The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

of Florence, Siena, Bologna, and Perugia are as full of fighting and bloodshed as those of Rome; but their fights were not mere brawh, nor were their triumphs always barren. Even the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which were like the coming of the spring after a long winter, making the earth to blossom, and gladdening the hearts of men⁠—the centuries which elsewhere in Italy, and over the rest of Europe, gave birth to the noblest medieval Art, when every great city was adorning itself with the beautiful works of the new architecture, sculpture, and painting⁠—even these centuries left scarcely any token of their passage over Rome. The sun, breaking through the clouds that had long hidden it, shone everywhere but here. While Florence was building her Cathedral and her Campanile, and Orvieto her matchless Duomo⁠—while Pisa was showing her piety and her wealth in her Cathedral, her Camposanto, her Baptistery, and her Tower⁠—while Siena was beginning a church greater and more magnificent in design than her shifting fortune would permit her to complete⁠—Rome was building neither cathedral nor campanile, but was selling the marbles of her ancient temples and tombs to the builders of other cities, or quarrying them for her own mean uses.”

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This recalls Pope’s Universal Prayer:⁠—

“Father of all! in every age,
In every clime, adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!”

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Not the great Roman general who took Syracuse, after Archimedes had defended it so long with his engines and burning-glasses, but a descendant of his, who in the civil wars took part with Pompey and was banished by Caesar. Pope’s Essay on Man, Ep. IV 257:⁠—

“And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels.”

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Of the state of Florence, Napier writes, Florentine History, I 122:⁠—

“It was not the simple movement of one great body against another; not the force of a government in opposition to the people; not the struggle of privilege and democracy, of poverty and riches, or starvation and repletion; but one universal burst of unmitigated anarchy. In the streets, lanes, and squares, in the courts of palaces and humbler dwellings, were heard the clang of arms, the screams of victims, and the gush of blood: the bow of the bridegroom launched its arrows into the very chambers of his young bride’s parents and relations, and the bleeding son, the murdered brother, or the dying husband were the evening visitors of Florentine maids and matrons, and aged citizens. Every art was practised to seduce and deceive, and none felt secure even of their nearest and dearest relatives. In the morning a son left his paternal roof with undiminished love, and returned at evening a corpse, or the most bitter enemy! Terror and death were triumphant; there was no relaxation, no peace by day or night: the crash of the stone, the twang of the bow, the whizzing shaft, the jar of the trembling mangonel from tower and turret, were the dismal music of Florence, not only for hours and days, but months and years. Doors, windows, the jutting galleries and roofs, were all defended, and yet all unsafe: no spot was sacred, no tenement secure: in the dead of night, the most secret chambers, the very hangings, even the nuptial bed itself, were often known to conceal an enemy.

“Florence in those days was studded with lofty towers; most of the noble families possessed one or more, at least two hundred feet in height, and many of them far above that altitude. These were their pride, their family, citadels; and jealously guarded; glittering with arms and men, and instruments of war. Every connecting balcony was alive with soldiers; the battle raged above and below, within and without; stones rained in showers, arrows flew thick and fast on every side; the seraglj, or barricades, were attacked and defended by chosen bands armed with lances and boar-spears; foes were in ambush at every corner, watching the bold or heedless enemy; confusion was everywhere triumphant, a demon seemed to possess the community, and the public mind, reeling with hatred, was steady only in the pursuit of blood. Yet so accustomed did they at last become to this fiendish life, that one day they fought, the next caroused together in drunken gambols, foe with foe, boasting of their mutual prowess; nor was it until after nearly five years of reciprocal destruction, that, from mere lassitude, they finally ceased thus to mangle each other, and, as it were for relaxation, turned their fury on the neighboring states.”

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Upon this subject Napier, Florentine History, II 626, remarks:⁠—

“A characteristic, and, if discreetly handled, a wise regulation of the Florentines, notwithstanding Dante’s sarcasms, was the periodical revision of their statutes and ordinances, a weeding out, as it were, of the obsolete and contradictory, and a substitution of those which were better adapted to existing circumstances and the forward movement of man. There are certain fundamental laws necessarily permanent and admitted by all communities, as there are certain moral and theological truths acknowledged by all religions; but these broad frames or outlines are commonly filled up with a thick network of subordinate regulations, that cover them like cobwebs, and often impede the march of improvement. The Florentines were early aware of this, and therefore revised their laws and institutions more or less frequently and sometimes factiously, according to the turbulent or tranquil condition of the times; but in 1394, after forty years’ omission, an officer was nominated for that purpose, but whether permanently or not is doubtful.”

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See Note 551. ↩

Limbo, Inferno IV 25, the “foremost circle that surrounds the abyss.”

“There, in so far as I had power to hear,
Were lamentations none, but only sighs,
Which tremulous made the everlasting air.
And this was caused by sorrow without torment
Which the crowds had,