Chapter 10 CHARLES VIII.

The Italian States confront the Great Nations of Europe-Policy of Louis XI.

of France-Character of Charles VIII.-Preparations for the Invasion of Italy-Position of Lodovico Sforza-Diplomatic Difficulties in Italy after the Death of Lorenzo de' Medici-Weakness of the Republics-II Moro-The year 1494-Alfonso of Naples-Inefficiency of the Allies to cope with France-Charles at Lyons is stirred up to the Invasion of Italy by Giuliano della Rovere-Charles at Asti and Pavia-Murder of Gian Galeazzo Sforza-Mistrust in the French Army-Rapallo and Fivizzano-The Entrance into Tuscany-Part played by Piero de' Medici-Charles at Pisa-His Entrance into Florence-Piero Capponi-The March on Rome-Entry into Rome-Panic of Alexander VI.-The March on Naples-The Spanish Dynasty: Alfonso and Ferdinand-Alfonso II. escapes to Sicily-Ferdinand II. takes Refuge in Ischia-Charles at Naples-The League against the French-De Comines at Venice-Charles makes his Retreat by Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Pontremoli-The Battle of Fornovo-Charles reaches Asti and returns to France-Italy becomes the Prize to be fought for by France, Spain, and Germany-Importance of the Expedition of Charles VIII.

One of the chief features of the Renaissance was the appearance for the first time on the stage of history of full-formed and colossal nations. France, Spain, Austria, and England are now to measure their strength. Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples, even Rome, are destined in the period that is opening for Europe to play but secondary parts. Italy, incapable of coping with these great powers, will become the mere arena of their contests, the object of their spoliations. Yet the Italians themselves were far from being conscious of this change. Accustomed through three centuries to a system of diplomacy and intrigue among their own small states, they still thought more of the balance of power within the peninsula than of the means to be adopted for repelling foreign force. Their petty jealousies kept them disunited at an epoch when the best chance of national freedom lay in a federation. Firmly linked together in one league, or subject to a single prince, the Italians might not only have met their foes on equal ground, but even have taken a foremost place among the modern nations.[1] Instead of that, their princes were foolish enough to think that they could set France, Germany, or Spain in motion for the attainment of selfish objects within the narrow sphere of Italian politics, forgetting the disproportion between these huge monarchies and a single city like Florence, a mere province like the Milanese. It was just possible for Lorenzo de' Medici to secure the tranquillity of Italy by combining the Houses of Sforza and of Aragon with the Papal See in the chains of the same interested policy with the Commonwealth of Florence. It was ridiculous of Lodovico Sforza to fancy that he could bring the French into the game of peninsular intrigue without irrevocably ruining its artificial equilibrium. The first sign of the alteration about to take place in European history was the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday excursion of a hairbrained youth was as transient as a border-foray on a large scale. The so-called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent loss of Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from north to south, and returned upon its path from south to north within the space of a few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which it traversed, and changed the whole complexion of the politics of Europe.

[1] Read, however, Sismondi's able argument against the view that Italy, united as a single nation under a sovereign, would have been better off, vol. vii. p. 298 et seq. He is of opinion that her only chance lay in a Confederation. See chapter ii. above, for a discussion of this chance.

The invasion of Italy had been long prepared in the counsels of Louis XI. After spending his lifetime in the consolidation of the French monarchy, he constructed an inheritance of further empire for his successors by dictating to the old King Réné of Anjou (1474) and to the Count of Maine (1481) the two wills by which the pretensions of the House of Anjou to the Crown of Naples were transmitted to the royal family of France.[1] On the death of Louis, Charles VIII. became King in 1483. He was then aged only thirteen, and was still governed by his elder sister, Anne de Beaujeu.[2] It was not until 1492 that he actually took the reins of the kingdom into his own hands. This year, we may remark, is one of the most memorable dates in history. In 1492 Columbus discovered America: in 1492 Roderigo Borgia was made Pope: in 1492 Spain became a nation by the conquest of Granada. Each of these events was no less fruitful of consequences to Italy than was the accession of Charles VIII. The discovery of America, followed in another six years by Vasco de' Gama's exploration of the Indian seas, diverted the commerce of the world into new channels; Alexander VI. made the Reformation and the Northern Schism certainties; the consolidation of Spain prepared a way for the autocracy of Charles V. Thus the commercial, the spiritual, and the political scepter fell in this one year from the grasp of the Italians.

[1] Sismondi, vol. vi. p. 285. The Appendix of Pièces Justificatives to Philip de Comines' Memoirs contains the will of Réné King of Sicily, Count of Provence, dated July 22, 1474, by which he constitutes his nephew, Charles of Anjou, Duke of Calabria, Count of Maine, his heir-in-chief; as well as the will of Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, Count of Provence, dated December 10, 1481, by which he makes Louis XI. his heir, naming Charles the Dauphin next in succession.

[2] Her husband was a cadet of the House of Bourbon.

Both Philip de Comines and Guicciardini have described the appearance and the character of the prince who was destined to play a part so prominent, so pregnant of results, and yet so trivial in the affairs of Europe. Providence, it would seem, deigns frequently to use for the most momentous purposes some pantaloon or puppet, environing with special protection and with the prayers and aspirations of whole peoples a mere manikin. Such a puppet was Charles. 'From infancy he had been weak in constitution and subject to illness. His stature was short, and his face very ugly, if you except the dignity and vigor of his glance. His limbs were so disproportioned that he had less the appearance of a man than of a monster. Not only was he ignorant of liberal arts, but he hardly knew his letters. Though eager to rule, he was in truth made for anything but that; for while surrounded by dependents, he exercised no authority over them and preserved no kind of majesty. Hating business and fatigue, he displayed in such matters as he took in hand a want of prudence and of judgment. His desire for glory sprang rather from impulse than from reason. His liberality was inconsiderate, immoderate, promiscuous. When he displayed inflexibility of purpose, it was more often an ill-founded obstinacy than firmness, and that which many people called his goodness of nature rather deserved the name of coldness and feebleness of spirit.' This is Guicciardini's portrait. De Comines is more brief: 'The king was young, a fledgling from the nest; provided neither with money nor with good sense; weak, willful, and surrounded by foolish counselors.'

These foolish counselors, or, as Guicciardini calls them, 'men of low estate, body-servants for the most part of the king,' were headed by Stephen de Vesc, who had been raised from the post of the king's valet de chambre to be the Seneschal de Beaucaire, and by William Bri?onnet, formerly a merchant, now Bishop of S. Malo. These men had everything to gain by an undertaking which would flatter the vanity of their master, and draw him into still closer relations with themselves. Consequently, when the Count of Belgioioso arrived at the French Court from Milan, urging the king to press his claims on Naples, and promising him a free entrance into Italy through the province of Lombardy and the port of Genoa, he found ready listeners. Anne de Beaujeu in vain opposed the scheme. The splendor and novelty of the proposal to conquer such a realm as Italy inflamed the imagination of Charles, the cupidity of his courtiers, the ambition of de Vesc and Bri?onnet. In order to assure his situation at home, Charles concluded treaties with the neighboring great powers. He bought peace with Henry VII. of England by the payment of large sums of money. The Emperor Maximilian, whose resentment he had aroused by sending back his daughter Margaret after breaking his promise to marry her, and by taking to wife Anne of Brittany, who was already engaged to the Austrian, had to be appeased by the cession of provinces. Ferdinand of Spain received as the price of his neutrality the strong places of the Pyrenees which formed the key to France upon that side. Having thus secured tranquillity at home by ruinous concessions, Charles was free to turn his attention to Italy. He began by concentrating stores and ships on the southern ports of Marseilles and Genoa; then he moved downward with his army, to Lyons, in 1494.

At this point we are called to consider the affairs of Italy, which led the Sforza to invite his dangerous ally. Lorenzo de' Medici during his lifetime had maintained a balance of power between the several states by his treaties with the Courts of Milan, Naples, and Ferrara. When he died, Piero at once showed signs of departure from his father's policy. The son and husband of Orsini,[1] he embraced the feudal pride and traditional partialities of the great Roman house who had always been devoted to the cause of Naples. The suspicions of Lodovico Sforza were not unreasonably aroused by noticing that the tyrant of Florence inclined to the alliance of King Ferdinand rather than to his own friendship. At this same time Alfonso, the Duke of Calabria, heir to the throne of Naples, was pressing the rights of his son-in-law, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, on the attention of Italy, complaining loudly that his uncle Lodovico ought no longer to withhold from him the reins of government.[2] Gian Galcazzo was in fact the legitimate successor of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, who had been murdered in Santo Stefano in 1476. After this assassination Madonna Bona of Savoy and Cecco Simonetta, who had administered the Duchy as grand vizier during three reigns extending over a period of half a century, governed Milan as regents for the young Duke. But Lodovico, feeling himself powerful enough to assume the tyranny, beheaded Simonetta at Pavia in 1480, and caused Madonna Bona, the Duke's mother, on the pretext of her immorality, to quit the regency. Thus he took the affairs of Milan into his own hands, confined his nephew in an honorable prison, and acted in a way to make it clear that he intended thenceforth to be Duke in fact.[3] It was the bad conscience inseparable from this usurpation which made him mistrust the princes of the house of Aragon, whose rights in Isabella, wife of the young Duke, were set at nought by him. The same uneasy sense of wrong inclined him to look with dread upon the friendship of the Medici for the ruling family of Naples.

[1] His mother Clarice and his wife Alfonsina were both of them Orsini. Guicciardini, in his 'Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze' (Op. Ined. vol. ii. p. 46), says of him: 'sendo nato di madre forestiera, era imbastardito in lui il sangue Fiorentino, e degenerato in costumi esterni, e troppo insolenti e altieri al nostro vivere.' Piero, nevertheless, refused to accept estates from King Alfonso which would have made him a Baron and feudatory of Naples. See Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 347.

[2] The young Duke was aged twenty-four in 1493.

[3] Lodovico had taken measures for cloaking his usurpation with the show of legitimate right. He betrothed his niece Bianca Maria, in 1494, to the Emperor Maximilian, with a dower of 400,000 ducats, receiving in return an investiture of the Duchy, which, however, he kept secret.

While affairs were in this state, and as yet no open disturbance in Lorenzo's balance of power had taken place, Alexander VI. was elected to the Papacy. It was usual for the princes and cities of Italy to compliment the Pope with embassies on his assumption of the tiara; and Lodovico suggested that the representatives of Milan, Florence, Ferrara, and Naples should enter Rome together in a body. The foolish vanity of Piero, who wanted to display the splendor of his own equipage without rivals, induced him to refuse this proposal, and led to a similar refusal on the part of Ferdinand. This trivial circumstance confirmed the suspicions of Lodovico, who, naturally subtle and intriguing, thought that he discerned a deep political design in what was really little more than the personal conceit of a broad-shouldered simpleton.[1] He already foresaw that the old system of alliances established by Lorenzo must be abandoned. Another slight incident contributed to throw the affairs of Italy into confusion by causing a rupture between Rome and Naples. Lorenzo, by the marriage of his daughter to Franceschetto Cibo, had contrived to engage Innocent VIII. in the scheme of policy which he framed for Florence, Naples, Milan, and Ferrara. But on the accession of Alexander, Franceschetto Cibo determined to get rid of Anguillara, Cervetri, and other fiefs, which he had taken with his father's connivance from the Church. He found a purchaser in Virginio Orsini. Alexander complained that the sale was an infringement of his rights. Ferdinand supported the title of the Orsini to his new acquisitions. This alienated the Pope from the King of Naples, and made him willing to join with Milan and Venice in a new league formed in 1493.

[1] Piero de' Medici was what the French call a bel homme, and little more. He was tall, muscular, and well-made, the best player at pallone in Italy, a good horseman, fluent and agreeable in conversation, and excessively vain of these advantages.

Thus the old equilibrium was destroyed, and fresh combinations between the disunited powers of Italy took place. Lodovico, however, dared not trust his new friends. Venice had too long hankered after Milan to be depended upon for real support; and Alexander was known to be in treaty for a matrimonial alliance between his son Geoffrey and Donna Sancia of Aragon. Lodovico was therefore alone, without a firm ally in Italy, and with a manifestly fraudulent title to maintain. At this juncture he turned his eyes towards France; while his father-in-law, the Duke of Ferrara, who secretly hated him, and who selfishly hoped to secure his own advantage in the general confusion which he anticipated, urged him to this fatal course. Alexander at the same time, wishing to frighten the princes of Naples into a conclusion of the projected marriage, followed the lead of Lodovico, and showed himself at this moment not averse to a French invasion.

It was in this way that the private cupidities and spites of princes brought woe on Italy: Lodovico's determination to secure himself in the usurped Duchy of Milan, Ercole d' Este's concealed hatred, and Alexander's unholy eagerness to aggrandize his bastards, were the vile and trivial causes of an event which, however inevitable, ought to have been as long as possible deferred by all true patriots in Italy. But in Italy there was no zeal for freedom left, no honor among princes, no virtue in the Church. Italy, which in the thirteenth century numbered 1,800,000 citizens-that is, members of free cities, exercising the franchise in the government of their own states-could show in the fifteenth only about 18,000 such burghers:[1] and these in Venice were subject to the tyranny of the Council of Ten, in Florence had been enervated by the Medici, in Siena were reduced by party feuds and vulgar despotism to political imbecility. Amid all the splendors of revived literature and art, of gorgeous courts and refined societies, this indeed was the right moment for the Dominican visionary to publish his prophecies, and for the hunchback puppet of destiny to fulfill them. Guicciardini deplores, not without reason, the bitter sarcasm of fate which imposed upon his country the insult of such a conqueror as Charles. He might with equal justice have pointed out in Lodovico Sforza the actor of a tragi-comic part upon the stage of Italy. Lodovico, called II Moro, not, as the great historian asserts, because he was of dark complexion, but because he had adopted the mulberry-tree for his device,[2] was in himself an epitome of all the qualities which for the last two centuries had contributed to the degradation of Italy in the persons of the despots. Gifted originally with good abilities, he had so accustomed himself to petty intrigues that he was now incapable of taking a straightforward step in any direction. While he boasted himself the Son of Fortune and listened with complacency to a foolish rhyme that ran: God only and the Moor foreknow the future safe and sure, he never acted without blundering, and lived to end his days in the intolerable tedium of imprisonment at Loches. He was a thoughtful and painstaking ruler; yet he so far failed to win the affection of his subjects that they tossed up their caps for joy at the first chance of getting rid of him. He disliked bloodshed; but the judicial murder of Simonetta, and the arts by which he forced his nephew into an early grave, have left an ineffaceable stain upon his memory. His court was adorned by the presence of Lionardo da Vinci; but at the same time it was so corrupt that, as Corio tells us,[3] fathers sold their daughters, brothers their sisters, and husbands their wives there. In a word Lodovico, in spite of his boasted prudence, wrought the ruin of Italy and himself by his tortuous policy, and contributed by his private crimes and dissolute style of living no little to the general depravity of his country.[4]

[1] This is Sismondi's calculation (vol. vii. p. 305). It must be taken as a rough one. Still students who have weighed the facts presented in Ferrari's Rivoluzioni d' Italia will not think the estimate exaggerated. In the municipal and civil wars, free burghs were extinguished by the score.

[2] See Varchi, vol. i. p. 49. Also the Elogia of Paulus Jovius, who remarks that the complexion of Lodovico was fair. His surname, however, provoked puns. Me had, for example, a picture painted, in which Italy, dressed like a queen, is having her robe brushed by a Moorish page. A motto ran beneath, Per Italia nettar d' ogni bruttura. He adopted the mulberry because Pliny called it the most prudent of all trees, inasmuch as it waits till winter is well over to put forth its leaves, and Lodovico piqued himself on his sagacity in choosing the right moment for action.

[3] L' Historia di Milano, Vinegia, 1554, p. 448: 'A quella (scola di Venere) per ogni canto vi si convenivan bellissimi giovani. I padri vi concedevano le figliuole, i mariti le mogliere, i fratelli le sorelle; e per sifatto modo senz' alcun riguardo molti concorreano all' amoroso ballo, che cosa stupendissima era riputata per qualunque l' intendeva.'

[4] Guicciardini, Storia d' Italia, lib. iii. p. 35, sums up the character of Lodovico with masterly completeness.

Amid this general perturbation of the old political order the year 1494, marked in its first month by the death of King Ferdinand, began-'a year,' to quote from Guicciardini, 'the most unfortunate for Italy, the very first in truth of our disastrous years, since it opened the door to numberless and horrible calamities, in which it may be said that a great portion of the world has subsequently shared.' The expectation and uneasiness of the whole nation were proportioned to the magnitude of the coming change. On every side the invasion of the French was regarded with that sort of fascination which a very new and exciting event is wont to inspire. In one mood the Italians were inclined to hail Charles as a general pacificator and restorer of old liberties.[1] Savonarola had preached of him as the flagellum Dei, the minister appointed to regenerate the Church and purify the font of spiritual life in the peninsula. In another frame of mind they shuddered to think what the advent of the barbarians-so the French were called-might bring upon them. It was universally agreed that Lodovico by his invitation had done no more than bring down, as it were, by a breath the avalanche which had been long impending. 'Not only the preparations made by land and sea, but also the consent of the heavens and of men, announced the woes in store for Italy. Those who pretend either by art or divine inspiration to the knowledge of the future, proclaimed unanimously that greater and more frequent changes, occurrences more strange and awful than had for many centuries been seen in any part of the world, were at hand.' After enumerating divers signs and portents, such as the passing day after day in the region round Arezzo of innumerable armed men mounted on gigantic horses with a hideous din of drums and trumpets, the great historian resumes: 'These things filled the people with incredible fear; for, long before, they had been terrified by the reputation of the power of the French and of their fierceness, seeing that histories are full of their deeds-how they had already overrun the whole of Italy, sacked the city of Rome with fire and sword, subdued many provinces of Asia, and at one time or another smitten with their arms all quarters of the world.'

[1] This was the strictly popular as opposed to the aristocratic feeling. The common folk, eager for novelty and smarting under the bad rule of monsters like the Aragonese princes, expected in Charles VIII. a Messiah, and cried 'Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.' See passages quoted in a note below.

Among all the potentates of Italy, Alfonso of Naples had the most to dread; for against him the invasion was specially directed. No time was to be lost. He assembled his allies at Vicovaro near Tivoli in July and explained to them his theory of resistance. The allies were Florence, Rome, Bologna, and all the minor powers of Romagna.[1] For once the southern and the middle states of Italy were united against a common foe. After Alfonso, Alexander felt himself in greatest peril, for he dreaded the assembly of a Council which might depose him from the throne he had bought by simony. So strong was his terror that he had already sent ambassadors to the Sultan imploring him for aid against the Most Christian King, and had entreated Ferdinand the Catholic, instead of undertaking a crusade against the Turk, to employ his arms in opposition to the French. But Bajazet was too far off to be of use; and Ferdinand was prudent. It remained for the allies to repel the invader by their unassisted force. This might have been done if Alfonso's plan had been adhered to. He designed sending a fleet, under his brother Don Federigo, to Genoa, and holding with his own troops the passes of the Apennines to the North, while Piero de' Medici undertook to guard the entrances to Tuscany on the side of Lunigiana. The Duke of Calabria meanwhile was to raise Gian Galeazzo's standard in Lombardy. But that absolute agreement which is necessary in the execution of a scheme so bold and comprehensive was impossible in Italy. The Pope insisted that attention should first be paid to the Colonnesi-Prospero and Fabrizio being secret friends of France, and their castles offering a desirable booty. Alfonso, therefore, determined to occupy the confines of the Roman territory on the side of the Abruzzi, while he sent his son, with the generals Giovan Jacopo da Trivulzi and the Count of Pitigliano, into Lombardy. They never advanced beyond Cesena, where the troops of the Sforza, in conjunction with the French, held them at bay. The fleet under Don Federigo sailed too late to effect the desired rising in Genoa. The French, forewarned, had thrown 2,000 Swiss under the Baily of Dijon and the Duke of Orleans into the city, and the Neapolitan admiral fell back upon Leghorn. The forces of the league were further enfeebled and divided by the necessity of leaving Virginio Orsini to check the Colonnesi in the neighborhood of Rome. How utterly Piero de' Medici by his folly and defection ruined what remained of the plan will be seen in the sequel. This sluggishness in action and dismemberment of forces-this total inability to strike a sudden blow-sealed beforehand the success of Charles. Alfonso, a tyrant afraid of his own subjects, Alexander, a Pope who had bought the tiara to the disgust of Christendom, Piero, conscious that his policy was disapproved by the Florentines, together with a parcel of egotistical petty despots, were not the men to save a nation. Italy was conquered, not by the French king, but by the vices of her own leaders. The whole history of Charles's expedition is one narrative of headlong rashness triumphing over difficulties and dangers which only the discord of tyrants and the disorganization of peoples rendered harmless. The Atè of the gods had descended upon Italy, as though to justify the common belief that the expedition of Charles was divinely sustained and guided.[2]

[1] Venice remained neutral. She had refused to side with Charles, on the pretext that the fear of the Turk kept her engaged. She declined to join the league of Alfonso by saying it was mad to save others at the risk of drawing the war into your own territory. Nothing is more striking than the want of patriotic sentiment or generous concurrence to a common end in Italy at this time. Florence, by temper and tradition favorable to France, had been drawn into the league by Piero de' Medici, whose sympathies were firm for the Aragonese princes.

[2] This, of course, was Savonarola's prophecy. But both Guicciardini and De Comities use invariably the same language. The phrase Dieu monstroit conduire l'entreprise frequently recurs in the Memoirs of De Comines.

While Alfonso and Alexander were providing for their safety in the South, Charles remained at Lyons, still uncertain whether he should enter Italy by sea or land, or indeed whether he should enter it at all. Having advanced so far as the Rhone valley, he felt satisfied with his achievement and indulged himself in a long bout of tournaments and pastimes. Besides, the want of money, which was to be his chief embarrassment throughout the expedition, had already made itself felt.[1] It was an Italian who at length roused him to make good his purpose against Italy-Giuliano della Rovere,[2] the haughty nephew of Sixtus, the implacable foe of Alexander, whom he was destined to succeed in course of time upon the Papal throne. Burning to punish the Marrano, or apostate Moor, as he called Alexander, Giuliano stirred the king with taunts and menaces until Charles felt he could delay his march no longer. When once the French army got under weigh, it moved rapidly. Leaving Vienne on August 23, 1494, 3,600 men at arms, the flower of the French chivalry, 6,000 Breton archers, 6,000 crossbowmen, 8,000 Gascon infantry, 8,000 Swiss and German lances, crossed the Mont Genevre, debouched on Susa, passed through Turin, and entered Asti on September 19.[3] Neither Piedmont nor Montferrat stirred to resist them. Yet at almost any point upon the route they might have been at least delayed by hardy mountaineers until the commissariat of so large a force had proved an insurmountable difficulty. But before this hunchback conqueror with the big head and little legs, the valleys had been exalted and the rough places had been made plain. The princes whose interest it might have been to throw obstacles in the way of Charles were but children. The Duke of Savoy was only twelve years old, the Marquis of Montferrat fourteen; their mothers and guardians made terms with the French king, and opened their territories to his armies.

[1] 'La despense de ces navires estoit fort grande, et suis d'advis qu'elle cousta trois cens mille francs, et si ne servit de rien, et y alla tout l'argent contant que le Roy peut finer de ses finances: car comme j'ay dit, il n'estoit point pourveu ne de sens, ne d'argent, oy d'autre chose nécessaire à telle entreprise, et si en vint bien à bout, moyennant la grace de Dieu, qui clairement le donna ainsi à cognoistre.' De Comines, lib. vii.

[2] Guicciardini calls him on this occasion 'fatale instrumento e allora e prima e poi de' mali d' Italia.' Lib. i. cap. 3.

[3] I have followed the calculation of Sismondi (vol. vii. p. 383), to which should be added perhaps another 10,000 in all attached to the artillery, and 2,000 for sappers, miners, carpenters, etc. See Dennistoun, Dukes of Urbino, vol. i. p. 433, for a detailed list of Charles's armaments by land and sea.

At Asti Charles was met by Lodovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Ercole d' Este. The whole of that Milanese Court which Corio describes[1] followed in their train. It was the policy of the Italian princes to entrap their conqueror with courtesies, and to entangle in silken meshes the barbarian they dreaded. What had happened already at Lyons, what was going to repeat itself at Naples, took place at Asti. The French king lost his heart to ladies, and confused his policy by promises made to Delilahs in the ballroom. At Asti he fell ill of the small-pox, but after a short time he recovered his health, and proceeded to Pavia. Here a serious entanglement of interests arose. Charles was bound by treaties and engagements to Lodovico and his proud wife Beatrice d' Este; the very object of his expedition was to dethrone Alfonso and to assume the crown of Naples; yet at Pavia he had to endure the pathetic spectacle of his forlorn cousin[2] the young Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza in prison, and to hear the piteous pleadings of the beautiful Isabella of Aragon. Nursed in chivalrous traditions, incapable of resisting a woman's tears, what was Charles to do, when this princess in distress, the wife of his first cousin, the victim of his friend Lodovico, the sister of his foe Alfonso, fell at his feet and besought him to have mercy on her husband, on her brother, on herself? The situation was indeed enough to move a stouter heart than that of the feeble young king. For the moment Charles returned evasive answers to his petitioners; but the trouble of his soul was manifest, and no sooner had he set forth on his way to Piacenza than the Moor resolved to remove the cause of further vacillation. Sending to Pavia, Lodovico had his nephew poisoned.[3] When the news of Gian Galeazzo's death reached the French camp, it spread terror and imbittered the mistrust which was already springing up between the frank cavaliers and the plausible Italians with whom they had to deal.

[1] See above, p. 548.

[2] The mothers of Charles VIII. and Gian Galeazzo were sisters, princesses of Savoy.

[3] Sismondi does not discuss the fact minutely, but he inclines to believe that Gian Galeazzo was murdered. Michelet raises a doubt about it, though the evidence is such as he would have accepted without question in the case of a Borgia. Guicciardini, who recounts the whole matter at length, says that all Italy believed the Duke had been murdered, and quotes Teodoro da Pavia, one of the royal physicians, who attested to having seen clear signs of a slow poison in the young man. Pontano, de Prudentia, lib. 4, repeats the accusation. Guicciardini only doubts Lodovico's motives. He inclines to think the murder had been planned long before, and that Charles was invited into Italy in order that Lodovico might have a good opportunity for effecting it, while at the same time he had taken care to get the investiture of the Duchy from the Emperor ready against the event.

What was this beautiful land in the midst of which they found themselves, a land whose marble palaces were thronged with cut-throats in disguise, whose princes poisoned while they smiled, whose luxuriant meadows concealed fever, whose ladies carried disease upon their lips? To the captains and the soldiery of France, Italy already appeared a splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with charms, surrounded with illusions, hiding behind perfumed thickets her victims changed to brutes, and building the couch of her seduction on the bones of murdered men. Yet she was so beautiful that, halt as they might for a moment and gaze back with yearning on the Alps that they had crossed, they found themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques with roses that they might not hear the siren's voice too clearly. It was thus that Italy began the part she played through the Renaissance for the people of the North. The White Devil of Italy is the title of one of Webster's best tragedies. A white Devil, a radiant daughter of sin and death, holding in her hands the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and tempting the nations to eat: this is how Italy struck the fancy of the men of the sixteenth century. She was feminine, and they were virile; but she could teach and they must learn. She gave them pleasure; they brought force. The fruit of her embraces with the nations was the spirit of modern culture, the genius of the age in which we live.

Two terrible calamities warned the Italians with what new enemies they had to deal. Twice at the commencement of the invasion did the French use the sword which they had drawn to intimidate the sorceress. These terror-striking examples were the massacres of the inhabitants of Rapallo on the Genoese Riviera, and of Fivizzano in Lunigiana. Soldiers and burghers, even prisoners and wounded men in the hospitals, were butchered, first by the Swiss and German guards, and afterwards by the French, who would not be outdone by them in energy. It was thus that the Italians, after a century of bloodless battles and parade campaigning, learned a new art of war, and witnessed the first act of those Apocalyptic tragedies which were destined to drown the peninsula with French, Spanish, German, Swiss, and native blood.

Meanwhile the French host had reached Parma, traversing, all through the golden autumn weather, those plains where mulberry and elm are married by festoons of vines above a billowy expanse of maize and corn. From Parma, placed beneath the northern spurs of the Apennines, to Sarzana, on the western coast of Italy, where the marbles of Carrara build their barrier against the Tyrrhene Sea, there leads a winding barren mountain pass. Charles took this route with his army, and arrived in the beginning of November before the walls of Sarzana. Meanwhile we may well ask what Piero de' Medici had been doing, and how he had fulfilled his engagement with Alfonso. He had undertaken, it will be remembered, to hold the passes of the Apennines upon this side. To have embarrassed the French troops among those limestone mountains, thinly forested with pine and chestnut-trees, and guarded here and there with ancient fortresses, would have been a matter of no difficulty. With like advantages 2,000 Swiss troops during their wars of independence would have laughed to scorn the whole forces of Burgundy and Austria. But Piero, a feeble and false tyrant, preoccupied with Florentine factions, afraid of Lucca, and disinclined to push forward into the territory of the Sforza, had as yet done nothing when the news arrived that Sarzana was on the point of capitulation. In this moment of peril he rode as fast as horses could carry him to the French camp, besought an interview with Charles, and then and there delivered up to him the keys of Sarzana and its citadel, together with those of Pietra Santa, Librafratta, Pisa, and Leghorn. Any one who has followed the sea-coast between Pisa and Sarzana can appreciate the enormous value of these concessions to the invader. They relieved him of the difficulty of forcing his way along a narrow belt of land, which is hemmed in on one side by the sea and on the other by the highest and most abrupt mountain range in Italy. To have done this in the teeth of a resisting army and beneath the walls of hostile castles would have been all but impossible. As it was, Piero cut the Gordian knot by his incredible cowardice, and for himself gained only ruin and dishonor. Charles, the foe against whom he had plotted with Alfonso and Alexander, laughed in his face and marched at once into Pisa. The Florentines, whom he had hitherto engaged in ah unpopular policy, now rose in fury, expelled him from the city, sacked his palace, and erased from their memory the name of Medici except for execration. The unsuccessful tyrant, who had proved a traitor to his allies, to his country, and to himself, saved his life by flying first to Bologna and thence to Venice, where he remained in a sort of polite captivity-safe, but a slave, until the Doge and his council saw which way affairs would tend.

On the 9th of November Florence after a tyranny of fifty years, and Pisa after the servitude of a century, recovered their liberties and were able to reconstitute republican governments. But the situation of the two states was very different. The Florentines had never lost the name of liberty, which in Italy at that period meant less the freedom of the inhabitants to exercise self-government than the independence of the city in relation to its neighbors. The Pisans on the other hand had been reduced to subjection by Florence: their civic life had been stifled, their pride wounded in the tenderest point of honor, their population decimated by proscription and exile. The great sin of Florence was the enslavement of Pisa: and Pisa in this moment of anarchy burned to obliterate her shame with bloodshed. The French, understanding none of the niceties of Italian politics, and ignorant that in giving freedom to Pisa they were robbing Florence of her rights, looked on with wonder at the citizens who tossed the lion of the tyrant town into the Arno and took up arms against its officers. It is sad to witness this last spasm of the long-suppressed passion for liberty in the Pisans, while we know how soon they were reduced again to slavery by the selfish sister state, herself too thoroughly corrupt for liberty. The part of Charles, who espoused the cause of the Pisans with blundering carelessness, pretended to protect the new republic, and then abandoned it a few months later to its fate, provokes nothing but the languid contempt which all his acts inspire.

After the flight of Piero and the proclamation of Pisan liberty the King of France was hailed as saviour of the free Italian towns. Charles received a magnificent address from Savonarola, who proceeded to Pisa, and harangued him as the chosen vessel of the Lord and the deliverer of the Church from anarchy. At the same time the friar conveyed to the French king a courteous invitation from the Florentine republic to enter their city and enjoy their hospitality. Charles, after upsetting Piero de' Medici with the nonchalance of a horseman in the tilting yard, and restoring the freedom of Pisa for a caprice, remained as devoid of policy and indifferent to the part assigned him by the prophet as he was before. He rode, armed at all points, into Florence on November 17, and took up his residence in the palace of the Medici. Then he informed the elders of the city that he had come as conqueror and not as guest, and that he intended to reserve to himself the disposition of the state.

It was a dramatic moment. Florence, with the Arno flowing through her midst, and the hills around her gray with olive-trees, was then even more lovely than we see her now. The whole circuit of her walls remained, nor had their crown of towers been leveled yet to make resistance of invading force more easy Brunelleschi's dome and Giotto's tower and Arnolfo's Palazzo and the Loggie of Orcagna gave distinction to her streets and squares. Her churches were splendid with frescoes in their bloom, and with painted glass, over which as yet the injury of but a few brief years had passed. Her palaces, that are as strong as castles, overflowed with a population cultivated, polished, elegant, refined, and haughty. This Florence, the city of scholars, artists, intellectual sybarites, and citizens in whom the blood of the old factions beat, found herself suddenly possessed as a prey of war by flaunting Gauls in their outlandish finery, plumed Germans, kilted Celts, and particolored Swiss. On the other hand these barbarians awoke in a terrestrial paradise of natural and ?sthetic beauty. Which of us who has enjoyed the late gleams of autumn in Valdarno, but can picture to himself the revelation of the inner meaning of the world, incomprehensible yet soul-subduing, which then first dawned upon the Breton bowmen and the bulls of Uri? Their impulse no doubt was to pillage and possess the wealth before them, as a child pulls to pieces the wonderful flower that has surprised it on some mountain meadow. But in the very rudeness of desire they paid a homage to the new-found loveliness of which they had not dreamed before.

Charles here as elsewhere showed his imbecility. He had entered and laid hands on hospitable Florence like a foe. What would he now do with her-reform the republic-legislate-impose a levy on the citizens, and lead them forth to battle? No. He asked for a huge sum of money, and began to bargain. The Florentine secretaries refused his terms. He insisted. Then Piero Capponi snatched the paper on which they were written, and tore it in pieces before his eyes. Charles cried: 'I shall sound my trumpets.' Capponi answered: 'We will ring our bells.' Beautiful as a dream is Florence; but her somber streets, overshadowed by gigantic belfries and masked by grim brown palace-fronts, contained a menace that the French king could not face. Let Capponi sound the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: Ah, Ciappon, Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon! The secretaries beat down his terms. All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with 120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two days he quitted Florence.

Hitherto Charles had met with no serious obstacle. His invasion had fallen like the rain from heaven, and like rain, as far as he was concerned, it ran away to waste. Lombardy and Tuscany, the two first scenes in the pageant displayed by Italy before the French army, had been left behind. Rome now lay before them, magnificent in desolation; not the Rome which the Farnesi and Chigi and Barberini have built up from the quarried ruins of amphitheaters and baths, but the Rome of the Middle Ages, the city crowned with relics of a pagan past, herself still pagan, and holding in her midst the modern Antichrist. The progress of the French was a continued triumph. They reached Siena on the second of December. The Duke of Urbino and the lords of Pesaro and Bologna laid down their arms at their approach. The Orsini opened their castles: Virginio, the captain-general of the Aragonese army and grand constable of the kingdom of Naples, hastened to win for himself favorable terms from the French sovereign. The Baglioni betook themselves to their own rancors in Perugia. The Duke of Calabria retreated. Italy seemed bent on proving that cowardice and selfishness and incapacity had conquered her. Viterbo was gained: the Ciminian heights were traversed: the Campagna, bounded by the Alban and the Sabine hills, with Rome, a bluish cloud upon the lowlands of the Tiber, spread its solemn breadth of beauty at the invader's feet. Not a blow had been struck, when he reached the Porta del Popolo upon the 31st of December 1494. At three o'clock in the afternoon began the entry of the French army. It was nine at night before the last soldiers, under the flaring light of torches and flambeaux, defiled through the gates, and took their quarters in the streets of the Eternal City. The gigantic barbarians of the cantons, flaunting with plumes and emblazoned surcoats, the chivalry of France, splendid with silk mantles and gilded corselets, the Scotch guard in their wild costume of kilt and philibeg, the scythe-like halberds of the German lanz-knechts, the tangled elf-locks of stern-featured Bretons, stamped an ineffaceable impression on the people of the South. On this memorable occasion, as in a show upon some holiday, marched past before them specimens and vanguards of all those legioned races which were soon to be too well at home in every fair Italian dwelling-place. Nothing was wanting to complete the symbol of the coming doom but a representative of the grim, black, wiry infantry of Spain.

[1] The want of money determined all Charles's operations in this expedition. Borrowing from Lodovico, laying requisitions on Piero and the Florentines, pawning the jewels of the Savoy princesses, he passed from place to place, bargaining and contracting debts instead of dictating laws and founding constitutions. La carestia dei danari is a phrase continually recurring in Guicciardini. Speaking of the jewels lent to Charles by the royal families of Savoy and Montferrat at Turin, de Comines exclaims: 'Et pouvez voir quel commencement de guerre c'estoit, si Dieu n'eut guidé l'oeuvre.'

The Borgia meanwhile crouched within the Castle of S. Angelo. How would the Conqueror, now styled Flagellum Dei, deal with the abomination of desolation seated in the holy place of Christendom? At the side of Charles were the Cardinals Ascanio Sforza and Giuliano della Rovere, urging him to summon a council and depose the Pope. But still closer to his ear was Bri?onnet, the ci-devant tradesman, who thought it would become his dignity to wear a cardinal's hat. On this trifle turned the destinies of Rome, the doom of Alexander, the fate of the Church. Charles determined to compromise matters. He demanded a few fortresses, a red hat for Bri?onnet, Cesare Borgia as a hostage for four months, and Djem, the brother of the Sultan.[1] After these agreements had been made and ratified, Alexander ventured to leave his castle and receive the homage of the faithful.

Charles staid a month in Rome, and then set out for Naples. The fourth and last scene in the Italian pageant was now to be displayed. After the rich plain and proud cities of Lombardy, beneath their rampart of perpetual snow; after the olive gardens and fair towns of Tuscany; after the great name of Rome; Naples, at length, between Vesuvius and the sea, that first station of the Greeks in Italy, world-famed for its legends of the Sibyl and the sirens and the sorcerer Virgil, received her king. The very names of Parthenope, Posilippo, Inarime, Sorrento, Capri, have their fascination. There too the orange and lemon groves are more luxuriant; the grapes yield sweeter and more intoxicating wine; the villagers are more classically graceful; the volcanic soil is more fertile; the waves are bluer and the sun is brighter than elsewhere in the land. None of the conquerors of Italy have had the force to resist the allurements of the bay of Naples. The Greeks lost their native energy upon these shores and realized in the history of their colonies the myth of Ulysses' comrades in the gardens of Circe. Hannibal was tamed by Capua. The Romans in their turn dreamed away their vigor at Bai?, at Pompeii at Capre?, until the whole region became a byword for voluptuous living. Here the Saracens were subdued to mildness, and became physicians instead of pirates. Lombards and Normans alike were softened down, and lost their barbarous fierceness amid the enchantments of the southern sorceress.

[1] See above, p. 416, for the history of this unfortunate prince. When Alexander ceded Djem, whom he held as a captive for the Sultan at a yearly revenue of 40,000 ducats, he was under engagements with Bajazet to murder him. Accordingly Djem died of slow poison soon after he became the guest of Charles. The Borgia preferred to keep faith with the Turk.

Naples was now destined to ruin for Charles whatever nerve yet remained to his festival army. The witch too, while brewing for the French her most attractive potions, mixed with them a deadly poison-the virus of a fell disease, memorable in the annals of the modern world, which was destined to infect the nations of Europe from this center, and to prove more formidable to our cities than even the leprosy of the Middle Ages.[1]

[1] Those who are curious to trace the history of the origin of syphilis, should study the article upon the subject in Von Hirsch, Historisch-geographische Pathologie (Erlangen, 1860), and in Rosenbaum Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthum (Halle, 1845). Some curious contemporary observations concerning the rapid diffusion of the disease in Italy, its symptoms, and its cure, are contained in Matarazzo's Cronaca di Perugia (Arch. Stor. It. vol. xvi. part ii. pp. 32-36), and in Portovenere (Arch. St. vol. vi. pt. ii. p. 338). The celebrated poem of Fracastorius deserves to be read both for its fine Latinity and for its information. One of the earliest works issued from the Aldine press in 1497 was the Libellus de Epidemia quam vulgo morbum Gallicum vocant. It was written by Nicolas Leoniceno, and dedicated to the Count Francesco de la Mirandola.

The kingdom of Naples, through the frequent uncertainty which attended the succession to the throne, as well as the suzerainty assumed and misused by the Popes, had been for centuries a standing cause of discord in Italy. The dynasty which Charles now hoped to dispossess was Spanish. After the death of Joanna II. in 1435, Alfonso, King of Aragon and Sicily, who had no claim to the crown beyond what he derived through a bastard branch of the old Norman dynasty, conquered Naples, expelled Count Réné of Anjou, and established himself in this new kingdom, which he preferred to those he had inherited by right. Alfonso, surnamed the Magnanimous, was one of the most brilliant and romantic personages of the fifteenth century. Historians are never weary of relating his victories over Caldora and Francesco Sforza, the coup-de-main by which he expelled his rival Réné, and the fascination which he exercised in Milan, while a captive, over the jealous spirit of Filippo Maria Visconti.[1] Scholars are no less profuse in their praises of his virtues, the justice, humanity, religion, generosity, and culture which rendered him pre-eminent among the princes of that splendid period.[2] His love of learning was a passion. Whether at home in the retirement of his palace, or in his tent during war, he was always attended by students, who read aloud and commented on Livy, Seneca, or the Bible. No prince was more profuse in his presents to learned men. Bartolommeo Fazio received 500 ducats a year for the composition of his histories, and when, at their conclusion, the scholar asked for a further gift of 200 or 300 florins, the prince bestowed upon him 1,500. The year he died, Alfonso distributed 20,000 ducats to men of letters alone. This immoderate liberality is the only vice of which he is accused. It bore its usual fruits in the disorganization of finance.

[1] Mach. Ist. Fior. lib. v. cap. 5. Corio, pp. 332, 333, may be consulted upon the difficulties which Alfonso overcame at the commencement of his conquest. Defeated by the Genoese near the Isle of Ponza, and carried a prisoner to Milan, he succeeded in proving to Filippo Visconti that it was more to his interest to have him king of Naples than to keep the French there. Upon, this the Duke of Milan restored him with honor to his throne, and confirmed him in the conquest which before he had successfully opposed. It is a singular instance of the extent to which Italian princes were controlled by policy and reason.

[2] Vespasiano's Life of Alfonso (Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 48-72) is a model of agreeable composition and vivid delineation. It is written of course from the scholar's more than the politician's point of view. Compare with it Giovio, Elogia, and Pontanus, de Liberalitate.

The generous humanity of Alfonso endeared him greatly to the Neapolitans. During the half-century in which so many Italian princes succumbed to the dagger of their subjects, he, in Naples, where, according to Pontano, 'nothing was cheaper than the life of a man,' walked up and down unarmed and unattended. 'Why should a father fear among his children?' he was wont to say in answer to suggestions of the danger of this want of caution. The many splendid qualities by which he was distinguished were enhanced rather than obscured by the romance of his private life. Married to Margaret of Castile, he had no legitimate children; Ferdinand, with whom he shared the government of Naples in 1443, and whom he designated as his successor in 1458, was supposed to be his son by Margaret de Hijar. It was even whispered that this Ferdinand was the child of Catherine the wife of Alfonso's brother Henry, whom Margaret, to save the honor of the king, acknowledged as her own. Whatever may have been the truth of this dark history, it was known for certain that the queen had murdered her rival, the unhappy Margaret de Hijar, and that Alfonso never forgave her or would look upon her from that day. Pontano, who was Ferdinand's secretary, told a different tale. He affirmed that the real father of the Duke of Calabria was a Marrano of Valentia. This last story is rendered probable by the brusque contrast between the character of Alfonso and that of Ferdinand.

It would be terrible to think that such a father could have been the parent of such a son. In Ferdinand the instinct of liberal culture degenerated into vulgar magnificence; courtesy and confidence gave place to cold suspicion and brutal cruelty. His ferocity bordered upon madness. He used to keep the victims of his hatred in cages, where their misery afforded him the same delight as some men derived from watching the antics of monkeys.[1] In his hunting establishment were repeated the worst atrocities of Bernabo Visconti: wretches mutilated for neglect of his hounds extended their handless stumps for charity to the travelers through his villages.[2] Instead of the generosity for which Alfonso had been famous, Ferdinand developed all the arts of avarice. Like Sixtus IV. he made the sale of corn and oil a royal monopoly, trafficking in the hunger of his subjects.[3] Like Alexander VI. he fattened his viziers and secretaries upon the profits of extortion which he shared with them, and when they were fully gorged he cut their throats and proclaimed himself the heir through their attainder.[4] Alfonso had been famous for his candor and sincerity. Ferdinand was a demon of dissimulation and treachery. His murder of his guest Jacopo Piccinino at the end of a festival, which extended over twenty-seven days of varied entertainments, won him the applause of Machiavellian spirits throughout Italy. It realized the ideal of treason conceived as a fine art. Not less perfect as a specimen of diabolical cunning was the vengeance which Ferdinand, counseled by his son Alfonso, inflicted on the barons who conspired against him.[5] Alfonso was a son worthy of his terrible father. The only difference between them was that Ferdinand dissembled, while Alfonso, whose bravery at Otranto against the Turks had surrounded him with military glory, abandoned himself with cynicism to his passions. Sketching characters of both in the same paragraph, de Comines writes: 'Never was man more cruel than Alfonso, nor more vicious, nor more wicked, nor more poisonous, nor more gluttonous. His father was more dangerous, because he could conceal his mind and even his anger from sight; in the midst of festivity he would take and slaughter his victims by treachery. Grace or mercy was never found in him, nor yet compassion for his poor people. Both of them laid forcible hands on women. In matters of the Church they observed nor reverence nor obedience. They sold bishoprics, like that of Tarento, which Ferdinand disposed of for 13,000 ducats to a Jew in favor of his son whom he called a Christian.'

[1] See Pontanus, de Immanitate, Aldus, 1518, vol. 1. p. 318: 'Ferdinandus Rex Neapolitanorum pr?claros etiam viros conclusos carcere etiam bene atque abunde pascebat, eandem ex iis voluptatem capiens quam pueri e conclusis in cavea aviculis: qua de re s?penumero sibi ipsi inter intimos suos diu multumque gratulatus subblanditusque in risum tandem ac cachinnos profundebatur.'

[2] See Pontanus, de Immanitate, Aldus; 1518, vol. i. p. 320: 'Ferd. R.N. qui cervum aprumve occidissent furtimve palamve, alios remo addixit, alios manibus mutilavit, alios suspendio affecit: agros quoque serendos inderdixit dominis, legendasque aut glandes aut poma, qu? servari quidem volebat in escam feris ad venationis su? usum.'

[3] Caracciolo, de Varietate Fortun?, Muratori, vol. xxii. p. 87, exposes this system in a passage which should be compared with Infessura on the practices of Sixtus. De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11, may be read with profit on the same subject.

[4] See Caracciolo, loc. cit. pp. 88, 89, concerning the judicial murder of Francesco Coppola and Antonello Perucci, both of whom had been raised to eminence by Ferdinand, used through their lives as the instruments of his extortion, and murdered by him in their rich old age.

[5] See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 11; Sismondi, vol. vii. p. 229. Read also the short account of the massacre of the Barons given in the Chronicon Venetum, Muratori, xxiv. p. 15, where the intense loathing felt throughout Italy for Ferdinand and his son Alfonso is powerfully expressed.

This kind of tyranny carried in itself its own death-warrant. It needed not the voice of Savonarola to proclaim that God would revenge the crimes of Ferdinand by placing a new sovereign on his throne. It was commonly believed that the old king died in 1494 of remorse and apprehension, when he knew that the French expedition could no longer be delayed. Alfonso, for his part, bold general in the field and able man of affairs as he might be, found no courage to resist the conqueror. It is no fiction of a poet or a moralist, but plain fact of history, that this King of Naples, grandson of the great Alfonso and father of the Ferdinand to be, quailed before the myriads of accusing dead that rose to haunt his tortured fancy in the supreme hour of peril. The chambers of his palace in Naples were thronged with ghosts by battalions, pale specters of the thousands he had reduced to starvation, bloody phantoms of the barons he had murdered after nameless tortures, thin wraiths of those who had wasted away in dungeons under his remorseless rule. The people around his gates muttered in rebellion. He abdicated in favor of his son, took ship for Sicily, and died there conscience-stricken in a convent ere the year was out.

Ferdinand, a brave youth, beloved by the nation in spite of his father's and grandfather's tyranny, reigned in his stead. Yet even for him the situation was untenable. Everywhere he was beset by traitors-by his whole army at San Germano, by Trivulzi at Capua, by the German guide at Naples. Without soldiers, without allies, with nothing to rely upon but the untried goodwill of subjects who had just reason to execrate his race, and with the conquerors of Italy advancing daily through his states, retreat alone was left to him. After abandoning his castles to pillage, burning the ships in the harbor of Naples, and setting Don Federigo together with the Queen dowager and the princess Joanna upon a quick-sailing galley, Ferdinand bade farewell to his kingdom. Historians relate that as the shore receded from his view he kept intoning in a loud voice this verse of the 127th Psalm: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' Between the beach of Naples and the rocky shore of Ischia, for which the exiles were bound, there is only the distance of some seventeen miles. It was in February, a month of mild and melancholy sunshine in those southern regions, when the whole bay of Naples with its belt of distant hills is wont to take one tint of modulated azure, that the royal fugitives performed this voyage. Over the sleeping sea they glided; while from the galley's stern the king with a voice as sad as Boabdil's when he sat down to weep for Granada, cried: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.'

There was no want of courage in the youth. By his simple presence he had intimidated a mob of rebels in Naples. By the firmness of his carriage he subdued the insolent governor of Ischia, and made himself master of the island. There he waited till the storm was overpast. Ten times more a man than Charles, he watched the French king depart from Naples leaving scarcely a rack behind-some troops decimated by disease and unnerved by debauchery, and a general or two without energy or vigor. Then he returned and entered on a career of greater popularity than could have been enjoyed by him if the French had never made the fickle race of Naples feel how far more odious is a foreign than a familiar yoke.[1]

Charles entered Naples as a conqueror or liberator on February 22, 1495. He was welcomed and fêted by the Neapolitans, than whom no people are more childishly delighted with a change of masters. He enjoyed his usual sports, and indulged in his usual love-affairs. With suicidal insolence and want of policy he alienated the sympathies of the noble families by dividing the titles, offices, and fiefs of the kingdom among his retinue.[2] Without receiving so much as a provisional investiture from the Pope, he satisfied his vanity by parading on May 12 as sovereign, with a ball in one hand and a scepter in the other, through the city. Then he was forced to return upon his path and to seek France with the precipitancy he had shown in gaining Naples. Alexander, who was witty, said the French had conquered Italy with lumps of chalk and wooden spurs, because they rode unarmed in slippers and sent couriers before them to select their quarters. It remained to be seen that the achievements of this conquest could be effaced as easily as a chalk mark is rubbed out, or a pair of wooden spurs are broken.

[1] The misfortunes and the bravery of this young prince inspire a deep feeling of interest. It is sad to read that after recovering his kingdom in 1496, he died in his twenty-eighth year, worn out with fatigue and with the pleasures of his marriage to his aunt Joanna, whom he loved too passionately. His uncle Frederick, the brother of Alfonso II., succeeded to the throne. Thus in three years Naples had five Sovereigns.

[2] 'Tous estats et offices furent donnez aux Fran?ois, à deux ou trois,' says De Comines.

While Charles was amusing himself at Naples, a storm was gathering in his rear. A league against him had been formed in April by the great powers of Europe. Venice, alarmed for the independence of Italy, and urged by the Sultan, who had reason to dread Charles VIII.,[1] headed the league. Lodovico, now that he had attained his selfish object in the quiet position of Milan, was anxious for his safety. The Pope still feared a general council. Maximilian, who could not forget the slight put upon him in the matter of his daughter and his bride, was willing to co-operate against his rival. Ferdinand and Isabella, having secured themselves in Roussillon, thought it behooved them to re-establish Spaniards of their kith and kin in Naples. Each of the contracting parties had his r?le assigned to him. Spain undertook to aid Ferdinand of Aragon in Calabria. Venice was to attack the seaports of the kingdom; Lodovico Sforza, to occupy Asti; the King of the Romans, to make a diversion in the North. Florence alone, though deeply injured by Charles in the matter of Pisa, kept faith with the French.

[1] Charles, by an act dated A.D. 1494, September 6, had bought the title of Emperor of Constantinople and Trebizond from Andrew Pal?ologus (see Gibbon, vol. viii. p. 183, ed. Milman). When he took Djem from Alexander in Rome, his object was to make use of him in a war against Bajazet; and the Pope was always impressing on the Turk the peril of a Frankish crusade.

The danger was imminent. Already Ferdinand the Catholic had disembarked troops on the shore of Sicily, and was ready to throw an army into the ports of Reggio and Tropea. Alexander had refused to carry out his treaty by the surrender of Spoleto. Cesare Borgia had escaped from the French camp. The Lombards were menacing Asti, which the Duke of Orleans held, and without the possession of which there was no safe return to France. Asti indeed at this juncture would have fallen, and Charles would have been caught in a trap, if the Venetians had only been quick or wary enough to engage German mercenaries.[1] The danger of the situation may best be judged by reading the Memoirs of De Comines, who was then ambassador at Venice. 'The league was concluded very late one evening. The next morning the Signory sent for me earlier than usual. They were assembled in great numbers, perhaps a hundred or more, and held their heads high, made a good cheer, and had not the same countenance as on the day when they told me of the capture of the citadel of Naples.[2] My heart was heavy, and I had grave doubts about the person of the king and about all his company; and I thought their scheme more ripe than it really was, and feared they might have Germans ready; and if it had been so, never could the king have got safe out of Italy.' Nevertheless De Comines put a brave face on the matter, and told the council that he had already received information of the league and had sent dispatches to his master on the subject.[3] 'After dinner,' continues De Comines, 'all the ambassadors of the league met for an excursion on the water, which is the chief recreation at Venice, where every one goes according to the retinue he keeps, or at the expense of the Signory. There may have been as many as forty gondolas, all bearing displayed the arms of their masters upon banners. I saw the whole of this company pass before my windows, and there were many minstrels on board. Those of Milan, one at least of them who had often kept my company, put on a brave face not to know me; and for three days I remained without going forth into the town, nor my people, nor was there all that time a single courteous word said to me or to any of my suite.'

[1] See De Comines, lib. vii. cap. 15, pp. 78, 79.

[2] De Comines' account of the alarm felt at Venice on that occasion is very graphic: 'They sent for me one morning, and I found them to the number of fifty or sixty in the Doge's bedchamber, for he was ill of colic; and there he told me the news with a good countenance. But none of the company knew so well how to feign as he. Some were seated on a wooden bench, leaning their heads on their hands, and others otherwise; and all showed great heaviness at heart. I think that when the news reached Rome of the battle of Cann?, the senators were not more confounded or frightened.'

[3] Bembo, in his Venetian History (lib. ii. p. 32), tells a different tale. He represents De Comines quite unnerved by the news.

Returning northward by the same route, Charles passed Rome and reached Siena on June 13. The Pope had taken refuge, first at Orvieto, and afterwards at Perugia, on his approach; but he made no concessions. Charles could not obtain from him an investiture of the kingdom he pretended to have conquered, while he had himself to surrender the fortresses of Civita Vecchia and Terracina. Ostia alone remained in the clutch of Alexander's implacable enemy, the Cardinal della Rovere. In Tuscany the Pisan question was again opened. The French army desired to see the liberties of Pisa established on a solid basis before they quitted Italy. On their way to Naples the misfortunes of that ancient city had touched them: now on their return they were clamorous that Charles should guarantee its freedom. But to secure this object was an affair of difficulty. The forces of the league had already taken the field, and the Duke of Orleans was being besieged in Novara. The Florentines, jealous of the favor shown, in manifest infringement of their rights, to citizens whom they regarded as rebellious bondsmen, assumed an attitude of menace. Charles could only reply with vague promises to the solicitations of the Pisans, strengthen the French garrisons in their fortresses, and march forward as quickly as possible into the Apennines. The key of the pass by which he sought to regain Lombardy is the town of Pontremoli. Leaving that in ashes on June 29, the French army, distressed for provisions and in peril among those melancholy hills, pushed onward with all speed. They knew that the allied forces, commanded by the Marquis of Mantua, were waiting for them at the other side upon the Taro, near the village of Fornovo. Here, if anywhere, the French ought to have been crushed. They numbered about 9,000 men in all, while the allies were close upon 40,000. The French were weary with long marches, insufficient food, and bad lodgings. The Italians were fresh and well cared for. Yet in spite of all this, in spite of blind generalship and total blundering, Charles continued to play his part of fortune's favorite to the end. A bloody battle, which lasted for an hour, took place upon the banks of the Taro.[1] The Italians suffered so severely that, though they still far outnumbered the French, no persuasions could make them rally and renew the fight. Charles in his own person ran great peril during this battle; and when it was over, he had still to effect his retreat upon Asti in the teeth of a formidable army. The good luck of the French and the dilatory cowardice of their opponents saved them now again for the last time.

[1] The action at Fornovo lasted a quarter of an hour, according to De Comines. The pursuit of the Italians occupied about three quarters of an hour more. Unaccustomed to the quick tactics of the French, the Italians, when once broken, persisted in retreating upon Reggio and Parma. The Gonzaghi alone distinguished themselves for obstinate courage, and lost four or five members of their princely house. The Stradiots, whose scimitars ought to have dealt rudely with the heavy French men-at-arms, employed their time in pillaging the Royal pavilion, very wisely abandoned to their avarice by the French captains. To such an extent were military affairs misconstrued in Italy, that, on the strength of this brigandage, the Venetians claimed Fornovo for a victory. See my essay 'Fornovo,' in Sketches and Studies in Italy, for a description of the ground on which the battle was fought.

On July 15, Charles at the head of his little force marched into Asti and was practically safe. Here the young king continued to give signal proofs of his weakness. Though he knew that the Duke of Orleans was hard pressed in Novara, he made no effort to relieve him; nor did he attempt to use the 20,000 Switzers who descended from their Alps to aid him in the struggle with the league. From Asti he removed to Turin, where he spent his time in flirting with Anna Soléri, the daughter of his host. This girl had been sent to harangue him with a set oration, and had fulfilled her task, in the words of an old witness, 'without wavering, coughing, spitting, or giving way at all.' Her charms delayed the king in Italy until October 19, when he signed a treaty at Vercelli with the Duke of Milan. At this moment Charles might have held Italy in his grasp. His forces, strengthened by the unexpected arrival of so many Switzers, and by a junction with the Duke of Orleans, would have been sufficient to overwhelm the army of the league, and to intimidate the faction of Ferdinand in Naples. Yet so light-minded was Charles, and so impatient were his courtiers, that he now only cared for a quick return to France. Reserving to himself the nominal right of using Genoa as a naval station, he resigned that town to Lodovico Sforza, and confirmed him in the tranquil possession of his Duchy. On October 22 he left Turin, and entered his own dominions through the Alps of Dauphiné. Already his famous conquest of Italy was reckoned among the wonders of the past, and his sovereignty over Naples had become the shadow of a name. He had obtained for himself nothing but momentary glory, while he imposed on France a perilous foreign policy, and on Italy the burden of bloody warfare in the future.

A little more than a year had elapsed between the first entry of Charles into Lombardy and his return to France. Like many other brilliant episodes of history, this conquest, so showy and so ephemeral, was more important as a sign than as an actual event. 'His passage,' says Guicciardini, 'was the cause not only of change in states, downfalls of kingdoms, desolations of whole districts, destructions of cities, barbarous butcheries; but also of new customs, new modes of conduct, new and bloody habits of war, diseases hitherto unknown. The organization upon which the peace and harmony of Italy depended was so upset that, since that time, other foreign nations and barbarous armies have been able to trample her under foot and to ravage her at pleasure.' The only error of Guicciardini is the assumption that the holiday excursion of Charles VIII. was in any deep sense the cause of these calamities.[1] In truth the French invasion opened a new era for the Italians, but only in the same sense as a pageant may form the prelude to a tragedy. Every monarch of Europe, dazzled by the splendid display of Charles and forgetful of its insignificant results, began to look with greedy eyes upon the wealth of the peninsula. The Swiss found in those rich provinces an inexhaustible field for depredation. The Germans, under the pretense of religious zeal, gave a loose rein to their animal appetites in the metropolis of Christendom. France and Spain engaged in a duel to the death for the possession of so fair a prey. The French, maddened by mere cupidity, threw away those chances which the goodwill of the race at large afforded them.[2] Louis XII. lost himself in petty intrigues, by which he finally weakened his own cause to the profit of the Borgias and Austria. Francis I. foamed his force away like a spent wave at Marignano and Pavia. The real conqueror of Italy was Charles V. Italy in the sixteenth century was destined to receive the impress of the Spanish spirit, and to bear the yoke of Austrian dukes. Hand in hand with political despotism marched religious tyranny. The Counter-Reformation over which the Inquisition presided, was part and parcel of the Spanish policy for the enslavement of the nation no less than for the restoration of the Church. Meanwhile the weakness, discord, egotism, and corruption which prevented the Italians from resisting the French invasion in 1494, continued to increase. Instead of being lessoned by experience, Popes, Princes, and Republics vied with each other in calling in the strangers, pitting Spaniard against Frenchman, and paying the Germans to expel the Swiss, oblivious that each new army of foreigners they summoned was in reality a new swarm of devouring locusts. In the midst of this anarchy it is laughable to hear the shrill voice of priests, like Julius and Leo, proclaiming before God their vows to rid Italy of the barbarians. The confusion was tenfold confounded when the old factions of Guelf and Ghibelline put on a new garb of French and Spanish partisanship. Town fought with town and family with family, in the cause of strangers whom they ought to have resisted with one will and steady hatred. The fascination of fear and the love of novelty alike swayed the fickle population of Italian cities. The foreign soldiers who inflicted on the nation such cruel injuries made a grand show in their streets, and there will always be a mob so childish as to covet pageants at the expense of freedom and even of safety.

[1] Guicciardini's Dialogo del Reggimento di Firenze (Op. Ined. vol. ii. p. 94) sets forth the state of internal anarchy and external violence which followed the departure of Charles VIII., with wonderful acuteness. 'Se per sorte l' uno Oltramontano caccerà l' altro, Italia resterà in estrema servitù,' is an exact prophecy of what happened before the end of the sixteenth century, when Spain had beaten France in the duel for Italy.

[2] Matarazzo, in his Cronaca della Città di Perugia (Arch. St., vol. xvi. part 2, p. 23), gives a lively picture of the eagerness with which the French were greeted in 1495, and of the wanton brutality by which they soon alienated the people. In this he agrees almost textually with De Comines, who writes: 'Le peuple nous advouoit comme Saincts, estimans en nous toute foy et bonté; mais ce propos ne leur dura gueres, tant pour nostre desordre et pillerie, et qu'aussi les ennemis oppreschoient le peuple en tous quartiers,' etc., lib. vii. cap. 6. In the first paragraph of the Chronicon Venetum (Muratori, vol. xxlv. p. 5), we read concerning the advent of Charles: 'I popoli tutti dicevano Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Nè v'era alcuno che li potesse contrastare, nè resistere, tanto era da tutti i popoli Italiani chiamato.' The Florentines, as burghers of a Guelf city, were always loyal to the French. Besides, their commerce with France (e.g. the wealth of Filippo Strozzi) made it to their interest to favor the cause of the French. See Guicc. i. 2, p. 62. This loyalty rose to enthusiasm under the influence of Savonarola, survived the stupidities of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and committed the Florentines in 1328 to the perilous policy of expecting aid from Francis I.

In spite of its transitory character the invasion of Charles VIII., therefore, was a great fact in the history of the Renaissance. It was, to use the pregnant phrase of Michelet, no less than the revelation of Italy to the nations of the North. Like a gale sweeping across a forest of trees in blossom, and bearing their fertilizing pollen, after it has broken and deflowered their branches, to far-distant trees that hitherto have bloomed in barrenness, the storm of Charles's army carried far and wide through Europe thought-dust, imperceptible, but potent to enrich the nations. The French alone, says Michelet, understood Italy. How terrible would have been a conquest by Turks with their barbarism, of Spaniards with their Inquisition, of Germans with their brutality! But France, impressible, sympathetic, ardent for pleasure, generous, amiable and vain, was capable of comprehending the Italian spirit. From the Italians the French communicated to the rest of Europe what we call the movement of the Renaissance. There is some truth in this panegyric of Michelet's. The passage of the army of Charles VIII. marks a turning-point in modern history, and from this epoch dates the diffusion of a spirit of culture over Europe. But Michelet forgets to notice that the French never rightly understood their vocation with regard to Italy. They had it in their power to foster that free spirit which might have made her a nation capable, in concert with France, of resisting Charles V. Instead of doing so, they pursued the pettiest policy of avarice and egotism. Nor did they prevent that Spanish conquest the horrors of which their historian has so eloquently described. Again, we must remember that it was the Spaniards and not the French who saved Italy from being barbarized by the Turk.

For the historian of Italy it is sad and humiliating to have to acknowledge that her fate depended wholly on the action of more powerful nations, that she lay inert and helpless at the discretion of the conqueror in the duels between Spain and France and Spain and Islam. Yet this is the truth. It would seem that those peoples to whom we chiefly owe advance in art and knowledge, are often thus the captives of their intellectual inferiors. Their spiritual ascendency is purchased at the expense of political solidity and national prosperity. This was the case with Greece, with Judah, and with Italy. The civilization of the Italians, far in advance of that of other European nations, unnerved them in the conflict with robust barbarian races. Letters and the arts and the civilities of life were their glory. 'Indolent princes and most despicable arms' were their ruin. Whether the Renaissance of the modern world would not have been yet more brilliant if Italy had remained free, who shall say? The very conditions which produced her culture seem to have rendered that impossible.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX I.

Blood-madness. See Chapter iii, p. 109.

One of the most striking instances afforded by history of H?matomania in a tyrant is Ibrahim ibn Ahmed, prince of Africa and Sicily (A.D. 875). This man, besides displaying peculiar ferocity in his treatment of enemies and prisoners of war, delighted in the execution of horrible butcheries within the walls of his own palace. His astrologers having once predicted that he should die by the hands of a 'small assassin,' he killed off the whole retinue of his pages, and filled up their places with a suit of negroes whom he proceeded to treat after the same fashion. On another occasion, when one of his three hundred eunuchs had by chance been witness of the tyrant's drunkenness, Ibrahim slaughtered the whole band. Again, he is said to have put an end to sixty youths, originally selected for his pleasures, burning them by gangs of five or six in the furnace, or suffocating them in the hot chambers of his baths. Eight of his brothers were murdered in his presence; and when one, who was so diseased that he could scarcely stir, implored to be allowed to end his days in peace, Ibrahim answered: 'I make no exceptions.' His own son Abul-Aghlab was beheaded by his orders before his eyes; and the execution of chamberlains, secretaries, ministers, and courtiers was of common occurrence. But his fiercest fury was directed against women. He seems to have been darkly jealous of the perpetuation of the human race. Wives and concubines were strangled, sawn asunder, and buried alive, if they showed signs of pregnancy. His female children were murdered as soon as they saw the light; sixteen of them, whom his mother managed to conceal and rear at her own peril, were massacred upon the spot when Ibrahim discovered whom they claimed as father. Contemporary Arab chroniclers, pondering upon the fierce and gloomy passions of this man, arrived at the conclusion that he was the subject of a strange disease, a portentous secretion of black bile producing the melancholy which impelled him to atrocious crimes. Nor does the principle on which this diagnosis of his case was founded appear unreasonable. Ibrahim was a great general, an able ruler, a man of firm and steady purpose; not a weak and ineffectual libertine whom lust for blood and lechery had placed below the level of brute beasts. When the time for his abdication arrived, he threw aside his mantle of state and donned the mean garb of an Arab devotee, preached a crusade, and led an army into Italy, where he died of dysentery before the city of Cosenza. The only way of explaining his eccentric thirst for slaughter is to suppose that it was a dark monomania, a form of psychopathy analogous to that which we find in the Maréchal de Retz and the Marquise de Brinvilliers. One of the most marked symptoms of this disease was the curiosity which led him to explore the entrails of his victims, and to feast his eyes upon their quivering hearts. After causing his first minister Ibn-Semsama to be beaten to death, he cut his body open, and with his own knife sliced the brave man's heart. On another occasion he had 500 prisoners brought before him. Seizing a sharp lance he first explored the region of the ribs, and then plunged the spear-point into the heart of each victim in succession. A garland of these hearts was made and hung up on the gate of Tunis. The Arabs regarded the heart as the seat of thought in man, the throne of the will, the center of intellectual existence. In this preoccupation with the hearts of his victims we may therefore trace the jealousy of human life which Ibrahim displayed in his murder of pregnant women, as well as a tyrant's fury against the organ which had sustained his foes in their resistance. We can only comprehend the combination of sanguinary lust with Ibrahim's vigorous conduct of civil and military affairs, on the hypothesis that this man-tiger, as Amari, to whom I owe these details, calls him, was possessed with a specific madness.

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APPENDIX II.

Nardi, Istorie di Firenze, lib. i. cap. 4. See Chap. iv. p. 195.

After the freedom regained by the expulsion of the Duke of Athens and the humbling of the nobles, regularity for the future in the government might have been expected, since a very great equality among the burghers had been established in consequence of those troubles. The city too had been divided into quarters, and the supreme magistracy of the republic assigned to the eight priors, called Signori Priori di libertá, together with the Gonfalonier of Justice. The eight priors were chosen, two for each quarter; the Gonfalonier, their chief, differed in no respect from his colleagues save in precedence of dignity; and as the fourth part of the honors pertained to the members of the lesser arts, their turn kept coming round to that quarter to which the Gonfalonier belonged. This magistracy remained for two whole months, always living and sleeping in the Palace; in order that, according to the notion of our ancestors, they might be able to attend with greater diligence to the affairs of the commonwealth, in concert with their colleagues, who were the sixteen gonfaloniers of the companies of the people, and the twelve buoni uomini, or special advisers of the Signory. These magistrates collectively in one body were called the College, or else the Signory and the Colleagues. After this magistracy came the Senate; the number of which varied, and the name of which was altered several times up to the year 1494, according to circumstances. The larger councils, whose business it was to discuss and make the laws and all provisions both general and particular, were until that date two; the one called the Council of the people, formed only by the cittadini popolani, and the other the Council of the Commune, because it embraced both nobles and plebeians from the-date of the formation of these councils.[1] The appointment of the magistrates, which of old times and under the best and most equitable governments was made on the occasion of each election, in this more modern period was consigned to a special council called Squittino.[2] The mode and act of the election was termed Squittinare, which is equivalent to Scrutinium in the Latin tongue, because minute investigation was made into the qualities of the eligible burghers. This method, however, tended greatly to corrupt the good manners of the city, inasmuch as, the said scrutiny being made every three or five years, and not on each occasion, as would have been right, considering the present quality of the burghers and the badness of the times, those who had once obtained their nomination and been put into the purses thereto appointed, being certain to arrive some time at the honors and offices for which they were designed, became careless and negligent of good customs in their lives. The proper function of the Gonfaloniers was, in concert with their Gonfalons and companies, to defend with arms the city from perils foreign and civil, when occasion rose, and to control the fire-guards specially deputed by that magistracy in four convenient stations. All the laws and provisions, as well private as public, proposed by the Signory, had to be approved and carried by that College, then by the Senate, and lastly by the Councils named above. Notwithstanding this rule, everything of high importance pertaining to the state was discussed and carried into execution during the whole time that the Medici administered the city by the Council vulgarly called Balia, composed of men devoted to that government. While the Medici held sway, the magistracy of the Dieci della Guerra or of Liberty and Peace were superseded by the Otto della Pratica in the conduct of all that concerned wars, truces, and treaties of peace, in obedience to the will of the chief agents of that government. The Otto di guardia e balia were then as now delegated to criminal business, but they were appointed by the fore-named Council of Balia, or rather such authority and commission was assigned them by the Signory, and this usage was afterwards continued on their entry into office. Let this suffice upon these matters. Now the burghers who have the right of discussing and determining the affairs of the republic were and still are called privileged, beneficiati or statuali, of that quality and condition to which, according to the laws of our city, the government belongs; in other words they are eligible for office, as distinguished from those who have not this privilege. Consequently the benefiziati and statuali of Florence correspond to the gentiluomini of Venice. Of these burghers there were about 400 families or houses, but at different times the number was larger, and before the plague of 1527 they made up a total of about 4,000 citizens eligible for the Consiglio Grande. During the period of freedom between 1494 and 1512 the other or nonprivileged citizens could be elevated to this rank of enfranchisement according as they were judged worthy by the Council: at the present time they gain the same distinction by such merits as may be pleasing to the ruler of the city for the time being: our commonwealth from the year 1433 having been governed according to the will of its own citizens, though one faction has from time to time prevailed over another, and though before that date the republic was distressed and shaken by the divisions which affected the whole of Italy, and by many others which are rather to be reckoned as sedition peculiar and natural to free cities. Seeing that men by good and evil arts in combination are always striving to attain the summit of human affairs, together also with the favor of fortune, who ever insists on having her part in our actions.

[1] Lorenzo de' Medici superseded these two councils by the Council of the Seventy, without, however, suppressing them.

[2] A corruption of Scrutinio.

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Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. iii. caps. 20, 21, 22.

The whole city of Florence is divided into four quarters, the first of which takes in the whole of that part which is now called Beyond the Arno, and the chief church of the district gives it the name of Santo Spirito. The other three, which embrace all that is called This side the Arno, also take their names from their chief churches, and are the Quarters of Sta. Croce, Sta. Maria Novella, and San Giovanni. Each of these four quarters is divided into four gonfalons, named after the different animals or other things they carry painted on their ensigns. The quarter of Santo Spirito includes the gonfalons of the Ladder, the Shell, the Whip, and the Dragon; that of Santa Croce, the Car, the Ox, the Golden Lion, and the Wheels; that of Santa Maria Novella, the Viper, the Unicorn, the Red Lion, and the White Lion; that of San Giovanni, the Black Lion, the Dragon, the Keys, and the Vair. Now all the households and families of Florence are included and classified under these four quarters and sixteen gonfalons, so that there is no burgher of Florence who does not rank in one of the four quarters and one of the sixteen gonfalons. Each gonfalon had its standard-bearer, who carried the standard like captains of bands; and their chief office was to run with arms whenever they were called by the Gonfalonier of Justice, and to defend, each under his own ensign, the palace of the Signory, and to fight for the people's liberty; wherefore they were called Gonfaloniers of the companies of the people, or, more briefly, from their number, the Sixteen. Now since they never assembled by themselves alone, seeing that they could not propose or carry any measure without the Signory, they were also called the Colleagues, that is, the companions of the Signory, and their title was venerable. This, after the Signory, was the first and most honorable magistracy of Florence; and after them came the Twelve Buonuomini, also called, for the like reason, Colleagues. So the Signory with the Gonfalonier of Justice, the Sixteen, and the Twelve were called the Three Greater. No man was said to have the franchise (aver lo stato), and in consequence to frequent the council, or to exercise any office, whose grandfather or father had not occupied or been passed for (seduto o veduto) one of these three magistracies. To be passed (veduto) Gonfalonier or Colleague meant this: when a man's name was drawn from the purse of the Gonfaloniers or of the College to exercise the office of Gonfalonier or Colleague, but by reason of being below the legal age, or for some other cause, he never sat himself upon the Board or was in fact Gonfalonier or Colleague, he was then said to have been passed; and this held good of all the other magistracies of the city.

It should also be known that all the Florentine burghers were obliged to rank in one of the twenty-one arts: that is, no one could be a burgher of Florence unless he or his ancestors had been approved and matriculated in one of these arts, whether they practiced it or no. Without the proof of such matriculation he could not be drawn for any office, or exercise any magistracy, or even have his name put into the bags. The arts were these: i. Judges and Notaries (for the doctors of the law were styled of old in Florence Judges); Merchants, or the Arts of; ii. Calimala,[1] iii. Exchange, iv. Wool; Porta Santa Maria, or the Arts of; v. Silk; vi. Physicians and Apothecaries; vii. Furriers. The others were viii. Butchers, ix. Shoemakers, x. Blacksmiths, xi. Linen-drapers and Clothesmen, xii. Masters, or Masons, and Stone-cutters, xiii. Vintners, xiv. Innkeepers, xv. Oilsellers, Pork-butchers, and Rope-makers, xvi. Hosiers, xvii. Armorers, xviii. Locksmiths, xix. Saddlers, xx. Carpenters, xxi. Bakers. The last fourteen were called Lesser Arts; whoever was enrolled or matriculated into one of these was said to rank with the lesser (andare per la minore); and though there were in Florence many other trades than these, yet having no guild of their own they were associated to one or other of those that I have named. Each art had, as may still be seen, a house or mansion, large and noble, where they assembled, appointed officers, and gave account of debit and credit to all the members of the guild.[2] In processions and other public assemblies the heads (for so the chiefs of the several arts were called) had their place and precedence in order. Moreover, these arts at first had each an ensign for the defense, on occasion, of liberty with arms. Their origin was when the people in 1282 overcame the nobles (Grandi), and passed the Ordinances of Justice against them, whereby no nobleman could exercise any magistracy; so that such of the patricians as desired to be able to hold office had to enter the ranks of the people, as did many great houses of quality, and matriculate into one of the arts. Which thing, while it partly allayed the civil strife of Florence, almost wholly extinguished all noble feeling in the souls of the Florentines; and the power and haughtiness of the city were no less abated than the insolence and pride of the nobles, who since then have never lifted up their heads again. These arts, the greater as well as the lesser, have varied in numbers at different times; and often have not only been rivals, but even foes, among themselves; so much so that the lesser arts once got it passed that the Gonfalonier should be appointed only from their body. Yet after long dispute it was finally settled that the Gonfalonier could not be chosen from the lesser, but that he should always rank with the greater, and that in all other offices and magistracies, the lesser should always have a fourth and no more. Consequently, of the eight Priors, two were always of the lesser; of the Twelve, three; of the Sixteen, four; and so on through all the magistracies.

[1] The name Calimala was given to a trade in cloth carried on at Florence by merchants who bought rough goods in France, Flanders, and England, and manufactured them into more delicate materials.

[2] Marco Foscari, quoted lower down, estimates the property the Arts at 200,000 ducats.

As a consequence from what has been said, it is easy to perceive that all the inhabitants of Florence (by inhabitants I mean those only who are really settled there, for of strangers, who are passing or sojourning a while, we need not here take any account) are of two sorts. The one class are liable to taxation in Florence, that is, they pay tithes of their goods and are inscribed upon the books of the Commune, and these are called contributors. The others are not taxed nor inscribed upon the registers of the Commune, inasmuch as they do not pay the tithes or other ordinary imposts; and these are called non-contributors: who, seeing that they live by their hands, and carry on mechanical arts and the vilest trades, should be called plebeians; and though they have ruled Florence more than once, ought not even to entertain a thought about public affairs in a well-governed state. The contributors are of two sorts: for some, while they pay the taxes, do not enjoy the citizenship (i.e. cannot attend the council or take any office); either because none of their ancestors, and in particular their father or their grandfather, has sat or been passed for any of the three greater magistracies; or else because they have not had themselves submitted to the scrutiny,[1] or, if they have advanced so far, have not been approved and nominated for office. These are indeed entitled citizens: but he who knows what a citizen is really, knows also that, being unable to share either the honors or the advantages of the city, they are not truly citizens; therefore let us call them burghers, without franchise. Those again who pay taxes and enjoy the citizenship (whom we will therefore call enfranchised burghers) are in like manner of two kinds. The one class, inscribed and matriculated into one of the seven first arts, are said to rank with the greater; whence we may call them Burghers of the Greater: the others, inscribed and matriculated into the fourteen lesser arts, are said to rank with the lesser; whence we may call them Burghers of the Lesser. This distinction had the Romans, but not for the same reason.

* * *

Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. ix. chs. 48, 49, 46.

As for natural abilities, I for my part cannot believe that any one either could or ought to doubt that the Florentines, even if they do not excel all other nations, are at least inferior to none in those things to which they give their minds. In trade, whereon of a truth their city is founded, and wherein their industry is chiefly exercised, they ever have been and still are reckoned not less trusty and true than great and prudent: but besides trade, it is clear that the three most noble arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture have reached that degree of supreme excellence in which we find them now, chiefly by the toil and by the skill of the Florentines, who have beautified and adorned not only their own city but also very many others, with great glory and no small profit to themselves and to their country. And, seeing that the fear of being held a flatterer should not prevent me from testifying to the truth, though this will turn to the highest fame and honor of my lords and patrons, I say that all Italy, nay the whole world, owes it solely to the judgment and the generosity of the Medici that Greek letters were not extinguished to the great injury of the human race, and that Latin literature was restored to the incalculable profit of all men.

[1] For an explanation of Squittino and Squittinare, see Nardi, p. 593 above.

I am wholly of opinion opposed to that of some, who, because the Florentines are merchants, hold them for neither noble nor high-spirited, but for tame and low.[1] On the contrary, I have often wondered with myself how it could be that men who have been used from their childhood upwards for a paltry profit to carry bales of wool and baskets of silk like porters, and to stand like slaves all day and great part of the night at the loom, could summon, when and where was need, such greatness of soul, such high and haughty thoughts, that they have wit and heart to say and do those many noble things we know of them. Pondering on the causes of which, I find none truer than this, that the Florentine climate, between the fine air of Arezzo and the thick air of Pisa, infuses into their breasts the temperament of which I spoke. And whoso shall well consider the nature and the ways of the Florentines, will find them born more apt to rule than to obey. Nor would it be easily believed how much was gained for the youth of Florence by the institution of the militia; for whereas many of the young men, heedless of the commonwealth and careless of themselves, used to spend all the day in idleness, hanging about places of public resort, girding at one another, or talking scandal of the passers by, they immediately, like beasts by some benevolent Circe transformed again to men, gave all their heart and soul, regardless of peril or loss, to gaining fame and honor for themselves, and liberty and safety for their country. I do not by what I have been saying mean to deny that among the Florentines may be found men proud, ambitious, and greedy of gain; for vices will exist as long as human nature lasts: nay, rather, the ungrateful, the envious, the malicious, and the evil-minded among them are so in the highest degree, just as the virtuous are supremely virtuous. It is indeed a common proverb that Florentine brains have no mean either way; the fools are exceeding simple, and the wise exceeding prudent.

[1] Compare, however, Varchi, quoted above, p. 243. The Report of Marco Foscari, Relazioni Venete, series ii, vol. i. p. 9 et seq., contains a remarkable estimate of the Florentine character. He attributes the timidity and weakness which he observes in the Florentines to their mercantile habits, and notices, precisely what Varchi here observes with admiration: 'li primi che governano lo stato vanno alle loro botteghe di seta, e gittati li lembi del mantello sopra le spalle, pongonsi alia caviglia e lavorano pubblicamente che ognuno li vede; ed i figliuoli loro stanno in bottega con li grembiuli dinanzi, e portano il sacco e le sporte alle maestre con la seta e fanno gli altri esercizi di bottega.' A strong aristocratic prejudice transpires in every line. This report was written early in 1527. The events of the Siege must have surprised Marco Foscari. He notices among other things, as a source of weakness, the country villas which were all within a few months destroyed by their armies for the public good.

Their mode of life is simple and frugal, but wonderfully and incredibly clean and neat; and it may be said with truth that the artisans and handicraftsmen live at Florence even better than the citizens themselves: for whereas the former change from tavern to tavern, according as they find good wine, and only think of joyous living; the latter in their homes, with the frugality of merchants, who for the most part make but do not spend money, or with the moderation of orderly burghers, never exceed mediocrity. Nevertheless there are not wanting families, who keep a splendid table and live like nobles, such as the Antinori, the Bartolini, the Tornabuoni, the Pazzi, the Borgherini, the Gaddi, the Rucellai, and among the Salviati, Piero d'Alamanno and Alamanno d'Jacopo, and some others. At Florence every one is called by his proper name or his surname; and the common usage, unless there be some marked distinction of rank or age, is to say thou and not you; only to knights, doctors, and prebendaries is the title of messere allowed; to doctors that of maestro, to monks don, and to friars padre. True, however, is it that since there was a Court at Florence, first that of Giulio, the Cardinal de' Medici, then that of the Cardinal of Cortona, which enjoyed more license than the former, the manners of the city have become more refined-or shall I say more corrupt?

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APPENDIX III.

The Character of Alexander VI., from Guicciardini's Story, Fiorentina, cap. 27. See Chap. vii. p. 412 above.

So died Pope Alexander, at the height of glory and prosperity; about whom it must be known that he was a man of the utmost power and of great judgment and spirit, as his actions and behavior showed. But as his first accession to the Papacy was foul and shameful, seeing he had bought with gold so high a station, in like manner his government disagreed not with this base foundation. There were in him, and in full measure, all vices both of flesh and spirit; nor could there be imagined in the ordering of the Church a rule so bad but that he put it into working. He was most sensual toward both sexes, keeping publicly women and boys, but more especially toward women; and so far did he exceed all measure that public opinion judged he knew Madonna Lucrezia, his own daughter, toward whom he bore a most tender and boundless love. He was exceedingly avaricious, not in keeping what he had acquired, but in getting new wealth: and where he saw a way toward drawing money, he had no respect whatever; in his days were sold as at auction all benefices, dispensations, pardons, bishoprics, cardinalships, and all court dignities: unto which matters he had appointed two or three men privy to his thought, exceeding prudent, who let them out to the highest bidder. He caused the death by poison of many cardinals and prelates, even be rich in benefices and understood to have hoarded much, with the view of seizing on their wealth. His cruelty was great, seeing that by his direction many were put to violent death; nor was the ingratitude less with which he caused the ruin of the Sforzeschi and Colonnesi, by whose favor he acquired the Papacy. There was in him no religion, no keeping of his troth: he promised all things liberally, but stood to nought but what was useful to himself: no care for justice, since in his days Rome was like a den of thieves and murderers: his ambition was boundless, and such that it grew in the same measure as his state increased: nevertheless, his sins meeting with no due punishment in this world, he was to the last of his days most prosperous. While young and still almost a boy, having Calixtus for his uncle, he was made Cardinal and then Vice-Chancellor: in which high place he continued till his papacy, with great revenue, good fame, and peace. Having become Pope, he made Cesare, his bastard son and bishop of Pampeluna, a Cardinal, against the ordinances and decrees of the Church, which forbid the making of a bastard Cardinal even with the Pope's dispensation, wherefore he brought proof by false witnesses that he was born in wedlock. Afterwards he made him a layman and took away the Cardinal's dignity from him, and turned his mind to making a realm; wherein he fared far better than he purposed, and beginning with Rome, after undoing the Orsini, Colonnesi, Savelli, and those barons who were wont to be held in fear by former Popes, he was more full master of Rome than ever had been any Pope before. With greatest ease he got the lordships of Romagna, the March, and the Duchy; and having made a most fair and powerful state, the Florentines held him in much fear, the Venetians in jealousy, and the King of France in esteem. Then having got together a fine army, he showed how great was the might of a Pontiff when he hath a valiant general and one in whom he can place faith. At last he grew to that point that he was counted the balance in the war of France and Spain. In one word he was more evil and more lucky than ever for many ages peradventure had been any pope before.

* * *

APPENDIX IV.

Religious Revivals in Medi?val Italy. See Chap. viii. p. 491 above.

It would be unscientific to confound events of such European importance as the foundation of the orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic with the phenomena in question. Still it may be remarked, that the sudden rise and the extraordinary ascendency of the mendicants and preachers were due in a great measure to the sensitive and lively imagination of the Italians. The Popes of the first half of the thirteenth century were shrewd enough to discern the political and ecclesiastical importance of movements which seemed at first to owe their force to mere fanatical revivalism. They calculated on the intensely excitable temperament of the Italian nation, and employed the Franciscans and Dominicans as their militia in the crusade against the Empire and the heretics. Again, it is necessary to distinguish what was essentially national from what was common to all Europeans in the Middle Ages. Every country had its wandering hordes of flagellants and penitents, its crusaders and its pilgrims. The vast unsettled populations of medi?val Europe, haunted with the recurrent instinct of migration, and nightmare-ridden by imperious religious yearnings, poured flood after flood of fanatics upon the shores of Palestine. Half-naked savages roamed, dancing and groaning and scourging their flesh, from city to city, under the stress of semi-bestial impulses. Then came the period of organized pilgrimages. The celebrated shrines of Europe-Rome, Compostella, Monte Gargano, Canterbury-acted like lightning-conductors to the tempestuous devotion of the medi?val races, like setons to their over-charged imagination. In all these universal movements the Italians had their share: being more advanced in civilization than the Northern peoples, they turned the crusades to commercial count, and maintained some moderation in the fakir fury of their piety. It is not, therefore, with the general history of religious enthusiasm in the Middle Ages that we have to do, but rather with those intermittent manifestations of revivalism which were peculiar to the Italians. The chief points to be noticed are the political influence acquired by monks in some of the Italian cities, the preaching of peace and moral reformation, the panics or superstitious terror which seized upon wide districts, and the personal ascendency of hermits unaccredited by the Church, but believed by the people to be divinely inspired.

One of the most picturesque figures of the first half of the thirteenth century is the Dominican monk, John of Vicenza. His order, which had recently been founded, was already engaged in the work of persecution. France was reeking with the slaughter of the Albigenses, and the stakes were smoking in the town of Milan, when this friar undertook the noble task of pacifying Lombardy. Every town in the north of Italy was at that period torn by the factions of the Guelfs and Ghibellines; private feuds crossed and intermingled with political discords; and the savage tyranny of Ezzelino had shaken the fabric of society to its foundations. It seemed utterly impossible to bring this people for a moment to agreement. Yet what popes and princes had failed to achieve, the voice of a single friar accomplished. John of Vicenza began his preaching in Bologna during the year 1233. The citizens and the country folk of the surrounding districts flocked to hear him. It was noticed with especial wonder that soldiers of all descriptions yielded to the magic of his eloquence. The themes of his discourse were invariably reconciliation and forgiveness of injuries. The heads of rival houses, who had prosecuted hereditary feuds for generations, met before his pulpit, and swore to live thenceforth in amity. Even the magistrates entreated him to examine the statutes of their city, and to point out any alterations by which the peace of the commonwealth might be assured. Having done his best for Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his sanctity had been already spread abroad. The carroccio of the city, on which the standard of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to many a bloody battle, was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he entered the gates in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace produced the same results. Old enmities were abandoned, and hands were clasped which had often been raised in fierce fraternal conflict. Treviso, Feltre, Beliuno, Conegliano, and Romano, the very nests of the grim brood of Ezzelino, yielded to the charm. Verona, where the Scalas were about to reign, Vicenza, Mantua, and Brescia, all placed themselves at the disposition of the monk, and prayed him to reform their constitution. But it was not enough to restore peace to each separate community, to reconcile household with household, and to efface the miseries of civil discord. John of Vicenza aimed at consolidating the Lombard cities in one common bond. For this purpose he bade the burghers of all the towns where he had preached to meet him on the plain of Paquara, in the country of Verona. The 28th of August was the day fixed for this great national assembly. More than four hundred thousand persons, according to the computation of Parisio di Cereta, appeared upon the scene. This multitude included the populations of Verona, Mantua, Brescia, Padua, and Vicenza, marshaled under their several standards, together with contingents furnished by Ferrara, Modena, Reggio, Parma, and Bologna. Nor was the assembly confined to the common folk. The bishops of these flourishing cities, the haughty Marquis of Este, the fierce lord of Romano, and the Patriarch of Aquileia, obeyed the invitation of the friar. There, on the banks of the Adige, and within sight of the Alps, John of Vicenza ascended a pulpit that had been prepared for him, and preached a sermon on the text, Pacem meam do vobis, pacem relinquo vobis. The horrors of war, and the Christian duty of reconciliation, formed the subject of his sermon, at the end of which he constrained the Lombards to ratify a solemn league of amity, vowing to eternal perdition all who should venture to break the same, and imprecating curses on their crops, their vines, their cattle, and everything they had. Furthermore, he induced the Marquis of Este to take in marriage a daughter of Alberico da Romano. Up to this moment John of Vicenza had made a noble use of the strange power which he possessed. But his success seems to have turned his head. Instead of confining himself to the work of pacification so well begun, he now demanded to be made lord of Vicenza, with the titles of Duke and Count, and to receive the supreme authority in Verona. The people, believing him to be a saint, readily acceded to his wishes; but one of the first things he did, after altering the statutes of these burghs, was to burn sixty citizens of Verona, whom he had himself condemned as heretics. The Paduans revolted against his tyranny. Obliged to have recourse to arms, he was beaten and put in prison; and when he was released, at the intercession of the Pope, he found his wonderful prestige annihilated.[1]

[1] The most interesting accounts of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza are to be found in Muratori, vol. viii., in the Annals of Rolandini and Gerardus Maurisius.

The position of Fra Jacopo del Bussolaro in Pavia differed from that of Fra Giovanni da Vicenza in Verona. Yet the commencement of his political authority was very nearly the same. The son of a poor boxmaker of Pavia, he early took the habit of the Augustines, and acquired a reputation for sanctity by leading the austere life of a hermit. It happened in the year 1356 that he was commissioned by the superiors of his order to preach the Lenten sermons to the people of Pavia. 'Then,' to quote Matteo Villani, 'it pleased God that this monk should make his sermons so agreeable to every species of people, that the fame of them and the devotion they inspired increased marvelously. And he, seeing the concourse of the people, and the faith they bare him, began to denounce vice, and specially usury, revenge, and ill-behavior of women; and thereupon he began to speak against the disorderly lordship of the tyrants; and in a short time he brought the women to modest manners, and the men to renunciation of usury and feuds.' The only citizens of Pavia who resisted his eloquence were the Beccaria family, who at that time ruled Pavia like despots. His most animated denunciations were directed against their extortions and excesses. Therefore they sought to slay him. But the people gave him a bodyguard, and at last he wrought so powerfully with the burghers that they expelled the house of Beccaria and established a republican government. At this time the Visconti were laying siege to Pavia: the passes of the Ticino and the Po were occupied by Milanese troops, and the city was reduced to a state of blockade. Fra Jacopo assembled the able-bodied burghers, animated them by his eloquence, and led them to the attack of their besiegers. They broke through the lines of the beleaguering camp, and re-established the freedom of Pavia. What remained, however, of the Beccaria party passed over to the enemy, and threw the whole weight of their influence into the scale of the Visconti: so that at the end of a three years' manful conflict, Pavia was delivered to Galeazzo Visconti in 1359. Fra Jacopo made the best terms that he could for the city, and took no pains to secure his own safety. He was consigned by the conquerors to the superiors of his order, and died in the dungeons of a convent at Vercelli. In his case, the sanctity of an austere life, and the eloquence of an authoritative preacher of repentance, had been strictly subordinated to political aims in the interests of republican liberty. Fra Jacopo deserves to rank with Savonarola: like Savonarola, he fell a victim to the selfish and immoral oppressors of his country. As in the case of Savonarola, we can trace the connection which subsisted in Italy between a high standard of morality and patriotic heroism.[1]

[1] The best authorities for the life and actions of Fra Jacopo are Matteo Villani, bks. 8 and 9, and Peter Azarius, in his Chronicle (Groevius, vol. ix.).

San Bernardino da Massa heads a long list of preachers, who, without taking a prominent part in contemporary politics, devoted all their energies to the moral regeneration of the people. His life, written by Vespasiano da Bisticci, is one of the most valuable documents which we possess for the religious history of Italy in the first half of the fifteenth century. His parents, who were people of good condition, sent him at an early age to study the Canon law at Siena. They designed him for a lucrative and important office in the Church. But, while yet a youth, he was seized with a profound conviction of the degradation of his countrymen. The sense of sin so weighed upon him that he sold all his substance, entered the order of S. Francis, and began to preach against the vices which were flagrant in the great Italian cities. After traveling through the length and breadth of the peninsula, and winning all men by the magic of his eloquence, he came to Florence. 'There,' says Vespasiano, 'the Florentines being by nature very well disposed indeed to truth, he so dealt that he changed the whole State and gave it, one may say, a second birth. And in order to abolish the false hair which the women wore, and games of chance, and other vanities, he caused a sort of large stall to be raised in the Piazza di Santa Croce, and bade every one who possessed any of these vanities to place them there; and so they did; and he set fire thereto and burned the whole.' S. Bernardino preached unremittingly for forty-two years in every quarter of Italy, and died at last worn out with fatigue and sickness. 'Of many enmities and deaths of men he wrought peace and removed deadly hatreds; and numberless princes, who harbored feuds to the death, he reconciled, and restored tranquillity to many cities and peoples.' A vivid picture of the method adopted by S. Bernardino in his dealings with these cities is presented to us by Graziani, the chronicler of Perugia: 'On September 23, 1425, a Sunday, there were, as far as we could reckon, upwards of 3,000 persons in the Cathedral. His sermon was from the Sacred Scripture, reproving men of every vice and sin, and teaching Christian living. Then he began to rebuke the women for their paints and cosmetics, and false hair, and such like wanton customs; and in like manner the men for their cards and dice-boards and masks and amulets and charms: insomuch that within a fortnight the women sent all their false hair and gewgaws to the Convent of S. Francis, and the men their dice, cards, and such gear, to the amount of many loads. And on October 29 Fra Bernardino collected all these devilish things on the piazza, where he erected a kind of wooden castle between the fountain and the Bishop's palace; and in this he put all the said articles, and set fire to them; and the fire was so great that none durst go near; and in the fire were burned things of the greatest value, and so great was the haste of men and women to escape that fire that many would have perished but for the quick aid of the burghers.' Together with this onslaught upon vanities, Fra Bernardino connected the preaching of peace and amity. It is noticeable that while his sermon lasted and the great bell of S. Lorenzo went on tolling, no man could be taken or imprisoned in the city of Perugia.[1]

[1] See Vespasiano, Vite di Uomini Illustri, pp. 185-92. Graziani, Archivio Storico, vol. xvi. part i. pp. 313, 314.

The same city was the scene of many similar displays. During the fifteenth century it remained in a state of the most miserable internal discord, owing to the feuds of its noble families. Graziani gives an account of the preaching there of Fra Jacopo della Marca, in 1445: on this occasion a temporary truce was patched up between old enemies, a witch was burned for the edification of the burghers, the people were reproved for their extravagance in dress, and two peacemakers (pacieri) were appointed for each gate. On March 22, after undergoing this discipline, the whole of Perugia seemed to have repented of its sins; but the first entry for April 15 is the murder of one of the Ranieri family by another of the same house. So transitory were the effects of such revivals.[1] Another entry in Graziani's Chronicle deserves to be noticed. He describes how, in 1448, Fra Roberto da Lecce (like S. Bernardino and Fra Jacopo della Marca, a Franciscan of the Order of Observance) came to preach in January. He was only twenty-two years of age; but his fame was so great that he drew about 15,000 persons into the piazza to listen to him. The stone pulpit, we may say in passing, is still shown, from which these sermons were delivered. It is built into the wall of the Cathedral, and commands the whole square. Roberto da Lecce began by exhibiting a crucifix, which moved the audience to tears; 'and the weeping and crying, Jesu misericordia! lasted about half an hour. Then he made four citizens be chosen for each gate as peacemakers.' What follows in Graziani is an account of a theatrical show, exhibited upon the steps of the Cathedral. On Good Friday the friar assembled all the citizens, and preached; and when the moment came for the elevation of the crucifix, 'there issued forth from San Lorenzo Eliseo di Christoforo, a barber of the quarter of Sant Angelo, like a naked Christ with the cross on his shoulder, and the crown of thorns upon his head, and his flesh seemed to be bruised as when Christ was scourged.' The people were immensely moved by this sight. They groaned and cried out, 'Misericordia!' and many monks were made upon the spot. At last, on April 7, Fra Roberto took his leave of the Perugians, crying as he went, 'La pace sia con voi!'[2] We have a glimpse of the same Fra Roberto da Lecce at Rome, in the year 1482. The feuds of the noble families della Croce and della Valle were then raging in the streets of Rome. On the night of April 3 they fought a pitched battle in the neighborhood of the Pantheon, the factions of Orsini and Colonna joining in the fray. Many of the combatants were left dead before the palaces of the Vallensi; the numbers of the wounded were variously estimated; and all Rome seemed to be upon the verge of civil war. Roberto da Lecce, who was drawing large congregations, not only of the common folk, but also of the Roman prelates, to his sermons at Santa Maria sopra Minerva, interrupted his discourse upon the following Friday, and held before the people the image of their crucified Saviour, entreating them to make peace. As he pleaded with them, he wept; and they too fell to weeping-fierce satellites of the rival factions and worldly prelates lifting up their voice in concert with the friar who had touched their hearts.[3] Another member of the Franciscan Order of Observance should be mentioned after Fra Roberto. This was Fra Giovanni da Capistrano, of whose preaching at Brescia in 1451 we have received a minute account. He brought with him a great reputation for sanctity and eloquence, and for the miraculous cures which he had wrought. The Rectors of the city, together with 300 of the most distinguished burghers upon horseback, and a crowd of well-born ladies on foot, went out to meet him on February 9. Arrangements were made for the entertainment of himself and 100 followers, at public cost. Next morning, three hours before dawn, there were already assembled upwards of 10,000 people on the piazza, waiting for the preacher. 'Think, therefore,' says the Chronicle, 'how many there must have been in the daytime! and mark this, that they came less to hear his sermon than to see him.' As he made his way through the throng, his frock was almost torn to pieces on his back, everybody struggling to get a fragment.[4]

[1] See Graziani, pp. 565-68.

[2] Graziani, pp, 597-601.

[3] See Jacobus Volaterranus. Muratori, xxiii. pp. 126, 156, 167.

[4] See Istoria Bresciana. Muratori, xxi. 865.

>It did not always need the interposition of a friar to arouse a strong religious panic in Italian cities. After an unusually fierce bout of discord the burghers themselves would often attempt to give the sanction of solemn rites and vows before the altar to their temporary truces. Siena, which was always more disturbed by civil strife than any of her neighbors, offered a notable example of this custom in the year 1494. The factions of the Monti de' Nove and del Popolo had been raging; the city was full of feud and suspicion, and all Italy was agitated by the French invasion. It seemed good, therefore, to the heads of the chief parties that an oath of peace should be taken by the whole body of the burghers. Allegretti's account of the ceremony, which took place at dead of night in the beautiful Cathedral of Siena, is worthy to be translated. 'The conditions of the peace were then read, which took up eight pages, together with an oath of the most horrible sort, full of maledictions, imprecations, excommunications, invocations of evil, renunciation of benefits temporal and spiritual, confiscation of goods, vows, and so many other woes that to hear it was a terror; et etiam that in articulo mortis no sacrament should accrue to the salvation, but rather to the damnation of those who might break the said conditions; insomuch that I, Allegretto di Nanni Allegretti, being present, believe that never was made or heard a more awful and horrible oath. Then the notaries of the Nove and the Popolo, on either side of the altar, wrote down the names of all the citizens, who swore upon the crucifix, for on each side there was one, and every couple of the one and the other faction kissed; and the bells clashed, and Te Deum laudamus was sung with the organs and the choir while the oath was being taken. All this happened between one and two hours of the night, with many torches lighted. Now may God will that this be peace indeed, and tranquillity for all citizens, whereof I doubt.'[1] The doubt of Allegretti was but too reasonable. Siena profited little by these dreadful oaths and terrifying functions. Two years later on, the same chronicler tells how it was believed that blood had rained outside the Porta a Laterino, and that various visions of saints and specters had appeared to holy persons, proclaiming changes in the state, and commanding a public demonstration of repentance. Each parish organized a procession, and all in turn marched, some by day and some by night, singing Litanies, and beating and scourging themselves, to the Cathedral, where they dedicated candles; and 'one ransomed prisoners, for an offering, and another dowered a girl in marriage.'

In Bologna in 1457 a similar revival took place on the occasion of an outbreak of the plague. 'Flagellants went round the city, and when they came to a cross, they all cried with a loud voice: Misericordia! misericordia! For eight days there was a strict fast; the butchers shut their shops.' What follows in the Chronicle is comic: 'Meretrices ad concubita nullum admittebant. Ex eis quadam qu? cupiditate lucri adolescentem admiserat, deprehensa, ali? meretrices ita illius nates nudas corrigiis percusserunt, ut sanguinem emitteret.'[2] Ferrara exhibited a like devotion in 1496, on even a larger scale. About this time the entire Italian nation was panic-stricken by the passage of Charles VIII., and by the changes in states and kingdoms which Savonarola had predicted. The Ferrarese, to quote the language of their chronicler, expected that 'in this year, throughout Italy, would be the greatest famine, war, and want that had ever been since the world began.' Therefore they fasted, and 'the Duke of Ferrara fasted together with the whole of his court. At the same time a proclamation was made against swearing, games of hazard, and unlawful trades: and it was enacted that the Jews should resume their obnoxious yellow gaberdine with the O upon their breasts. In 1500 these edicts were repeated. The condition of Italy had grown worse and worse: it was necessary to besiege the saints with still more energetic demonstrations. Therefore 'the Duke Ercole d' Este, for good reasons to him known, and because it is always well to be on good terms with God, ordained that processions should be made every third day in Ferrara, with the whole clergy, and about 4,000 children or more from twelve years of age upwards, dressed in white, and each holding a banner with a painted Jesus. His lordship, and his sons and brothers, followed this procession, namely the Duke on horseback, because he could not then walk, and all the rest on foot, behind the Bishop.'[3] A certain amount of irony transpires in this quotation, which would make one fancy that the chronicler suspected the Duke of ulterior, and perhaps political, motives.

[1] See Muratori, vol. xxiii. p. 839.

[2] Annales Bononienses. Mur. xxiii. 890.

[3] Diario Ferrarese. Mur. xxiv. pp. 17-386.

It sometimes happened that the contagion of such devotion spread from city to city; on one occasion, in 1399, it traveled from Piedmont through the whole of Italy. The epidemic of flagellants, of which Giovanni Villani speaks in 1310 (lib. viii. cap. 121), began also in Piedmont, and spread along the Genoese Riviera. The Florentine authorities refused entrance to these fanatics into their territory. In 1334, Villani mentions another outburst of the same devotion (lib xi. cap. 23), which was excited by the preaching of Fra Venturino da Bergamo. The penitents on this occasion wore for badge a dove with the olive-branch. They staid fifteen days in Florence, scourging themselves before the altars of the Dominican churches, and feasting, five hundred at a time, in the Piazzi di S. M. Novella. Corio, in the Storia di Milano (p. 281), gives an interesting account of these 'white penitents,' as they were called, in the year 1399: 'Multitudes of men, women, girls, boys, small and great, townspeople and countryfolk, nobles and burghers, laity and clergy, with bare feet and dressed in white sheets from head to foot,' visited the towns and villages of every district in succession. 'On their journey, when they came to a cross-road or to crosses, they threw themselves on the ground, crying Misericordia three times; then they recited the Lord's Prayer and the Ave Maria. On their entrance into a city, they walked singing Stabat Mater dolorosa and other litanies and prayers. The population of the places to which they came were divided: for some went forth and told those who staid that they should assume the same habit, so that at one time there were as many as 10,000, and at another as many as 15,000 of them.' After admitting that the fruit of this devotion was in many cases penitence, amity, and alms-giving, Corio goes on to observe: 'However, men returned to a worse life than ever after it was over.' It is noticeable that Italy was devastated in 1400 by a horrible plague; and it is impossible not to believe that the crowding of so many penitents together on the highways and in the cities led to this result.

During the anarchy of Italy between 1494-the date of the invasion of Charles VIII.-and 1527-the date of the sack of Rome-the voice of preaching friars and hermits was often raised, and the effect was always to drive the people to a frenzy of revivalistic piety. Milan was the center of the military operations of the French, the Swiss, the Spaniards, and the Germans. No city suffered more cruelly, and in none were fanatical prophets received with greater superstition. In 1516 there appeared in Milan 'a layman, large of stature, gaunt, and beyond measure wild, without shoes, without shirt, bareheaded, with bristly hair and beard, and so thin that he seemed another Julian the hermit.' He lived on water and millet-seed, slept on the bare earth, refused alms of all sorts, and preached with wonderful authority. In spite of the opposition of the Archbishop and the Chapter, he chose the Duomo for his theater; and there he denounced the vices of the priests and monks to vast congregations of eager listeners. In a word, he engaged in open warfare with the clergy on their own ground. But they of course proved too strong for him, and he was driven out of the city. He was a native of Siena, aged 30.[1] We may compare with this picturesque apparition of Jeronimo in Milan what Varchi says about the prophets who haunted Rome like birds of evil omen in the first years of the pontificate of Clement VII. 'Not only friars from the pulpit, but hermits on the piazza, went about preaching and predicting the ruin of Italy and the end of the world with wild cries and threats.'[2] In 1523 Milan beheld the spectacle of a parody of the old preachers. There appeared a certain Frate di S. Marco, whom the people held for a saint, and who 'encouraged the Milanese against the French, saying it was a merit with Jesus Christ to slay those Frenchmen, and that they were pigs.' He seems to have been a feeble and ignorant fellow, whose head had been turned by the examples of Bussolaro and Savonarola.[3] Again, in 1529, we find a certain monk, Tommaso, of the order of S. Dominic, stirring up a great commotion of piety in Milan. The city had been brought to the very lowest state of misery by the Spanish occupation; and, strange to say, this friar was himself a Spaniard. In order to propitiate offended deities, he organized a procession on a great scale. 700 women, 500 men, and 2,500 children assembled in the cathedral. The children were dressed in white, the men and women in sackcloth, and all were barefooted. They promenaded the streets of Milan, incessantly shouting Misericordia! and besieged the Duomo with the same dismal cry, the Bishop and the Municipal authorities of Milan taking part in the devotion.[4] These gusts of penitential piety were matters of real national importance. Writers imbued with the classic spirit of the Renaissance thought them worthy of a place in their philosophical histories. Thus we find Pitti, in the Storia Fiorentina (Arch. Stor. vol. i. p. 112), describing what happened at Florence in 1514: 'There appeared in Santa Croce a Frate Francesco da Montepulciano, very young, who rebuked vice with severity, and affirmed that God had willed to scourge Italy, especially Florence and Rome, in sermons so terrible that the audience kept crying with floods of tears, Misericordia! The whole people were struck dumb with horror, for those who could not hear the friar by reason of the crowd, listened with no less fear to the reports of others. At last he preached a sermon so awful that the congregation stood like men who had lost their senses; for he promised to reveal upon the third day how and from what source he had received this prophecy. However, when he left the pulpit, worn out and exhausted, he was seized with an illness of the lungs, which soon put an end to his life. Pitti goes on to relate the frenzy of revivalism excited by this monk's preaching, which had roused all the old memories of Savonarola in Florence. It became necessary for the Bishop to put down the devotion by special edicts, while the Medici endeavored to distract the minds of the people by tournaments and public shows.

[1] See Prato and Burigozzo, Arch. Stor. vol. iii. pp. 357, 431. It is here worth noticing that Siena, the city of civil discord, was also the city of frenetic piety. The names of S. Caterina, S. Bernardino, and Bernardo Tolomei occur to the mind.

[2] Storia Fiorintina, vol. i. p. 87.

[3] Arch. Stor. vol. iii. p. 443.

[4] Burigozzo, pp. 485-89.

Enough has now been quoted from various original sources to illustrate the feverish recurrences of superstitious panics in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It will be observed, from what has been said about John of Vicenza, Jacopo del Bussolaro, S. Bernardino, Roberto da Lecce, Giovanni della Marca, and Fra Capistrano, that Savonarola was by no means an extraordinary phenomenon in Italian history. Combining the methods and the aims of all these men, and remaining within the sphere of their conceptions, he impressed a r?le, which had been often played in the chief Italian towns, with the stamp of his peculiar genius. It was a source of weakness to him in his combat with Alexander VI., that he could not rise above the monastic ideal of the prophet which prevailed in Italy, or grasp one of those regenerative conceptions which formed the motive force of the Reformation. The inherent defects of all Italian revivals, spasmodic in their paroxysms, vehement while they lasted, but transient in their effects, are exhibited upon a tragic scale by Savonarola. What strikes us, after studying the records of these movements in Italy, is chiefly their want of true mental energy. The momentary effect produced in great cities like Florence, Milan, Verona, Pavia, Bologna, and Perugia is quite out of proportion to the slight intellectual power exerted by the prophet in each case. He has nothing really new or life-giving to communicate. He preaches indeed the duty of repentance and charity, institutes a reform of glaring moral abuses, and works as forcibly as he can upon the imagination of his audience. But he sets no current of fresh thought in motion. Therefore, when his personal influence was once forgotten, he left no mark upon the nation he so deeply agitated. We can only wonder that, in many cases, he obtained so complete an ascendency in the political world. All this is as true of Savonarola as it is of S. Bernardino. It is this which removes him so immeasurably from Huss, from Wesley and from Luther.

* * *

APPENDIX V.

The 'Sommario della Storia d'Italia dal 1511 al 1527,' by Francesco Vettori.[1]

I have reserved for special notice in this Appendix the short history written of the period between 1511 and 1527 by Francesco Vettori; not because I might not have made use of it in several of the previous chapters, but because it seemed to me that it was better to concentrate in one place the illustrations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini which it supplies. Francesco Vettori was born at Florence in 1474 of a family which had distinguished itself by giving many able public servants to the Commonwealth. He adopted the politics of the Medicean party, remaining loyal to his aristocratic creed all through the troublous times which followed the French invasion of 1494, the sack of Prato in 1512, the sack of Rome in 1527, and the murder of Duke Alessandro in 1536. Even when he seemed to favor a republican policy, he continued in secret stanch to the family by whom he hoped to obtain honors and privileges in the state. Like all the Ottimati, so furiously abused by Pitti, Francesco Vettori found himself at last deceived in his expectations. To the Medici they sold the freedom of their native city, and in return for this unpatriotic loyalty they were condemned to exile, death, imprisonment, or frosty toleration by the prudent Cosimo. Two years after Cosimo had been made Duke, Vettori died, aged upwards of sixty, without having shared in the prosperity of the princes to whose service he had consecrated his life and for whose sake he had helped to enslave Florence. To respect this species of fidelity, or to feel any pity for the men who were so cruelly disappointed of their selfish expectations, is impossible.

[1] Printed in Arch. Stor. It. Appendice No. 22, vol. vl.

Francesco Vettori held offices of importance on various occasions in the Commonwealth of Florence. In 1520, for example, he entered the Signory; and in 1521 he was Gonfalonier of Justice. Many years of his life were spent on foreign missions, as ambassador to the Emperor Maximilian, resident ambassador at the Courts of Julius and Leo, ambassador together with Filippo Strozzi to the Court of Francis I., and orator at Rome on the election of Clement. He had therefore, like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the best opportunities of forming a correct judgment of the men whose characters he weighed in his Sommario, and of obtaining a faithful account of the events which he related. He deserves a place upon the muster-roll of literary statesmen mentioned by me in chapter V.; nor should I have omitted him from the company of Segni and Varchi, had not his history been exclusively devoted to an earlier period than theirs. At the same time he was an intimate friend both of Guicciardini and Machiavelli. Some of the most precious compositions of the latter are letters addressed from Florence or San Casciano to Francesco Vettori, at the time when the ex-war-secretary was attempting to gain the favor of the Medici. The clairvoyance and acuteness, the cynical philosophy of life, the definite judgment of men, the clear comprehension of events, which we trace in Machiavelli, are to be found in Vettori. Vettori, however, had none of Machiavelli's genius. What he writes is, therefore, valuable as proving that the Machiavellian philosophy was not peculiar to that great man, but was shared by many inferior thinkers. Florentine culture at the end of the fifteenth century culminated in these statists of hard brain and stony hearts, who only saw the bad in human nature, but who were not led by cynicism or skepticism to lose their interest in the game of politics.

In the dedication of the Sommario della Storia d' Italia to Francesco Scarfi, Vettori says that he composed it at his villa, whither he retired in 1527. I do not purpose to extract portions of the historical narrative contained in this sketch; to do so indeed would be to transcribe the whole, so closely and succinctly is it written; but rather to quote the passages which throw a light upon the opinions of Machiavelli and Guicciardini, or confirm the views of men and morals adopted in my previous chapters.

After touching on the sack of Prato and the consternation which ensued in Florence, Vettori describes the return of the Medici in 1512. Giuliano, the son of Lorenzo, was the first to appear: after him came the Cardinal Giovanni, and Giuliano's son Giulio.[1] The elder among their partisans persuaded them to call a Parlamento and assume the government in earnest. On September 16, accordingly, the Cardinal took possession of the palace, fece pigliare il Palazzo; the Signory summoned the people into the piazza-a mere matter of form; a Balia of forty men was appointed; the Gonfalonier Ridolfi resigned; and the city was reduced to the will and pleasure of the Cardinal de' Medici. Then reasons sons Vettori:[2] 'This was what is called an absolute tyranny; yet, speaking of the things of this world without prejudice and according to the truth, I say that if it were possible to institute republics like that imagined by Plato, or feigned to exist in Utopia by Thomas More, we might affirm they were not tyrannical governments: but all the commonwealths or kingdoms I have seen or read of, have, it seems to me, a savor of tyranny. Nor is it a matter for astonishment that parties and factions have often prevailed in Florence, and that one man has arisen to make himself the chief, when we reflect that the city is very populous, that many of the burghers desire to share in its advantages, and that there are few prizes to distribute: wherefore one party always must have the upper hand and enjoy the honors and benefits of the state, while the other stands by to watch the game.' He then proceeds to criticise France, where the nobles alone bear arms and pay no taxes, and where the administration of justice is slow and expensive; and Venice, where three thousand gentlemen keep more than 100,000 of the inhabitants below their feet, unhonored, powerless, unprivileged, oppressed. Having demonstrated the elements of tyranny and injustice both in a kingdom and a commonwealth reputed prosperous and free, he shows that, according to his own philosophy, no blame attaches to a burgher who succeeds in usurping the sole mastery of a free state, provided he rule wisely; for all kingdoms were originally founded either by force or by craft. 'We ought not therefore to call that private citizen a tyrant who has usurped the government of his state, if he be a good man; nor again to call a man the real lord of a city who, though he has the investiture of the Emperor, is bad and malevolent.' This critique of constitutions from the pen of a doctrinaire, who was also a man of experience, is interesting, partly for its positive frankness, and partly as showing what elementary notions still prevailed about the purposes of government. Vettori's ultimate criterion is the personal quality of the ambitious ruler.

[1] Giovanni and Giulio were afterwards Leo X. and Clement VII.

[2] P. 293.

Passing to what he says about Leo X.,[1] it is worth while to note that he attributes his election chiefly to the impression produced upon the Cardinals by Alexander and Julius. 'During the reign of two fierce and powerful Pontiffs, Cardinals had been put to death, imprisoned, deprived of their property, exiled, and kept in continual alarm; and so great was the dread among them now of electing another such Pope, that they unanimously chose Giovanni de' Medici. Up to that time he had always shown himself liberal and easy, or, rather, prodigal in squandering the little that he owned; he had moreover managed so to dissemble as to acquire a reputation for most excellent habits of life.' Vettori adds that his power in Florence helped him, and that he owed much to the ability displayed by Bernardo da Bibbiena in winning votes. The joy of the Florentines at his election is attributed to mean motives: 'being all of them given over to commerce and gain, they thought they ought to get some profit from this Papacy.'[2]

The government which Lorenzo, afterwards Duke of Urbino, now established in Florence is very favorably described by Vettori.[3] 'Lorenzo, though still a young man, applied himself with great attention to the business of the city, providing that equal justice should be administered to all, that the public moneys should be levied and spent with frugality, and that disputes should be settled to the satisfaction of all parties. His rule was tolerated, because, while the revenues were large and the expenses small, the citizens were not troubled with taxes; and this is the chief way to please a people, seeing their affection for a prince is measured by the good they get from him. Taking this opinion of Lorenzo, it is possible for Vettori in another place to say of him that 'he governed Florence like a citizen;'[4] and on the occasion of his death in 1520, he passes what amounts to a panegyric on his character. 'His death was a misfortune for Florence, which it would be difficult to describe. Though young, he had the qualities of virtuous maturity. He bore a real affection toward the citizens, was parsimonious of the moneys of the Commune, prodigal of his own; while a foe to vice, he was not too severe on those who erred. Though he began his military life at twenty-three, he always bore the cuirass of a man at arms upon his shoulders day and night on active service. He slept very little, was sober in his diet, temperate in love. The Florentines did not love him, because it is not possible for men used to freedom to love a ruler; but he, for his part, had not sought the office which was thrust upon him by the will of others. Madonna Alfonsina, his mother, brought unpopularity upon him; for she was avaricious, and the Florentines, who noticed every detail, thought her grasping: and though he wanted to restrain her, he found himself unable to do so through the high esteem in which he held her. Maddalena, his wife, died six days before him, after giving birth to a daughter Catherine.' This is the, no doubt, highly favorable portrait of the man to whom Machiavelli dedicated his Principe. The somewhat negative good qualities of Lorenzo, his prudence and parsimony, his freedom from despotic ambition, and dislike of dangerous service, combined with his deference to the powerful members of his own family, are very unlike Machiavelli's ideal of the founder of a state. Cesare Borgia was almost the exact opposite. The impression produced by Vettori's panegyric is further confirmed by what he says about Lorenzo's disinclination to undertake the Duchy of Urbino.[5]

[1] P. 297.

[2] P. 300.

[3] Ibid.

[4] P. 306.

[5] P. 321. See too p. 307.

But to return to the early days of Leo's pontificate. Vettori marks his interference in the affairs of Lucca as the first great mistake he made.[1] His advisers in Florence had not reflected 'what infamy it would bring upon the Pope in the opinion of all men, or what suspicion it would rouse among the princes, if in the first months of his power he were led to sanction an attack by the Florentines upon the Lucchese, their neighbors and allies. How too could the burghers of Florence, who had urged him to this step, remind the pontiff that he ought to moderate his desire of gaining dominion for the Church and for his kin, by the example of former Popes, all of whom, in the interest of their dependents, had acquired to their own dishonor with peril and expense what in a few days upon their death returned to the old and rightful owners?' The conduct of Leo with regard to Lucca, his policy in Florence, and the splendor maintained by his brother at Rome, did in fact rouse the jealousy of the Italian powers both great and small.[2] 'King Ferdinand remarked: If Giuliano has left Florence, he must be aiming at something better, which can be nothing but the realm of Naples. The Dukes of Milan, Ferrara, and Urbino said the same. The Sienese thought: If the pope allows the Florentines to attack Lucca, which is so strong, well furnished, and harmonious, far more will he consent to their encroaching upon us, who are weak, ill-provided, and at odds among ourselves. The Duke of Ferrara had further reasons for discontent in respect to Modena and Reggio.' Altogether, Leo began to lose credit. Secret alliances were formed against him by the della Rovere, the Baglioni, and the Petrucci; and though he took care to attend public services and to fast more than etiquette required, nobody believed in him. Vettori's comment reads like an echo of Machiavelli and Guicciardini.[3] 'Assuredly it is most difficult to combine temporal lordship with a reputation for religion: for they are two things which will not harmonize. He who well considers the law of the Gospel will observe that the pontiffs, though called Christ's Vicars, have originated a new religion unlike that of Christ except in name. His enjoins poverty; they desire riches. He preached humility; they follow after pride. He commanded obedience; they aim at universal sovereignty. I could enlarge upon their other vices; but it is enough to allude to these, without entering into inconvenient discourses.' While treating of the affairs of Urbino,[4] however, Vettori remarks that Leo could not have done otherwise than punish Francesco Maria della Rovere, if he wished to maintain the Papacy at the height of reputation to which it had been raised by his predecessors.

[1] P. 301.

[2] P. 303.

[3] P. 304.

[4] P. 319.

In his general estimate of Leo, Vettori confirms all that we know about this Pope from other sources. He insists more perhaps than other historians upon the able diplomacy by which Lodovico Canossa, Bishop of Tricarico, made terms with Francis after Marignano,[1] and traces Leo's fatal alliance with Charles V. in 1520 to the influence of Jeronimo Adorno.[2] The secret springs of Leo's conduct, when he was vainly endeavoring to steer to his own profit between the great rivals for power in Europe, are exposed with admirable precision at both of these points. Of the prodigality which helped to ruin this Pope, and which made his two successors impotent, he speaks with sneering sarcasm. 'It was as easy for him to keep 1,000 ducats together as for a stone to fly into the air by its own weight.'[3] When the news of the capture of Milan reached him on November 27, 1520, Leo was at the Villa Magliana in the neighborhood of Rome.[4] Whether he took cold at a window, or whether his anxiety and jealousy disturbed his constitution, Vettori remains uncertain. At any rate, he was attacked with fever, returned to Rome, and died. 'It was said that his death was caused by poison; but these stories are always circulated about men of high estate, especially when they succumb to acute disease. Those, however, who knew the constitution and physical conformation of Leo, and his habits of life, will rather wonder that he lived so long.' After summing up the vicissitudes of his career and passing a critique upon his vacillating policy, Vettori resumes:[5] 'while on the one hand he would fain have never had one care to trouble him; on the other he was desirous of fame and sought to aggrandize his kindred. Fortune, to rid him of this ambition, removed his brother and his nephew in his lifetime. Lastly, when he had engaged in a war against the King of France, in which, if he won, he lost, and was going to meet obvious ruin, fortune removed him from the world so that he might not see his own mischance. In his pontificate at Rome there was no plague, no poverty, no war. Letters and the arts flourished, and the vices were also at their height. Alexander and Julius had been wont to seize the inheritance not only of the prelates but of every little priest or clerk who died in Rome. Leo abstained entirely from such practices. Therefore people came in crowds; and it may be said for certain that in the eight years of his papacy, the population of Rome increased by one third.' Vettori prudently refuses to sum up the good and bad of Leo's character in one decisive sentence. He notes, however, that he was blamed for not keeping to his word: 'it was a favorite expression with him, that princes ought to give such answers as would send petitioners away satisfied; accordingly he made so many promises; and fed people with such great expectations, that it became impossible to please them.'

[1] P. 313.

[2] P. 334.

[3] P. 322.

[4] P. 338.

[5] P. 339.

The election of Adrian is attributed by Vettori to the mutual hatred and jealousy of the Cardinals.[1] He ascribes the loss of Rhodes to the Pope's want of interest in great affairs, adds his testimony to his private excellence and public incapacity, and dismisses him without further notice.[2]

[1] P. 341.

[2] Pp. 343, 347.

What he tells us about Clement is more interesting. In the dedication to the Sommario he apologized in express terms for the high opinion recorded of this Pope. Yet the impression which he leaves upon our mind by what he writes is so unfavorable as to make it clear what Clement's foes habitually said against him. He remarks, as one excuse for his ill-success in office, that he succeeded to a Papacy ruined by the prodigality in war and peace of Leo.[1] As knight of Rhodes, as governor of Florence, and as Cardinal, Clement had shown himself an able man. Fortune heaped her favors on him then. As soon as he was made Pope, she veered round. 'From a puissant and respected Cardinal, he became a feeble and discredited Pope.' His first care was to provide for the government of Florence. In order to arrive at a decision, he asked council of the Florentine orators and four other noble burghers then in Rome, as to whether he could advantageously intrust the city to the Cardinal of Cortona in guardianship over Ippolito and Alessandro, the young bastards of the Medici.[2] 'All men nearly,' says Vettori, 'are flatterers, and say what they believe will please great folk, although they think the contrary. Of the thirteen whom the Pope consulted, ten advised him to send Ippolito to Florence under the guardianship of the Cardinal of Cortona.' The remaining three, who were Ruberto Acciajuoli, Lorenzo Strozzi, and Francesco Vettori, pointed out the impropriety of administering a free city through a priest who held his title from a subject town. They recommended the appointment of a Gonfalonier for one year, and so on, till a member of the Medicean family could take the lead. Clement, however, decided on the other course; and to this cause may be traced half the troubles of his reign.

[1] P. 348.

[2] P. 349. They were 14 and 13 years of age respectively.

The greater part of what remains of the Sommario is occupied with the wars and intrigues of Francis, Charles, and Clement. Vettori, it may be said in passing, records a very unfavorable opinion of the Marquis of Pescara, who was, he hints, guilty of first turning a favorable ear to Moroni's plot and then of discovering the whole to his master.[1] A few days after his breach of faith with the Milanese, he fell ill and died. 'He was a man whose military excellence cannot be denied; but proud beyond all measure, envious, ungrateful, avaricious, venomous, cruel, without religion or humanity, he was born to be the ruin of Italy; and it may be truly said that of the evil she has suffered and still suffers, a large part was caused by him.'

[1] Pp. 358, 359.

Of the breach of faith of Francis, after he had left his Spanish prison, Vettori speaks in terms of the very highest commendation.[1] His refusal to cede Burgundy to Charles was just and patriotic. That he broke his faith was no crime; for, though a man ought rather to die than forswear himself, yet his first duty is to God, his second to his country, Francis was clearly acting for the benefit of his kingdom; and had he not left his two sons as hostages in Spain? The whole defense is a good piece of specious pleading, and might be used to illustrate the chapter on the Faith of Princes in the Principe.

[1] P. 362.

By far the most striking passage in Vettori's Sommario is the description of the march of Frundsberg's and De Bourbon's army upon Rome.[1] He makes it clear to what extent the calamity of the sack was due to the selfishness and cowardice of the Italian princes. First of all the Venetians refused to offer any obstacles before the passage of the Po, feeling that by doing so they might draw trouble on their own provinces. Then the Duke of Ferrara supplied the Lutherans with artillery, of which they hitherto had stood in need. The first use they made of their fire-arms was to shoot the best captain in Italy, Giovanni de' Medici of the Black Bands. The Duke of Urbino, the Marquis of Saluzzo, and Guido Rangoni watched them cross the river and proceed by easy stages through the district of Piacenza, 'following them like lacqueys waiting on their lords.' The same thing happened at Parma and Modena, while the Duke of Ferrara kept supplying the foreigners with food and money. Clement meanwhile was penniless in Rome. Rich as the city was, he had so utterly lost credit that he dared not ask for loans, and was so feeble that he could not rob. The Colonnesi, moreover, who had recently plundered the Vatican, kept him in a state of terror. As the invaders, now commanded by the Constable de Bourbon, approached Tuscany, the youth of Florence demanded to be armed in defense of their hearths and homes. The Cardinal of Cortona, fearing a popular rising, refused to grant their request. A riot broke out, and the Medici were threatened with expulsion: but by the aid of influential citizens a revolution was averted. The Constable, avoiding Florence and Siena, marched straight on Rome, still watched but unmolested by the armies of the League. He left his artillery on the road, and, as is well known, carried the walls of Rome by assault on the morning of May 3, dying himself at the moment of victory. From what has just been rapidly narrated, it will be seen how utterly abject was the whole of Italy at this moment, when a band of ruffians, headed by a rebel from his sovereign, in disobedience to the viceroy of the king he pretended to serve, was not only allowed but actually helped to traverse rivers, plains, and mountains, on their way to Rome. What happened after the capture of the Transteverine part of the city moves even deeper scorn. 'It still remained for the Imperial troops to enter the populous and wealthy quarters; and these they had to reach by one of three bridges. They numbered hardly more than 25,000 men, all told. In Rome were at least 30,000 men fit to bear arms between the ages of sixteen and fifty, and among them were many trained soldiers, besides crowds of Romans, swaggering braggarts used to daily quarrels, with beards upon their breasts. Nevertheless, it was found impossible to get 500 together in one band for the defense of one of the three bridges.' What immediately follows gives so striking a picture of the sack: that a translation of it will form a fit conclusion to this volume. 'The soldiers slew at pleasure; pillaged the houses of the middle classes and small folk, the palaces of the nobles, the convents of both sexes, and the churches. They made prisoners of men, women, and even of little children, without regard to age, or vows, or any other claim on pity. The slaughter was not great, for men rarely kill those who offer no resistance: but the booty was incalculable, in coin, jewels, gold and silver plate, clothes, tapestries, furniture, and goods of all descriptions. To this should be added the ransoms, which amounted to a sum that, if set down, would win no credence. Let any one consider through how many years the money of all Christendom had been flowing into Rome, and staying there in a great measure; let him remember the Cardinals, Bishops, Prelates, and public officers, the wealthy merchants, both Roman and foreign, selling at high prices, letting their houses at dear rents, and paying nothing in the way of taxes; let him call to mind the artisans, the poorer folk, the prostitutes; and he will judge that never was a city sacked of which the memory remains, whence greater store of treasure could be drawn. Though Rome has at other times been taken and pillaged, yet never before was it the Rome of our days. Moreover, the sack lasted so long that what might not perhaps have been discovered on the first day sooner or later came to light. This disaster was an example to the world that men proud, avaricious, envious, murderous, lustful, hypocritical, cannot long preserve their state. Nor can it be denied that the inhabitants of Rome, especially the Romans, were stained with all these vices, and with many greater.'

[1] Pp. 372-82.

* * *

INDEX

A

Abelard, 9.

Ahmed, 589.

Albigenses, 9.

Aldi, the, 23.

Aleander, 27.

Alexander VI., 406., 407. seq.., 603; death, 430. (see Papacy).

Alfonso I. of Naples, 568.

Alfonso II., 119, 572.

Allegre, 418,

Allegretti, works, 292; cited, 165;

quoted, 616

America, effects of its discovery, 540.

Ammanati, works, 489.

Anjou, house of, transfers its claims to Sicily, 539.

Appiani, 148.

Ariosto, works, 119; cited, 413;

quoted, 130

Aristotle, influence of his writings, 197; quoted, 234, 235.

Art in Middle Age, 17; effect of religious conventionalism, 18;

revolution made by Renaissance, 18, 19.

Italian, inimical to ugliness, 490;

flourishes under despots, 79.

Ascham, R., quoted, 472.

B

Bacon, Francis, 26;

--, Roger, 9, 10..

Baglioni, 122, 148.

Barbiano, 159.

Bartoli, A., cited, 252.

Beccadelli, 174.

Bellini, works, 488.

Bentivogli, 102, 115, 123.

Bergamo, V. da, 618.

Bernard, St., 13.

Berni cited, 443.

Bibbiena, 184; quoted, 190.

Bologna, 123, 617.

Boniface VIII., 76.

Borgia, Cesare, 117, 324, 345 seq., 426, 577; murders, 352.

Borgia, Lucrezia, 419; character cleared of calumny, 420.

Borgia, Roderigo (see Alexander VI).

Boscoli, P. P., 466.

Bracciolini, P., 274.

Brant?me quoted, 117.

Brescia, 615; Arnold of, 64.

Browning, R., quoted, 13.

Bruni, L., 274.

Buonarottí, 491; works, 19.

Burchard cited, 430, 431.

Burckhardt cited, 428; quoted, 434.

Burton, Robert, cited, 475.

Bussolaro, J. del, 610.

Byzantine empire, effect of its fall, 14.

C

Capistrano, G. da, 615.

Capponi, P., 284, 563.

Carducci, 284, 289; works, 293.

Carmagnuola, F., 161.

"Carmina Burana," 9.

Carrara, 149.

Carroccio, 58.

Castiglione, works, 183, 457.

Catholic Church (see Papacy). Support of Church required by good society, 455;

philosophy and theology fused, 456;

religion divorced from morality, 462, 493;

influence of ancient literature, 464;

?stheticism, 465;

humanism antagonistic to Christianity, 493;

its corruption, 448 seq.;

not universal, 470;

immorality of priests, 458, 459;

power of ecclesiastical eloquence, 491;

revivals, 490, 606 seq.;

indestructable vigor of religious faith, 469.

Cellini, B., 104, 462, 492; memoirs, 325.

Charles VIII. (see Italy, history), 540 seq.; escape, 580.

Charles of Anjou, 75.

Charles the Great, 50.

Chivalry, 483.

Christianity (see Catholic Church, Morals), influence in forming modern society, 7;

how affected by Renaissance, 25.

Clement VII., 443, 633.

Colonnesi, 375.

Columbus, 15.

Comines cited, 416; quoted, 214, 475, 541, 553, 572, 578.

Condottieri, 86, 113, 131, 156 seq.; 245, 361; character of warfare, 102, 363.

Compagni, Dino, chronicle of, 262; its authenticity, 266 seq.

Copernicus, 15.

Corio, works, 292; quoted, 135, 143, 145, 152. 160, 385, 391, 392, 619.

Coryat, T., quoted, 475.

Croce, della, 614.

Cromwell, 454.

Cruelty (see Blood-madness), instances of, 151, 478, 571;

of French, 557, 583;

its use, 354.

Crusades, 7.

D

Dante, political views, 261; works, 10, 11, 73, 260;

quoted, 73, 76, 77, 133.

Democratic idea, its gradual growth, 8.

Dennistoun cited, 160.

Descartes, 26.

Djem, 415, 566, 576.

Dürer, works, 490; cited, 475.

E

Erasmus, 24, 27.

Este, house of, 395, 420; Nicolo, 168.

F

Fanfoni, P., cited, 263, 268.

Feltre, V. da, 171, 176.

Ferdinand of Arragon, 296, 358; of Naples, 570.

Ferrara, 499, 617; court, 423.

Ficino, 175, 456.

Fiesole, G. da, Works, 488.

Filelfo, 171; quoted, 381.

Flora, Joachim of, 9.

Florence, its constitution, 195, 201, 592, 596, 598; number of citizens, 598;

parties, 211;

perpetual flux, 221;

government by merchants, 225;

the "parlamento," 230;

cause of failure of popular government, 231;

population, 256;

the "arti," 597;

militia, its value, 601;

Machiavelli's reforms, 312;

revenues, 255;

topography, 595;

history (see Italy),

rule of the Medici, 277, 305, 629, years 1527-31, 282;

recovers liberty through the French, 560;

occupation, 562;

commonwealth, 282;

divisions of popular party, 283;

siege, 285;

effect of Savonarola's prophecies, 290;

Pazzi conspiracy, 398;

final subjugation, 446;

character of its historians, 248 seq., 274.

Society, character of people, 600;

their enlightenment and immorality, 504;

absence of religious faith, 295;

excess of intellectual mobility, 237;

commercial character, 238;

social life, 242.

A city of intelligence, 232, 246.

Fondulo, G., 463.

Ford, J., cited, 477.

Foscari, F., 215; quoted, 600.

Francia, works, 489.

Frattcelli, 9.

Frederick I., 63.

Frederick II., 10, 68, 105.

Froben, J., 23.

G

Gambacorta, 147.

Gemistos Plethon, 173.

Genezzano, 506, 522.

Genoa, 79; history, 201.

Giacomini, 313.

Giannotti cited, 217; quoted, 169,196, 216, 238, 278, 280.

Giotto, works, 488.

Giovio, quoted, 249.

God, medieval idea of, 16.

Gonzaghi, 146.

Government, Guicciardini's theories, 305. [See Machiavelli.]

Graziani quoted, 614.

Greek, knowledge of, in Renaissance, 182.

Greene, R., quoted, 473.

Gregorovius cited, 421, 430, 479,.

Guarino, 171.

Guarnieri, 158.

Guelphs and Ghibeliines, 69, 206.

Guicciardini, 278, 280, 285, 295, 482; works, 291, 294, 301 seq.;

political theories analyzed, 304 seq.;

quoted, 44, 91, 92, 119, 169, 223, 284, 404, 409, 412, 417, 431, 434, 451, 536. 541. 547, 549, 582, 583, 603.

H

Hawkwood, J., 113.

Hegel quoted, 367.

Hegel, C, cited, 252.

Heribert, 58.

Hildebrand, 59.

Hirsch cited, 567.

Hogarth, works, 490.

Howell cited, 473.

Hussites, 9.

Hutten, 27.

I

Infessura, works, 292; cited, 405;

quoted, 395, 404, 474,

Innocent VIII., 403.

Inquisition in Spain, 399.

Inventions of Renaissance, 29.

Italy, history (see Condottieri, Papacy), its character, 32;

papacy and empire, 33, 41, 43, 94, 97, 99;

variety of governments, 35, 43;

their influence on national development, 44;

politics, 36;

invasions, 39;

want of historical continuity, 41;

the despotisms, 42;

origin of modern history, 46;

the Lombards, 48;

Charles the Great, 51;

Berengar, 52;

Otho I., 52;

growth of power of Church, 53;

Frederick I., 63;

Charles of Anjou, 75;

convulsions of 14th century, 81;

states of 15th century, 88;

obstacles to unity, 89;

to monarchy, 92;

to federalism, 95;

in time of Machiavelli, 365;

policy of Lorenzo, 543;

equilibrium destroyed, 545;

French invasion, 549;

character of their army, 565;

league against them, 576;

cause of their failure, 340;

effect of their example, 583;

on other nations, 585;

Charles V., 98.

Italians incapable of helping themselves, 586;

responsible for their despots, 115;

development precocious and unsound, 495;

fatal effects of want of union, 538, 552.

The Republics, character of their history, 33, 193; beginning of the power of the cities, 53;

their origin, 54;

count and bishop, 55; "people," 55;

commune, 56;

consuls, 56;

effect of struggle of papacy and empire, 61;

influence of latter, 198;

Guelphs and Ghibeliines, 69, 80, 206;

wars of cities, 62;

Frederic I., 64;

struggle with nobles, 66;

the podesta, 67;

"captain of the people," 71;

the "arti," 72;

distinction between parties, 74;

not representative governments, 196;

not democratic, 195;

factions, 195, 210;

small number of active citizens, 209;

temporal character of alliances, 212.

The Despotisms, 42, 76; their justification, 83;

idea of liberty, 78;

republican freedom unknown, 91;

policy commercial, 85;

taxation, 86;

diplomacy substituted for warfare, 87;

illegitimacy, 102;

good government, 103;

bad effect of their example, 104;

courts, 106, 186;

varieties of despotisms, 109;

claims of despots due to force, not rank, 116;

their democratic character, 117;

uncertainty of tenure of power, 117, 129;

domestic crime, 119;

murders, 120;

tastes and pursuits, 126;

degeneracy of their houses, 126, 151;

bad effects of rule, 130;

centralizing tendencies, 131;

cruelty, 151;

absence of all morality, 168.

Society. Why Italy took the lead in the Renaissance, 5; Italians gentle and humane, 478;

not gluttons, 479;

personal originality not discouraged, 488;

Italy originates type of gentleman, 192;

courtiers, idea of nobility, 186;

community of interest with that of Roman Church, 470;

immorality not great relatively, 487;

superiority to their contemporaries, 489;

purity of their art shows that heart of the people was not vitiated, 488;

commercial integrity, 474;

demoralization of society, 472;

immorality came from above, 489;

commonness of crime, 170, 480;

exceptions to rule, 183;

murders, 480;

deficiency in sense of honor, 481;

chastity in women, 486;

unnatural passions, 477;

charms of illicit love, 476;

immoral literature, 475.

Literature, early, 53.

J

Jews, expulsion from Spain, 400.

Julia, daughter of Claudius, 22, 23.

Julius II., 389, 406, 432 seq.

L

Lecce, Roberto da, 614.

Leo X., 435, 630.

Libraries of Renaissance, 21.

Locke, J., 26.

Lombards, 48 seq.

London, medi?val, 137.

Louis XII., 339.

Luini, works, 489.

Lungo, del, cited, 273.

Luther, 26, 442, 454, 530,

M

Macaulay on the despots, 127, 320.

Machiavelli, 232, 278, 308 seq.; property, 309;

education, 310;

political career, 311;

cringing character, 317;

intercourse with Cesare Borgia, 347;

compared with Savonarola, 368;

last years, 328;

death, 333.

Works, 76, 169, 203, 249, 332, 369, 457, 494; military system, 312;

Art of War, 328;

History, 331;

The Prince, 319;

object in writing it, 321;

appeal to the Medici, 366;

apology for the author, 367;

morality of the work, 324-6;

author's sincerity, 333;

not the inventor of Machiavellianism, 335;

it assumes Reparation of statecraft and morality, 335;

an abstract of political expediency, 336;

how permanently to assimilate provinces, 338;

colonies, 338;

founders of monarchies, 343;

distinction between monarch and despot, 341;

use of cruelty, 354;

value of distrust, 358;

military precautions, 360;

the work condemned by the Inquisition, 336;

opinion of it in France, 326;

quoted, 45, 82, 84, 96, 98, 115, 116, 146, 152, 187, 202, 214, 215, 245, 325, 447, 450, 453, 460.

Madonna, conventional idea of, 18.

Malatesta, 172.

Malespini, chronicle, 251.

Mantegna, works, 489.

Mantuanus, B., quoted, 394.

Marlowe quoted, 336.

Marston, cited, 473, 475.

Massa, B. da, 611.

Masuccio quoted, 458, 486.

Matarazzo, works, 292; quoted, 583.

Medici, their policy, 87, 90, 128, 155, 228, 230; expulsion, 222;

connection with papacy, 404;

services to literature, 600.

Alessandro, 298;

Cosimo, 300, 492;

Lorenzo, 504, 628;

death, 523;

Piero, 558.

Michelet quoted, 15, 585.

Middle Age: mental condition, 6, 13; inaccessibility to mental ideas, 7;

political character, 8;

art, 17;

scholarship, 20.

Milan, 58; Visconti and Sforza, 154.

Milman quoted, 530.

Milton, 454.

Mirandola, 171, 456, 520; quoted, 401, 511.

Monaldeschi, L. B., 252.

Montferrat, 146.

Montone, B. da, 123, 159.

Morals (see Italy, society; Papacy, court; Virtu;) in Cellini's memoirs, 325; sexual immorality,474;

tyrannicide defended, 468.

Müntz, E., cited, 384.

Muzio quoted, 174.

N

Naples (see Italy), attraction for foreigners, 566; claims of house of Anjou, 539;

flight of king, 574.

Nardi, 278, 280, 290; works, 291;

quoted, 292, 511, 534, 592.

Nerli, 278, 290; works, 293 seq.;

quoted, 328.

Nicholas V., 378.

Normans In Italy, 58.

O

Olgiati, 166.

Orsini, 375.

Otho 1., 52.

P

Pamponazzo, 456..

Pandolfini, 239; works, 241.

Papacy (see Catholic Church), "the ghost of the Roman empire," 6; church and state, 8;

Charles the Great, 51;

imperial nominees, 59;

change in mode of election, 60;

effect of crushing the Hohenstauffen, 101;

nepotism, 114;

authority in 14th century, 371, 375;

secularization, 371, 375;

temporal power, 376;

its consolidation, 378;

its extent, 434;

persecution, 402;

of Platonists, 417;

its effect, 418;

plan to transform Papacy to kingdom, 392;

sale of pardons, 404, 439;

no horror felt at election of Alexander VI., 410;

Turks invited to Italy, 415, 551;

censure of press, 416:

alliance with France, 427, 566;

political crimes of Alexander VI., 428;

tide turns with Julius II., 433;

reforms of Adrian VI., 441;

moral advantage of sack of Rome, 445.

Court, 372; its scandalous history, 390, 403, 411, 414, 420, 424, 439, 457;

extravagance, 390, 436, 437;

extortion, 437;

monopolies, 394;

nepotism, 419, 438;

simony, 394, 405, 414;

art patronage, 384, 401, 433, 436.

Paterini, 9.

Pazzi conspiracy, 396.

Perrotti quoted, 179.

Perugia, 612.

Pescara, marquis of, 634.

Petrarch, 11, 20; quoted, 250.

Poliziano, 171,

Poontano cited, 481.

Printers of Renaissance, 23,

Provence, civilization of, 9.

Puritanism, 25, 37.

R

Raffaella quoted, 483.

Raphael, works, 488.

Reformation, 433; how affected by Renaissance, 27.

Rembrandt, works, 490.

Renaissance (see Middle Age), not synonymous with "revival of learning," 1; not completed, 2;

extent of signification, 2-3;

origin, 3;

idea not separable from "Reformation," "Revolution," 5;

effect on old beliefs, 14, 16;

all its tendencies worldly, 455;

restores double past, Christian and pagan, 506;

obstacles in the way, 5;

preparation, 9;

opposition of the Church, 10;

character of the men, 12;

discoveries, 15;

scholarship, 20;

assimilation of paganism, 25;

reaction against enlightenment, 25;

inventions, 29.

Reuchlin, 27.

Reumont, A. von, cited, 212, 524.

Ripamonti quoted, 163, 167.

Robbia, works, 489.

Romagna, 349.

Romano, Ezzelino da, 69, 75, 106, 119; Giulio, works, 490.

Rome (see Italy, Papacy), effect of its ruins, 253; appearance at time of French occupation, 564;

early medi?val history, 47;

opposition to Lombards, 49;

government semi-independent of pope, 376;

advantages derived from presence of papal court, 377;

improvements under Nicholas V., 378,

impunity of criminals, 405;

factions destroyed, 413;

rising of Colonnas, 443;

sack, 444, 636;

prostitutes, 474.

Romeo and Juliet, 74,

Rosellini, works, 489,

Rosenbaum cited, 567.

Royere, F. della (see Sixtus IV.); Francesco Maria, 393;

Giuliano (see Julius II,);

Pietro, 390.

Rubens, works, 490.

R

Sadoleto, quoted, 446.

Savelli, 375.

Savonarola, 202, 221, 230, 277, 283, 290, 345, 368, 453, 454, 456, 491, 498 seq., 561, 622; poems, 502;

settles in Florence, 504;

portraits, 508;

eloquence, 510;

creed, 513;

prophecies, 514;

political career, 526;

hatred of secular culture, 527;

dares not break with Rome, 531;

martyrdom, 533;

works, 536;

quoted, 128.

Savoy, 146.

Scala, della, family, 145, 258.

Scheffer-Bolchorst cited, 252, 269.

Segal, 278, 280, 289; works 292, seq.

Sforza family, 131 seq.; their magnificience, 164;

to be made kings of Lombardy, 392;

Francesco, 153, 159 seq., 345;

Galeazzo, 165;

Ludovico, 543 seq.

Shelley cited, 477.

Siena, 207, 616.

Sismondi quoted, 138, 144, 159, 226, 533.

Sixtus IV., 388 seq., 502.

Soderini, P., 289, 324.

Spaniards, cruelty of, 478.

Spinoza, 26.

Stendhal cited, 482.

Stephani, the, 23.

Strozzi, Ercole, 423; F., 285.

Swiss, 450.

Syphilis, history of, 567.

T

Tasso, 486.

Temporal Power (see Papacy).

Tenda, Beatrice di, 152.

Theodoric, 47.

Theology, effect of Renaissance upon, 16.

Tiraboschi, quoted, 173.

Titian, works, 19.

Torre, della, 132.

Trinci, 122.

U

Urbino, dukes of, 174 seq., 393, 438.

V

Valois, Charles of, 76.

Varani, 121.

Varchi, 278, 290; works, 279, 303 seq.;

quoted, 204, 244, 505.

Venice, 79, 88, 91; an exception among the republics, 195, 214;

constitution, 215;

the Ten, 218;

fascination exercised by government, 220;

military system, 220;

no initiative mining citizens, 233;

compared with Sparta, 234;

indifference to prosperity of Italy, 550.

Vespusiano quoted, 174, 477, 612.

Vettori, F., 624; works, 626.

Vicenza, John of, 607.

Villani, M., works, 251 seq., quoted, 128, 139.

Villari, quoted, 195, 500.

Vinci, da, 326, 548; works, 489.

Virgil, 20.

Virtu, 171, 337, 345, 484, 493.

Visconti, family, 131 seq.; their realm falls to pieces, 150;

Filippo, 152;

Gisa, 141;

Violante, 137.

W

Webster, J., quoted, 119, 557.

Witchcraft persecutions, 402.

Y

Yriarte, quoted, 210, 217.

* * *