucasus, Armenia, and northern Asia Minor, continued ^ to flourish and to bring vast wealth to the home city in her proud eyrie on the Riviera. Only with the conquests of Mohammed II.— conquests on which the too selfish Genoese had looked quite coolly, suspecting profit and privilege to come— was the rich Italian settlement at Pera swept away, and the destruction of the great colony of Caffa in the Crimea soon after sounded the kneil of Genoa's supremacy in the Black Sea— indeed, of her great- ness as a Mediterranean power. From that time the star 62 Italian Cities of the Italian cities waned, and that of Spain and Portu- gal waxed and prevailed. It was in the thirteenth century, the period of her most rapid advance in wealth and power, that Genoa fought out her great duel with Pisa. The quarrel was an old one. The two cities were too close to one another as they each fought their desperate struggle for existence against the Saracens, as they learned the arts of war and trade, as they built their galleys and wandered forth seek- ing gain and profitable outlet for their energy. Then Pope Benedict VIII., most unhappily, in his zeal to win Corsica and Sardinia from the infidels, promised the lord- ship of the islands to whichever one of the two cities should conquer them and establish in them the true faith. It was now the interest of each not only to triumph over the Saracens, but to checkmate one another. Pisa won control over Sardinia, but Corsica remained a fatal bone of contention, and as the ambition and power of each city increased, as the popes tended more and more in the twelfth century and the thirteenth to favor Genoa, and as Pisa turned more and more to the emperor, the duel saw added to tiie original commercial rivalry the fierce feud between Guelf and Ghibelline. So the quarrel became one of life and death. To trace the succession of their victories and defeats would, indeed, be unprofitable enough. You can scarcely avoid some sympathy with Pisa, even if only because you are conscious of a debt to her, but there was little to choose between them on the score of either enterprise or unscrupulous cunning, of either gallantry or ferocity. At last Genoa prevailed. In the great battle off Meloria in August, 1284, one hun- dred and twenty Genoese and allied ships met and crushed Genoa and Pisa 63 after a savage and obstinate fight seventy-two galleys of Pisa. It was a decisive victory. The blows which Genoa might in future strike at her defeated rival only brought unnecessary humiliation and suflFering to an already declin- ing city, and made more certain the future supremacy of Florence over the exhausted Tuscan sea-power. A hun- dred years later a Genoese expedition under an admiral of the great house of D'Oria almost dealt similar destruction to Venice. The Venetians were defeated in a great battle. The queen of the Adriatic was brought to the very verge of ruin when, as if by miracle— as the two forces fought bitterly and ferociously at Chioggia— the tide of victory changed. Vettor Pisani, whose defeat at Pola had brought him to stern imprisonment and had almost brought de- struction to Venice, was taken from his dungeon and placed in command once more. The rejoicing Genoese, insolently refusing to make peace until they should camp in the Piazza of St. Mark, were at last defeated and most of them captured; and the year 1380, instead of renew- ing the glory of Meloria, rather saw the definite beginning of Genoa's decline as compared with her splendid Adri- atic rival. And now what of Genoa's Tuscan rival,' the city so humbled in 1284, and left so hopelessly behind by the triu.Tiphant Ligurians in the race for commercial and maritime greatness? Pisa's destiny was a strange one. The same century, in fact the same generation, that saw her humiliation, gave her that glory which will be hers .h . !i" "'1,'='''^ °' j> ?°?: ns in the hillside. One poor sou! with a shave, .ovn is suspended in mid-air, an angel grasping his am s and a devil his feet. The fearsome beast has his jaws wide open, as if he might be howling forth curses, but another angel is hastening towards them with outstretched arm, so one may have hopes that the fiend is to be discomfited and the distressed soul rescued. Those who are being borne safely to Paradise by angels have their hands clasped in prayer, as well they might. A little further along the wall is a Last Judgment, and 74 Italian Cities a most terrifying representation of Hell itself. Altogether, one feels that the relatives of those who are buried here must have had stout hearts indeed if they could visit the graves of the departed, albeit buried in the holiest of soil, and gaze on these things without quakings of spirit and much inward searching. They represented a per- fectly real thing to the medieval mind. Each terrified beholder, as he gazed shrinking and yet fascinated on those helpless souls rising from the dead mouths, might dream of the time that would surely come when D( ith's scythe would at last reach him, too, when prayer and priestly intercession would avail no longer, and when if no angel came to save him, nor crown nor tonsure, nor silk robes nor mitre, would save him from the awful grip of those fiendish claws. Many sober faces and evil dreams must these frescoed walls have caused in the four centuries or more since they were painted. One wonders whether the heart of the painter himself must not have been smit- ten by his horrible imaginings, or whether indeed he would lay down his brush from the coloring of a demon's jaw .: tail and pass worldly jests with frivolous companions over the good red Chianti. Who knows? Dante himself knew somewhat of the joys of the world, even though men said that his black hair had been curled and his face darkened by the heat and smoke of hell. 11 CHAPTER V SIENA Already your thoughts have turned once to Siona, where Niccola's great masterpiece stands. Now you go there, with full intent to give yourself up for a little while to the fascination of the lovely old city and get wholly rid of the memories of the Campo Santo demons. The jour- ney itself will require some patience. If you go from either Pisa or Florence, you must change at Empoli and take an absurdly slow train for the south. Thereon you will meditatively rock and rumble, pausing frequently for long ruminations, past fields red with poppies, past hills crowned with little cities, past distant towers that were built cnly about six hundred years ago, until you come to the quiet city that was once the second state in Tuscany. As you drive along through the streets you pass a column bearing the Roman she-wolf and twins, for Siena was founded, saith tradition, by Senio, son of Remus, and her emblem has been fcr many ages that of Rome herself. Then you are landed before a comfortable house near St. Catherine's old church of San Domenico, and welcomed by a smiling Italian hostess, and you very soon discover in your soul a sense of satisfaction, of rest, of desire to stay where you are and revel, which few other cities in the length and breadth of Italy could give you." In due time you find yourself on the Via Cavour. 1 See Edmond Gardner's "Siena," in i i "Stories of Medieval Tn«m«" series, and VV. D. Howells' "Paniorte di Siena." in his "Tuscan c"ei"^ °'™' 75 W-^V^i^ 76 Italian Citits There .5 always a Via Cavour. no matter what the city may be as there is always a Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. but no Via Cavour and no Piazza Vittorio Emanuele in other cities can at all be classed with those of Siena. The great statesman himself is but little in your thoughts as you stroll down the narrow winding street that bears his name. Some of the shop windows are in a mild way modem enough, but houses and streets suggest in the mam a time far beyond Cavour or Mazzini or Napoleon or the Grand Dukes, and you drift back easily into the fourteenth century. Then as 3 .u walk on and turn with- out knowmg it into the Via deila Citta, you have one of the most entirely delightful surprises that even Italy could hold for you. Through an unexpected break in the stone buildings on your left, opens out all at once the great ZT^ J ^ ?°"°"' '"^""P '' ''°P"' ^°^" f'-°"' yo" like the floor of a huge theater, and on the far side straight in front of you, rises the scaring tower of the Mangia. You do not immediately descend from your point of vantage; the prospect from the upper rim of the Piazza .s too exhilarating. But after a while you walk down towards the great bri:': Palazzo Communale that has stood here with its tower since the end of the thirteenth cen- nry, and enter, bent on exploration. It is the building that corresponds to the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the old seat of government in the days when Siena was a pros- perous city of one hundred thousand inhabitants, and an mdependent republic. But there is an air of deserted splendor, of long silence and disuse here that scarcely pf !! 'Z •" ^'^ P^^^"° Vecchio or in the Doges' Palace ,n Venice. Siena and her associations are more medieval and less Renaissance or modem than either , A STREET IN SIENA With the Muncia T.^wcr Siena 77 Florence or Venice. Her final fall, when it came in 1555, was more complete and irreparable than theirs. Their public buildings, old though they are, yet have some modem associations. Siena has none. Her Palazzo Communale has memories only of centuries long dead and half forgotten, and yet they are memories so proud and kept with such dignity that you walk through the old halls with no lack of reverence, indeed with a feeling that in some council room, you may, at any moment, come upon a group of white-bearded, hawk-eyed senators, gfravely debating affairs of state. Most of the frescoes are fairly to be called archaic, not pre-Giotto, but fourteenth century. You reap some martial joy from the warlike pictures of Spinello Aretino, — from one particulany, not as warlike as the others, representing the Doge of Venice and the Emperor Freder- ick Barbarossa holding the stirrups of Pope Alexander III. The point whereof is that said pope was a Sienese, and that much joy warmed the hearts of the proud burghers of Siena at the sight of Doge and Emperor doing honor to their fellow-townsman. The same famous story of the "Peace of Venice" between Pope and Emperor, only emphasizing the legendary humiliation of Barbarossa, you will meet in Venice on the walls of the Ducal palace itself, only a stone's throw from the spot where the proud pontiff was fabled to have placed his foot upon the neck of the humbled Caesar. Bui here in Siena the story has the flavor of pride of city added to that of country and church. In another room are three frescoes that give you a pleasure half similar to that of solving a puzzle. They are allegorical, and endeavor to portray the ideals of government. One of them shows a grave King sur- M 4i 78 Italian Cities rounded by virtues, and with a procession of citizens coming to the foot of his throne. At the other side of the picture, balancing the figure of the King, is Justice, with Concord at her feet, Wisdom hovering above her head, and attendant spirits dispensing rewards to the good and punishment to the wicked. From the hand of Justice yen can trace a cord passing down through Concord, through the line of citizens and running up to terminate in the King's scepter. Behold the moral! The Monarch's power, embodied in his scepter, comes to him from his people, but is based ultimately on Concord, which comes from Justice inspired by Wisdom ! On another wall is a series of scenes representing flourishing towns, fertile fields, and happy groups of people, showing the results of good government. On a third are barren fields, a disconsolate and scanty population, men quarreling, and general desolation, all of which comes from bad govern- ment. So that the total effect of the three frescoes should have been a constant appeal to the rulers of Siena to be mindful of their duty. One wonders how often it was heeded. At all events, these with the frescoes in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, are the most famous allegorical paintings in Italy, and they quite repay study. From the Palazzo Communale you walk across the square to a fountain which is itself worth coming to Siena to see, but which can be described in detail with but little profit. It is the famous Fonte Gaja decorated by reliefs carved in marble by Jacopo della Querela. You will meet his work again at Bologna, but you are not likely any- where to see better illustrations of this greatest cf Michel- angelo's predecessors than here in Siena. These reliefs Aim Siena 79 are not the originals: those are in the museum that you will see later, near the Cathedral, the Opera del Duomo. But the originals are in voefully worn and battered con- dition, and the copies seem to an untutored mind — in spite of Ruskin's great authority — to give one far more of the sculptor's actual message than do the mutilated frag- ments of Jacopo's own making. The one best worth studying you will see also reproduced over the door of the Duomo library, the "Expulsion from Paradise." In this you will perhaps verify that incautious phrase just used a moment ago — "the greatest of Michelangelo's predeces- sors." Not, remember, the greatest of Italian sculptors before Michelangelo; perhaps Ghiberti, Donatello or Verocchio might indignantly and successfully contest such a statement. But of those who in a special sense taught the genius of Michelangelo to follow its mighty path Jacopo della Querela, in this "Expulsion from Paradise," most neariy fore-shadowed the figures of the Sistine and the "Moses" itself. Adam and Eve have here the same strength, the same intense vitality, the same marvelous expression of tearing, consuming emotions in outward form that we associate with Michelangelo. The other reliefs on the fountain are well worth careful study too, and in proportion as you have their strong lines firmly in mind will you be able soon to approach the masterpieces of the Sistine ceiling. If in an actual visit you could thus long postpone a )k at the cathedral your patience could only be explained by your ignorance. Yet one must in a sense envy you that very ignorance. First impressions are by no means always the best or even the dearest, but still they are the first, and as such have a certain exhilaration about them 8o Italian Cities sometimes that you would like to have repeated, if it were possible. You mount the slope to the Via della 'itta again, turn to your left up the Via dei Peregrini, march on past the enti«.ing looking door of S. Giovanni, turn a sharp bend, and lo! the Duomo itself! There is a stone seat running round the side of the square, and so you seat yourself as luxuriously as may be directly in front of the great facade and try to study its detail. Few architec- tural studies in Europe are more fascinating. But what an utterly hopeless task it would be to attempt for a moment to describe it! To the first amazed sweep of the eye it stands out in the bright sunlight as a great blaze of lovely color. Then as it takes shape you see the Gothic lines designed by Niccola's son Giovanni Pisano, the three gables filled each with a bright colored mosaic, the statues and pillars of curious stones, and all the richly ornate beauty that master artists could devise by cunning har- monies of red, black and wLte marble. How it is that the human mind can take pleasure now in the simple lines of a Greek temple and again in the infinitely detailed adornment of this cathedral might be hard to say. The truly classic eye might be troubled at this riot of color. Witness Mr. Joseph Addison, who stood here something over two hundred years ago.' "There is nothing in this city," he says, "so extraordi- nary as the cathedral, which a man may view with pleas- ure after he has seen St. Peter's, though it is quite of another make, and can only be looked upon as one of the masterpieces of Gothic architecture. When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense, that our forefathers > He would see the church as it is now except for the mosaics in the gables. They were added In 1878. ! Siena 8i have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they wou'.d have left us had they been only instructed in the /ight way." What, one wonders, would the good Spectators' conception of "the right way" have been! He goes on gravely and profitably enough, "One would wonder to see the vast labor that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are laden with ort;aments; the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspec- tive, with a multitude of little pillars retiring one behind another; the great columns are finely engraven with fruits and foliage that run twisting about them from the very top to me bottom. The whole body of the church is chequered with different lays of white and black marble; the pavement curiously cut out in designs and scripture stories: and the front covered with such a variety of figures, and overrun with so many little mazes and laby- rinths of sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties, and affected ornaments, to a noble and majestic simplicity." • And without any disparagement to Addison, whom all men love w.ll, one may prefer the judgment of Mr, Howells, when he says that "if we had a little of that lavish loveliness in one structure in America, the richness of that one would impoverish the effect of all the othe'- buildings on the continent." Altogether you are inclined to rank this Duomo of Siena second to only one church in Italy, St. Mark's in Venice. It is bewildering to reflect that the present nave was planned as the transept of a mighty church whose vastness would have surpassed anything that the world has > Works, (New York, i8;g), Vcl. II,, p. 314. 82 Italian Citic- yet dreamed of. The great design was checked by the terrible pestilence of 1348, the Black Death. In four months that awful plague carried off eighty thousand of the population of Siena. Within the walls once crowded with houses there are now great areas of tilled land where empty and desolate sections of the city were set on fire and cleared of dwellings after the pest. One wonders how the stricken city could possiblv have recovered itself suffi- ciently to complete the cathc iral even on its reduced plan. You are within the building now, walking up the great nave. Your feelings of repose are greatly hindered by the regular horizontal black stripes, the alternate rows of black and white marble in walls and columns. But ever, if the interior has not the glorious beauty of the exterior, it is impressi"e beyond most churches, a fit memorial of Siena in her prime. There beneath the dome is the great pulpit that you compared not long ago with its maker's first masterpiece in Pisa. And here is a little chapel that is well worth some study, the Capella San Giovanni, vith Donatello's bronze "John the Baptist" and five beautiful little frescoes by Pinturicchio. One of these especially you will not soon forget. It is Alberto Aringhieri, Knight of Malta, kneeling in prayer on a thick carpet of grass and flowers with the walls and towers of a fair city in the distant background, framed in by rugged cliffs and tropi- cal looking trees nearer at hand. The noble face of the young knight, the red cross on his breast, the bright armor, the idealized beauty of city and landscape, leave with you a singularly complete and pathetic interpretation of the best sides of the age of chivalry, — that age of chiv- alry which was even then passing away, if it had not already ceased to be. Siena «3 Only a step from the little cbapel is the door leading to the great library cf the cathedral. You have been to'.d that there are frescoes there illustrating scenes in the life of the famous Sienese pope, Pius '"., better known as yEneas Sylvius. They are the work of Pinturicchio, the painter of your "Knight of Malta," so you anticipate possible pleasure. You enter, — and what a wonder is this! lou find yourself in a tumult cf ecstasy more im- mediate and altogether delightful than any pictures in Italy have hitherto been able to arouse in you. It is indeed a quite unreasonable and objectionable ecstasy, for Pintu- ricchio is not at all one of the greatest masters, and these frescoes of his are by no means looked upon with favor by critics. "As figure-painting," says our infallible Beren- son, "they scarcely cot 1 be worse. Not a creature stands on his feet, not a body exists ; even the beauty of his women's faces, has through carelessness and thought- less, constant repetition, become soured; as color these frescoes could hardly be gaudier or cheaper." Can this be true.? Why perhaps it is. And yet strangely enoug) , you care not one whit, for )ou have been transported of a sudden into fairyland; you are back again in the golden age of childhood, buried in a most enchanting picture- book; no small pictures either, but great bright-colored sections of wall that by the very glory of their broad space and gay figures laugh at criticism and carry you into a magic country long unvisited. Jocund memories of Grimm and the "Arabian Nights" throng upon you and you eagerly drink in the joy of this pictured tale ol /Eneas Sylvius. You know little of him, but that matters nothing. He was doubtless a prince aided by a genie or by a fairy godmother, ultimately bound to wed a beautiful princess. 1 < 84 Italian Cities Here is joyous company surely, gay ladies and gayer gentlemen gathered on prancing horses to celebrate the hero's departure for the Council of Basle. At least so they say, though to you it seems more like a wedding- feast or some like festival. But your eye runs over the heads of steeds and merrymakers and your heart beats fast as you think you recog^iize a background you love well in a favorite tale of Kenneth Grahame's. The familiar words come back to you, — words that you had always felt must be the description of a real picture. "Meadow- land came first, set with flowers, blue and red, like gems. Then a white road ran, with wilful uncalled for loops, up a steep conical hill, crowded with towers, bastioned walls, and belfries; and down the road the little knights came riding two and two. The hill on one side descended to water, tranquil, far-reaching and blue; and a very curly ship lay at anchor, with one mast having an odd sort of crow's nest at the top of it."* How often you have turned over the words in your mind for very joy of exquis- ite phrase and dainty picturing, and now could this be the very hill and city? Alas, no, and yet the spirit, of the words is the spirit of the picture. There are the little ships riding at anchor, the fairy towers and battlements, and there is the white, many curved road winding up the hill, — all bathed in the clear air and radiant lighi that make care or pain, evil or foulness seem impossible, quite of another and lower world. Alas for the little hill towns of Italy ! How far are they from this ideal brightness and peace! How often have their narrow streets run blood, and their walls echoed to moan and merciless war cry! Yet they had their peaceful times too, and since the sunny > "Its walls were as of Jasper," in Kenneth Grahame's "Dream Days." Siena 85 Italian nature forgets quickly they were doubtless often as happy and bright as this one that is "emptied of its folk" on so fair a morning to bid farewell to yEneas Sylvius. But one cannot describe a pleasure so purely one of fancy, of delight in bright color, of joyous romance. After all some grave persons might look at your uncon- cealed glee with wonderment and scorn. What unseemly rejoicings, they would say, over pictures that are not at all to be ranked with the masterpieces of Perugino before which you stood quite unmoved a few days ago in Perugia ' Will you go with the same joy do you think from room to room frescoed by Raphael in the Vatican? Or will you revel so openly in Titian, in Leonardo, in Michelangelo? And if you must sorrowfully shake your head, are you not confessing to a depraved delight in gaudy mediocrity? It is a serious charge, but if it is true one must be honest about it; pretense is never more vulgar and out of place than in the presence of great art. Yet you do not believe that it is true, somehow. You do not rank Pinturicchio with Leonardo, but two things Pinturicchio has given you for which you genuinely give thanks,— a genius not easily surpassed for showing you the largeness, the exhilarating openness of the world, and a care-free joy of soul whi :h shines through all the poor drawing and gaudy coloring pointed out by the critic. For this enlargement of vision, for this breath of fresh air, for these bright faces and sunny landscapes you rejoice without shame. The world would surely be far brighter if only the weak, the tired, the disheartened of all lands, could come and renew their childhood, not with Cinderella and the Giant-Killer, but with ^neas Sylvius and his gay company in this cathedral library of old Siena. '"li 86 Italian Cities Just look now into the Opera del Duomo, the cathedral museum. There are many precious things here, but you may take time for only one just now, — one great painting that you must certainly see before you enter upon the study of the great Florentine painters. In Florence the fame of Cimabue and Giotto obscures all other artists of their time; to the Florentines Cimabue gloriously ended the line of ancient painters and launched the new era on its course with his great pupil. And the personality and influence of Giotto justify such an idea so largely that it is hard to find much fault with it. All that our visit to this picture in Siena will do will be to illustrate the truth that a great man is seldom altogether isolated in his thought and work. There is a mysterious but very real solidarity about human progress, and you will render poor justice to a great leader if you try to interpret him as a phenomenon quite independent of his fellows. His genius is doubtless his own, but its fruitfulness, its suc- cess, and even the path it takes, are dependent largely on the subtle movements of heart and mind in those about him. Shakespeare was not the only great Elizabethan dramatist. Titian was not the on' great Venetian painter. Cromwell was not the only great upholder of the rights of Englishmen against Charles I. And Giotto was not the only Tuscan of his time who was eagerly reaching for- ward to a new realism, a new beauty in art. On the second floor of the Opera del Duomo, then, is the great "Majestas" Madonna with the Holy Child and certain saints, painted about six centuries ago by Duccio di Buoninsegna, and placed over the high altar of the cathedral with the inscription in Latin — Holy Mother oj God, do thou grant peace to the Sienese and life to Duccio, Siena 87 who ha^ thus painted thee.' Beside the Madonna is the far more interesting series of twenty-six smaller pictures representing the life of Christ. Every one of them will repay study. It is impossible to say of the figures in "The Three Marys" or "Christ in the Garden" or "The Betrayal," that there is decoration but no reality in them, dignity but no perspective, devotion of spirit but no attempt at real composition. Duccio shows an unques- tionable sense for reality, perspective and natural group- ings. He was no mere decorator, and the new light shines through his stiff figures with a distinctness and power only obscured to later generations by the radiant genius of Giotto. Let him by no means be forgotten, then. He lacked the Florentine's sense for beauty, and he had not the vitality or the touch of poetry that you feel in the frescoes of Assisi or the Arena Chapel in Padua. But he was a worthy artist, one of the notable pioneers, and you will understand the genius of Giotto himself the better for your little study of his great contemporary of Siena. If you walk directly from the Duomo to the Church of S. Domenico, that is as directly as Italian streets ever permit one to walk, you will have to descend into a hollow and then laboriously climb a steep incline on the other side. Siena, like the other wolf-city, was built on hills. You are going to enter for a moment into another phase of Sienese history and life, and that a very famous and important one. Siena as a proud republic, the greatest Tuscan rival of thirteenth-century Florence, whose citi- zens, allied with Florentine exiles, o. erthrew the Floren- tine Guelfs themselves at Montaperti in 1260, — all this "« ii- ' Mater Sancta Dei, sis caussn Senis renuiei pinxit ita. sis Duccio vita, tc quia 88 Italian Cities 4 you saw reflected in the Palazzo della Signoria. The city's artistic pride, her love of the beautiful, her loyalty to the church; the wealth and public spirit which prevailed in her during the century after Montaperti, you have seen in the cathedral. Her contribution to early Tuscan paint- ing you have studied in the Opera del Duomo. Now you are to enter the church which is inseparably associated with the famous saint for whom Siena would doubtless have cheerfully sacrificed all of her other glories, the blessed St. Catherine. As you stand by the church of S. Domenico, look across the valley just for a moment at the cathedial. It is one of the views that you will be least likely to forget, — the red-tiled roofs sweeping up the hill and topped by the glorious marble church with its Campanile. But then you turn and enter the quiet, somber building beside you and in a moment you are standing by the chapel of St. Catherine. The great Lombard painter Sodoma has left some of his finest paintings here to aid the imagination of the devout, and the church is so very quiet that it is not hard to idealize the good saint who used to stand here in hoty meditation. It was in this chapel that she received the Stigmata, the marks of Christ's suffering, to the p^ous joy of her Dominican associates. The good friars had long mourned the preference in this regard which had been shown to the founder of the rival order of Franciscans, and they welcomed with grateful Te Deums the miracle which proclaimed the sanctity of St. Catherine equal to that of St. Francis. In Sodoma's pictures the artist's quick feeling for beauty has perhaps overcome his sense of fitness. A Florentine like Filippino Lippi might have better represented the emaciation, the triumph of soul Siena 89 over body in the saint who at the age of six flogged her- self habitually, who at the age of twelve abandoned the use of meat, at the age of fifteen wine, at the age of twenty br;ad, living on uncooked vegetables; who lived three yea* \ without speaking; and who wore a chain of iron until 1 ate into her flesh. But if Sodoma's pictured face of St. Catherine is not quite the thin, restrained face of the ascetic who wore herself to death at thirty-three, yet its sweet ethereal beauty doubtless represents truly enough the gentle lady's real beauty of soul. As she prays for the beheaded criminal whose soul you may see borne to heaven by angels, as she sinks fainting beneath the agony of the Stigmata, as she gazes up in ecstasy at the radiant vision of the Madonna and Child, the pure, pale countenance gives you a message of real saintliness and beauty that perhaps no one but Raphael could have interpreted so rarely as Sodoma does here. In a silver reliquary is preserved the head of the saint. Poor St. Catherine's mortal remains are much scattered. Mr. Ilowells, on the authority of the Diario Senese of Girolamo Gigli, places one of her fingers in the Certosa at Pontignano, "where it has been seen by many to their great advantage, with the wedding-ring of Jesuc Christ upon it. Her right thumb is in the church of the Domini- cans at Camporeggi; one of her ribs is in the Cathedral at Siena; anothei- in the church of the Company of St. Catherine, from which a morsel has been se.' i to the same society in the city of Lima in Peru; her cervical vertebra and one of her slippers are treasured by the Nuns of Paradise; in the monastery of Saints Dominic and Sixtus at Rome is her right hand; her shoulder is in the convent of St. Catherine at Magnanopoli; and her right foot is in 1 1 1 90 Italian Cities hi the church of San Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. In St. Catherine at Naples are a shoulder bone and a finger" and so on, to the great marvel of any poor modern who tries to be guided by the light of reason. But one must not be prejudiced against the saint on account of this veneration of her bones. There are many worse things in the world than the reverence paid to a St. Francis or a St. Catherine. Did not the great and good St. Augustine aver that the bones of St. Stephen wrought seventy miracles in his diocese, five of them being resurrections of the dead? Why should we of little faith deny the same virtue to the bones of this good Saint of Siena? ' ' Here, ' ' says the tablet on the chapel wall, "she remained with- drawn from the world, listening to the divine services of the Church, and here continually in divine colloquy she conversed familiarly with Jesus Christ, her Spouse. Here leaning against this pilaster, she was rapt in frequent ecstasies; wherefore this pilaster has ever since been potent against the infernal furies, delivering many pos- sessed of devils." Towards the evening of one lovely day you stroll through the little park, the Lizza, and out on the earth- works of Duke Cosimo's old fortress of Santa Barbara. It was built by Siena's conqueror soon after the dreadful siege which ruined her and almost depopulated her. But the tragic memories of a time so long past are softened by time, and the dusty Italian soldiers who are drilling in the court-yard, the stoutly-blowing bandsmen who are practicing on their instruments in some concealed comer, are quite oblivious of the cruel Spaniards or mercenaries who threw up these ramparts long ago at the command of the Florentine tyrant. The drill hour ends. The Siena 91 young soldiers straggle off to their welcome rest. The last brazen blasts from the band close the discordant noises from beneath your perch. You are left with the distant fields, the orchards just below you, the city with its Duomo and its soaring Mangia tower,— all full of memories of old Siena. Then as from the box thickets of the Villa Medici in Rome, and as from the cool shelters of the Boboli gardens in Florence, breaks from a grove the prelude of a nightingale, true and sweet and full-toned as the song of the wood-thrush in the woods at home. You let your spirit go out to it, and the old fancy of the bird's immortality comes back to fit into your musings about the fair old city, and its age upon age of brave life. The music of Keats' verse makes fit accompaniment to the rich notes now pouring out in loveliest melody from the hidden perch among the leaves. " Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird/ No hungry generations tread thee down ; Tlie voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown : Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amidst the alien corn ; Tlie same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn." i WWr CHAPTER VI FLORENCE: FROM DANTE TO BOCCACCIO As you take your stand on the heights of Fiesole and look down on the valley of the Arno and the city of Flor- ence, you see a city very different from the one that Dante knew. The great cathedral dome, uie lovely bell tower, the heavy brown palaces would all be strange to him. Only the outline of the surrounding hills, the curve of the river, an old bridge, a spire, a tower, and perhaps the general aspect of the red-tiled roofs would be familiar to the poet's keen eye if he could see them now. His friend Giotto would indeed recognize another landmark, the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, but its gray walls were still rising under the direction of Arnolfo when Dante was exiled in 1302; Giotto's Campanile was only begun when its designer himself died in 1336, fifteen years after Dante; and the age of the great builders — the Medici, the Pitti, the Strozzi — was all yet to come. Other towers would still be s .nding, though, when the fourteenth cen- tury opened, that have vanished now, — the towers from which powerful families and their retainers watched and fought during the great feuds that so shook and tortured thirteenth-century Florence ; and the great seer would in vain now strain his eyes to descry some sign of the too familiar brawls and battles of his time, or his ears to catch the well-known war-cries of the rival houses. For the Florence of Dante was far from being the care-free, well-behaved city that it is now; and his Italy 92 Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio 93 was far from enjoying its present happy state of peace and unity. You iiave already in Assisi thought over some of the things that tended to make the centuries from the fifth to the thirteenth an age of political and civil confu- sion and unrest, and the considerations that you dwelt on then you saw to be true to a greater or less degree of all Europe. But Italy for several reasons passed through experiences and developed conditions and tendencies which made her fortune very different from that of the rest of the continent. The Germans entered and influ- enced Italy as they did Gaul, Britain, and Spain, but no tribe ever conq .ered Italy as entirely and permanently as the Franks did Gaul. The Ostrogoths and the Lombards almost did it, but both failed, the one in permanence and the other in completeness, and no power ever came to rescue Italy from confusion as the Normans in cruel mercy came to divided England. Instead of this she had the two empires, one at Constantinople and one north of the Alps, pulling her in different directions, and the great spiritual power of the papacy in her midst, none of them quite strong enough to overcome the others and unite the country in one coherent state. (This lack of any prevail- ing unifying center strikes us all through the Middle Ages in Italy,— is perhaps the greatest single curse of the country. \ Take, for instance, the life of Dante himself. If we could follow him in every detail of his career in Florence as citizen, partisan, member of the governing body,— in Arezzo as exile, passionately eager for return to his city,— in Verona as friend and dependent of a great lord, return to Florence put aside as a dream not to be treasured, brooding over torn and savagely quarreling Italy, pouring i i i i i Hi I" ¥ ¥ 94 Italian Cities i out his great heart in immortal verse, now and then turn- ing his pen or his voice into practical politics when he seemed to be needed, — if we could thus follow his life we should have a living appreciation of what Italy was in the later Middle Ages, — a group of little cities and states that remind us of ancient Greece in their intense local inde- pendence, their keen vitality, their restless ambition, and their bitter and cruel party divisions. Italy was intensely alive in that thirteenth century; that was its most hopeful characteristic; and that this life was real and fruitful was abundantly proved by the number of great men that she produced in rapid succession for the next three hundred years. But she was terribly and wastefully subdivided. The wars of Florence with Fiesole, Hire those of Athens with Salamis, are as if New York wafjCd war on Newark, Boston on Gloucester or Marblehead. In Tuscany alone, a region smaller than Maryland and little la-ger than New Jersey, there might be a dozen cities in constant hostility, between whom at any moment the flame of fierce war might flash out. In the great confederacy that made war on Pisa in 1284, when Dante was nineteen years of age, that war which ended Pisa's greatness and almost annihilated her, there were five cities engaged, of whom the nearest to her was Lucca, ten miles distant, and the farthest Genoa, about ninety miles, practically the distance from Philadelphia to New York. In all, one may say — and this is part of the reason for the constant quarrels — the same public questions existed: for pope or emperor; for prince or republic; for Italian independence or foreign intervention; for nobles or people. And the party uppermost in one city usually aided its hlorence: From Dante to Boccaccio 95 friends and fought its opponents in other cities. Imagine Tammany Hall leading the Democrats of New York to overthrow in battle the rampant Republicanism of Phila- delphia, and you will have a home parallel of Guelf Flor- ence seeking to destroy Ghibelline Siena. The origin of these two famous parties is of but little interest. /The Guelfs stood in the main for jealousy of foreign influence, local and national pride, and conservative democracy; the Ghibellines, more doubtfully, for unity, for strong, central- ized government, and for aristocracy. ^ The Guelfs usually looked to the pope for a certain patronage and leadership, the Ghibellines to the emperor. But these main divisions were constantly obscured by special local conditions. A city whose enemy and rival was intensely Guelf was led simply because of that fact to range itself on the side of the Ghibellines, though they might be quite equal in patriotism and republican enthusiasm. A Ghibelline might find himself fighting against an emperor, or a Guelf against the cause of the pope. Still the main party divis- ions were as just laid down. Florence under normal conditions was decidedly Guelf. But there was a strong Ghibelline faction which was able to cause trouble and occasionally hold the upper hanH. In 1249 the Guelf leaders were vanquished and exiled. In 1250 they returned and banished the Ghibellines. Ten years later, the Ghibellines, securing help from the German king of Sicily, son of an emperor (Frederick II.) and nat- ural patron of the Imperial party, met the Florentine Guelfs in a great battle at Montaperti by the river Arbia, and won a victory that for the moment seemed final and crushing. But a French army, hostile to the emperor, and so hostile to the Ghibellines, marching south to the conquest of Sicily, soon 96 Italian Cities re-established the Guelfs, and Florence was a free Guelf republic when Dante Alighieri was born in 1265. It re- mained so during the rest of the century, so that it was as a Guelf that Dante rose to manhood and did his duties as citizen and magistrate up to his thirty-fifth year and after. But then the fatal Italian tendency to feud and dissensions ' jlit the Florentines again, and two rival families, the Cerchi vind the Donati, began to trouble the city with their quarrels as the Montagues and Capulets did Verona in the days of Romeo and Juliet. In the neighboring city of Pistoia long before, a noble citizen after the death of his wife Bianca married again. The descendants of his first wife, who called themselves after her Bianchi, or Wiiites, gradu- ally fell away from those descended from his second wife, who by way of marking themselves off from their cousins, called themselves Neri — Blacks. As these two divisions of a great family became ever fiercer and were a constant disturbance, Florence stepped in to try the part of concili- ator, and it seemed best to her to move the heads of both families to Florence so that the heat of dissension might the more easily die away in Pistoia. Alas for good inten- tions! The heads of tne Neri faction went to live with their friends the Donati; of the Bianchi went to the Cerchi, and the rival Florentine families at once took u j the cause of their guests, adopting their distinctive parcy names. Florence now, instead of Pistoia, was split from top to bottom by the feud of Whites and Blacks. Dante was a White. Collision after collision between the two factions shook the city's peace. At last, after one or two changes of fortune, the Blacks remained victors, and Dante and the leading Whites went into lifelong exile. For a time they waited at Arezzo, plotting, hoping, turn- Florence; From Dante to Boccaccio 97 ing even to the Ghibellines for help, until Dante, in despair, broke with them, and began the life of restless wandering that only ceased with his death in Ravenna in 1321. One special point is perhaps worthy of a moment's attention here before you turn to other things,— Dante as a Ghibelline, a believer in the emperor. Dante is often called the great Ghibelline poet, and yet for a great part of his life he was entirely Guelf, and it m \y be doubted whether he ever considered himself a Ghibelline. It was only the misery of exile that threw him into the ranks of the Ghibellines, and it was as an exile, feeling bitterly in his own person the anarchy and petty divisions of Italy, that he turned to the one hope of unity, the imperial power, and welcomed the emperor, Henry VII., when he descended from the Alps to try again to realize the hope- less dream of uniting Italy and Germany in one Empire. "Behold," cried Dante,' "now is the accepted time, in which the signs of consolation and peace arise. For a new day grows bright, revealing a dawn that already lessens the gloom of long calamity. Already the eastern breezes grow stronger; the lips of heaven grow ruddy and strengthen the auguries of the people with a caressing tranquillity. And even we, who so long have passed our nights in the desert, sh?ll behold the gladness for which we have longed. Then be ye all vigilant and rise up to meet your king!" A bright hope that faded before Dante himself died. The "Divine Comedy" was begun before Dante's iri '"V.!"' '9, "V? Pf'nces and Peoples of Italy," id Latham's 'Dante's Trl^l'L'jKr^ I^"?- perhaps the most helpful and suggestive of all brief and accessible studies of Dante is the essay contained in Church's "Dante, and 98 Italian Cities exile in 1 302, and gradually during the next nineteen years it took shape as the supreme interpretation of the age that was passing away. Some time you will study it in detail. One or two things you should note about it even now that will help to make clearer its place in the develop- ment of Italy. \In the first place, it is well to see the sig- nificance of the mtense reality of the future life, to Dante and to his age. \ Hell is painted with the detail and cer- tainty of touch that one might expect in a description of Florence herself. The existence a. id character of the devils was no more to be questioned than the existence and char- acter of the English or the Germans. And one realizes, too, that if all this is true, if Dante's Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise represent his fundamental conviction and that of his age, regarding the life after death, then they are right and natural in ignoring all things except those pertaining to salvation. If fleshly lusts, heresy, violence, worldly ambitions, mean eternal torment in a hell as real as this earth, only never ending, then nothing could be more foolish than the yielding to them, nothing more detestable than encouragement of them. The life of this world, with its fleeting pleasures, becomes a contemptible nothing — three-score years and ten beside eternity! The virtues that mean Paradise are above all else to be desired. The vices that mean Hell are above all else to be stamped out. It becomes of interest, then, to find out what according to Dante would condemn a man to Hell and what fit him for Paradise. Three main causes of condemnation you will find in even a first reading of the "Inferno" — malice, or badness of heart ; the yielding to pleasures of the flesh in any form; and alienation from Christ and his Church. Thus, under the first head are condemned the evil tem- Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio 99 I ■I ii pered, the defamers, even the crafty, like the noble but cunning Ulysses; under the second head the gluttons, the luxurious, or those like Francesca da Rimini, whom the world has gladly pardoned, but whom the stern poet con- demns even while pitying; and under the third, th^ pagans of antiquity are condemned with modern unbelievers like Farinata or Cavalcanti, no matter what their virtues might be. In each case the judgment is unrelenting and abso- lute. Ignorance, private and public virtue are of no avail as excuses. Sins of the heart, of the flesh, and of the intellect that are unpardoned, definitely and absolutely condemn the sinner to unending torment. \Here a else- where Dante's verdict is that of his age rigid and uncom- promising, with no concession to the i.ioral standards of the world, — and note the result. Sins of the heart can only be purged by faith, by devotion, by unwearying self-denial and attention to the example of Christ and the saints. Sins of the flesli can only be conquered by a stem crucify- ing of the flesh, by asceticism, by turning away from the vanities of the world, by answering the tender appeals of the senses with the scourge and bitter austerities. Sins of the mind — questionings that may result in eternal hell- are only to be avoided by absolute faith in Christ and the voice of the Church. These are the logical results of Dante's creed. ^The man who lived up to it absolutely, the man worthy of Dante's Paradise, the St. Francis, the St. Dominic, the St. Louis of France, was in conduct a saint, and in the intellectual world a man who schooled himself never to ask the question why. But if Dante reflects this lofty, uncompromising medi- eval ideal and the sad inability of most men to at all attain it ; if he portrays a system of creation which condemned lOO Italian Cities with terrible certainty the vast majority of mankind to eternal torment; if the law is to him so unyielding that popes are not saved by their tiara, nor poets and philoso- phers by their loftiness of soul, yet he himself shows all unconsciously the beginnings of the end of this stern, nar- row attitude to life and eternity. For he painted it with such uncompromising and fatal clearness that whoever read the "Inferno" had, as it were, been there and talked with hell's woeful citizens. And human life, human emo- tions, human aims, and ways of looking at things, come in so visibly and humanly all through, that in spite of your- self you break through the hard theology of it, and find yourself following the narrative in eager sympathy here, in horror there, in warm contact with reality everywhere. Ideas, doctrines, systems, that are once clearly inter- preted, are, just because man is infinite and because "his reach should exceed his grasp, ' ' ready at once to give way to ideas and systems that -ve larger and more adequate. "When the soul becomes visible, the body is ready to drop away." ' A curious instance of the new indepc once and indi- vidualism which is characteristic of Dante is in the third canto of the "Inferno." Dante, guided by Virgil, had barely eii^ered the terrible gates when "strange tongues, horrible outcries, words of pain, tones of anger, voices deep and hoarse, and sounds of hands amongst them, made a tumult which turns itself unceasing in that air for- ever dyed, as sand when it eddies in a whirlwind. And I, my head begirt with horror, said: 'Master, what is this •See the noble essay on Dante in Caird's "Literary and Philosophical Essays," vol. I. To those who have access to "Queen's Quarterly," vol. 1., ''atson's "Lectures on Dante" will also be most suKzestive. They will ouubtless be ibsued in book form soon. ^:ij ! [ I Florence: From Dante to. Boccaccio loi that I hear? and who a ese that seem so overcome with pain?' Ard he to me. 'This miserable mode the dreary souls of those sustain, who lived without blame, and without praise. They are mixed with that caitiff choir of the angels who were not rebellious nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves. Heaven chased them forth to keep its beauty from impair; and the deep Hell receives them not. for the wicked would have some glory over them.' " How strangely modem is this con- ception of the "crew of caitiffs who never were alive, hateful to Goa and to his enemies." It is the idea of Kipling's "Tomlinson." of Browning's "Statue and the Bust," an emphasis of individualism, of that positive character development whose neglect may be more shameful than actual crime. Nothing could be more unmedieval. Yet we must not press this so far as to suppose that this passionate Florentine who comfo..ed his unresting mmd m exile by painting his time in living semblance on t:.e background of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, saw that he was lielping to open the way to a new era. He was no more conscious of it than was St. Francis. His blows against the symbolism, the difficulty of thinking in a human earthly way, the stern theology, the indifference to mdividual development, the narrow horizon of thought, the neglect of liberal culture which were characteristic of the Middle Ages, were dealt all unconsciously. He was not a critic, but an interpreter. He shows us the thir- teenth century and the coming tides of new thought too but the signs of the new time are latent, implicit, uncon- scious. To quote the Master of Balliol again, "Dante interprets the religion of the cloister, in such a way as to I02 Italian Cities I ,;il! carry us beyond it. His Divina Cotnmedia may be com- pared to the portal of a great cathedral, through which we emerge from the dim religious light of the Middle Ages into the open day of the modern world, but emerge with the imperishable memory of those harmonics of form and color on which we have been gazing, and with the organ notes that lifted our soul to heaven still sounding in our ears." And what of ''^e art in which Florence was to shine with such splendor in the times to come? Surely the growing life that could produce Francis and Dante, and that could see in Pisa the revival of reality and beauty in sculpture, would act in some measure on the sister art of painting. Not that there was not some beauty in medi- eval painting. Much of the old technical skill had been handed down from generation to generation in Constanti- nople, and Byzantine masters or Italians who had studied under them, were, during the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies, careiuUy and skilfully adorning churches throughout the peninsula with frescoes that still fascinate us with their quaint,^teliness. They could do exquisite mosaic work too. And^yet few who come to these old works of art for the first time are able to admire them. They seem to our eyes by no means beautiful, and quite dead in their stiffness and uiireality. These Madonnas and saints have the shapes of Wv .len and men indeed, but they are painted in somber colors un a gold background, with heads always at an angle and with long, narrow eyes, without expres- sion, without real human existence.' They were the product of a demand for church adornment that would awaken the souls of the worshipers to heavenly not earthly 'See the first chapter of Sir Martin Conway's " Early Tuscan Art." Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio 103 beauty; devotion, not pleasure of the eye; -levout yearning for the life to come, not joy in this transient world with its temptations to momentary material bliss. The medi- eval artist, then, in so far as he was an artist, had a severe task before him. (His only patron was the Church, and the Church demanded the elimination of both earthly beauty and xeality.\ Nothing was left but such decorative beauty as would deepen the solemnity, the dignity, the mystery, the drawing of the mind to higher things and to the world to come that was deemed fitting in a building designed for the worship of God and the contemplation of Eternity. This much was attained in the best medieval art. It does add to the old churches a stately, pathetic, unearthly kind of beauty. But often the artist, taught to forget beauty of line and color and reality, com- pelled to adopt the severe standards handed down to him by his master^ and demanded by the Church, produced only ugliness. No freedom or life could be expected in painting until Europe should escape from the age of con^'usion, until her thoughtful men should have once more the realization that it was not the sole duty of mankind to propitiate an angry deity, and prepare for heaven. You are prepared to see this change coming in the thirteenth century, especially after your little study of Niccola Pisano. And you do not look in vain. For what saith our good friend Giorgio Vr.sari, our diligent sixteenth-century chronicler and gos- siper? "The endless flood of misfortunes which over- whelmed unhappy Italy not only ruined everything worthy of the name of a building, but completely extinguished the race of artists, a far more serious matter. Then, as it pleased God, there was born in the year 1 240, in the I04 Italian Cities city of Florence, Giovanni, surnamed Cimabue, to shed the first light on the art of painting." In the great Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella — a church which contains more things of interest and profit than you will be able to glance at in your pres- ent study — you will find the famous old painting which tradition says was done by Cimabue and borne amid ecstatic rejoicings to its present home. Whether this is really Cimabue 's' or whether it is another, done by a Sienese painter, Duccio, can matter very little to us. Cimabue, who was Giotto's master, has become really little more than a great name, to whom these works have been traditionally ascribed for centuries, and to whom we may still ascribe them for convenience. For we know nothing about them with certainty. We simply have Dante's testimony, "Once in painting Cimabue held the field, now all the cry is for Giotto," and very definite tradition to assure us that this great old Florentine was thought in his time to have gathered together in his work all that was great in the old methods and to have shad- owed forth the coming artistic ideals of beauty and reality. In this Rucellai Madonna and in Duccio it is easier to see that here is the old Byzantine work at its best than to see the coming life. For with all the stateliness and pathos of the famous old picture, there is little beauty in it in the later sense. There is a Madonna in Assisi, indeed, said to be by Cimabue, that, with all its stiffness and slanting bead and narrow eyes and gold background, 1 It would be hard to find any painting that can with absolute certainty be ascribed to Cimabue. But Duccio of ^iena, whom we may study in per- fectly authentic works, belongs to the same age, and there are frescoes in Assisi too- in the church of St. Francis- which Illustrate exactly the same features of artistic development that you find in the Santa Maria Novella Madonna— the Rucel'ai Madonna, as it is called. 8 , m irifl Li :^^W. Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio 105 is wonderfully impressive, aid above in the upper church ' a sadly blurred figure of Abraham, standing with uplifted knife over the altar, life and energy in every line. So with some of Duccio's groups there is an occasional aban- donment of the old stiff unreal!.,,- -a real effort to see things as they are, which is a sure prophecy of the dawn of modern art. But it is prophecy only, not fulfilment. These old paintings are simply, after all, medieval art at its best, producing its fairest flower at the moment of perishing. But if you are in Assisi, look from the Cimabue Madonna to the scenes from the life of St. Francis done a little later by Cimabue's pupil Giotto. Or if you are here in Florence go from the Rucellai Madonna to the Giotto frescoes in Santa Croce. Or later on, if you should be going to Venice, drop off at Padua and see Giotto's frescoes of scenes from the life of Chnst. You will find in all these a totally new point of view. Here at last is a painter who tries to paint things as they are. He was first found by Cimabue, it is said, as a little shepherd boy, trying to draw one of his sheep on a smooth stone. It was a true omen of his mission as an artist. His figures are often stiff, it is true, and his faces have often the set look that recalls the Byzantine work. Even his perspective is none too perfect. But the real point is that he tries— with entire success too— to make his men and women living human beings, not decorative figures, that he tries to make his face? show forth human thoughts and emotions, not simply holy contemplation, and that he realizes that there is such a thing as perspective. At last Giotto and by the painters that preceded him. £o6 Italian Cities human beauty and artistic reality were come to earth again. At last men's eyes were opened to the marvels that lay about and within them, to the earth beneath and around them as well as the heaven that might await their coming. Giotto was more than a painter. All the world knows that we owe to him the lovely bell-tower that rose in the center of the city during the years that followed his death. He only lived to design and begin it, but that others could take his conception and carry it out in this marvel of grace and color is proof in itself that his spirit lived after him. No one came for a time who had at all his head, or eye, or brain, but there were many who had caught enough of the inipiration of his genius to work out the lessons he had taught them. Gradually men learned to draw the human form with surer and more living touch than of old, and to paint faces more open to the play of expression and more beautiful. Orcagna came, the maker of the tabernacle in Or San Michele and the painter of the beautiful angels of Santa Maria Novella. And Fra Angelico came, whose wonder- ful angel-faces and exquisite tc;:ches of fancy were, in their own way, never surpassed by any who followed. There is a lovely little painting of his in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, "The Naming of St. John," showing the blind old father of John the Baptist writing, "His name shall be called John," while the silent group who have brought him the news of his son's birth, stand waiting. It was painted probably within the fourteenth century, much less than a hundred years after Giotto's death. Every figure is alive and graceful. The wooden stiffness that Giotto had first driven away is utterly absent, and the set, drawn tl. M >. o n > t A -■ Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio 107 faces of the old time have given place to sweet, rounded ones. Over the stone wall nod roses and through a pas- sage way— with a perspective that has quite lost the appear- ance of effort — you catch a glimpse of grass and trees, a bright little hint of a garden that adds a most unexpected touch of fancy. It is true thL. the ar:=«t-friar has not a wide range of vision. He strayed little into the broad world, and his faces have more of a spiritual, heavenly beauty than those that one would easily find in the crowded city streets; but it was enough for him to make human forms angelic and the angels themselves human— to catch Giotto's lesson of reality, and make his fair visions womanly and manly, walking on a real and very fair earth, albeit they are of a more spiritual loveliness than one might usually find among mortals. And when one gazes on his angels circling about the throne or treading the flowery fields of paradise, one even of our late day may feel that this gentle seer of five hundred years ago has given us a heaven more full of grace and simple delight- someness than any other we have imagined. The variety, the glory, the myriad moods of the world, had yet to be discovered and portrayed, but Giotto, Orcagna, and Fra Angelico had surely found the secret of reality and beauty. Their successors had but to develop their lessons. There are two other men who help one to understand this fourteenth century, and to get a clearer idea of its meaning and permanent results. Of one, Petrarch, you will be able to see something a little later when you glance for a moment at the revival of learning.* But his friend Boccaccio is best seen here in the company of artists who brought naturalness and life to painting, and a little study > See chapter vii. io8 Italian Cities V of him will help us to make clearer to ourselves the funda- mental mission of them all. It seems strange at first sight to class Boccaccio with Fra Angelico. There is little in common, of a truth, between the angels of the Uffizi "Coronation" and the tales of the Decameron. And yet in widely different ways the saintly friar and the jovial novelist were leading Florentines and Italians to a common goal. As we may see clearly enough now, the spiritual world of Italy and Europe was passing through a difficult and painful crisis. The names Francis, Dante, Niccola, Giotto, Petrarch, Fra Angelico shi. at us a spiritual current deep and strong, but not at once visible, — ultimately invincible, but subtle and slow-n.cving. And the waters were not easily stirred. The fresh stream of new vitality did not easily penetrate and awaken. For so many ages the earth had been to all serious and devout minds the playground of the devil, aye, and his working ground too, his peculiar domain, where any attitude of conciliation or contentment with worldly things on the part of the elect seemed a bowing to Satan. Beauty and pleasure were words and thoughts to be applied to heaven and to spiritual things, not to earth. Tribulation, not contentment,— unceasing struggle, not repose, — the crush- ing of the world and the flesh, not their exaltation, — these were the anifest duty of the faithful, and marvelously did many holy saints fulfil it. Tennyson's "St. Simeon Stylites" embodies much of the idea. But it scarcely does the saint justice. Not only did he feel it to be his duty to expose himself for his sins on the top of his pillar and to otherwise diligently mortify the flesh, but he further showed his sanctity, it is said, by an unusual contempt for worldly affections. His !l Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio 109 first promptings towards a life of holiness moved him to fiet f'om home and break the heart of a devoted father. Twenty-seven years later his mother found out where he was and made haste to visit him. But he closed his door on her. She wept and implored for a sight of his face. "My son," she cried, "why hast thou done this? I gave thee life, and thou hast bo\ ed me down with griei. I gave thee milk, and thou hast wrung from me tears. I gave thee kisses, and thou hast given me the anguish of a broken heart. For all my pain and toil for thy sake thou hast repaid me in bitter wrongs." But it was all in vain. The saint sent word that she would see him soon. Three days and nights she remained before her son's closed door, and then, aged and feeble and exhausted with grief, she died. Then, and not till then, did the holy man come forth and offer a prayer for his mothei 's soul, while his followers and the world extolled so marvelous a victory over worldly desires and affections.* No earthly love, no demand of the flesh, no yearning of the intellect, no worldly ambition, no social or civic or filial or paternal duty was as aught beside the duty to save one's soul alive and to propitiate a wrathful God by prayer and penance. Even the monastic duties of w rk and teaching were not to be emphasized. "The duty of a monk," said St. Jerome, "is not to teach but to weep." As time passed and as the rule of St. Benedict came in the sixth century to reduce the monastic ideal to some- thing like order, these extremes of asceticism doubtless became less common and less monstrous. But the ascetic conception of virtue remained characteristic of Latin Christianity in no very modified form through century • Lecky, "European Morals," Vcl. II., p. 138. I lO Italian Cities after century. And if monks, priests, bishops and even Popes often fell away from it in practice, yet it remained none the less an ideal, and a very powerful and subtle one. Now it was just this that needed to be changed in some way or other before our modern life could come to its birth. The dark shadow needed to be lifted. The eter- nal contemplation of sin must no longer be the normal attitude of the man who was to be esteemed good. Human bonds, human affections, human needs must no longer be esteemed vain and evil. "The world and the flesh" must no more be looked upon as the inevitable asso- ciates of "the devil." So when Fra AngeHco painted sweet human faces for his women and his angels alike, when he gave them bright, dainty robes, when he showed pretty roses topping a wall and bright little flowers in his heavenly meadow, when he e'. made a joyful little friar clasp his pretty lady-love in a .cry eager and very human embrace in the very presence of the angels, he was definitely help- ing to put aside the pall of human depravity, the ever present horror of the devil, the refusal to see brightness and joy even in frail humanity and material nature. From such a point of view it will not seem strange after all, P rhaps, to associate Boccaccio with Fra Angelico him- self as with Giotto and with St. Francis, in this great work of parting the clouds, of bringing back sunshine to the weary, restless world, of consecrating healthy natural- ness, of taking away the oppressive burden of sin, Satan, and the fear of Hell. To tell just how Boccaccio fulfilled nis part in all this is not easy without telling his stories, and this would noc be easy to do even were there space without offending the proprieties. But even if one cannot help sometimes being ['ii Florence: From Dante to Boccaccio iii disgusted wuh the Decameron, yet one should not carry tod much of our twentieth-century delicacy into these studies of fourteenth-century Italy. AivCr all Boccaccio is not much worse than his contemporary, our well-beloved Chaucer. And in any case much of the Decameron may still be read even by the most sensitive without offense. For the coarseness and broad humor of some of the stories, spontaneous and without malice as it is, by no means taints the book throuj^hout. It is not the evil, the pene- tratingly evil product of a bad man and a blas^ society. It is simply the open-hearted, unrestrained, wide-eyed survey of life on its lighter side. Indeed if his spirit still haunts our libraries he must look at us sometimes in a quizzical, puzzled way, wondering how it is that we look so sternly upon his merry tales. For life was gay to him, scholar and friend of Petrarch though he was, and he would doubtless marvel much how any one could refuse to cast aside petty conventions and go with him to the Flor- ence of jest and song, of light heart and quick tongue that he knew so well. Not all jest was it to him either, for he and Petrarch both saw their city in the grip of the Black Death,' and terrible indeed is the picture of it in the introduction to the Decameron. Yet that awful year supplies the frame- work to the stories. For it was during the plague that a little group of youths and maids met one day at mass in Santa Maria Novella. And here where the Rucellai Madonna gazed sadly down upon them they talked things over, and decided to go from the death-stricken city to the country. They did so and in a rural retreat "on a little hill, somewhat withdrawn on every side from the ' In the year 134S. Petrarch's Laura died of this plaeue in Avignon. 112 Italian Cities highway and full of various shrubs and plants, all preen of leafage and pleasant to behold" they comforted their exile by telling diverting tales. But all the tales would not give us more of the new attitude to life that was in Boccaccio's heart than this one little fragment, selected almost at random. It is uttered -v the lady who sug- gested the flight to the country. "There." she said may we hear the small birds sing, there may we see the hills and plains clad all in green and the fields full of corn wave as doth the sea; there may we see trees, a thousand sorts, and there is the face of heaven more open to view, the which, angered against us though it be. nevertheless denieth not unto us its eternal beauties." •t"*; V %.., i I 'J 1 wm LORI'NZO DE MEDICI AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN UeUil ir.jm Bcnozzo GozzoH's Frt-s. v ill the Ricrardi Pa!a re stanaing or n; ing on a carpet of gr.^ ^s aui! prea> pring ^nv rs. Above their heads lies a chubby little Cuuid. v ain.> straight at tiie heart of ( le of tl makr *-ao r you suppose, the Graces She is ior k* youth to the k*'t, (imi ano who stands her for H -rm Flora, covered th pref red flower-, ani besid h / a nyn.ph f •■nm whose moutl flo herself stands in the nidst rath il the exuberaiK .1 spring meant little to he Timort ' Venus and th t of uiui " in ' ie picture. The res gr n, dotied with the 1 the p; n; e is Se and cot and - jugh there i i subt' e' Mec' . H aves >om with arrow esent, at jthei iiyiu comes irple and dull yr speeds in pursuit of Tre dropping. Venus suvily surveying it all, as '.e palled somewhat and th. The loose robe of practically the only reds ite 01 'How or cool, dark )wers. The whole tone of , rather ^nan gay and bright, sense of grace and movement a), ug -a ovement which gives you a strange cons^ ou-snes of breezes and rustling and wavy swrving— vet 1 is s hdued and uiet hroughout. It seem^ just a little birai ^-e, this o. ■^ c<' -lelancholy, in a painting of spring, a id you find .le pensiveness in the "Birth of Venus" in the Uffiz., where Botticelli shows the new- born ddess standing in her open sea-shell, and being 124 Italian Cities :hl^ wafted to shore over tiny waves. Both paintings are a response to the passion of interest in Greece and Rome that was characteristic of fifteenth-century Florence. Both show a drifting away from the purely religious atmosphere, from the close association with the Church, which had been the dominant fact in the development of painting till the time of Fra Filippo Lippi. Even Fra Filippo had used only sacred subjects, though he treated them in a secular, human way. \ But Botticelli definitely takes pagan subjects and tries to deal with them in the ancient way. V How far he succeeded is perhaps a question. To place one of the Casa Vettii frescoes in Pompeii beside this "Birth of Venus" would be, you imagine, to com- pare things utterly unlike, the first century with the fif- teenth. It is a far cry from the Venus of Melos to the Venus of the "Primavera," from the Hermes of Prax- iteles to the Hermes of Botticelli. The humanism of Lorenzo and his circle might do away with medieval ascet- icism and medieval narrowness in theology, but a certain nameless wistfulness, a feeling for the infinite possibilities of the soul, a yearning for the unattainable, an unescap- able sense of "The heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world," would inevitably remain as the heritage of centuries of Christian teaching to make impossible the exultant sense of perfection, the calm, self-satisfied serenity of the ancient Greeks. Botticelli is still, then, a Christian painter, — less naive, less simple in his faith than Filippino Lippi or the fourteenth-century painters, — more inclined to ponder over things and be puzzled by life's contradictions, but still Christian far more than pagan. The revival of I* 1 = The Florence of the Medici 125 paganism by the humanist scholars had as yet only dis- turbed and distressed the faithful, or had at most only modified their ideas of life and widened their horizon of thought, without at all uprooting and sweeping away the old standards of faith or the essential hold of Christianity on earnest minds. Masaccio, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli — these three are perhaps the typical fifteenth-century masters of Florentine art. There are others, indeed, men like Benozzo Gozzoli and Filippino Lippi and Ghirlandajo and Andrea del Sarto, who painted glorious pictures and greatly exalted the fame of their city and their age. But in greater or less measure they shared the characteristics of the masters you have been studying. All of them show the increasing sense for human feeling and for the joys of this present life. Yet all have the lingering feeling that bea' ty of the flesh and worldly joy are less to be valued than holiness and beauty of spirit. The most devout is doubtless Filippino; the least so is perhaps Ghirlandajo. Still Ghirlandajo's pic- tures vary greatly in this regard, and one might in some respects name Andrea rather as the least religious of the Florentines. Attractive as his paintings must always be to lovers of beauty, exquisite as are both faces and figures in, for instance, the "Madonna of the Harpies," yet his delight was largely, one might say, in the externals of painting. He was a master colorist, and had almost a Venetian love for rich harmonies and gorgeous detail. But even Andrea and Ghirlandajo are seldom without the spirit of reverence that one grows to associate in a pecu- liar degree with the name of Florence. > The Florentines have been called the Puritans of Italy, and the parallel is not without suggestiveness. They passed on their tradi- '1 ^ hi ^|l ? ; In 126 Italian Cities tion even beyond the fifteenth century. Verocchio, the painter of the lovely twilight "Annunciation" of the Uffizi, was the teacher of Leonardo. Michelangelo was a student under Lorenzo's protection. So that m a sense the "Last Supper" and the terrible "Last Judgment" are the final expression in painting of the stem persistence of Florence in her old faith until her liberty and clearness of vision together departed from her. Still, even while remembering, nay emphasizing this Florentine Puritanism, this characteristic vein of serious- ness and devotion that so marks off the Florentine from the Venetian painters, one should not forget the contri- bution of the humanists and of Fra Filippo. Few of the best souls in Florence, it is true, ever lost hold entirely of the old faith. They retained throughout the grave spirituality which in different degrees and in different ways marks Dante, Giotto, Masaccio, and Michelangelo. But the fif- teenth century saw, nevertheless, the steady advance of a conscious joy in the life of this world. The peculiar mixture of Christian with pagan ideas and ideals which character- ized the Renaissance at its height is amusing and almost unintelligible to a modem. But even Dante had Charon and Cerberus in his Christian Hell, and the easy assimila- tion of heathen with Christian mythology that one sees in our own poetry as late as Milton is a sufficient hint of the way in which noble minds could retain, theoretically, their allegiance to medieval faith and ideals, and yet adopt with enthusiasm and without shock the study of antiquity, the new delight in pure culture, and the new joy in earthly existence. Medicean Florence did not, as a matter of fact, analyze or understand itself. The emaciated, spirit- ual faces of Filippino Lippi are just as characteristic in t ■ a W-' •* The Florence of the Medici 127 their own way of his city and time as the pleasant visages of Fra Lippo's saints and angels. Pico della Mirandola, beloved by saints and men of the world, Platonist and Christian, prince among scholars and purest of souls, friend of Lorenzo and of Savonarola, was perhaps the one supreme instance of the combination of the new human- ism with the old faith, each in its noblest form. But the two streams did not always coalesce. And in painting, the "Primavera" of Botticelli is the most ideal expression of Florentine spirituality and religious feeling, gazing reflectively and yet withal eagerly at the new brightness of the once despised world. Few could have Pico's con- fident grasp of the ultimate oneness of all truth, his fear- less reaching out to Plato with one hand and to Christ with the other. To the average thoughtful Florentine the matter was rather as Botticelli had it — the world undoubtedly good, beauty and nature and romance un- doubtedly worth while, but back of all a seriousness, an uneasy questioning that was never long absent or very far from the surface. So as Fra Angelico's "Paradise" was an interpreta- tion in its way of the ideals of the later fourteenth century, so the "Primavera" is to be turned to again and again as a true voice from the Florence of Lorenzo. It is not simply an allegory, else, perhaps, it might not deserve to be called a great picture. It is a portrayal of living and most fascinating figures on a background cf which you will never tire. It is no desecration to let Keats interpret these goddesses, this music of graceful line and soft color, this nymph fl^ ■ :, from embrace, as if his glance had fallen on this t. "'nr than on that other shape of far differ- ent beauty. I 128 Italian Cities h "What r.icn or gods are these? What maidens loath What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? Wh.?t pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. Though winning near the goal — yet, do not jjrieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss. For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" One might well wish for a really intimate glimpse of the age that knew Botticelli and Ghirlandajo, Verocchio and Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola and Lo'-enzo himself in their prime. And another there was, the supreme type of Florentine Puritanism, the great Dominican who vainly tried to stem the corruption and paganism that was destroying the o'd ideals of life and faith, the mighty Savonarola. It is half pathetic to see the broad-minded, cultured Lorenzo reaching out to Savonarola the hand that the reformer sternly refused to take. Lorenzo, steeped in Plato, learned in the languages, the literature, and the thought of Greece and Rome, keenest of art critics, past master in diplomacy and statesmanship, who could turn from philosophy or politics to write jewel lyrics, songs that flashed through all Tuscany and were sung in the streets of the city — this supreme man of the world could rightly enough value Savonarola. He was a judge of men, and he knew that the friar was a leader of men. But the great reformer, narrow as he was zealous, looked bitterly upon Lorenzo as a very incarnation of the The Florence of the Medici 129 worldly spirit against which he had declared war. The love of earthly beauty, the delight in philosophy and poetry, all the great enthusiasms and achievements which were to make the age of Lorenzo an age never to be for- gotten, were as nothing to this prophet who cried his somber warning of wrath to come in spite of poet or painter, philosopher or ruler. After Lorenzo died the words of Savonarola began to tell, and for a time he was supreme, as the representative and voice of Jesus Christ, sole ruler of Florence. But he could not hold back the tide alone. He had declared war on the Renais- sance in all its glory, — the Renaissance of Greek license and paganism as of Greek ideals of beauty and of thought, the idealization of the foul and the earthly as well as of the divine in humanity and in God's world — and with its sad evils and its mighty good the genius of the time was too strong for him. His brief power vanished. The wrath of the wicked whom he had tried to crush conquered and slew him. He had refused to identify himself with what was good in the Renaissance, and trying to stand alone, he perished. There is little basis for a parallel between Savonarola and Socrates. And yet this much is true, that each stood valiantly for righteousness, each won for a time respect, and even reverence, each refused to com- promise with evil, and each was put to death by his city. And this also, the warning of each, unheeded, was remem- bered when destruction fell, and when bitter repentance came too late to Florence as to Athens. But what of the side of Lorenzo's Florence that Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola stood for? There has surely been a notable lack in your thinking about the Renaissance so far when you have neglected the revival IJO Italian Cities of learning. It seems to you when you come to think of it, that long ago in your school-days you were taught that "Renaissance" and "Revival of Learning" were almost interchangeable terms, and yet here you have been dis- cussing the Renaissance in many pages with barely a men- tion of this wave of new enthusiasm for things Greek and Roman. Well, in so far as this implies neglect, you have erred indeed. The revival of antique culture meant as much to the world, doubtless, as did the arr of Giotto and Botticelli and Leonardo, and if you had been planning a systematic treatise you would have said so before this. To see the real beginning of this conscious revival of the spirit, the thought, the literature of antiquity, you must go back to Petrarch,' the first lyric poet of Italy, and the father of humanism. We do not easily understand now this latter phrase, father of humanism, but it means a great deal. It means just that Petrarch was the leader in the bringing back of classical culture to the knowledge and interest of men. It must be remembered that culture, the breadth of mind and the exactness, the elasticity, the comprehensiveness of thought that only comes from much reading of good literature and the patient digestion thereof, could only then be had through the Greeks and Romans. We of these later days do not absolutely need any lan- guage but our own. We may read for a lifetime and read great things and still not exhaust what is worth while in our own language. But it was not so in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Until Dante wrote 'See Robinsons •• Petrarch," easily the best book in English on the poet- scholar Petrarch s lather was a Jriend of Dante, and they were banished Irotn Horcnce in the same year, 1.^02. Francis Petrarca-or Petracco if you wish to use his father s exact name-was born two years later, in exile at Arezzo. He always counted himself a Florentine, though he lived litt'e' in Florence. ° z'lWfimmts'Jtta' . imk The Florence of the Medici »3> there was no vernacular literature whatever. Until Boccaccio wrote there was no such thing as good Italian prose. There was nothing that could possibly take the place of Homer and the Attic dramatists, of Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. Yet these had drifted out of the ken of Europe many generations before. Greek had vanished utterly, and if Latin remained, the appreciation of the spirit of Cicero and Virgil was quite gone. The few who read the Roman poets were constantly suspecting alle- gories and symbolism, or gravely accepting the narrative of the adventures of ^neas as a chronicle of historic facts. The old free, broad gaze at the world, the pleas- ure in bright fancy and in the music of rich verse, the desire to enjoy this life for its own sake, the immense interest in human nature, in its complexity, its power, its unfathomed possibilities,— all of these which were second nature to the cultured Roman of the first or second cen- tury of our era, were foreign and unknown to the Christian thinker of the thirteenth. The medieval mind busied itself rather with logic and rhetoric, and wove for itself great networks of metaphysics and theology. So that it is because Petrarch definitely and powerfully stood out against all this that he is called the father of humanism. He did not condemn the favorite medieval mental exercise oflogic. "Far from it .... I know that it is one of the liberal studies, a ladder for those who are striving upwards, and by no means a useless protection to those who are forcing their way through the thorny thickets of philosophy But because a road is proper for us to traverse, it does not immediately follow that we should linger on it forever. No traveler, unless he be mad, will forget his destination on account of the pleasures of the 132 Italian Cities ill way; his characteristic virtue lies, on the contrary, in reaching his goal as soon as possible Dialectics may form a portion of our road, but certainly not its end; it belongs to the morning of life, not to its evening." You may equally see Petrarch's capacity for putting aside cobwebs and getting at the heart of things in such a com- ment as this on the philosopher who dominated — almost enslaved — the minds of later medieval thinkers: "I believe that Aristotle was a great man and that he knew much; yet he was but a man, and therefore something, nay many things, may have escaped him And although he has said much of happiness both at the beginning and the end of his 'Ethics, ' I dare assert that he was so completely ignorant of true happiness that the opinions upon this matter of any pious old woman, or devout fisherman, shepherd, or fanner, would, if not so fine spun, be more to the point than his." Join, then, this new critical power, this clear-eyed grip on essentials, to an unaffected pleas- ure in literary beauty, a joy in poetry for its own sake, and one may a little understand how great a gift of fresh- ness, ol naturalness, of directness Petrarch gave to his time. And he accompanied this revival of the old Greek and Roman point of view regarding culture by earnest, lifelong efforts to rescue from hidden comers the ne- glected, dust-covered manuscripts of the old civilizations. So he not only brought to view the old mastr pieces again, but he taught people how to read them. This work of Petrarch's was nobly followed up by his friends and disciples. He himself had never been able to find a teacher of Greek He only knew Homer in a bad Latin translation. But soon the tongue of Sophocles and Plato began to be studied and rapidly mastered, as scholars The Florence of the Medici ^33 from Constantinople found it worth their while to come to Venice and Florence. The coming of Manuel Chrys- oloras, a Byzantine Greek and one of the foremost Hellenists of his age, to fill the chair of Greek in the University of Florence in 1396 was the beginning of a new era, and the patronage of men like Palla degli Strozzi, Cosimo de' Medici, and Pope Nicholas V., secured the future of Greek scholarship. Libraries were founded and steadily added to. Eager students came from all parts of Europe to study under Chrysoloras and his successors. And by the time of Lorenzo's young manhood the Greek literature, the Greek attitude to life, were as familiar to Italian scholars as they are to the scholars of to-day. Plato and Homer were living realities to them. To Poliziano and to Pico, the two greatest scholars of their time, Greek was as familiar as Latin had been to Petrarch, and it seems natural, too, that with the little group of brilliant companions that constituted the nucleus of Lorenzo's court, Plato should be the prime favorite. To them Aristotle's teacher, with his great vein of poetry, his vivid imagination, his love of roaming at large through all the world of human thought and action, was greater than Aristotle himself with his systematic treatises, his more formal and final doctrines. The Platonic academy in which Lorenzo and Poliziano and the noble and well-loved lord of Mirandola studied and dreamed and crossed swords in keen dialectic repre- sented, doubtless, the highest point of the intellectual Renaissance. But whether one looks at the painting, the poetry, the scholarship, the sculpture, the architecture, or the phi- losophy of that wonderful age, it is after all the same spirit I- 'J4 Italian Cities ^ i^\ in all that fascinates and will ever fascinate while the world stands. It was one of the ages in which the race seems to renew its youth. Even the supreme art of the gener- ation that followed, the art of the sixteenth-century masters, cannot quite thrill with the glow or delight with the charm that Filippo Lippi and Botticelli give us. Supreme mastery of technique and majesty of vision may compel our worship, and yet one may still turn from them to this age of enthusiasm, this age of immortal youth. The early sixteenth-century scholars surpassed Poliziano and Pico in textual criticism and in defined purism of style; they never approached the friends of Lorenzo in real genius and power, and as to their chief, the central figure of this golden age of Florence, — well, you are con- tent to view him as neither a philanthropist nor the tyran- nical destroyer of his city's liberties. You are inclined to condemn Lorenzo little more than you condemn Cxsar. It seems an ungracious thing, somehow, to pass harsh sentence against a man of his type, so lovable, so open- mmJ^d, and so great. So you put aside accusing voices, even tl e stern thunder-note of Savonarola, and salute the JFlorentine banker-prince and poet-scholar across the cen- turies with something of affection. Even Italy produced few men like him. In a cool, very quiet little chapel in the heart of Florence, not five minutes* walk from the old palace of the Medici, all that is mortal of him still lies in its stone coffin, brooded over by a beautiful, unfinished Madonna by Michelangelo, "After life's fitful fever he sleeps well." Others of his name came after him, and in time they made themselves Grand Dukes of Tuscany, but the full bloom, the exuberance, the freedom, and half- unconscious power of the Renaissance was over. There ; < The Florence of the Medici »J5 never really was found a successor to the keen mind, the broad scholarship, the clear-sighted statesmanship, the catholic taste, the kindly care for artists and poets, the joyous contact with the whole spiritual blossoming of his marvelous time, of Lorenzo the Magnificent. 11 :'■ • ff ll CHAPTER VIII RENAISSA \CE ROME Not long ago you walked about the Forum and the Palatine and meditated on the splendors of ancient Rome. You stand now in the Piazza of St. Peter's with the mes- sage of Renaissance Rome everywhere about you. And you are conscious of a long gap between the two. You have had glimpses into the Middle Ages as you studied Assisi, Genoa, or Florence, but what of Rome all this time! Indeed, there seem to be many centuries un- accounted for as far as all Italy ,^ concerned. It cannot be helped here, perhaps, but truth to tell, you are inclined to suspect that to a wocf.illy large majority Europe — except for the barbarian invasions, the Crusades, and the towering figure of Charlemagne is practically non-exist- ent from the days of Julius Caesar to the thirteenth cen- tury. And this is especially true of Italy. University students to whom Pericles and Cicero are familiar friends, are content to leap in their survey of the past from the reign of Augustus— not to the Renaissance, but to the later Middle Ages — from the end of the Roman republic to the age of Innocent III. Students of literature pass in their reading and thinking from Virgil and Horace, or at latest Tacitus and Juvenal and Pliny, to Dante and Petrarch. And only those who are specifically interested ■n the history of the Christian Church know anything real or vital about those ages during which the civilization of Rome was subtly passing on its heritage to the Teuton 136 Renaissance Rome <37 settlers and conquerors, the ages that saw the passing of the classical ideals and their displacement by the half- Christian and half-pagan civilization that one sees fully formed in the thirteenth century. •■ Every one knows the names, if that were all, of Marcus Aurelius, of St. Augus- tine, of St. Benedict, of Gregory the Great, of the vener- able Bede. But of the ideals and .' . ubles and temptations and ways of thinking that made up the spiritual life of these men, of the enormous influence and character of the early and medieval Church, of the incidents and conflicts and human needs connected with the rise of the papal power up to the time of Innocent III., few but specialists care. Yet this is by no means good. It is true that in those centuries there was much confusion and darkness, but out of this chaos great things came; in its midst toiled a chosen remnant of strong men; and it possible to urderstand the fruit of *' . of these men, i e thought and deeds s century giants — Innocent III., Francis, L , Aquinas, D. nte — without a sympathetic the ages that went before. You are Y think that the very use of the term "Middle Ages" is a pity. Even the idea with which you were inclined in Assisi to be satisfied, that the Middle Ages were pecu- liarly a time of education, is only suggestive, not entirely adequate. Your soul rebels a little at the con- clusion that those centuries had no value in themselves, that they really need an apology, or that they can only be is never quite ichievements fn ' 'hirteenth i!f\iC, r-^omas y Tcdafi jn of ■'. i.ied to ' This defect may be lafc,'e of tfie Middle Agt n a measure rectified by Taylor's "Classical Heri- Lecky's " History of European Morals," avoiding, perhaps, the philosophical hrst chapter, and Gibl)on"s "Decline and Fall liur'v o ctiKiun ul (jibbuii iix9 broUKhi iiial iiidrvelous and ever-uew date in point of scholarship. I work up to -• ^ 138 Italian Cities deemed fruitful in the light of the Renaissance. Boethius, Boniface, Alfred the Great, and Abelard were as great in their way as the poets and painters of the fifteenth century. Every century, surely, from Augustine to Charle- magne and on to Dante and on still to Lorenzo and Michelangelo, has its own greatness and its own problems, its own place in the slow, steady stream of European development. The fact that for some centuries there was lost the sense of literary style, of artis^ beauty and reality, of serene breadth and depth of philosophic vision, makes us call those centuries the Dark Ages, and ignore them or call them transitional. We forget that an age may produce no cltt osic literature, no great art, and no supreme master of philosophy, and yet may contain great thinkers, soldiers, and statesmen. Their problems were not those of fifth- century Athens or Renaissance Florence. They did not demand for their solution a Pericles, a Sophocles, a Lorenzo, or a Botticelli. Rather did the age demand iron wills, ideals true at bottom rather than refined and pain- fully thought out, purposes sincere and stem, religion childlike, crude, and material in its reality, direct and unquestioning rather than balanced and analytic. It is natural, perhaps, that we should judge an age by its liter- ary or artistic fruit. Yet such a standard is painfully inadequate. Certainly no Virgil or Dante was produced in the eighth century or the eleventh. The philosophy of the "Dark Ages" was barren— the theology fanciful and metaphysical. Yet when we speak of the intellectual stagnation and superstition of the time we ignore the statesmen and soldiers who laid the basis of the new Europe, the lawyers who revived the heritage of Roman SI Renaissance Rome «39 jurisprudence, the popes who made possible the Rome of Hildebrand, of Innocent III., and of Julius II. Even to think about these things— to realize that the gap in oiir knowledge between the beginning of the Roman Empire and the fully formed systems and ideas of the thirteenth century, is a gap in our minds rather than in the nature of things— is worth while. You cannot fill the gap, but it is something to see it. In some shadowy way you see those ages no longer as a time only of misery, darkness, and stagnation. Each century you see thronged with stern knights, wise statesmen, earnest saints, great kings, and mighty pontiffs. And never for a moment does Italy give up the sceptre. Her temporal power passes from her indeed— only to prove that the race which produced Rome could still rule the world in spirit and intellect after her legions had been conquered. The suc- cessors of Caesar and Constantine were the Bishops of Rome. And through the long period of torture, when Italy lay mangled and torn apart by aliens and by her own sons, her mighty genius continued to produce scholars, saints, and leaders of men in the calm, inexhaustible fruit- fulness of a race that refused to die. The salvation and union of Italy was not yet to be. But Rome was still the Eternal City, and Italy still, in some measure, led the world. Ani -ic-.f, meditating deeply even if confusedly, about the past ; aie Church, and the amazing history of these •i ritual .ulers who date their beginning from the impetu- ous Galilean fisherman, you enter St. Peter's and look about you. Just to your right is a chapel containing a lovely "Pieta," the Madonna holding in teariess sorrow the dead body of her Son, carved over four hundred years * 140 Italian Cities M ago by Michelangelo.' It is not what you would have expected from the ''terrible" master, this lovely, pitiful figure, so quiet and resigned in supremest grief. You know it is not like his other work, and you lean now against a pillar and let your thoughts drift back over the centuries to the time when the earnest young Florentine in Rome saw these forms of beauty in a block of marble and wrought the 1 into shape. It was Lorenzo who saw the promise of great things in the boy, and gave him an opportunity to learn his art from the best masters and the best models in Italy. In the schools of Florence, the gardens of San Marco, and the palace of Lorenzo, Michelangelo spent the happiest years of his life, in contact with the best minds of his time. The sterner, serious side of his nature, which could never have been far from the surface, was awakened and deepened by the preaching of Savona/ola. But the mighty friar was unable to wean him from the patron who had made the artistic life possible to him, and he remained true to Lorenzo until his ^eat patron's death, in 1492. Times began to change then. There was always work to be done, and there were still things to be learned, but Florence was no longer the ideal home for the artist that it had been. So Michelangelo, after some restless jour- neys, drifted to Rome, and it was there after he had worked for a time quite exclusively on antique subjects, that he was recalled from pagan to Christian ideals of beauty and strength by the news of Savonarola's death. The tragic end of the great reformer moved deeply the 'The standard lives of Michclangeio are those oi Grimm and Symonds. Much interestiriK and truitful comment on his work will be (ound in Freeman's "Italian '^culjituie ol the Renaissance," and in Heronson's 'Florentine Pamters," and two admirable numbers of the Masters in Art magazine are devoted to him as sculptor and paintvf. Renaissance Rome 141 soul of the young artist who had once listened so earnestly to the Dominican's solemn warnings of the wrath to come. And the artistic expression of this return of softness, of pitiful sympathy, of sorrow for the death of Christ and the woes of humanity, was the "Pieta." You are astonished to find how little else there is in St. Peter's that especially appeals to you. No one of English race can look quite unmoved, indeed, at the monument to the exiled princes of the House of Stuart, with Canova's beautiful figures at its base; the inscrip- tion to James III. has an odd look, but there is enough charm of romance attached to the memories of that ill- starred family to make even an ardent believer in the Revolution unwilling to protest against the empty title. Strange surely, to have memories of Bonnie Prince Charlie brought to one in St. Peter's! Then in the sacristy, to come back to things Italian, there are a few interesting small pictures by Giotto, with the same general characteristics that you have noted in his work at Assisi and Florence. And with them are the lovely angels of Melozzo da Forli. But in the church itself you find chiefly vast space, second-rate carving, and great pictures or mosaics that you turn away from with indifference. Altogether you are an ^ idity, incomprehensible and un- profitable to the voluble guides who expatiate about the splendors of the church to the Cook tourists. And you are content to remain so. You stroll meditatively about, ponder over the decent sense of propriety that clothed in metal drapery the nude statues in the choir, gaze with much grave reflection at the old bronze statue of St. Peter witii its shining stump of a toe worn away with ages of kissing, shiver a little at the coldness and hugeness of the 142 Italian Cities Sistme Chapel. As you turn away from the strange 1 statue ,f he Apostle, an earnest-faced mother w' h pathetic devotion m her eyes lifts her wee boy to kiss the bnght spot on the bronze foot. The act is a praye att. all, and you have a feeling that the God of St Peter wil hear it and answer. "' gail^coltd s' '"'"" . ""^^ '"^ ^^^ "^ht door, pass the gaily colored Swiss juard. climb the long stairs, and in a moment find yourself inside the doors of The famous room Right before you. covering with one huge frescoed design he whole end wall of the hall, is Michelangelo's "Z Judgn^ent.- Above you. stretching from end'to end of th neglect for the moment, mteresting as they are. It is not often, truly, that you would turn away from Bottic „ and Prntuncchio. but here Michelangelo dominat^"^ an' aTleaTt Tbe" '"'' ''' '''''' ^'" '''"''' '" ^^^ ^'isti at least to be supreme. Flat on the Qoor you stretch yourself scorning the conventions, with your head on a couple of books, and gaze upward at the fi^s that seem to^mo^ve and strain and radiate strength anf energ3. on tl^ acts'lTcZ-""".?'' '"'^'^P' -presenting the various acts of Creation attract you more than those at the other end representing rhe scenes in the Garden and the inci- dent, of the Deluge. The expulsion of the guilty paL from Eden ,s impressive, surely, but you cafno he o remembenng Masaccio', rendering of J same s b e.t L yuercia » m the great fountain at Siena, and you are not < ■:: -I o -5 O ac I ■ i ; 1 1.A . m. :^-. Renaissance Konic '4J sure that Michelangelo has added anything to your con- ception of the dignity and grief of Adam and Eve, the horror and completeness of their fall. But the Creation of the Sun and Moon, the Creation of Adam— these pro- voke no comparison whatever. The tremendous life- giving form of the Creator— the listless, perfectly molded figure of the first man as the finger of the Almighty touches him and awakens him to the first drawing of breath and the first wondering look at the world— these Michelangelo makes real to you, fills with incomparable vitality. And the Prophets and Sibyls, too, Jewish and Gentile foretellers of the Christ — every one of them worth studying, and some, like the Jeremiah and Zachariah, quite unforgettable. As your eye rests on these colossal figures, and drifts from them to the nude forms in every posture that flank the main groups, you increasingly realize the truth of the saying, that in his grip of the significance of the human form and his power of rendering that sig- nificance in every phase, Michelangelo is quite supreme. His power seems to show itself in the form rather than in the face, and, as all the world knows, in strength, strain, and stress rather than in repose, meditation, and tenderness. But exceptions to such a statement occur to you at once ; it is only true as a very general comment. And as you scan form after form you are more and more lost in astonishment at the restlessness and many-sided power of that swift hand that turned from the portrayal of the brooding Jeremiah, thinking deeply, with head resting on hi? hand, to the Creator of the Sun and Moon, .adiating swift movement and vibrant with force— then to the superb long curves of a resting youth, then to the hawk- eyed, eager old Ezekiel, then to another nude youth, - rt, tcra z-j 144 Italian Cities straining with supple muscles, his black eyes darting rest- less impatience, and his long raven hair blowing out straight in the wind. And all this was done by the hand that carved the "Pieta"! Simply to believe that a sculptor painted such a figure as that of Adam is not so impossible. But the repose of the "Pieta," its quietness and soft beauty, seems singularly remote from the restlessness, the force, of the figures—divine and human — on the ceiling here. An interval of about ten years « separates the tw i works. With Michelangelo, as with few other Italian artists, the personal equation is a very potent one, and a glance at ♦he ten years clears up all of the mystery except the unfathomable mystery of genius. After producing the "Pieta" he had drifted back to Florence. There he carved for the republic the colossal "David," Florence facing her foes, and then while he was preparing to do yet greater 'hings for his city, he received his momentous summons to Rome at the end of 1 504. The warlike Giuliano della Rovere had become Pope Julius II. The "Pieta" and the "David" had made Michelangelo the most famous sculptor in Italy, and now he was given a commission by the new pope to make a mausoleum more splendid than any in the world. Michelangelo accepted the task with enthusiasm, and submitted a plan magnifi- cent enough even for the ambitious pontiff. The Church of St. Peter, vast and old and crowded with sacred tra- ditions, was not large enough for the great tomb, so a new St. Peter's — the present one — was begun to contain it. Months were now spent in the quarries of Carrara. ' Michelangelo was born in m75- The Pieta was finished probably some time ID UV^ "iue Sistine ceiling was commenced in the spring ot 1509- . ^ . ,!.>.■ «-. TBf^ Renaissance Rome H5 All the marble needed for the tomb was hewn out under the sculptor's own eye, and the toil and anxiety of the whole tedious process of getting it safely from northern Tuscany to Rome was repaid only by the greatness of the reward to come, in congenial labor and in sure and abiding fame. But the splendid plan was never carried out. The enthusiasm of the pope cooled; it became harder and harder to get the money needed; and at last Michelangelo, hindered and interrupted until his spirit was chafed beyond endurance, abruptly left Rome and went to Florence. Such independence was by no means to the taste of the haughty Julius, but it took command after command to bring the equally haughty sculptor to terms of reconcili- ation. When they finally met and renewed their friend- ship at Bologna it was on a basis that injured the self-respect of neither. But if Michelangelo's pride was soothed he was given little satisfaction in regard to the great tomb. For two years pope and sculptor busied themselves with other matters, and when at length Michel- angelo found himself once more in Rome in the spring of 1508, eager to renew the work which had never left his mind, he was only given a new commission, the decoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He did not want to do it. He would infinitely have preferred to work away at the tomb which he had designed three years before, and for which he had already blocked out his "Moses." But the pope's will prevailed. With a sadder, sterner, angrier heart than of old, the painter-sculptor worked sullenly on alone on the high scaffolding, painting with a turious energy that left liltle time for eating or sleeping. It must ha-, c been a sight worth seeing— the stubborn, i; If 146 Italian Cities proud painter deigning little attention to the fiery, pur^ poseful old pope who employed him. until Julius threatened to throw down scaffold and paintor togoth r if the ceiling were not shown him. Then Michelangelo yielded, and bade the workmen remove the timbers and show to the wondering priests and people the half-fin.shcd work. As soon as he could he resumed the task with tireless energy, and when it was completed he turned eagerly again to his chisel and marble. In the year 1513. Pope M""^ '^'^^' ^"'^ ^^" ^'' Giovanni de' Medici, son of Lorenzo, reigned in his stead And you rise from the stone floor of the Sistine an^ find your way to the rooms decorated for this courtly Floren- tine man of the world, by Raphael. The fiery soul of the warlike Julius had found something kindred in the mighty, self-willed genius of Michelangelo. He was content to toil away at his projects of diplomacy and war while the artist drew from the marble or threw on the plaster great shapes whose immortal force inspired and exhilarated h.m. But the son of Lorenzo was less fond of the forceful, the colossal, the spiritually disturbing, aud to him the graceful genius of Raphael was .nrinitely more attractive than the uncontrollable might of Michelangelo. We need not think the less of him for that. After all. the art of Michel- angelo even now. as a rule, excites awe and amazed admiration rather than love; it exhilarates far more than it attracts: it is wonderful rather than purely beautiful. And we need not marvel pX any one turning from him to the painter whose instinct for Un-eliness. whose radiant love of all things beautiful, tender, and good have made the name r.f Raphael-to quote a great critic -the most famous and beloved in modern art. 1 m MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No 2) 1.0 I.I 1.25 ;f iiiiiM i" IIIIIM I: 1^ t 1^ 1.4 1 2.5 2.2 2£ 1.8 1.6 M APPLIED IM/^GE Inc ^^ 1653 EasI Main Street r.S Rochester, Ne« York 14609 u5A J= (7! 6) ".82 - 300 - Plione :^ (716) 288 - "jSSg - Fo« Wl MADONNA OF THE CHAIR Kapliacl. I'itti Palate, Fl'iriiuc ^1! Renaissance Rome H7 Raphael was a citizen of Urbino.' His chief early teacher was Perugino, who as his name implies, was a citizen of Perugia. Both cities are comparatively small Umbrian towns, of some note and power at times, but without at all the rank and greatness of Florence, Venice, Rome, or even Siena. And as you ponder over these things, you see why these painters whose places of birth and study were the smaller towns of central Italy ' were more cosmopolitan, less characterized by the hall-mark of any one school— in one sense at any rate— than any of the other great artists of the Renaissance. The Florentines are deeply spiritual; the Venetians are lovers of the splen- did; the Central Italians, not dominated by the masterful spirit of republican, ideal-loving Florence, or rich, beauty- loving Venice, could learn of both. And so Coreggio, Perugino, Pinturicchio, Melozzo da Forli, Raphael, and others in a greater or less degree, accordi .j to the influ- ence of a great master, the neighborhood of a great city, or the impulses of indiv'dual genius, develop beauty and sweetness surpassing Florence, tenderness and spirituality known to few of the Venetians, and a sense of space and landscape -a refreshing spaciousness in their composition —which is quite their own. One might easily suppose, then, that if these painters of soft, lovely faces and forms, devout, tender Madonnas, spacious, gaily colored pageants, and romantic fairyland backgrounds developed among them a really pre-eminent genius he might possibly be supreme, greater even than the painters of Florence and Venice. Such, perhaps, though the superlative in such matters is alwa> j unsafe, was Raphael. So as you stand before the "School of Athens" you ' See Berenson's " Central Italian Painters j( the Renaissance." 148 Italian Cities {*; \m really cannot remomber any painting you have ever seen so entirely beyond criticism, so absolutely worthy of study in every detail. The stately, gracious forms of Aristotle and Plato and the throng of soldiers, thinkers, and poets grouped about them in this lordly hall — these surely give us humanity at its best. Every foot of the fresco we should wish to remember as we wish to keep in our minds the harmonies of Handel and Wagner, the lines of Shakes- peare. And it is so with all of these frescoes.* It may be that other paintings will give you more intimate pleas- ure, for that is a matter of temperament and training, just as som- ake more pleasure from Wordsworth and Keats than from Browning. Your own greatest joy may be in the fifteenth-century Florentines or the earlier Venetians. But even so you would never dream of saying that the work of Filippino Lippi or Carpaccio is as great as this. Their work is very lovely, and you get from it the joy of innocent, care-free existence, of simple devotion, of with- drawal from the bustling, material side of life. But it is as if you were to compare Scott's romantic novels with the plays of Shakespeare— "The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens" with "The Tempest." The thing is impossible, of course, but it is quite a sufficiently accurate parallel. Your affection for Scott or for the old ballads may be actually more keen and intimate than for Shakespeare: your responsiveness to Carpaccio more quick and delight- some than to Rap'iael. But if you put aside for the time being your personal temperament, you feel in spite of yourself, as you stand before "The School of Athens," a certain commanding strength and sureness, a hold on the • Students are especially advised to consider the "School of Athens," the "Disputa, " the " Incendio del Borgo, " and the " Farnassus." Renaissance Rome 149 great things of life, a large and joyous view of the world of truth and beauty in all its phases which reminds you of Shakespeare himself. You do not love Carpaccio, Bellini, and the Florentines the less —they show you a phase of life to which you turn with ever-fresh fascination— but Raphael is on a higher, grander plane nevertheless, and breathes that rarer air which, in Italian painting at any rate, is only shared by Giotto, Leonardo. Michelangelo, and perhaps Titian and Tintoretto. And you are not sure that he does not overtop them all. If it so happens that you were trained a strict Protestant —a fact which is scarcely an aid to your sympathetic understanding of Italian art— it is somewhat a shock to you to realize the new attitude you insensibly assume towards Pope Leo X. He was the pope who excommuni- cated Luther,— very antich-ist to the first Protestants. Yet as you remember Raphael's portrait of him in Florence, and think of him now here in the Vatican, his image does not come to you as that of a devil. His face as Raphael gives it to you is that of a pleasant, well-informed man who enjoyed life to the full, whose mind and tastes were cultivated and refined, and whose heart was quite worldly and probably selfish. He was indeed an inter- esting type of these closing days of Italy's golden age. He had known Florence in her most brilliant years. His teacher, Poliziano, had been the greatest scholar in Europe, a lyric poet of the first rank, and the closest friend of Lorenzo. The group of men who had given him his boyish ideals had been philosophers, poets, dreamers, painters, to whom in the main Plato was far more inter- esting than St. Paul. They had not been bad men, and they left the world much that was good. Only they and \ 150 Italian Cities their young pupil, this Giovanni de* Medici, made cardi- nal at fourteen, and elected pope in 1 5 13, not as the saintliest of the candidates, but as the cleverest and best- liked, were practically pagans. While you are studying Raphael, indeed, you look at his master and 1 end with much tolerance. You feel that you would have much enjoyed a conversation with Pope Leo yourself— possibly more than with so stern a saint as Gregory VII., who could not nearly so well have entered into a mooi-.n stu- dent's point of view. But you must remember that Luther had not and could not have your twentieth-cen- tury willingness to take a man as you find him. You do not seek in Leo, you say, an Augustine or Hildebrand, but a son of Lorenzo and a friend of Raphael. Quite so, \ but Luther's demand was that the head of the Church { should represent in life and word the spirit of the Church's Founder. Leo's worldliness, his love of pagan culture, and his utter indifferenc3 to the kingdom of Heaven were to the German's intensely moral and religious nature an abomination. And we have to take both views if we would understand how this splendid edifice of Renaissance culture— so marvelous in its beauty that the world will never let its memory fade— rested on so frail a base of righteousness and soundness of heart that it tottered and fell at the very summit of its glory. For it came to pass in the year 1527 when another Medicean pope, Clement VII., held the throne of St, Peter, that an army of Germans and Spaniards fell upon Rome at the bidding of the young Emperor Charles V., and when the sack was over, there was left only the ashes of the city's greatness : Of the group of scholars and artists who had known and worked with Raphrei and E Renaissance Rome iri Michelangelo, and who had seen the new St. Peter's begun by Bramante, some were killed, some imprisoned, some worn out by cruel treatment and privation, some driven mad by the destruction of all they valued, and some sent naked into exile. The Rome of Julius II. and Leo X. had fallen indeed. But one of the great group survived the sack of Rome and the final enslavement of Florence a few years later. To Michelangelo work was as ever a spirtual necessity, but the restless, fiery genius that demanded outlet through his brush and chisel had to bow to men of the race that had destroyed his city and country. The tyrants who spared his life demanded work from him. Terrible was his response. The tombs in the Medici Chapel, the fresco of the "Last Judgment" in the Sistine,— these are the great artist's mighty protest, his passion^ite condemnation of the generation that was enslaving Italy and tearing her to pieces. As you stand before that tremendous creation on the end wall of the Chapel, you no longer turn away in astonished revolt from the terrible figure of Christ, huge and threatening, raising one arm with wrathfully swelling muscles, looking down with hard merciless gaze at the writhing forms that sh nk away from him and fall shud- dering towards the abyss. So might we, had we the power, paint the condemnation of those who destroyed our liberties, killed and tormented the learned, the good the patriotic, fillej our land with misery and mourning' and blotted out all that we held precious. Michelangelo was bidden to paint the last judgment. He did it as in his soul he saw it. And age after age that dread figure with uplifted arm, those whirling forms driven in unspeak- able horror from the presence of the Lord, have stood as 152 Italian Cities 11 a menace and a revelation, silent and yet ever moving and straining on the painted wall. At the other end of Rome, in a small church not far from the Colosseum, you may see the great statue that was to have been part of the never-finished tomb of Julius II.— the "Moses" over which Michelangelo worked and pondered and chafed for thirty years. It is his r 'ter- piece. If you stand in front of the seated pro: you catch a passionate gleam in his eye, a blaze of v,.aih that makes you think he is about to leap to his feet and level blasting curses at the apostate Israelites who turn from Jehovah to the golden calf. It is something of the spirit of the "Last Judgment" fresco. But if you stand to one side, out of the direct range of the marble eyes, the face is strong and patient. The wrath you feel will die away. The sin will be condemned and the sinners punished, but the people will repent and be pardoned, and the leader will at last guide his people to the promised land. Per- haps it is the sculptor's final message. Relentless judg- ment for the guilty, but hope, infinite need of patience, and then perhaps after weary years freedom again, and for the Italians, too, a promised land. m. and far that ilius and iter- you that level Tom pirit one face way. but ader Per- udg- ince, and CHAPTER IX VENICE To Venice you come, at last, and come, r ot as the thoughtless tourist, ignominiously by train to the city's back door, but across the lagoon as her sailors and guests used to come in the days of her pride. The Giudecca is on your ri-ht, S. Giorgio is befcre you, the great dome of S. Maria della Salute to your left, and as you pass the custom-house you look beyond it up the wide sweep of the Grand Canal. Right before you are the two great columns, the portico of the republic, and the Palace of the Doges itself with the tops of St. Marks' domes peep- mg over it. And then in a moment you land within a stone's throw of that lovely building, "most dignified and most fair," which holds so many bright and terrible memories behind '.s rcreen of rosy marble. You remember the h r , . gray pile of the Palazzo Vecchio of Flor .1 , rou walk beneath the graceful arcades of this p.ibL. palace of Venice. Florence, with all her fierce republicanism, her alternate fervor of reli- gion and frenzy of debauchery, her exile of patriots, and her defiance of tyrants, you have learned to love for her humanity. To Rome in the majesty of her power and the majesty of her desolation you have bowed down. And now, what of this Sea-queen, this builder of fairy palaces, this city of sunny smile and swift, terrible justice, of the jeweled church, and the quiet, dark, ugly dungeons-this Venice? »53 *Yrt-,: It •54 Italian Cities In the evil times, when the arm of Rome had become powerless to hold back the hordes of barbarians, and when Goths, Vandals, Franks, and Saxons swept in fierce bands across the frontier into the rich provinces of Europe, there came also a whirlwind of savages who were not Teutons — Asiatic nomads, called by the terrified provin- cials the Huns. Checked by a defeat in northern France, this deluge — led by Attila, scourge of God — penetrated the Alps and poured down into Italy. Old and wealthy cities were sacked or utterly destroyed, and many of the survivors among the citizens and the country folk, seeking in this collapse of their world some safe place of retreat, came to the shores of the \driatic. Here the rivers bringing down from the hills, mud, and debris, had formed a great shallow lagoon, protected from the full fury of the sea by long sand-bars or lidi, and dotted with low islands. Here then the refugees found safety. The very shallowness of the lagoon made it dangerous for all who did not, by cautious observation and long practice, know its intricate deeper channels. And the new settlers learned soon from Constantinople the art of building a peculiar but most graceful boat of light draught, clumsy and unmanageable in unpracticed hands, but a thing instinct with beauty and swift life 'vhen propelled by the skilled arm of the Venetian gondolier. So in thankfulness and hope the new settlers made the best of their islands, fished and traded for a living, found that this aquatic position gave them peculiar advantages for the coast traffic, and soo awoke to the fact that in wealth and commercial gre^.ness they might become the natural heirs of the storm-swept cities that had once been their homes. In 697 they drew together and elected a doge, Venice '55 who made the settlement of Heraclea his headquarters. The seat of government was soon shiftcrl to Malamocco, and then after an attack from Charlemagne's son had shown the danger of so exposed a site, the doge's resi- (lence was finally fixed ;t Rivo Alto. There it remained, and there arose in increasing splendor and growing beauty the city which has taken to itself the old name of the whole region. Venetia, the Romans called it; Venezia the Italians call it; to us of the English race it is Venice. Bit by bit the new city gained the chief place among the trading centers of northeastern Italy. Half on sea and half on land, with the Po and the Adige reaching up into the interior, with the most used passes of the eastern Alps within easy reach, and with a peace, a tradition of stability and security that no other city in Italy possessed, Venice had immense advantages of position that her citi- zen used to the full. She had kept up her communica- tion, too, with the imperial city of Constantinople. For some centuries, indeed, she was even in nominal subjec- tion to the emperor. And with the control of the Adriatic which came to her in due time, the trade to the Bosphorus and the Levant easily passed into the hands of the Vene- tian merchants. Her ships, like those of her rival Genoa, carried the Crusaders to Syria, bringing back rich cargoes and much world-wisdom. Holding proudly and scorn- fully aloof from torn and struggling Italy,— far more interested in the carrying trade of the Adriatic and the East than in anything the land could give her, except con- signments of merchandise,— holding out one hand to the East and the other, not to Italy particu.arly, but to all Europe, and especially the countries north of the Alps, Venice developed, as the centuries passed by, a separate 156 Italian Cities individuality, a separate civic character, as different from that of Florence, let us say, as Rome from Athens. Indeed, as you see the liberal-limited monarchy of the earlier centuries, almost a democracy under a freely elected doge, gradually give place to the rule of the merchant princes; as you see these harden into a wealthy and ex- clusive class, so that the people on the one hand, and the doge on the other, find themselves more and more power- less, their hands more and more firmly tied; as you see Venice thus becoming an oligarchy, the analogy with Rome becomes more and more stri)'ing. And "though the asso- ciations and the scale of the two were so different, though Rome had its hills and its legions, and Venice its lagoons and its galleys, the long empire of Venice, the heir of Carthage, and predecessor of England on the seas, the great aristocratic republic of a thousand years, is the only empire that has yet matched Rome in length and steadi- ness of tenure. Brennus and Hannibal were not resisted with greater constancy than Doria and Louis XIII. ; and that great aristocracy, Iotio: so proud, so high-spirited, so intelligent, so practical, which combined the enterprise and wealth of merchants, the self-devotion of soldiers and gravity of senators, with the uniformity and obedience of a religious order, may compare without shame its Giustini- ani, and Zenos, and Morosini with Roman Fabii and Claudii. And Rome could net be more contrasted with Athens than Venice with Italian and contemporary Flor- ence — stability with fitfulnesr independence impregnable and secure with a short-lived and troubled liberty; empire meditated and achieved with a course of barren intrigues and quarrels." So Venice grew ever more splendid in her pride, her Venice »57 beauty, and her power, ever victorious, ever expanding in her empire and her trade, interfering in her lordly way in the politics of Italy whenever it suited her to do so, or standing aside in just as lordly indifference. Her citizens, proud of her and adoring her, sacrificed all for her, and cared little that their ancient liberty was gone. Her only rivals, Pisa and Genoa, declined and fell from their high estate. Pisa's greatness ended with her great defeat at Meloria in 1284 at the hands of Genoa. Genoa, in turn, after almost overcoming Venice, was fina''" defeated by her in 1378, leaving her supreme. Heru-.ns, in unholy alliance with the Crusaders, triumphed over Constanti- nople herself; her decrees were obeyed in many an older city on the mainland, in Dalmatia, the Ionian Islands, and Crete; as the fifteenth century drew to its close only Rome and Lorenzo's Florence could at all match her in fame, and even, they had not her stability, her security, her reputation for greatness, past and present, greatness solid and splendid and certain for the future. "Contemplate, " says Taine, "the enterprising life of a free city like this Venice, a borough of fishmongers, planted on mud, without water, without stone, without wood, which conquers the coasts of its own gulf, Constantinople ♦he Archipelago, the Peloponnesus, and Cyprus, which ■ .r presses seven rebellions in Zara and sixteen rebellions m Crete, which defeats the Dalmatians, the Byzantines, the Sultans of Cairo, and the kings of Hungary, which launches on the Bosphorus flotillas of five hundred sail, which arms squadrons of two hundred galleys, which keeps afloat at one time three thousand vessels, which annually, with four fleets of galleys, unites Trebizond, Alexandria, Tunis, Tangiers. Lisbon, and London, which 158 Italian Cities finally, creating manufactures, an architecture, a school of painting, and an original society, transforms itself into a magnificent jewel of art, whilst its /essels and its soldiers in Crete and the Morea defend Europe against the last of barbarian invasions." Yet power and pride so great were a danger, after all, and the old strength of brain and will and spirit began to be sapped in the sixteenth century, — perhaps even earlier. The Turkish conquests too, the fall of Constantinople and the presence of these warlike savages from the Bos- phorus to the Nile, sorely blocked the old trade routes to the East. Before the fifteenth century was done, not only had a Genoese mariner under commission from Spain discovered America, but Portugese sailors had rounded the Cape of Good Hope and found a new road to India that dangerously threatened the supremacy of the Mediter- ranean. Slowly but surely as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wore on, the primacy of Venice in the eastern trade gave way to that of Portugal. Her beauty and her fame remained, but her power and wealth left her, and it was only a shadow of the old Venice that yielded up its remnant of independent life to Napoleon in 1797- And now what of the immortal part of Venice? Her empire and her wealth are only a memory. Her beauty is a possession that can only be taken away when her palaces crumble into the lagoons, and her paintings so fade and perish that Bellini and Titian become empty names. Here, right at the outset of any study of Venetian art, we need to guard against a misconception. If we look only at painting and at the Renaissance we are apt to say — as many have said — that the artistic life of Venice be- Venice 159 gan later than at Florence. If, on the other hand, we open our eyes to all the ways in which the sense of beauty in form and color shows itself, such a statement becomes an absurdity. The long contact between Venice and Con- stantinople kept this one Italian city in touch with all that were left of Greek traditions of workmanship, and with a form of art that was at least akin to painting,— mosaic. The Venetians had in their own sky and sea a training in color. So through the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries arose those marvels of beauty— the Doge's Palace and the Church of St. Mark— glowing with color, adorned with loving care, patterned like no other buildings in Italy an* Europe. The lessons for their making came from the East and the North; they are Byznntine and Gothic, so far as you can classify them at all, but they were given a stamp by their builders which makes them in a definite sense simply Venetian. Indeed they are monuments of a genius for form and color in building to which it is not easy to find a parallel in all the rest of Italy. But these had nothing to do with the Renaissance. The impulse of new life that was transforming the intel- lectual and artistic life of Italy in the fourteenth century, reviving the forgotten -enius of Greece and Rome, and mfusing life into dead forms, touched the city of the lagoons at first scarcely at all. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, however, and with the opening of the fifteenth— the century that was to see so great an advancement of learning and art in Florence under the patronage of the Medici— Venice began to see something interesting in the newly developed art of painting. Young artists began to study under Tuscan and Umbrian masters, i i6o Italian Cities and the result was immediate and brilliant. Here, as in architecture, Venice kept her own unmistakable character. These early Venetian paintings are not like the early work of the Florentines or the Sienese. You miss the twisted head, the slanting eyes, the somber colored drapery on a gold background, the stiffness and even ugliness which were the result of a striving for a purely spiritual effect. All of these things were too foreign to the sunny, beauty-loving spirit of Venice to be tolerated there. The first painters preferred to take their inspiration from their own mosaic work and from the bright colors of their city, and their paintings, if they were stiff and crude, with imperfect drawing and perspective, were yet bright and pretty, with a glittering, doll-like prettiness. Here was the beginning of an art that would be like Venice herself, —brilliant, beautiful in form and color, sunny, delightful, and not very spiritual — an art that at its best, when un- spoiled, would be pure joy and loveliness incarnate, and that at its weakest would be material, glaring, and sensuous. There are five great painters that every one who loves Venice and wants to know more of her should try to study, for among them they interpret for us, as far as painting can be an interpretation, the life of Venice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These are Carpaccio, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and Tintoretto. Now let me quote a remark of Ruskin's, which is worth thinking about. "Now, John Bellini," he says,' "was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith animates their works to the last. 1 "Stones of Venice." chapter !. Venice i6i There is no religion in any work of Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or a 'm- pathies, either in himself or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhi- bition of pictorial rhetoric, composition, and color Now, this is not merely because John Bellini was a relil gious man and Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the school of painters con- temporary with them; and the difference in their artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own natural characters as in their early education. Belhni was brought up in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the vital religion of Venice had expired. ' ' This is surely worth looking into. You stroll into the room of the academy that contains Carpaccio's pictured story of St. Ursula Here it is all told for you. In an open, airy room a Christian king is receiving a group of heathen British ambassadors who have come to ask the hand of the princess Ursula for their prince, Conon. The embassy being dismissed, the king and the princess are shown gravely discussing the situation, Ursula evidently counting off the pros and cons on her fingers, but finally the suit is granted on two conditions: the prince must become a Christian, and Ursula must be permitted to make an extend nilgrimage, attended by eleven thousand vir- gins. The prince joyfully consents, and together the two set forth amid a glorious pageant of galleys, with banners and stately groups of lords and ladies backed by Venetian palaces. But alas, in their journey they come to Cologne, to visit the shrine of the Three Kings of the East, and find the city besieged by the Huns. They are warned of i6i Italian Cities the danger, but they insist on landing. In vain does an angel visit Ursula is she sleeps and tell her of her approaching martyrdom. All untroubled, she rests in her quiet little room, her crown neatly laid on a cushion by the foot of the bed, her slippers disposed at the bed- side, and her little dog slumbering near by oblivious of the angelic visitor. On the morrow they land and are cruelly shot to death by the arrows of the Huns. And all through you are in a most delightful world of sunlight and color, and fair ladies and gallant gentlemen, and over all a peace and joy so innocent, so free from sin and care, that even the murderous Huns in the last picture seem to do their deed right courteously, and their victims to receive the arrows with cheerful faces and joyous hearts. So with the same painter's noble 'St. George and the Dragon," in S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, w ere you are quite divided in your good will between the fair knight and the gorgeous monster who so gaily prances there. The grewsome frag- ments of the dragon's victims do not prejudice you; you are quite sure so admirable a beast must be without real guiie, and so fair a world could scarcely, you think, admit of anything very serious in the way of evil. Now walk into the church, let us say, of S. Zaccaria and stand before a lovely Madonna by John Bellini. Here is not indeed the joyous love of life and color that Car- j)accio gives you. It is more earnest and stately, as befits the subject, and perhaps more spiritual, but with the spirituality and the innocence there is no suggestion of a struggle against evil, no scorn of the flesh, no shrinking from earthly beauty. The asceticism and consciousness of the terrible power o*" the Evil One that you saw con- stantly in the minds of the Florentines is quite lacking. •F^^' Venice 163 Flere is a lovely mother with her baby, and at her feet sits a oeautiful little angel, serious, but without any sign that the sin and sorrow of the world are weighing un her, meditatively holding a stringed instrument, as if she would play some soft little air on it. The four saints— St. Lucy, St. Tatherine, St Peter, and St. Jerome— stand in thoughtful preoccupation, dignified, graceful, and stately, with not an unworthy line in faces or forms, not a line that would show st.uggle or self-abasement. A religion is here, based, not on man's consciousness of sin, not on an ascetic hatred of the world or the flesh, but on man's noble striving after the divine, on a love for that lofty earthly grace which is the mirror and type of the pure soul. Carpaccio and Bellini, unlike as they are in temperament and method, are alike the interpreters of a civilization sunny and peaceful, loving law and order and quiet, revering that which is noble and true, glr.dly bowing to God's Church, delighting in the beauty and the grace and the joyousness of God's world md His creatures. And now comes Giorgione, lovmg beauty with even greater fervor, forgetting perhaps a little more easily the deeper or the sadder or the more spiritual side of life. Ard after him Titian, faultless in drawing, a master in rich harmonious color, majestic in conception, triumphant in execution, but, except in a very few cases, without a hint of that subtle spirit which was all in all to a Floren- tine and which gave so pure a grace to Carpaccio and Bellini, that hint of a beauty beyond form and color, of a joy not wholly of earth, of the light that never was on sea or land, of that peace of God which the world cannot give and which passeth all understanding. Nothing in Renais- sance art is more e hically instructive than the contrast 164 Italian Cities between, let us say, Filippino Lippi's "Vision of St. Bernard" or Fra Angelico's "Coronation of the Virgin," and Titian's "Assumption," or much more, Paolo Vero- nese's "Venice Enthroned." One feels that the devo- tional side of painting was really the very breath of life to the Florentines, or if the generalization should be made broader, that the thing the Florentines chiefly cared about was the serious, human message that was to be conveyed. The message, the spiritual and ethical side of their art was not everything to them, or that art never would have been as great as it was. But it was so much to them that color and beauty were quite subordinated. Of all the Florentines Andrea del Sarto was the only great colorist. Whether one says, then, that their greatness as artists was achieved in spite of their constant preoccupation with their religious message, or whether it is better to say that this grave, ethical tone, sometimes earth-despising and some- times realistic, but always quiet and in a sense prayerful, is the distinctive charm of their work, the result is the same. No matter how we state it, this attention to con- tent rather than to form and color constitutes much of the human interest of the Tuscan painters. One grows to love it and to look for it, and to come before the "As- sumption" or the frescoes of the Ducal Palace means at first to the lover of Giotto and Botticelli a distinct shock. They seem material, voluptuous, beside the quiet, lov- able men and women and angels of the Uffizi. Yet one should not class the "Assumption" with Veronese's fres- coes. Indeed, one cannot long do Titian real injustice, or refuse to him the homage due to one of the greatest paint- ers who ever lived. If he has not the spirituality, the subtle fascination of Botticelli, there is in him an over- ■ St. fin," /^ero- levo- F life ■nade ibout ;yed. r art have that 1 the )rist. ; was their this )me- rful, the con- Fthe s to 'As- is at ock. lov- one Fres- ;, or lint- the iver- ANGEL Detail Iroin Bellini's Ma lonna and Saints, in the Church of S. Zaccaria. Venice Venice .65 powering sense of mastery, of splendor, of rich beauty that none of the Florentines could claim for a moment. The "Assumption" itself has an impressiveness, a lofty beauty that never can be forgotten. And even if we miss in him any deep sense of the divine in life one can scarcely say that the sinse of idealism is quite gone; his majestic St. Christopher, and the exquisite figure of the Virgin in the "Presentation" would alone make us hesi- tate to say anything so sweeping. But in Tintoretto, marvelous painter as he was, and in Paolo Veronese, real- ism has definitely supplanted idealism; boldness of concep. tion, skill in execution, glorious mastery of color, have taken the place once for aH of the simplicity, the moral health, the heavenly striving of the eariier masters.' From the simplicity, the faith in God, the joy in hu- manity, of Carpaccio and Bellini, to the gorgeous draperies, the luxury, the pride of wealth, the splendid woridliness of Paolo Veronese, such was the deeply significant move- ment of Venetian art during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. And with this dying out of the spiritual in art, there were flitting away from Venice the sources of her wealth and power. As the line of great painters ended and gave place to workmen to whom art was good drawing, rich and splendid coloring, effective composition, faultless' per- spective, and these alone, the heart of Venice was growing cold, her brain and will were losing their force, and the sea on which she had earned her supremacy was ceasing Venice i^lf U^n.^'^^.'^^alllL^/s^jio^.S 'S ^ '^P^ vi.i.in, di Schiavoni, where the Carpaccios are^ ThMiniest ch" ^h'^hif ' °* ^- ^*°',^° a ven- small London drawing-rootn-but with7^c?ufesM I An^'^h" *^*' ''^* see Carpaccio give him my^love. and whenever vousiL RHmnT*"^"* h^' ''°'' adoration, for none is like him-John that^rfor his hmth^M ^n^** '"'° TX "Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones ' Vo li d ^t tnhn R„M"''^.''i^P^l'- Gf^nt c w=)= not at ■-,>] hi^ r-:„i' ,hZ, .i 1 ,'" j'^V^-'^' J°"" "•^'im! s brother and sincerity ^"*" """"'*'' '"= ''="^ ">« ^^^^ charm of simplicity 1 66 Italian Cities to be the chief highway of the East. The spirit of the great city was dying with her faith as the scepter passed awa , from her. The doge could look sadly out from the balcony of the great council hall, and no more see the lagoon splendid with galleys bearing the wealth of the East to the entrance of the Grand Canal. And the great jeweled Church looked down on a city whose faith and whose strength were gone, whose splendid beauty still unfaded hid the speedy coming of death. "Not in the wantonness of wealth, not in vain ministry to the desire of the eyes or the pride of life, were those marbles hewn into transparent strength, and those arches arrayed in the colors of the iris. There is a message writ- ten in the dyes of them that once was written in blood; and a sound in the echoes of their vaults that one day shall fill the vault of heaven, 'He shall return to do judgment and justice.' The strength of Venice was given iicr so long as she remembered this; her destruction found her when she had forgotten this; and it found her irrevocably because she forgot it without excuse The sins of Venice, whether in her palace or in her piazza, were done with the Bible at her right hand. The walls on which its testimony was written were separated but by a few inches of marble from those which guarded the secrets of her councils or confined the victims of her policy. And when, in her last hours, she threw off all shame and all restraint, and the great square of the city became filled with the madness of the whole earth, be it remembered how much her sin was greater because it was done in the face of the House of God, burning with the letters of his Law. Mountebank and masquer laughed tiieii laugh and went Venice 167 their way; and a silence has followed them not unfore- tokl; for amidst tl em all, through century after century of gathering vanity md festering guilt, that white dome of St. Mark's has uttt.ed in the dead ear of Venice, 'Know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.' " ' It is near the close of a lovely afternoon in June. You have been in the great church of the Frari, steeping your- self in the loveliness of Bellini's altar-piece and Titian's wonderful "Madonna of the Pesaro Family." As the light began to fail you, you left the dim church and walked meditatively down towards the Grand Canal. You are in the mood for an aimless ramble, and you are just tired enough to welcome the cushioned seat of a gondola. Just the gondolier you want is waiting for you at the traghetto,^ ferocious of aspect, gayly attired in white, and adorned with flowing blue sash and tie, altogether a fit man for your mood, and an oarsman, as you know well, of tireless strength and fine instinct for discoveries. You give him the easy instruction to go where he pleases, and off you glide with that exquisite swimming motion that nothing but the canoe can equal and even the canoe can- not surpass, across the wide reach of the Grand Canal and into one of the exquisite little canals that are among the chief beauties of Venice. Past dark doors, past ■: tie boats moored idly, past garden walls overhung by vines and graceful branches you swing along with a gentle rock and a soft swish, until you are conscious of a familiar landmark ahead. It is the Bridge of Sighs. In a moment ' "Stones of Venice, " il., chapter IV. . 2 .An ancient and famous terra in Venice. To the casual traveler the word simply means a gondola landing, but the niore accurate meaoine mav "» f^und i68 Italian Cities you pass the rear of St. Mark's and of the Ducal Palace, see the Bridge poised for a second above you as you glide darkly along between palace and prison, and then in a stroke you are out on the lagoon. You turn just for a moment to glance back on that marvelous work of old Venice, to delight once more in the dainty arcades, the stately columns by the Mole, and — as you pass the line of the Piazzetta — the corner that you can see of the great church; you catch from your gondola a flash of innumer- able wings as a cloud of pigeons sweeps down and out of sight into the Piazza, and then with a long look down the magnificent reach of the Grand Canal, you settle back with a sigh at the exceeding goodness of it all. Your gondolier is evidently aiming for the Giudecca. With easy strokes he carries you past the Custom House, past Santa Maria della Salute, and across the Canal of the Giudecca toward the Redentore. Then a few little turns and you go more slowly along by the abodes of sail- ors and fishermen. It is a fairly wide canal lined with ^oats of all kinds. The beams of the low sun glance from behind you and light with level rays the gaunt masts and tangled cordage, the yellow sails, the black hulls, the bright sun-burned faces, and as you turn in delight and look back it seems to you that nowhere else in the world could you get such entrancing effects of light and shade and rich color. It is purely Venetian. Yet no palaces are here, and few of these bronzed men and women could tell you much of Dandolo or Marino Faliero, of Shylock or Othello, even though many of them are the descendants of warriors who fought the Genoese at Chioggia and helped to storm Constantinople. You pass barges full of busy workers, and see huge baskets half sunk in the MOLli AND i'lAZKTTA. VENICK mV, Venice 169 water. You point in astonishment to a little green crab painfully climbing the side of a basket and your good- natured pilot swings you in for a moment beside one of the boats. The floor of it is a foot deep with crawling green crabs, and you are informed that they make good eating. Your quite unreasonable gesture of horror is taken in good part. They doubtless realize something of foreign prejudices; and you somewhat hastily move away as they try to contribute to your education in Venetian customs by offering you a toothsome, squirming little morsel. But if you hesitate to touch the crab you have no ill will toward the smiling fisherman or his company. Indeed, so unaffectedly happy are they all that you catch the infection and beam radiantly at the whole canal with its baskets and barges and picturesque sounds and sights and its rich evening colors. All is good and most beautiful. With a quieter, longer stroke, your gondola glides out upon the lagoon again, this time on the side away from the city. The sun is near setting. Out towards the Lido the black form of a gondola is silhouetted in the clear air against the reflected glow of the sunset. No other life is visible, and you look away out over the quiet water towards the Adriatic, your heart full of the loveliness in which— taken all in all— Venice and her lagoons reign supreme. Your gondolier knows it, too, familiar as it is to him, and you hear with quick sympathy his murmur ' ' Molta bella ! "— " most beautiful 1 " Here again the ages fade away. The terrors of war, the burdens of conquest and empire, the generations of pride and glory, of stern tyranny balanced by greatness and stability, the long decay, the bitterness of Napoleon's robberies and the lyo Italian Cities surrender to Austria, the three-score years and ten of Austrian rule, and then the glad triumph of a better free- dom than the old — all these pass before you in a moment's vision. And over and above all that is selfish and cruel in the whole wonderful story there sinks into you now as the day wanes the marvel of this jeweled city, built on marshy islets, lifted from these muddy lagoons, raised in strength and beauty by "iron hands and patient hearts" to be one of the famous spots of the whole earth. Your last words of it cannot be Ruskin's stern words of judg- ment. Few cities have brought forth for our encourage- ment so many generations of stout-hearted citizens. Few cities have done their part in the world's work so man- fully. Only two at most have left the world so brilliant a flowering of beauty. So for good work and for beauty, for palaces and for fisher's huts, for St. Mark's and for the painters, for sun and color and swift gondola, for all that is Venice, let the world ever give thanks. CHAPTER X MILAN From a lovely nook on a hillside by beautiful Lake Como you are looking away off towards Milan and the south. You will soon be in Piedmont, and then you are to turn north to Switzerland and say farewell to Italy. Here ';ere the air is fresh and where the green leaves and the lake give you only a lovely present world, nothing to study, you look back reflectively. It seems a long time since you landed in Naples and began these Italian wan- derings. Days, weeks, months have been unlike the same periods of time at home; they have held so much for you that perspective has been destroyed, and the multi- plicity of sights and studies has tended to blind you some- what to the total. The trees have hid the forest. There have been times when the glory of Venice has obscured the more spiritual beauty of Florence; when the dread visions of Dante overshadowed the merry jests and romances of Boccaccio; when the fascination of the hill- towns and the beauty of unexpected byways swept away the somber memory of narrow, hot stone streets and for- bidding palace walls; when it seemed hard to draw back and see all of them together as Italy— all Italy— Rome, Lombardy, Venice, Naples, and all the varied moods of a racial genius which in succeeding ages could bring forth Caesar and Fra Angelico. Virgil and Pope Juiius, Hilde- brand and Fra Lippo. lya Italian Cities Yet this effort you ^nust make. This handsome, ruddy, unkempt youth who is climbing the road near you might have served in the legions of Marius. That monk that you were talking to this morning might have been a Gregory the Great, a Fra Bartolommeo, a com- panion jf Savonarola. The restless, vigorous old man whom you met the other day in the Ambrosian Library in Milan might be Petrarch incarnate once more, and his rubicund, bright-eyed companion might be Boccaccio. All alike were Italians and fellow-countrymen, all alike illustrate the amazing genius of a people so many-siHed in their achievements that unless we bethink ourselves we make the stories of Rome, of the Papacy, of the Renaissance, and of the later days of Mazzini and Cavour as if they were accounts of different peoples. Yet beyond the infusion of Lombard and Norman and Ostrogothic blood — perhaps some Visigothic and Prankish too — the Italian race is now what it was two thousand years ago, and this freshening of the stock by other races has cer- tainly not changed its identity. The people led by Cavour and Garibaldi to liberty and union were the people who saw the domes of St. Peter's and Santa Maria del Fiore rise at the bidding of Michelangelo and Brunelleschi, who sprang at one another's throats in the conflicts of Guelfs and Ghibellines, who fought the Germans under Germani- cus, the Britons under Agricola, and the Gauls under Caesar, who applauded the festivals of blood in the Circus Maximus, and who humbled the pride of Carthage. Ancestors of Venetians, Pisans, Florentines, and Pied- montese served in the galleys of Pompey and the legions of Trajan. And one must see Italy as Italy — Rome, Florence, Lombardy, if you like, but over all and through Milan 173 all one Italian race and genius — if one would see each city, each age, each achievement, in its true setting. It is perhaps easiest to do this in Rome. There one may see the Colosseum from a trolley-car that passes along the Via Cavour, and then in a moment ascend a tunneled slope beneath a palace of the Borgias to see in the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli the "Moses" of Michelangelo. Gradually, but quite inevitably, one is forced to the conviction that the city of the Emperors, of the Popes, of the Renaissance, and of the Liberation is really the same city moved in different ages by different motives; that a municipal proclamation signed by Colonna — descendant of Petrarch's friends — should be expected, not marvelled at; and that to erect in Rome of all places a dividing wall between ancient, medieval, and modem history is the surest of ways in which to falsify the truth and make the living past a dead jumble of names. What is true of Rome is true of all Italy. It is natural that we should make a halo about those ages and cities that have brought forth great men and heroic deeds. And it is natural that the distinctive characteristics of an epoch or a state should blind us to the essential unity of a great race's development. But two thousand years ago Tus- cans, Venetians, and Latins were all Romans; now they are all Italians. The contemporaries of Cicero saw no more glor}' about his head than we see about the head of Mazzini. The mob that cheered Mark Antony was doubt- less very like a mob that might gather in the streets of modern Rome. One might almost imagine sometimes that there might be some who would reverently take the Forum, the Colos- seum, and the Temple of Vesta and place them in a 174 Italian Cities museum, mounted and labelled, where the dust and roar of vulgar traffic would not defile or profane them. But the columns that stood unmoved amid the babel and the tumults of ancient Rome cannot be greatly disturbed by the noise of to-day. Why should the ancient be sacred and the modem defiling? It is all Rome. Here in a villa you may step from reliefs carved in A.D, 51 or 52 to celebrate victories in Britain, to Canova's statue of Pauline Borghese, sister of Napoleon I., and then you may go upstairs to see masterpieces of Titian, Correggio, and Andrei del Sarto. In this city, if anywhere in Italy, you may expect to see monuments of the first century and the nineteenth, of Venice, Florence, or Parma. With all her intense individuality Rome is not and never was tied to one bit of ground or to one age, and sooner or later she will teach every earnest student the lesson that Italy's history is not to be cut ruthlessly into three or four parts. It is less easy to keep this large horizon in your mind's eye in Florence or Venice. But the lesson has been brought back almost with a shock in the great Lombard city of Milan. It is not long since you crossed the long bridge from Venice to the mainland, left the lagoons behind you, and headed for Lombardy, You reached Milan early enough to take a stroll through the streets and to get a first look at the Cathedral, but your first really accurate impressions were not formed until the next morning. Even before your arrival you had formed the stern resolve to climb the tower, untaught by experiences of the Leaning Tower, the Campanile of Giotto, and the monuments at Bunker Hill and Washington. But all such determinations dis- appeared for the time as you walked about the huge Hi Milan ns church and entered it. It is not that it is more beautiful than other churches. You were not lost in a delight that was keen and personal as at Siena or before St. Mark's. You were not braced and chastened and inspired as by Cologne or by one of the great Norman churches of Eng- land. But you were lost in a marvel, in a bewilderment that quite overwhelmed you, as you gazed at the dazzling pile of white marble, swarming with its thousands of statues, carrying your eye up to pinnacle after pinnacle, until it reached the tiny tower overtopping all. And thi marvel continued when you entered. Here was a foresi of immense columns, not bearing a heavy ro f upon their broad tops, but soaring up with a divine airiness that seemed rather to lift the whole edifice lightly up towards heaven. In one long sweep each pillar carried your eye from floor to roof, and the roof itself was cunningly carved in tl e semblance of foliage, so that the great church became one tremendous stone forest, gray and silent, as if the German builders had taken the beloved woods of their home land and bidden them stand there petrified, majestic and eternal, to the giory of God. Perhaps you would tire of it soon. Perhaps the mixed, ornate, not quite genuine architecture of it might trouble you in time. But for the present it was all wonderful and glorious to you, and you bowed before it in amazement and rever- ence. Then you bethought you of the dome and tower. You climbed to the roof and stood delighted by the flying buttresses, in the midst of the myriad statues.' This much was surely worth while. But then you toiled on ' There are over two thousand statues and ninety-eight turrets, all of marble. The tower is three hundred and sixty (eet above the pavement. 176 Italian Cities higher, until at last with numb muscles and disgusted spirit you stood on the little top platform. Away below you was the roof. Farther below walked tiny men by toy carriages and horses. In the distance was a faint blue line behind which you knew rose the Alps. But after all, it was just like a map done in relief. All perspective was gone, all detail loat in the distance, and when you began to descend your thoughts regarding ascent and view were not those of unmingled self-congratulation. Your remaining strength you spent that morning in an aimless walk through busy streets. What a far cry from this to Naples, even from this to Florence ! In Milan you were no longer in quaint old half-medieval Italy, but in a modem city, the most modern that you had seen since you left the shores of America. The streets might have been German, English, even American. The common, familiar characteristics stamped by modern commercial and indus- trial life on a}\ that it can reach were here in truth, and it was hard to realize that you were within the wall . the great Lombard city that defied Barbarossa, the city ot Gian Galeazzo Visconti and Ludovico Sforza. You wondered, half-regretfully, whether all Italy would one day be assim- ilated to this new busy industrial life, whether the subtle old flavor of days departed would cease to linger over the walls and pavements and crooked ways ot Perugia and Assisi and Fiesole, perchance even of Naples and Amalfi. Once upon a time the burghers of Milan were mightily stirred by dread tidings — tidings that told of Barbarossa himself coming with all his mailed host of German knights and mer .t-arms to declare his rule over Lombardy and all Itrjy. It was the second visit of the great emperor. His first, four years before, had witnessed his coronation Milan 177 by the Englisli pope, A.irian IV., but it had been closed hurriedly, and not wholly triumphantly, by the combined pressure of the Roman fever and the tumultuous Roman populace. Since then he had been too busily occupied in the pacification of Germany to renew his etTorts— so im- portant to the imperial dignity— to thoroughly secure the subjugation of Italy. Now, however, all was well in the north. "There was such unwonted peace there that men seemed changed, the land a different one, the verj' heaven had become milder and softer." At the great diet of Besanfon, says the good chronicler Ragewin, "all the earth was filled with admiration for the clemency and justice of the emperor, and moved both by love and fear ail strove to overwhelm him with novel praises and new honors." So with a mind at ease and a stout heart Frederick in this summer of 1 1 58 crossed the Alps and demanded the homage of the Lombards. Fome of the cities yielded willingly enough, notably Pavia, Lodi, Como, and Cremona. If there was much jealousy of the Germans as foreigners there was also a strong traditional sentiment of loyalty to the Roman em- peror," no matter what his blood, and this latter feeling justified and strengthened in many cases a conviction that the emperor was bound to win, and that to those that sup- ported him would be honor and much profit. But some held back, chief among them our stately Milan, and against this greatest city of all Lombardy Frederick marched with all his legions, a hundred thousand armed men "vel am- pliits." Whoso looked upon this mighty array, opines the Gerr'in chronicler, might at last clearly understand the ' See Bryce's brilliant essay on "The Holy Roman Empire." The detail* here aic thielly Iroiii llie tlirouicies ol KaKcwiii and Olio of Freising, modlfled by some of the Italian narr-'ives contained in Muratori's "Scriptores." 178 Italian Cities words, "Beautiful as the moon, splendid as the sun, terri- ble as an army with banners." Well might the restless and rebellious city quail as the northern host sat down before its walls and prepared for a siege. But the war between city and emperor was not yet to the death. A few fierce assaults, a few weeks of hard fighting distinguished chiefly by the savage cruelty of the Cremonese and the Pavians towards the Milanese and -'ice versa — a hatred marvelous and disgustful to the Germans— and then before autumn came the citizens sued for peace. It was granted readily enough. Complete submission was insisted upon, but the terms were on the whole easy ones. All the men of the city marched out with bare feet and humble vesture carry- ing their unsheathed swords while the emperor, receiving their oath of allegiance with placid countenance — as became one who was still ''divits Aitfiustus'' to a Christian historian—expressed his joy that God had moved so fair a city and so great a people to prefer peace rather than war. So the clash of war ceased on the fair plains of Lom- bardy, and now Frederick called together all the notables of north Italy in a great diet at Roncaglia. "Here," to paraphrase an old hexameter narrative, "was a plain, green and fertile, where the Roman king when he visited the cities of Liguria wu accustomed to hold his court. Hither, therefore, the emperor, wishing to hold an assembly according to ancient custom, betook himself, and called together the great chiefs of the Ligurians with the wise men also by whose learning he was wont to revise the laws and settle innumerable strifes. Now then did he set forth a new law, that all the peoples of his empire should submit to a perpetual treaty of peace, obeying his Milan 179 decrees. None should violate, none make fierce trial of battle, and cunning fraud and brutal rapine should pass away. So did men live in oldcn times, rejoicing to lead a heavenly life on earth, so that it has been called the golden age of the world." But alas for this dawn of perpetual peace! Learned doctors might set forth the doctrines of imperial absolutism. Obsequious lawyers might report that all the governing powers of the cities, all the tolls and taxes, all rights of navigation, the powers of the podestas, the consuls and judges, belonged to the imperial government; that persons elected to these dig- nities by the citizens should receive the same as a gift from the hand of the emperor, and should lay them aside only with his consent. A grave archbishop might even quote the maxim, what is pleasing to the prince has the jorce of law, and decla.c that whatsoever the emperor by letter or decree commanded thereby became law.' And yet after all the chiefs and. lawyers had so mightily pleased the ci.npcTor and themselves with their legal researches and wise dicta, the contumacious city of Milan indignantly rejected the diet's decisions, expelled the imperial legates, and took up arms again with fierce resolve to fight the matter out. But if Milan was stirred to anger so also was Freder- ick. There followed bitter war and a terrible three years' siege. Bravely indeed fought the Milanese. But one by one their allies fell before the great power of the emperor. Piacenza was leveled to the ground; Mantua and other cities were sacked and burned; and at last the proud city I It is odd that while all contemporary chroniclers alike, German and Italian, speak ol the Diet of Koncat^lia, only the Germans set forth in detail ihcsc reports of the lawyers in support ol Ihc itiipcrm! powcf. The Staiian historians are silent or use vague terms. i8o Italian Cities came to the end of ber resources, and bowed to her con- queror. Then "unable to prevail against the anger of Caesar and the weight of the Empire, Milan, proud city as she was, head of Lig^ria and flower of all Italy, showed in the completeness of her overthrow how perilous it was to strive against the onset of a flood, how insane not to yield to supreme maje'-ty." No mercy was shown this time. The humbled city was surrounded. The men of Lodi were assigned to one gate, the men of Cremona to another, of Como to another, and so with the other Italian cities that hated their proud rival and clustered now to aid in her annihilation. First all the houses were burned, then the buildings, the towers, the city gates, and many of the churches. For a time one great campanile stood in the midst of the ruin, marvelous in beauty and height, the like of which was seen nowhere else in Italy. But then this too was torn down, and the pride of Milan seemed shat- tered forever. All the cities of the region came to aid in her destruction. Almost all Lombardy labored at the leveling of her walls and trenches. More was destroyed in a few days, wrote the imperial notary Burchardus to a friend in Germany, than one would have supposed could be destroyed in two months, and every day added to the ruin and desolation. But the end was not yet. The cities of Lombardy found that in destroying their rival they had destroyed their stoutest champion. The quiet after the storm lasted little more than a year or two. Then four strong cities rose against the podestas who ruled them in the name of the emperor, and formed a league. They were backed by Venice, now Frederick's declared enemy. The very men who had destroyed Milan helped to rebuild her, and her ; - 1 Milan i8i people drifted back to their old homes. Once more the queen city of Lombardy arose in her c ' pride ana cower, this time head of a Lombard league iicl'^'ling eve- Lodi and all the towns of the northern plain . ^Vhen Frt ierick came down to Rome in Ii68 and saw his arniy Jv imated again by the Roman fever, his unruly vassals blocked the approach to the Alpine passes so that the wrathful prince had to return to Germany by a toilsome and roundabout way. Alexandria was built by the league as an outpost city, protecting the highroad from Milan to Genoa, so that all was ready when the emperor came once more with a great host to crush once for all the insolent independence of the Lombard towns. Burghers and emperor met on the field of Legnano.* Again, as of old, the stubborn Milanese were the backbone of the Italian host, and this time the Italians overcame the Germans as in bygone days their ancestors under Marius had overcome the barbaric forefathers of Barbarossa and his knights. The reconcili- ation of the humbled emperor with the pope next year at Venice, and not many years later the Peace of Constance, closed this most famous episode in the story of Milan. For a time almost single-handed, then at the head of a great league, she had fought, suffered, and conquered in the cause of Italy for Italians. Happy had it been for Italy if the victory had brought also unity, national dignity, freedom from petty, suicidal dissensions, but it was not so to be. "Weary of unceas- ing and useless contests," says the stately Hallam,' "in which ruin fell with an alternate but equal hand upon either party, liberty withdrew from a people who dis- ' Fought in May, 1176. 2 " Middle .■Vges, Chap. III., Part II. i l82 Italian Cities graced her name; and the tumultuous, the brave, the intractable Lombards became eager to submit themselves to a master, and patient under the heaviest oppression. Before the middle of the fourteenth century, at the latest, all those cities which had spurned at the faintest mark of submission to the emperors, lost even the recollection of self-government, and were bequeathed, like an undoubted patrimony, among the children of their new lords. Such is the progress of usurpation; and such the vengeance that heaven reserves for those who waste in license and faction its first of social blessings, liberty." Milan was one of the first to forget her struggle for independence, and a century after Legnano accepted the lordship of the Visconti. After the Visconti came the great house of Sforza. From hand to hand passed the fallen queen of north Italy, until in our own day blazed forth once more the old spirit that had quelled Barbarossa, when in the five days of March, 1848, the Milanese drove from her streets and gates the troops of Austria. A new age was dawn- ing then after long sleep — sleep which as far as liberty was concerned had lasted nearly six centuries. Yet in those long ages of forgotten independence the material and artistic life of the city went on unchecked, and as you wandered about the city in this new age of union and happy freedom, you felt that the genius of Milan could never have been really dead. The energy once spent in fighting the great emperor did not die away. It only turned into other lines, and the people who chafed and growled at the tyranny of Visconti or Sforza still fought and traded and toiled as they made their city more wealthy and more famous with each generation, proud of her great name, and perhaps half trusting that some time ri M ilan »83 the spirit of old times would come back to her and nerve the a ms and hearts of her citizens to hold deeds. Gal- lantly indeed did sl^e fulfil her destiny %» uon the time came in '48 and in '59, when Piedmont came down from her hills like a strong youth to awaken with war cry and sword- stroke the ancient dreams and deeds of Lombardy and Tuscany. Good blood may flow sluggishly or congeal. Seldom does it turn to water. One great name is inseparably associated with Milan, that of Leonardo da Vinci. Here he spent nearly twenty years, in the service of that least admirable of tyrants, Lodovico Sforza, and here he did his most famous piece of work. If you could have seen only one thing in all Milan you know well how little doubt would have entered your mind as to what that should be. In the old refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in pathetic and irreparable ruin, you may still see one of the three or four world-master- pieces of painting. "The artis.," says Goethe, "repre- sents the peaceful little band round the sacred table as thunder-struck by the Master's words, 'One of you shall betray me.' They have been pronounced; the whole com- pany is in dismay, while he himself bows his head with downcast eyes. His whole attitude, the motion of his arms and hands, all seem to repeat with heavenly resigna- tions, and his silence to confirm, the mournful words, 'It cannot be otherwise. One of yoM shall betray me.' " It was painted in oils on the plaster. It is not a fresco. And so, while other paintings, done even earlier than this "Last Supper, " on scores of walls throughout Italy are surviving in perfect beauty, this, one of the greatest of them all, is decaying and passing to inevitable ruin. Indeed, it scarcely lasted in perfection fifty years. Re- Ui h 184 Italian Cities painted again and again since 1499, even the added col- ors have faded, and now it is all a mere faded outline. Nothing can stay the disaster. One can only photograph or copy, and of the alternatives, perhaps the photograph is usually preferable. There are copies by skilled paint- ers in the room with the original, supposedly to assist the student in the interpretation of Leonardo's work. And yet you turn from copy to original in quite unaffected irri- tation. The original is blotched and di!>flgured indeed, terribly so, but somehow even to your inexpert eyes ihere is a power and majesty in the ruined forms and faces beside which the copies look cheap and ordinary. There is quite enough left to assist one's imagination,' and as you pore over it, and tiy to think yourself back into the mind of the painter, the outlines and colors come faintly back, the face of the Saviour is filled with its old dignity, its old pathos, its old divine humanity, and you look indeed at the "Last Supper" of our Lord. After all, no other portrayal of the subject can compare with it, ruined as it is. Andrea's is second, and Andrea's is a very g^eat painting. Yet the gap between them is wide, and you are left with the melancholy certainty that in the space of only a few years one of the greatest paintings of all time will have ceased to be.' There is no more cosmopolitan, less provincial, city in Italy than Milan, unless it be Rome herself, — none that seems quite so naturally to have adjusted its conditions 'The imagrination is not, in this case, left quite to itself. The drawings of Leonardo may render anv student familiar with his stvlc. and the sketch of the head of Christ in the "Brera ' at Milan aids greatly in the appreciation and reconstruction of the painting. 2 Of Leonardo's paintings " LaGioconda," called also " Monna Lisa," and the "Madonna of the Kocks," both in the Louvre, may be most safely com- mended to students. Copies of the drawings may be found in Richter's " Literary Wui ke uj LeuiiaiUo dtt Viucl." VVatler I'dler'scSsay ou Luouardoin bis "Renaissance " is worth reading. col- ine. aph ii.ii aph M ii ^ :4i int- •> 1 the % ■ ■^^Wppr- "•^' •■■ \nd ? .A; 1 m- i '^9Bl * 1 ;ed, 1 Jgp'^e*^ . i ■e is i^^^ii^ .a side i uite )ore E |U . f < ^'■■^ .., o 1 the ' L y-i ' r c "ace lOS, r ^ fii, B 1- D o M >, .ast of •f * 1 ^^^^^F^ sa's f ■ ^BC X 2 Yet ■ ■ ^^ ■w. HO c the ■ i •„ ,-. •p»^ ;ars "••^^l^fc. '^^^^mk^MI M^^^ > sed iMKflBS • ||M e8 •3 g^y ■^^^HKf'"IH **' c9 y in ^||- jPate-i^J- . i that a& ipjH -B^.Ai^B|." ons ''^'^B irings chof !- and *■ ■ and ^ com- #-. , t ter's lioin i^mi Milan 185 and appearance to the customs and requirements of a city in the modern sense of the word. Siena is Sienese, Flor- ence is Florentine, Venice is Venetian, Naples is Neapoli- tan, but Milan is simply Italian. In spite of yourself you think in Assisi of St. Francis, in Florence of Dante and Lorenzo, for in and through the buzz of modern life and the glare of modern things breathes an echo of older times that you cannot escape from. A trolley-car doubtless carries you through the streets of Florence, but it lands you beside Giotto's tower, or within a stone's throw of the Bargello, where you may tread steps that Dante trod. You may buy picture post-cards in Assisi, but you cannot lift your eyes without seeing the Church of St. Francis, or the old castle on the mountain-top, or the dome in the plain that shelters the Portiuncola. And in each city it is the older, not the newer, life that you think of and see. But in Milan the modem life has swept quite over the ancient and medieval. Once the most obstinate and inde- pendent of city states, it is now simply a thriving and wealthy member of the great commonwealth of Italy. The old days of the Lombard league and the strife with Barbarossa are quite gone, and even the great Cathedral, with its infinitely labored adornment, its stuccoed pillars, gives to the world not the message of a mighty generation or a surpassing genius, not the message of St. Mark's, of the Duomo of Siena, or Giotto's Campanile, but that of Galeazzo Visconti the tyrant, of Napoleon the conqueror, and of ruler after ruler, architect after architect, from the fourteenth century to the twentieth. So the great memories of the twelfth century are memories only. Milan never quite did for Lombardy what Florence did for Tuscany. Her compensation has i86 Italian Cities been that her very lack of distinctive character, her willing eclecticism, her readiness to adapt herself to each succeeding age and fortune, has made her now the most modern, the most thoroughly alive city in the whole of Italy. She, too, then, has her contribution to the new life of her new country. Not that of Florence or Venice, but one just as necessary — vitality, nervous energy, adapta- bility, and joyous willingness to accept modern con- ditions. So may she still be a great city, proud of her memories of Legnano and Leonardo, and still prouder, doubtless, of the five days of 1848. Yet after -"^u have rejoiced in her wealth and life and up-to-date ways, you may be glad — since after all you are still in Italy — to step into the quiet rooms of the Ambrosian Library, or into the refectory where hangs in ruined majesty the "Last Supper." Then again as in Assisi or Rome the centuries flit away, and you hear faintly the shouts of Barbarossa's army, or the murmured talk of Duke Ludovico and Leo- nardo as they stand before the new masterpiece. *>-|»«*K~.' her each most le of V life , but ipta- con- her ider, have you step into Last uries ssa's Leo- CHAPTER XI FROM TURIN TO ROME. THF REGENERATION OF ITALY Two cities stand out before all others in the minds of those who have watched the growth of modern Italy, — one, the oldest in story of all, and the greatest in achievement, — the other known to the world scarcely at all until recently, and now known simply as the capital of the little state that has united Italy, the city of Victor Emmanuel. To see the Piedmontese themselves, and to know them, we ought to stand in the great Piazza Castello in Turin as we have stood in the Piazza S. Pietro in Rome, the Piazza S. Marco in Venice. Or better still, we should journey slowly through, say, the glorious valley of Aosta, and visit t' homes of those who have been paving Piedmont's way to greatness here on the mountain slopes, living healthy, sturdy lives, biding their time until their noble House of Savoy should lead them to great deeds. But since Turin is not so much a city of memories as of recent achievements, we shall change our point of view a little. We shall leave the city by the Po, ride off until even the great dome of the Superga ' fades in the distance or is hidden by the hills, and on a mountain slope from which we may in vision overlook the whole plain and see even to stately Milan and the fertile fields of Lombardy, we shall survey the events of the last hundred years, the awakening of Italy; and we shall find our horizon widen- • The great burial church ol the house of Savoy. 187 i88 Italian Cities ing. too, towards the south, until Sicily and Naples come into view again, and then Rome herself. For if Italy's story begins, in a sense, when you first see the city on the Tiber emerging in some clear shape from the mists of the far past, if it is true that in each phase of the growth and change of the Italian race the scepter sooner or later has come to Rome, then we may well think of the genius of that race taking a new breath and looking forward to a new era, when the princes of Savoy take their abode on the Quirinal, and when the ashes of an Italian king are laid to rest in the Pantheon. The peninsula of Italy is, one may suppose, the most romantic and picturesque part of Europe in its wealth of associations. And yet if ; -i had said as much to a patri- otic Italian one hundre 1 s ago, instead of acknowl- edging your compliment with pride he would have given you but a dreary answer: "What matters a glorious past," he might have said, "when there is no present and no future. Italy is dead." And indeed it seemed so. Long after the nineteenth century was well under way the . Austrian chancellor Metternich was able to say with every ' appearance of truth that Italy was only a geographical expression. She had no national life, had known no unijt^ even under a despotic ruler, no unity of any type, for more than a thousand years. Even Germany had more promise of unity than had Italy. There was at least the idea of unitv in eighteenth-century Germany, and though the separation of state from state was bad enough there, more complicated indeed in its subdivision than in Italy, yet even Bavaria and Prussia were not so deeply— one would almost say irreparably -divided as Florence was from From Turin to Rome 189 Rome, Piedmont from Lombardy, Venice from Naples. Italy contained eleven political divisions which had not been united under one sovereignty for twelve hundred years. If you had asked a Venetian to consider the great past of his country he might indeed have reflected with pride on the past of Venice, but not of Italy. Italy was not his country. Venice had been founded, had risen in centuries of toil and trade to be one of the first maritime and commercial states in the world, had gradually declined, and was finally delivered over by Napoleon to the hands of Austria without ever once in her thousand years of his- tory forming part of a united Italy. She had developed her own peculiar form of civilization; so had Florence, so had Rome, so had Naples and Sicily. The traditions of each were as different from those of the other cities of Italy as those of London are from Paris and Berlin. The bar- riers between them seemed to go so far and so deeply into the past ages that any unity of life and aim seemed absard. Yet we have seen them overcome and Italy united during the last hundred years, chiefly by the genius, courage, and constancy of four men, — Mazzini, Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, and Cavour. "' The shock of a revolution was needed first, though. In 1789 there was no spirit in Italy and there were no leaders who could ever carry through a practical move- ment for liberation. Southern and central Italy were hopelessly degraded and spiritless after centuries of oppressive rule. And even the north was still almost medieval in its lack of culture, its antiquated laws, its superstition, its widespread poverty and disease, its com- plete disregard of sanitation and cleanliness, and its lack '7 _. 190 Italian Cities of any national spirit. The kin^ of Naples ' misniled south Italy and Sicily. The pope was temporal lord of Rome and the center as well as spiritual head of the Catholic world. Just north of the papal dominions came the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the smaller nuchies of Lucca, Modcna, and Parma. Then further north still were the two old republics of Genoa and Venice, the kingdom of Sardinia,^ and the plains of Lombardy, ruled by Austria. In not one of these was there evident even the germ of national life. Tuscany and Lombardy were doubtless the most enlightened and the best governed, but in neither was the thought of free political action tol- erated for a moment. Into this group of antiquated, dust-covered princi- palities and powers, in which the government of Florence (where Leopold reigned, brother of Marie Antoinette) was the only one that at all reflected the new intellectual rest- lessness of the time, came like a thunderbolt the shock of the F"rench Revolution. Napoleon's first independent com- mand was in P"'y, where in 1796-97, he led the armies of the new repi ^lic against Austria. In swift succession every despot in Italy was swept from his throne. Repub- lics arose under the protection of France in Naples, Rome, and Lombardy, and the bewildered people of Italy had to awaken to a new point of view with the entrance into their political vocabulary of the three words, liberty, equality, and fraternity. But the French republican general became an emperor, and the Italian republics that Ik had raised ' Moro iiroi)erly, king ol the Two Sicilies. Oftiii in the older histories Sicily is called Trinacria, and south Italy Sicilia, so that the realm ol the king whose capital was at Naples might be called the Two Sicilies. nVith its cr.pitnl :it Turin in ritrdiBont. 'n these psge? P'edm.-.nt =nd Sardinia will he interchangeable terms to describe the kingdom of Charles Albert and Victor Emanuel. From Turin to Rome 191 into life were changed into kingdoms, -not the old ones, but new ones, with Napoleon himself as king of one and his brother-in-law, Murat, of another. Then Waterloo came. Napoleon went to St. Helena. The powers he had raised up vanished, and the old princes came back to their thrones.- Only a few changes were made. Genoa was annexed now to the kingdom of Sardinia. Vonice was given to Austria. Austria more than evtr dominated all the states of Italy, and the revolutionary period seemed now doubtless to the returning princes and the absolutist statesmen like an evil dream of chan^^e and turmoil that was happily over. But it was no dreai.i. The revolution had been most real, and he Italians had been taught lessons as to the instability of thrones, the benefits of good government, the fascination of liberty, and the possi- bilities of unity that could never be wholly forgotten — however obscured they might be by the exhaustion of the people after the disturbed period since 1796. The first phase of the liberation of Italy had come and gone. Italy had been shaken out of her sleep, and had .een given by the great Italian emperor of the French a glimpse of a dawn, that might indeed be lost for a time in black clouds, but would surely in time break into the full light of a new Jay. Now came the period which has been aptly called the Thirty Years' Peace, extending from 1815, the year of Waterloo, to 1848, the great year of revolutions. If you find your way through a periotl by the aid chiefly of wars and treaties and convulsions it is a hard thirty-three years to keep track of, for it was a time of singularly little out- ward change. One spasm did break the quiet. — the revolution of 1830, — but it was quickly over, and the \gi Italian Cities occasional riots and rebellions in Italy or Hungary or Poland that now and then seemed likely to disturb the peace of Europe were stamped out quickly and thoroughly. But if we look beneath the surface we shall see that these little quickly suppressed commotions were the bubbles of a steady and persistent seething underneath. All those minds — and they numbered many thousands — which had been stirred into restless life by the revolutionary era were busy conning over the new ideals and casting about for some practical way of realizing them. At the same time the practical statesmen who were seeking to reduce things to order after the turmoil of the revolution — who looked upon liberty as the dangerous watchword of anarchy and rebellion, the tiresome idol of fanatics — were for their part making it their sole business to govern, to repress agitation, and to strengthen thr thrones that had been so sorely shaken. These two hostile groups had each their great repre- sentative during this thirty years' peace. The incarna- tion of the old ideas, the great statesman of expiring absolutism,— the stern, unyielding supporter of law and order as he understood the phrase, and the crushing and powerful enemy of liberty, was Prince Metternich, chan- cellor of the Austrian empire. With Russia and Prussia as his allies, and the princes of Italy almost his subjects, Metternich was able to stand as the chief exponent of absolute power through a great part of Europe from 1815 to 1848, In Italy Austria was practically all-powerful. Metternich's eye and arm seemed to penetrate into every comer. Every word or action that might portend even possible agitation or opposition meant some one's instant arrest and condemnation to years of imprisonment in some '^^m^ innmmf^m^Fmmwmm From Turin to Rome 193 lonely fortress in Austria, Hungary, or Bohemia. Metter- nich then was the practical embodiment of the statecraft and power of the old system. But opposed to Mettemich was a figure which stood out in singular contrast to him. Prince as he was, backed by the emperor of Austria, and feared by all Europe, the powerful chancellor was troubled by a shabbily clad, care- worn exile who wandered about Europe under the ban of governments, finding at last indeed his only safe refuge in England, hard put to it sometimes to know where his next meal was coming from, with the bondage of Italy burning into his soul, and with the vitality of genius radiating light and energy from him into every part of Europe. Poor and weak as Giuseppe Mazzini was, his devotion and his genius made him a match for Mettemich himself, an apostle and leader of the winning side in the great strug- gle between freedom and tyranny. Mazzini' was bom in Genoa, June 22, 1805. That is to say, he grew to boyhood and manhood in the latter days of Napoleon's regime and the years immediately following Waterloo. His father and his mother were cultured, capable people, both keenly interested in the tremendous political movements of their time, and both Liberals. So the boy learned the first principles of democracy from his parents, and these home lessons were illustrated and strengthened by the constant undertone of political discussion that he heard about him from the time when words began to mean anything to his childish ears, —talk of the great Revolution, of the doings of Napoleon, 'See Bolton King's "Mazzini" and " History of Italian Unity," Thayer's Uawn of Italian Independence.' Stillinan's "Union of Italy, " and the Count- ess Lesaresco s " Lihpr!(tinn of Italv " This last is probably the best account 01 the whole movement in a single volume. '. um'at «^i I mmt'imaiil-a 194 Italian Cities il' of the fitful rise and disappearance of the Italian repub- lics, of the disappointments that had come, of the loss of Genoese independence, and of the prospects for the future. Even his lessons in Greek and Latin, telling him of the great city republics of ancient times, taught him lessons as to the blessings of liberty and the hateful- ness of tyranny. So it was natural as he grew to years of responsibility that he should face with growing anxiety the situation in Italy. The state of affairs was very bad — as bad as it well could be. But what could b3 done! What could possibly relieve his down-trodden, degraded fellow-countrymen from the gigantic power of Austria! Only education, and patient, persistent agitation leading to a national revolt at some time in the future, — and towards this end Mazzini directed his effor.-, with increasing clear- ness of vision and certainty of conviction. He joined the society of the Carbonari, the only revolutionary organiza- tion that he could find, and for a time worked faithfully in its ranks. But he was dissatisfied with the results. It seemed to him that this great international secret society was too mysterious, too cosmopolitan, too subtle, and devious in its methods to ever excite a really national enthusiasm for the cause of Italy. And it was too con- servative, too cautious and slow moving for the impatient young Genoese, who so ardently yearned for the dawning of the new age of liberty and unity. He was arrested for his suspected share in a Car- bonari conspiracy, and six months of enforced quiet were given him in the fortress of Savona. Here he went over the whole situation in his mind. The more he thought of it the more decidedly did he turn away from the Carbuiiari as the possible regenerators of Italy. He t\ iBBtai From Turin to Rome 195 decided there in the prison to found a new society which should be purely national, which should be simple and clear in its aims, and which should adopt an aggressive and vigorous plan of campaign. The leaders of the Car- bonari were, perhaps, too old, too experienced in disap- pointments and failures to have the full revolutionary dash and enterprise, so Mazzini resolved to call his society 'Young Italy," and to accept no member who was over forty years of age. There in the Savona cell "Young Italy" was born, then, and when Mazzini was released for lack of evidence and because of his youth, he quickly began to gather in members. The new society caught the people's fancy at once. To make Italy one, jree, and repiihlkun — this was the simple, threefold 'aim of the enthusiastic band of young men who gathered about their silver-tongued leader, and "Young Italy" soon numbered its tens of thousands. Mazzini himself was soon exiled. He had to wander about for a time, hunted and unsettled, but after a year or two he drifted to London. A foggy, dismal place it seemed after the bright beauty of the Riviera, and yet friends were quickly made— the Cariyles among others— and by degrees t^- indness of kindred souls, the good- ness of heart i .. who sympathized openly with the cause that the < :. » loved, made the great city a second home which bee ■ . v^ery dear to him. Here he worked on steadily for the liberation of Italy. Letters and pam- phlets unceasingly crossed the channel. Month by month and year by year liberals throughout Europe, but espe- cially in Italy, found themselves looking with increasing eagerness for any new word from this prophet of the burning heart, the restless, vigorous brain, and the magic 196 Italian Cities 1*1 '■ pen. The leaders who were still permitted to work in Italy, or who visited their country at their own peril, kept constant communication with their great leader. Con- spiracies were formed, detected, and broken; revolts were begun and crushed; brave men were shot or hanged or spirited away to lifelong imprisonment. Yet still new plans were formed and new patriots came forward to take the places of the fallen and lost, and still the messages of hope and inspiration from Mazzini came to cheer and stimulate and gather new recruits for the host of "Young Italy." His faith never wavered, no matter how dull and spiritless his people seemed : no matter how invincible and cruel their oppressors. Love of country was a religion to him now, and he sought to make it so to others. "That old name of Italy, hung round with memories and glory and majestic griefs that centuries of mute servitude could not destroy" was indeed a new name to most Ital- ians, and it needed more elevation of spirit than most of them possessed to see his "vision of their country, radi- ant, purified by suffering, moving as an angel of light among the nations that thought her dead." Yet he worked on without despair. "I see the people pass before my eyes," he wrote, "in the livery of wretched- ness and political subjection, ragged and hungry, painfully gathering the crumbs that wealth tosses insuiJngly to it. or lost and wandering in riot and the intoxication of a brutish, angry, savage joy; and I remember that those brutalized faces bear the finger-print of God, the mark of the same mission as our own. I lift myself to the vision of the future, and behold the people rising in its majesty, brothers in one faith, one bond of equality and love, one ideal of citizen virtue that ever grows in beauty and IfcaiUK'-in ••»»••'»> '^^ From Turin to Rome »9/ might; the people of the future, uns] iled by luxury, ungoaded by wretchedness, awed by the consciousness of its rights and duties. And in the presence of that vision my heart beats with anguish for the present and glorying for the future," ' In 1848 seemed to come the beginning of the real- ization of at least part of Mazzini's dream. A sudden flame of revolt in the south shocked the king of Naples into a reluctant grant of a constitution to his people. This was in January, and it was the beginning of a wave of revolution. On February 7th Charles Albert granted a constitution to Piedmont. Before the month was over came the news of a great revolution in Paris and of the assembly at Mannheim demanding a free parliament for Germany. The liberal Pope Pius IX. inaugurated a sys- tem of reform in Rome. The flame reached Lombardy, when the Milanese expelled the Austrians in five terrible days of street fighting, and the dukes fled in panic from Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Lucca, leaving their states in the hands of provisional governments. The whole fabric of absolutism seemed to be staggering to its fall. From Vienna came the great news of risings in March which compelled Metternich himself to flee for his life. More riots came in May; the emperor had to leave his capital; Hungary and Bohemia rose in national revolts; and the tearing apart of Austria, that stronghold of des- potism, that stern power which had so long held down the popular aspirations of the Italians, seemed imminent, indeed almost accomplished. What if the pope's heart failed him, so that he left Rome and joined the king of Naples at Gaetal The Romans, in no wise dis' .•'artened, > Bolton King's " Mazzini," p. 28. 198 Italian Cities organized a republic, and guided and inspired by Mazzini himself, prepared to make good their claim of indepen- dence. Charles Albert, stirred by the enthusiasm of his peoDle, placed Sardinia at the head of an Italian rising ag ■ it the power of Austria. Indeed, it appeared that he had for years been awaiting this opportunity. He had said once to a good Liberal who brought to him reports of the hopes and dreams of patriots all over Italy: "Let those gentlemen know that for the present they must remain quiet ; but when the time comes, let them be cer- tain my life, the lives of my sons, my arms, my treasures — all shall be freely spent in the Italian cause." ' Now the promise was to be redeemed. But the end was not yet. One likes to pass quickly over these two years, 1848-49. It is never pleasant, and it is not always profitable to dwell upon disaster. Mazzini and Charles Albert had reckoned too hopefully on that most inscrutable and unreliable of forces — the people. Mazzini's vision of a united and free Italy was so real and sacred to him that it was inconceivable to him that the millions of his fellow-countrymen should not feel the same passion of patriotism that burned in his own heart. And Charles Albert never dreamed but that the enthusiastic Tuscans and Romans and Neapolitans who urged him to lead in a national war would bring strong legions of brave fighters from the center and south to support the gallant army of Piedmont. There was no intentional deceit; just the inevitable abyss between the optimism and enthu- siasm of the few and the indifference and inertia of the many. Italy was not yet fully awakened or adjusted to the idea of a real national rising. And it is equally true that she I Godkio, " Life of Victor Emmanuel 11.," p. 22. * iB Ull¥.^M i^»»l >n" l W^ ^-•■■ From Turin to Rome 199 had not yet found her leader. Mazzini was prophet and teacher, but no statesman; Charles Albert was an hon- est man, a patriot, and a brave soldier, but he was no general. Against the subtle diplomatists, the veteran generals, the disciplined battalions of Austria, poor Italy had little chance. A victory won by the king in May at Goito was followed by a crushing defeat at the hands of the Austrian marshal Radetski at Custozza, July 25th. A truce tied the hands of the combatants until the following spring, and then on the woeful field of Novara the cause of Italy suffered so crushing a reverse that no resurrec- tion seemed possible. Rome, heroically defended for nine weeks by Garibaldi and his brave companions against France ' as well as Austria, fell in July. Venice sur- rendered in August, after five short months of liberty and independence. Italy was enslaved again, and the chains seemed tighter and surer than ever. Nothing could have fallen more heavily on the hearts of Mazzini and his sanguine followers than the utter failure of so brave an effort to combine all Italians in a national struggle. And the gallant Piedmontese, who had borne the brunt of the war, the Milanese who had fought so bravely and exulted so triumphantly and prematurely found it hard to reconcile themselves to the weight of the disaster. But the brave men who had fallen on each hard-fought field of that sad year had not died in vain. They were martyrs for Italy, and they left a memory which nerved their comrades and their sons to emulation and final victory. "Deeming that the punishment of their ' ^"is Napoleon, later Napoleon 111., was now president of the French Kepublic. Whether to renew the tradition of the old Icings— "eldest sons of thechurch— or to secure the favor of the Catholics of France, in view of his designs on French liberty, he declared that he could not permit the overthrow by the Komans of the pope's authority. 200 Italian Cities f ■ enemies was sweeter than wealth or the pleasures of life or the hope of these, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon themselves alone. And when the moment came they were minded to resist and suffer, rather than to fly and save their lives; they ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battle- field their feet stood fast, and in an instant, at the height of their fortune, they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their glory." ' But even on the day of Novara the defeat was fol- lowed, if men could have seen it, by an omen of better days to come. For then Charles Albert, broken in heart and spirit, gave up his crown to his eldest son, and the gallant prince who had been the soul of the Piedmontese attack and resistance in the fight now took up the hard task that his father laid down, and became king of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II. Victor Emmanuel! There was courage and hope in the name itself surely, but there was little inclination in the sad group of patriots to see hope in a name. The times v;ere too sadly out of joint, and too much good blood had been shed at Custozza and Novara. Yet in truth the darkest hour was past when the sum- mer of 1849 reached its close. The new king had not the record of vacillation which would have hampered his father. Taking up the heavy task of retrieving the for- tunes of Piedmont with a brave heart and a strong will, holding to the promise of a constitution without a doubt or '"Thucydides" (Jowetfs translation), Look II. From Turin to Rome 20I a regret, Victor Emmanuel concluded peace with Austria and came back to Turin, knowing well what lay before him and prepared to face his destiny. Piedmont must no longer be an absolutist, medieval st-.lc; 1848 had closed one era and opened another; the constitution meant repre- sentation, representation meant popular government, and popular government meant adjustment to the ideas and practices of the progressive states of the west — the British Empire, the United States, and France. So the king summoned a representative parliament, called to his assist- ance a group of capable ministers, and set to work to remodel th'- institutions of Sardinia. It was not quite the Augean stable that Naples was, but there was much to be done, and Piedmont was far from unanimous in its atti- tude to the future. Indeed, a task had soon to be entered upo.. that awak- ened a powerful and bitter enemy. Six hundred years before, the practice had been universal in Europe to try the persons and suits of churchmen before the ecclesiastical courts. And not only churchmen, but all who were in any way dependent on the Church, all Crusaders, all wid- ows and orphans, could take their causes to ihe bishop rather than to the civil judge. Before the ecclesiastical court were brought all cases affecting wills and testa- ments or alms to the Church. Certain churches possessed the privilege of sanctuary, and might be a refuge to those pursued by the officers of the law. Education was con- trolled by the Church, in fact was almost a monopoly of the Church, so that few but clerks or monks could read at all. And the power thus confided in the Church in the Middle Ages was undoubtedly for the good of Europe. But as the age of confusion passed away, as 202 Italian Cities peace came in greater measure to the distracted states of the West, as higher ideals became more possible and more universal, and as governments became less and less mere powerful central forces quelling with a strong hand all powers opposed to them, the idea of administrative unity became both clearer and more possible of realization, and in England the church courts had lost most of their use- fulness and power before the Middle Ages can be said to have closed. The famous conflict between Henry II. and Thomas k Becket turned on this very issue. And this quarrel of twelfth-century England had to be fought out in nineteenth-century Italy, with Victor Emmanuel bravely but all unwillingly taking the part of the great Angevin. But the fierceness of Henry and the bitterness which led finally to the archbishop's murder were far from the heart of the Italian; his opposition to the Church was begun and maintained in sorrow and anxious desire for reconciliation; his persistence in reform, in the abolition of the church courts, in the nationalization of education, in the removal of laws against heretics, was due only to a severe sense of public duty; and his victory was unaccompanied with triumph or any feeling but one of satisfaction at duty done, and regret for his enforced alienation from the Church that he loved. Pius IX. remained proof against the king's earnest protests of fidelity, and the breach with the Church became in time even wider. In 1850 there entered the cabinet the man who was to do perhaps more than any other one individual towards making Italy united and free — Count Camillo Cavour.* He was a younger son of a noble Piedmontese house. 'See Countess Cesaresco's "Cavour ' in Itie Foreign Slatesmeo series. This, with the bibliography in Bolton King's "Italian Unity," will suUiciently direct the student to further material. ,. J: From Turin to Pome 203 I He had received a good education, and had traveled widely in Europe, but his family was not wealthy and his own portion was a meager one. So it was suggested that he should benefit the family and increase his own income by becoming manager of the ancestral estates. Into the business and agricultural sides of his new occupation he threw himself with energy and success; his fields and villages became models of wise management and pro- gressive methods; and long before he became a politician he was one of the wisest, most progressive, and most valu- able citizens of Piedmont. As his estates came to need less of his time he turned the spare energy thus set free into journalism, vigorously advocating the cause of all- round reform. He became in the new parliament one of the ablest and soundest speakers. There was probably not a man in Piedmont so well informed, by actual con- tact, as to the conditions of industry, commerce, agricul- ture, and public feeling. When the ministry of agricul- ture became vacant in 1850, it was natural enough that the portfolio should be given to Cavour, and in 1852 he be- came prime minister. From that time his name is insepar- ably assjciated with every step that was taken towards the aggrandizement of Piedmont and the liberation of Italy. In these early fifties the first duty of the Piedmontese government was still to place the country on a firm founda- tion industrially and commercially, and to adjust its insti- tutions to its new status as a liberal, seh-goveming state. Before it could lead Italy again in a national war it must recover its spent strength and stand on a firm financial basis. Before it could form a healthy nucleus for a free Italy it must try to educate its citizens and 'earn by prac- tice what intelligent liberty meant. So to these arduous I 204 Italian Citie h' tasks Cavour chiefly bent himself. But he never lost sight of the cause in which Charles Albert had spent the last year of his reign, and for whi '^ ''^»ct' r Emmanuel as Duke of Savoy had fought so g. il i.;tiy ii\ J vainly. He had faith in Italy as deep as Mazxui. •, ar I he had also what Mazzini lacked, a clear p ■ ccpiic:! )f the means which alone could make the liberal j \ "f {*aly oossible. In 1854 Sardinia joined Fran< e 4:-'! C- ' u b.itair in the Crimean War. Cavour and the kinj v/,,,^ bitterly criti- cized for wasting the country's sicnder r -o i-ces in a frivolous alliance, but the wise men who wtse guuling Piedmont to her great destiny knew their business. The troops under La Marmora fought bravely and wc'' The\ earned the respect and good will of their French and Eng- lish comrades. When the Congress of the Powers met at Paris to arrange the terms of the peace in 1856, Cavour himself represented Sardinia, and sat at the same board as his national arch-eneiny, the representative of Au-itria. Moreover, before the plenipotentiaries separated, Cavi-ur, who had won the favor of the representatives of France and England, begged permission to lay the state ot Italy before the Congress. In i calm and cogent st tement he brought for-van'. in indictment against Austria, v iich might e.xcite the violent wrath of the Austrian plenipoten- tiary indeed, but which rang from end to end of western Europe, and secured at once for the Italian cause the back- ing of uiat subtle and powerful spiritual force — the public opinion of the civilized world. P.cdmont had then re- established herself; she had secured the respect and friendiy regard of Europe; she had won for herself sym- pathy, and had aroused for her oppressor a distinct att^ tude of unfriendly criticism. So much was good. F^rom Fu i to R(»me Z05 And )w all wa' rcnrv for th( noxt step. Civou'- believed firmly, to the horror and disc' jnu.emeut of Ma/.zini, that Italy would need the help ot a great power against Austria. England was im[K)ssiblc; ^ni^sia was more imp issible; France might have iucn dee mei equally so had F cuuenot been ruled bv the mi-It..lia' '^ap leon III. The personality of his st e hun n was Cavour's hope He set himself to trie tast ing all the emperoi - old regard )r Ital^ , md ing in him all the Ad traditi* al Fren h Austria. He pointed to tht ii.^. lious advas, trian power in Italy, t ■ tht danffer if an striai on Piedmont — an attai whu u Pi dmon; 1 n to resist alone, but w use succws wou ave supreme i\-U!i- V lope iustria the promise •■anre would go to c of so ordering ? fulfilled. It is lie nestly sets whos ortification vent of 3 war with ; ' pubi-ed on w r preparations of all jHu said ex lerati , things, while main- tain g the : sc, . alou xternal politeness; in short, sh- went so ci se to at iial insult and ieclaration of hostile inunt that at iost A stria's ang and nervousness were too much for her. in ipril, 18,9 in le ultimatum which ende ' the long str in for Cavou enabled him to claim Napo :)n's promise. The miruck was realized. Once more rance ' 1 ?ed the Alps. Once more a Bonaparte crossed swords th Austria in Lombardy. On the fields things that the require-? coi ion sh seldom difficult to !>ro oke an at about it. ^' cdmont fortified po could have > meaiung except in tn Aiib i; shL kind she '' h ii I! > ; t 5' 206 Italian Cities of Magenta and Solferino were won the two greatest vic- tories that the French arms have achieved since the great NafKjleon, and Lombardy was freed at last. The Italian patriots hoped for Venice, too. The emperor had prom- ised to free Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. But even though his heart now failed him, though his treaty with Austria at Villafranca left Venice still in the hands of her oppressors,' though the disappointed rage of the Italians pursued him with execrations instead of bless- ings, yet Cavour and the king well knew how much they owed to the emperor. Before the end of 1859 not only Lombardy, but Lucca, Modena, Parma, and Tuscany owned the rule of Victor Emmanuel. No one could now declare that a united Italy was impossible. To one brave soldier the peace of Villafranca came as a peculiarly heavy disappointment. Giuseppe Garibaldi, exiled in 1834, had drifted off to South America, had joined himself there to all causes that reminded him of the cause he loved at home, had fought for liberty — or what seemed to him liberty — with a lion-like courage, an im- petuous abandon, a single-minded devotion to high ideals, a warmth of heart and an incapacity for corruption that had won for him the enthusiastic love of a little band of followers and great fame as an irregular fighter. The revolution year, 1848, had brought him home, only to be in time for the disasters of the fall and winter, and for the heroic defense of Rome in the summer of 1849. The outbreak of the great war of 1859 found him settled on the little island of Caprera, near the coast of Sardinia, • Oppressors only in a sentimental, national sense, be it understood. Apart from forbidding political action or agitation, Austria ruled her Italian Srovinces mildly and fairly well. Naples suffered from tyranny far more ttian lilan. "•fcwraWBKPSB^tr f From Turin to Rome 207 where he was patiently awaiting an opportunity to strike another blow for Italia una e libera, and in that war he did effective service in command of a body of irregular troops styled "Hunters of the A'ps." To his ardent nature the full dawning of Italian freedom was at hand. And the measure of his confident expectation was the measure of his bitter disappointment. Only the personal command of his beloved king made him lay down his arms, and he retired dejected to Caprera, only to fume and storm over the crimes and blunders — as they seemed — of others.* But pregnant rumors reached him as that winter neared its close — rumors of a stirring of the waters in Sicily. Only a leader was needed there, ^' was said, to bring about a revolution. Garibaldi was tempted — hesitated — then decided on the great venture. He had able lieuten- ants. Arms were secured and arrangements perfected with the utmost secrecy. And then, on the evening of May 5, i860, two small steamers slipped out of the harbor of Genoa with a thousand red-shirted men on board, bound no one knew whither. Before two weeks had passed Europe was being electrified with astonishing news. The famous guerrilla chief had landed in Sicily, had defeated a detachment of Neapolitan troops, and was marching on Palermo. Like a thunderbolt the red-shirted heroes fell on the Sicilian capital, captured it, held it against a terrific bombardment, and finally forced the royal general to a treaty, leaving Garibaldi the control of the island. He was proclaimed dictator of Sicily. But this was not enough. He crossed to the mainland, marched north, entered Naples, and there, too, was pro- most 'See Garibaldis " Autobioerpphy." There is. a capital account of thii It picturesque " maker ol Italy "^in Thayer's "Throne Makers." 'iM 208 Italian Cities y: claimed dictator. Whereupon Victor Emmanuel had to take a hand, and the King of North Italy marched south to receive from his loyal friend and subject ihe gift of a kingdom. The two joined forces to capture Gaeta, the last stronghold of the defeated king of the Two Sicilies. So Victor Emmanuel was king now of South and North. There remained only Rome and Venice. The story is nearly told. Cavour died in the summer of 1 86 1, all too soon for Italy. But his successors endeav- ored to hold to his ideals, and to use his methods. In 1866 Prussia fought her duel with Austria for supremacy in Germany. Austria's danger was Italy's opportunity, and Victor Emmanuel became the willing and use ml ally of King William. The issue was decided on the field of Koniggratz (Sadowa) and Italy's reward was Venice. Rome was still guarded by a French garrison. Napo- leon III. still declared himself the firm protector of the pope. But in 1 870 came the Franco- Prussian War. The terrible series of defeats during the summer of that year culminated in Sedan. With the capture of the emperor by the Prussians ended the Second Empire, and with Napoleon's fall ended the French guarantee of the temporal power of tie pope. The departure of the French garrison left the Vatican powerless. Th- little army of Pius IX. was soon overcome, and Rome itself was added to the kingdom of Italy, now united under one sceptre for the first time since Theodoric the Ostrogoth had reigned in the Eternal City thirteen centuries ago and more. Italy was united at last, and free. What the united Italian race may now look forward to, no man knows. That the destiny of that wonderful people will be a worthy II mim From Turin to Rome 209 one, few can doubt. For eight centuries the Italians were the first people of the civilized world, conquering and ruling all Europe south of the Danube and west of the Rhine, Asia to the Euphrates and Africa north of the Great Desert. For eight more centuries the Roman world was busily conquering its conquerors and rising in new forms of life from the ashes of the Empire. It was the age of Gregory the Great, of Hildebrand, of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa. Then came the century of Francis and Dante, then the tide of the Renaissance, reaching its full flood in the age of Lorenzo, Raphael, and Titian, then at the end of the sixteenth century the first perceptible lapse in the energy and fruitfulness of the Italian race during two thousand years. Was it exhausted then? Not so. At the end of the eighteenth century the man who caught the force of the French Revolution, harnessed it, ard used it to conquer Europe, \vas a pure-blood Italian, as true a type of the vigor of the race as Sulla or Columbus. A ri then came Italy's nineteenth-century prophet, Maz- zini, her knight-errant. Garibaldi, her statesman, Cavour, her sturdy king, Victor Emmanuel, and the miracle of the liberation of Italy! Let it not be said that so great a race can decay now at the moment when it is at last free and united. Rather may the New Italy combine the genius and fulfil the destiny of all her immortal cities, and be still Italy the undying. INDEX Academy of Fine Arts, Florence, iig. Addison's Description of Siena Cath- edral, 80, 81. Angelico, Fra, 106, 107, 110. Andrea del Sarto, 125, 164. Asceticism, 108, no. Assisi, 44-S6. "Athens, School of, " Fresco, 147-149. Attila the Hun, 134. Austrian Domination in Italy, igo- 193, 199, 204. Baiz, 4. Barbarossa, Frederick, 176-181. Bellini, Giovanni, 160-163, 16$. Benozzo Gozzoli, 113. Blacks, Faction of, in Florence, 96. Boccaccio, 107-111. Botticelli, 122-124, 127, 128 Burne-Jones, Sir E., on Carpaccio and Bellini, 165. Byzantine Art, 66, 102-103. Cxsar, 30, 31. Campo Santo of Pisa, 67, 68, 72, 74. Canova, 141. Carbonari, 194, 19$, Carpaccio, 160-162, 16$, Carthage, 24, Catherine of Siena, 88-90. Cavour, 189, 202-208. Charles Albert, 197-200. Chivalry, Meaning of, 43. Christianity in the Empire, 33-37. Chrysoloras, Manuel, Teaches Greek at Florence, 133. Church Medieval 0-44; Conflict of, with Victor Emmunuel, 201, 202. Cimabue, 104. Como Lake, 171. Cosimo de' Medici, 113-116. Crimean War, 204. Crusades, Genoa in the, 60; Venice in the, 1$$. Custozza, 199. Dante, 92-102. "David" of Michelangelo, 144. Decameron of Boccaccio, 108. Divine Comedy of Dante, 97-102. Doges, Palace of the, 153, 159, 168. Ouccio di Buoninsegna, 86, 87, 104. Duomo of Siena, io, 85. Forum Romanum, 19, 20. Fonte Gaja of Siena, 78, 79. Francis of Assisi, 44-S6. French Revolution, Effect of, on Italy, 190. Frederick Barbarossa, 176-181. Florence, Chapters VI. and V11.,/