Chapter 5

[Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.]

103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi, seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and entirely ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,--capacity of two virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,--order, namely; and obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where to find them.

104. Hubert of Lucca--How came they, think you, to choose _him _out of a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern Florence?

I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca; Villani says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."

They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th of October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you this heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be very useful to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate it:--

105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.

Gonfalon 1. Gules; a ladder, argent. 2. Argent; a scourge, sable. 3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con nicchi vermigli). 4. Gules; a dragon, vert.

B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio.

1. Azure; a chariot, or. 2. Or; a bull, sable. 3. Argent; a lion rampant, sable. 4. (A lively piece, "pezza gagliarda") Barry of (how many?) pieces, argent and sable.

You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called 'gagliarda' by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were called in English heraldry 'Restrial bearings,' "in respect of their strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and force of any triall they shall be put unto." [1] And also that, the number of bars being uncertain, I assume the bearing to be 'barry,' that is, having an even number of bars; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it should have been blazoned, argent; three bars, sable; or, if so divided, sable, three bars argent.

[Footnote 1: Guillim, sect. ii., chap. 3.]

This lively bearing was St. Pulinari's.

C. Sesto of Borgo.

1. Or; a viper, vert. 2. Argent; a needle, (?) (aguglia) sable. 3. Vert; a horse unbridled; draped, argent, a cross, gules.

D. Sesto of St. Brancazio.

1. Vert; a lion rampant, proper. 2. Argent; a lion rampant, gules. 3. Azure; a lion rampant, argent.

E. Sesto of the Cathedral gates.

1. Azure; a lion (passant?) or. 2. Or; a dragon, vert. 3. Argent; a lion rampant, azure, crowned, or.

F. Sesto of St. Peter's gates.

1. Or; two keys, gules. 2. An Italian (or more definitely a Greek and Etruscan bearing; I do not know how to blazon it;) concentric bands, argent and sable. This is one of the remains of the Greek expressions of storm; hail, or the Trinacrian limbs, being put on the giant's shields also. It is connected besides with the Cretan labyrinth, and the circles of the Inferno. 3. Parted per fesse, gules and vai (I don't know if vai means grey--not a proper heraldic colour--or vaire).

106. Of course Hubert of Lucca did not determine these bearings, but took them as he found them, and appointed them for standards; [1] he did the same for all the country parishes, and ordered them to come into the city at need. "And in this manner the old people of Florence ordered itself; and for more strength of the people, they ordered and began to build the palace which is behind the Badia,--that is to say, the one which is of dressed stone, with the tower; for before there was no palace of the commune in Florence, but the signory abode sometimes in one part of the town, sometimes in another.

[Footnote 1: We will examine afterwards the heraldry of the trades, chap, xi., Villani.]

107. "And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves, they ordered, for greater strength of the people, that all the towers of Florence--and there were many 180 feet high [1]--should be cut down to 75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of them they walled the city on the other side Arno."

[Footnote: 120 braccia.]

108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,--resolute maintenance of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern republicanism throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins.

109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for full two months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor Frederick II.; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Rinieri of Montemerlo, was killed by a piece of the vaulting [1] of his room falling on him as he slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor's death, "which was most useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune," they took the fall of the roof on his lieutenant as an omen of the extinction of Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic exiles, and that the Ghibellines should be forced to make peace with them. Which was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months; when, a quarrel chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Florentines, under a Milanese podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial battle, with great slaughter of Pistojese. Naturally enough, but very unwisely, the Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this battle; whereupon the people, returning flushed with victory, drove them all out, and established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at the same time the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent, a lily gules; but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted per pale, argent and gules, remained always on their carroccio of battle,--"Non si muto mai."

[Footnote 1: "Una volta ch' era sopra la camera."]

110. "Non si muto mai." Villani did not know how true his words were. That old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or our own Saxon Oswald's, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry changeless in sign; declaring the necessary balance, in ruling men, of the Rational and Imaginative powers; pure Alp, and glowing cloud.

Church and State--Pope and Emperor--Clergy and Laity,--all these are partial, accidental--too often, criminal--oppositions; but the bodily and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in everlasting harmony,

Not less the new bearing of the shield, the red fleur-de-lys, has another meaning. It is red, not as ecclesiastical, but as free. Not of Guelph against Ghibelline, but of Labourer against Knight. No more his serf, but his minister. His duty no more 'servitium,' but 'ministerium,' 'mestier.' We learn the power of word after word, as of sign after sign, as we follow the traces of this nascent art. I have sketched for you this lily from the base of the tower of Giotto. You may judge by the subjects of the sculpture beside it that it was built just in this fit of commercial triumph; for all the outer bas-reliefs are of trades.

111. Draw that red lily then, and fix it in your minds as the sign of the great change in the temper of Florence, and in her laws, in mid-thirteenth century; and remember also, when you go to Florence and see that mighty tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of the calamitous and accursed restorations which have smoothed its rugged outline, and effaced with modern vulgarisms its lovely sculpture)--terminating the shadowy perspectives of the Uffizii, or dominant over the city seen from Fésole or Bellosguardo,--that, as the tower of Giotto is the notablest monument in the world of the Religion of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, first shook itself to the winds the Lily standard of her liberal,--because honest,--commerce.

LECTURE V.

PAX VOBISCUM.

112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself, rather pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the 'lily standard of liberal commerce.' But it might occur, and I hope did occur, to some of you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had changed colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to red,) as a sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose.

113. I believe otherwise, however; and although the change itself was for the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.

Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and their officers in scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honour or beauty; you give your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up to his waist, because he is ashamed of it; and dress your pious rectors, and your sisters of charity, in black, as if it were _their_ trade instead of the soldier's to send people to hell, and their own destiny to arrive there.

114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a symbol,--unintentional, observe, but not the less notable,--of the recovery of human sense and intelligence in this matter. The reign of war was past; this was the sign of it;--the red glow, not now of the Towers of Dis, but of the Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco nota." And a day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls "in scarlet, with other delights," and "put on ornaments of gold upon _their_ apparel;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the only living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall be, at least in some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these."

115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence herself, with her new standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,--according to the custom and Christianity of the time,--her hatefullest, neighbours,--Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile states also of those benighted towns! Besides, the death of the Emperor had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement; and what was the use of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo?

116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began by ravaging the territory of Pistoja; then attacked the Pisans at Pontadera, and took 3000 prisoners; and finished by traversing, and eating up all that could be ate in, the country of Siena; besides beating the Sienese under the castle of Montalcino. Returning in triumph after these benevolent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece of money in memory of them,--the golden Florin!

117. This coin I have placed in your room of study, to be the first of the series of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not chronologically, but for the various interest, whether as regards art or history, which they should possess in your general studies. "The Florin of Florence," (says Sismondi), "through all the monetary revolutions of all neighbouring countries, and while the bad faith of governments adulterated their coin from one end of Europe to the other, has always remained the same; it is, to-day," (I don't know when, exactly, he wrote this,--but it doesn't matter), "of the same weight, and bears the same name and the same stamp, which it did when it was struck in 1252." It was gold of the purest title (24 carats), weighed the eighth of an ounce, and carried, as you see, on one side the image of St. John Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It is the coin which Chaucer takes for the best representation of beautiful money in the Pardoner's Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask of Death. Villani's relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis is worth translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.

118. "And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world, some of them got to Tunis, in Barbary; and the King of Tunis, who was a worthy and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them tested; and finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had the legend on them interpreted to him,--to wit, on one side 'St. John Baptist,' on the other 'Florentia.' So seeing they were pieces of Christian money, he sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his port, and much before the King (and also the Florentines traded in Tunis through Pisan agents),--[see these hot little Pisans, how they are first everywhere,]--and asked of them what city it was among the Christians which made the said florins. And the Pisans answered in spite and envy, 'They are our land Arabs.' The King answered wisely, "It does not appear to me Arab's money; you Pisans, what golden money have _you_ got?" Then they were confused, and knew not what to answer. So he asked if there was any Florentine among them. And there was found a merchant from the other-side-Arno, by name Peter Balducci, discreet and wise. The King asked him of the state and being of Florence, of which the Pisans made their Arabs,--who answered him wisely, showing the power and magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in comparison, was not, either in land or people, the half of Florence; and that they had no golden money; and that the gold of which those florins had been made was gained by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many victories. Wherefore the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both by reason of the florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the Florentines free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in Tunis, and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a truth from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office of the Priors."

119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time: the sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it being only useful as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in which many even of the best educated persons at the present day remain.

"Its value," he says always the same, "answers to eleven francs forty centimes of France."

But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that it contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins, other metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day, but from instant to instant.

120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the Venetian zecchin; [1] but of it I can only thus give you account in another place,--for I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I find recorded, as being made by the Florentines of their new money.

[Footnote 1: In connection with the Pisans' insulting intention by their term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 'zecca,' (mint) came from the Arabic 'sehk,' the steel die used in coinage.]

They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so often, that the Pistojese submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph exiles, and admitting a Florentine garrison into Pistoja. Next they attacked Monte Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese; and pressed it so vigorously that Siena was fain to make peace too, on condition of ceasing her alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the territory of Volterra: the townspeople, confident in the strength of their rock fortress, came out to give battle; the Florentines beat them up the hill, and entered the town gates with the fugitives.

121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the date 1254 underneath it; meaning that I was to remember that year as the beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours' territories may seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting in absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own ambition, and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of battle, they have nevertheless, in this their "year of victories,"--so they ever afterwards called it,--no occult or malignant purpose. At least, whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious; not now in cruel, but in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire to communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new artizan government, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are justly proud of themselves; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change they have made; true to each other for the time, and confident in the future. No army ever fought in better cause, or with more united heart. And accordingly they meet with no check, and commit no error; from tower to tower of the field fortresses,--from gate to gate of the great cities,--they march in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph, yet in gentle and perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered Volterra with her fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood is shed, nor a single house pillaged, nor is any other condition of peace required than the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may remember, as a symbol of the influence of Christianity in this result, that the Bishop of Volterra, with his clergy, came out in procession to meet them as they began to run [1] the streets, and obtained this mercy; else the old habits of pillage would have prevailed.

[Footnote 1: Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno."--_Villani._]

122. And from Volterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory of Pisa; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission. And the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the Pisans should let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without tax;--should use the same weights as Florence,--the same cloth measure,--and the same alloy of money.

123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator of the idea of free trade; and six hundred years have passed without bringing Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as to weights and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories.

The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor Manfred; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again; defeated them on the Serchio, near Lucca; entered the Pisan territory by the Val di Serchio; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck their florins on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of an art of coinage thus ductile to events, and easy in manipulution.

124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it drops through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in value.

125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines made the noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever recorded in any history; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal of them. You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th, chapters 61, 62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but without references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy, using Villani's authority wherever it reaches; one or two points I have farther to explain to you myself as I go on.