The Story of Florence. Gardner Edmund G.

was no less famous and influential in his day. Giannozzo Manetti, who pronounced Bruni's funeral oration, was noted for his eloquence and incorruptibility, and stands out prominently amidst the scholars and humanists by virtue of his nobleness of character; like that other hero of the new learning, Palla Strozzi, he was driven into exile and persecuted by the Mediceans.

      Far more interesting are the men of light and learning who gathered round Lorenzo dei Medici in the latter half of the century. This is the epoch of the Platonic Academy, which Marsilio Ficino had founded under the auspices of Cosimo. The discussions held in the convent retreat among the forests of Camaldoli, the meetings in the Badia at the foot of Fiesole, the mystical banquets celebrated in Lorenzo's villa at Careggi in honour of the anniversary of Plato's birth and death, may have added little to the sum of man's philosophic thought; but the Neo-Platonic religion of love and beauty, which was there proclaimed to the modern world, has left eternal traces in the poetic literature both of Italy and of England. Spenser and Shelley might have sat with the nine guests, whose number honoured the nine Muses, at the famous Platonic banquet at Careggi, of which Marsilio Ficino himself has left us an account in his commentary on the Symposium. You may read a later Italian echo of it, when Marsilio Ficino had passed away and his academy was a thing of the past, in the impassioned and rapturous discourse on love and beauty poured forth by Pietro Bembo, at that wonderful daybreak which ends the discussions of Urbino's courtiers in Castiglione's treatise. In a creed that could find one formula to cover both the reception of the Stigmata by St Francis and the mystical flights of the Platonic Socrates and Plotinus; that could unite the Sibyls and Diotima with the Magdalene and the Virgin Martyrs; many a perplexed Italian of that epoch might find more than temporary rest for his soul.

      Simultaneously with this new Platonic movement there came a great revival of Italian literature, alike in poetry and in prose; what Carducci calls il rinascimento della vita italiana nella forma classica. The earlier humanists had scorned, or at least neglected the language of Dante; and the circle that surrounded Lorenzo was undoubtedly instrumental in this Italian reaction. Cristoforo Landini, one of the principal members of the Platonic Academy, now wrote the first Renaissance commentary upon the Divina Commedia; Leo Battista Alberti, also a leader in these Platonic disputations, defended the dignity of the Italian language, as Dante himself had done in an earlier day. Lorenzo himself compiled the so-called Raccolta Aragonese of early Italian lyrics, and sent them to Frederick of Aragon, together with a letter full of enthusiasm for the Tuscan tongue, and with critical remarks on the individual poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Upon the popular poetry of Tuscany Lorenzo himself, and his favourite Angelo Ambrogini of Montepulciano, better known as Poliziano, founded a new school of Italian song. Luigi Pulci, the gay scoffer and cynical sceptic, entertained the festive gatherings in the Medicean palace with his wild tales, and, in his Morgante Maggiore, was practically the first to work up the popular legends of Orlando and the Paladins into a noteworthy poem–a poem of which Savonarola and his followers were afterwards to burn every copy that fell into their hands.

      1

      "Love, I demand to have my lady in fee,

      Fine balm let Arno be,

      The walls of Florence all of silver rear'd,

      And crystal pavements in the public way;

      With castles make me fear'd,

      Till every Latin soul have owned my sway."

– Lapo Gianni (Rossetti).

      2

      "For amongst the tart sorbs, it befits not the sweet fig to fructify."

      3

      "Let the beasts of Fiesole make litter of themselves, and not touch the plant, if any yet springs up amid their ran

1

"Love, I demand to have my lady in fee,Fine balm let Arno be,The walls of Florence all of silver rear'd,And crystal pavements in the public way;With castles make me fear'd,Till every Latin soul have owned my sway."– Lapo Gianni (Rossetti).

2

"For amongst the tart sorbs, it befits not the sweet fig to fructify."

3

"Let the beasts of Fiesole make litter of themselves, and not touch the plant, if any yet springs up amid their rankness, in which the holy seed revives of those Romans who remained there when it became the nest of so much malice."

4

"With these folk, and with others with them, did I see Florence in such full repose, she had not cause for wailing;

With these folk I saw her people so glorious and so just, ne'er was the lily on the shaft reversed, nor yet by faction dyed vermilion."

– Wicksteed's translation.

5

"The house from which your wailing sprang, because of the just anger which hath slain you and placed a term upon your joyous life,

"was honoured, it and its associates. Oh Buondelmonte, how ill didst thou flee its nuptials at the prompting of another!

"Joyous had many been who now are sad, had God committed thee unto the Ema the first time that thou camest to the city.

"But to that mutilated stone which guardeth the bridge 'twas meet that Florence should give a victim in her last time of peace."

6

"And one who had both hands cut off, raising the stumps through the dim air so that their blood defiled his face, cried: 'Thou wilt recollect the Mosca too, ah me! who said, "A thing done has an end!" which was the seed of evil to the Tuscan people.'" (Inf. xxviii.)

7

The Arte di Calimala, or of the Mercatanti di Calimala, the dressers of foreign cloth; the Arte della Lana, or wool; the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, judges and notaries, also called the Arte del Proconsolo; the Arte del Cambio or dei Cambiatori, money-changers; the Arte dei Medici e Speziali, physicians and apothecaries; the Arte della Seta, or silk, also called the Arte di Por Santa Maria; and the Arte dei Vaiai e Pellicciai, the furriers. The Minor Arts were organised later.

8

Some years later a new officer, the Executor of Justice, was instituted to carry out these ordinances instead of leaving them to the Gonfaloniere. This Executor of Justice was associated with the Captain, but was usually a foreign Guelf burgher; later he developed into the Bargello, head of police and governor of the gaol. It will, of course, be seen that while Podestà, Captain, Executore (the Rettori), were aliens, the Gonfaloniere and Priors (the Signori) were necessarily Florentines and popolani.

9

Rossetti's translation of the ripresa and second stanza of the Ballata Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai.

10

"Thou shall abandon everything beloved most dearly; this is the arrow which the bow of exile shall first shoot.

"Thou shalt make trial of how salt doth taste another's bread, and how hard the path to descend and mount upon another's stair."

– Wicksteed's