SALIMBENE was eminently a sociable man, and he has much to tell us of his friends. Many such descriptions will come later on in other contexts, but it will be well to collect in this chapter such scattered notices as may give an idea of the cheerful side of Franciscan life, in contrast to the troubles and discontents to which he so frequently alludes.
The Friars were still, until some time after his death, the most real intellectual and moral force in Christendom. All the great Schoolmen of this period were Friars; all or nearly all the great preachers; and the movement gave a great stimulus to poetry and to art. Salimbene found in his Order full scope for his love of travel, his eager (if somewhat random) curiosity, and his passion for music. All his closest friends seem to have been musicians; and he has left us delightful portraits of these minstrels of God. (181) “Brother Henry of Pisa was a comely man, yet of middle stature, free-handed, courteous, liberal, and ready. He knew well how to converse with all, condescending and conforming himself to each man’s manners, gaining the favour both of his own brethren and of secular persons, which is given but to few. Moreover, he was a preacher of great weight and favour with both clergy and people. Again, he was skilled to write, to minate (which some call illuminate), for that the book is illuminated with the scarlet minium),1 to write music, to compose most sweet and delightful songs, both in harmony and in plain-song. He was a marvellous singer; he had a great and sonorous voice, so that he filled the whole choir; but he had also a flute-like treble, very high and sharp; sweet, soft, and delightful beyond measure. He was my Custos in the Custody of Siena, and my master of song in the days of Pope Gregory IX. Moreover he was a man of good manners and devoted to God and the Blessed Virgin and Blessed Mary Magdalene; and no wonder, for the church of his contrada at Pisa was dedicated to this saint. Having heard a certain maid-servant 99 servant tripping through the cathedral church of Pisa and singing in the vulgar tongue,
“If thou carest not for me,
I will care no more for thee,”
he made then, after the pattern of that song, words and music of this hymn following: —
“Christ Divine, Christ of mine,
Christ the King and Lord of all.”2
Moreover, because when he was Guardian and lay sick on his bed in the infirmary of the convent of Siena, he could write no music, therefore he called me, and I was the first to note one of his airs as he sang it.” Salimbene goes on to enumerate other compositions of Brother Henry’s, the last of which reminds him of another musical friend. “Now the second air of these words, that is, the harmony, was composed by Brother Vita of the city of Lucca, and of the Order of Friars Minor, the best singer in the world of his own time in both kinds, namely, in harmony and plain-song. He had a thin or subtle voice, and one delightful to hear. There was none so severe but that he heard him gladly. He would sing before Bishops, Archbishops, and the Pope himself; and gladly they would hear him. If any spoke when Brother Vita sang, immediately men would cry out with Ecclesiasticus, ‘Hinder not music.’ Moreover, whenever a nightingale sang in hedge or thicket, it would cease at the voice of his song, listening most earnestly to him, as if rooted to the spot, and resuming its strain when he had ceased; so that bird and friar would sing in turn, each warbling his own sweet strains. So courteous was he in this that he never excused himself when he was asked to sing, pleading that he had strained his voice, or was hoarse from cold, or for any other reason; wherefore none could apply to him those oft-quoted verses [of Horace], ‘All singers have this fault, that they can never be brought to sing when they are begged to perform among friends.’ He had a mother and sister who were delightful singers. He composed this sequence, ‘Ave mundi,’ both words and air. He composed many hymns in harmony, wherein the Secular clergy specially delight. He was my master of song in his own city of Lucca. Again, the Lord Thomas of Capua having written that sequence, ‘Let the Virgin Mary rejoice,’ and having begged Brother Henry of Pisa to compose an air to it, he composed one delightful and fair and sweet to hear, whereto Brother Vita composed the secondary air, or harmony; for whenever he found any plain-chant 100 of Brother Henry he would gladly compose a harmony thereto. Moreover, the Lord Philip, Archbishop of Ravenna, took this Brother Vita to be of his household, both because he was of his own country, and because he was a Friar Minor, and because he knew so well to sing and write. He died at Milan, and was buried in the Convent of the Friars Minor. He was slender and lean of body, and taller of stature than Brother Henry, His voice was fitter for the chamber than for the choir. Oft-times he left the Order, and oft-times returned: yet he never left us but to enter the Order of St. Benedict; and when he wished to return, Pope Gregory IX was ever indulgent to him, both for St. Francis’s sake, and for the sweetness of his song. For once he sang so enchantingly that a certain nun, hearing his song, threw herself down from a window to follow him; but this might not be, for she broke her leg with the fall. This was no such hearkening as is written in the last chapter of the Song of Songs, ‘Thou that dwellest in the gardens, the friends hearken: make me hear thy voice.’ Truly, therefore, spake Brother Giles of Perugia (not that he was of Perugia, but that there he lived and ended his days — a man given to ecstasies and rapt in divine contemplation, the fourth Brother admitted to our Order, after St. Francis —), truly he spake, ‘It is a great grace of God to have no graces at all,’ speaking here of graces not given freely by God, but acquired, by reason whereof some men are frequently led into evil.” The celebrated Helinand of Froidmont, it may be noted, speaks still more strongly of the dangers of music to the Religious, “whether of instruments, or of the human voice . . . . . as Orpheus with his lute followed his desire even to hell. In further proof whereof, mark that thou shalt scarce find a man of light voice and grave life . . . . . I have seen numberless men and women whose life was so much the more evil as their voice was more sweet.” Benvenuto, again, while noting how Casella too belied Horace’s sarcasm by singing without delay at Dante’s request, and while laying stress on the sovereign virtues of good music, speaks of the danger of elaborate church music, “wherefore Athanasius, to avoid vanity, forbade the custom of singing in church, . . . . . and a certain good and prudent man who had the care of a great convent of nuns forbade them to celebrate their church services with song.”3 This Puritan estimate of song was far more common before the Reformation than is generally realised; and even St. Francis was believed by many to have forbidden church music.
But to return to Brother Henry. “In truth Brother Henry of 101 Pisa was my intimate friend, and such as he of whom the wise man saith, ‘A man amiable in society shall be more friendly than a brother’; for he himself also had a brother in the Order of my age, and I a brother of his age; yet he loved me far more, as he said, than his own blood-brother. And whereas Ecclesiasticus saith ‘The token of a good heart and of a good countenance thou shalt hardly find, and with labour,’ yet this could in no wise be said of him. He was made Minister of Greece, which is the Province of Romania, and gave me a letter of obedience, whereby, if it pleased me, I might go to him and be of his Province, with a companion of my own choice. Moreover, he promised that he would give me a Bible and many other books. But I went not, for he departed this life in the selfsame year wherein he went thither. He died at a certain Provincial Chapter, celebrated at Corinth, where also he was buried and hath found rest in peace. Moreover he foretold the future in the hearing of the Brethren who were in that Chapter, saying, ‘Now are we dividing the books of departed Brethren; but it may be that within a brief while our own too shall be divided.’ And so it came to pass; for in that same Chapter his books were divided.”
Though Brother Henry worked no miracles himself, yet he had long been of the household of the miracle-working Patriarch of Antioch. The reader will not fail to notice how many of Salimbene’s friends and acquaintances were distinguished in life or in death by these thaumaturgic powers. From the matter-of-fact frequency with which he notes the fact, one might almost fancy that he half expected the same of his own bones, when he should come in his turn to lie in the “good thick stupefying incense-smoke” of the choir at Montefalcone or at Reggio.* Miracles were in the air: the earlier volumes of Wadding teem with notices of obscure but wonder-working friars. In many cases, their very names had been forgotten within a century or two of their death; only a vague memory was cherished among the Brethren that “a saint is buried in our convent.”4
Another intimate friend was brother Roland of Pavia, humble and eloquent, of whom Salimbene relates one miracle of the stereotyped pattern. There is, however, far more individuality in (556) “Brother Nicholas of Montefeltro . . . who was many years Minister of Hungary, and afterwards for many years, even to the day of his death, he dwelt in subjection in the convent of Bologna. He was humble beyond all men whom I have ever 102 seen in this world. He neither thought nor would have others to think that he was anything at all: so that, when any man would do him reverence, forthwith he would fall to the ground and kiss his feet, if he might. When the refectory bell was rung for meals, it was he who came first to pour water into the lavatory for the Brethren’s hands: and when strange Brethren came, he would hasten first of all the convent to wash their feet; and though in appearance he was ill-fitted to perform such offices, for he was aged and corpulent, yet his charity and humility and holiness and courtesy and liberality and readiness made him skilful and pleasant and proper thereto. He lieth buried honourably in the church of the Friars Minor of Bologna. After his death God showed forth no miracle through him, for that he had prayed God that he might work none; as also that most holy Brother Giles of Perugia had besought God to show forth no miracles on his behalf after his death. (This was the Brother Giles, whose life Brother Leo, one of the three special companions of St. Francis, wrote at some length.) But in his lifetime Brother Nicholas wrought three miracles — or God through him — which are worthy to be related. The first was that the Guardian of a certain convent had laid upon a certain young friar, who was also a clerk and sub-deacon, the duty of cooking the Brethren’s soup or pottage for God’s sake, until the cook, who was absent, should return. He then obeyed in all humility; but by evil fortune his breviary fell into the pot and was utterly sodden with the pottage. Since therefore the book was thus foully destroyed, and the Brother wept and wailed, — for this was his greatest cause of grief, that the book was borrowed — Brother Nicholas hearing this, and willing to console him, said, ‘See, son, weep no more, but lend me the book, which I need awhile for saying Hours.’ And having taken the book, he went apart and poured forth his soul in prayer; and behold, God restored it to its former beauty, so that no spot or blemish appeared thereon. And the Brother who had before wept so bitterly at the destruction of the book, seeing this, was comforted and filled with admiration, and gave praise to God.” The next miracle of Brother Nicholas was of a more commonplace character; but the third is truly original. “There was a certain youth in the convent of Bologna who was called Brother Guido. He was wont to snore so mightily in his sleep that no man could rest in the same house with him; and, what is more, he made their waking-hours as hideous as their sleep-time: wherefore he was set to sleep in a shed among the wood and straw: yet even so the Brethren could not escape him, for the sound of that accursed rumbling 103 echoed throughout the whole convent. So all the priests and discreet Brethren gathered together in the chamber of Brother John of Parma, the Minister-General, and told him of this boy, how he must be cast utterly forth from the Order by reason of this monstrous fault; and I myself was there present. And it was decreed by a formal sentence that he should be sent back to his mother, who had deceived the Order, since she knew all this of her son before he was received among us. Yet was he not sent back forthwith; which was the Lord’s doing, Who purposed to work a miracle through Brother Nicholas. For this holy man, considering within himself that the boy must needs be cast out through a defect of nature, and without guilt on his own part, called the lad daily about the hour of dawn to come and serve him at his Mass: and at the end of the Mass, the boy would kneel at his bidding behind the altar, hoping to receive some grace of him. Then would Brother Nicholas touch the boy’s face and nose with his hands, desiring, by God’s gifts, to bestow on him the boon of health, and bidding him reveal this secret to no man. In brief, the boy was suddenly and wholly healed; and thenceforth he slept in peace and quiet, like any dormouse, without further discomfort to the Brethren. Afterwards he was transferred to the Province of Rome, where he became a priest and confessor and preacher, most serviceable and profitable to the Brethren, ever thankfully remembering the grace bestowed on him through the merits and prayers of the blessed Nicholas by God, Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.”
Here again is one more Franciscan of the true type. (429) “Brother Thomas of Pavia was a holy and good man, and a great clerk. He had grown old in the Order; a man of wisdom and discretion, and of good and sober counsel. He was a friendly man, ready, humble, and kindly, and devoted to God, and a gracious and weighty preacher. He wrote a great chronicle, for he was very full and prolix; he made also a treatise of sermons and a great and most diffuse work of theology, which for its size he named ‘The Ox.’ He reformed the Province of Tuscany. He was a dear friend of mine, for I lived with him many years in the Convent of Ferrara; may his soul, of God’s mercy, rest in peace! Amen.” Many of Salimbene’s other friends and acquaintances were distinguished authors of their time: Brother Benvenuto of Modena, a Greek scholar and a textual critic of the Bible, Master William of Auxerre, to whom the more famous Durandus was deeply indebted; Brother William of the Friars Preachers, “with whom I was familiar: for he was a humble and courteous man, though small of stature”; 104 and again, “Brother William Britto of the Friars Minor, whose Book is remembered of men; and who in stature was like unto that other Brother William aforesaid, yet not in manners; for he seemed rather wrathful and impatient, as is the nature of men who are small of stature: wherefore the poet saith:
‘Seldom is the small man humble, seldom hath the long man reason;
Seldom shalt thou find a red-head but his troth will smack of treason.” ’*
Nearly all the portraits of good friars in this chronicle belong to the same general type: — learned men and busy workers of the first or second generation, who had grown grey in the Order, and whom our friend knew in the tranquil and honoured evening of their life. Here and there, however, we have glimpses of wilder natures in the ferment of their first overwhelming sense of sin, and in all the agonies of conversion. There is the Lord Bernardo Bafolo (1285-364), a knight of great wealth and renown, who entered the Order in its earliest days, and sought to share the reproach of Christ by causing his own servants to scourge him round the city at a horse’s tail. As he passed thus by the portico of S. Pietro, “where the knights are wont to sit and make merry in their hours of ease, they were pricked to the heart, saying with groans ‘In truth we have seen marvels this day’; and many were goaded by his example to leave the world.” Two usurers, brethren by blood, restored their ill-gotten gains and joined the Franciscans; and one of them caused himself to be scourged likewise all round the city, with a bag of money round his neck. Bernardo Bafolo, whose father had distinguished himself at the storming of Constantinople in 1204, did not leave his own knightly courage behind him when he took the cowl: for “when he was a Friar Minor, and the men of Parma had marched with the Emperor’s army against Milan, he ran to the fire which had been kindled in the Borgo di Santa Cristina; and standing on the top of a burning house, he cut away with an axe and cast down on all side the blazing timbers, that no other houses might take fire. And all men saw him and commended him that he had wrought prudently and valiantly; and ‘it was reputed him unto justice, to generation and generation for evermore’: for this doughty deed of his hath lived many years in men’s memories. After this he crossed to the Holy Land, where he ended his days with all praise in the Order of St. Francis. May his soul by God’s mercy rest in peace, for he began well and ended well.”
105But the greatest by far of Salimbene’s friends was John of Parma, a man of very considerable intellectual force, and the Minister-General who trod most closely of all in the steps of St. Francis. For the life of this remarkable man Salimbene is by far our fullest authority: but he writes of him in so prolix and rambling a fashion (296 foll.), and John’s life has so often been told elsewhere, that I will abridge it considerably here. His father was called Albert the Fowler; for he loved fowling and made it his business. But John owed his education to an uncle, priest and Guardian of the Lazar-house of Parma, who sent him to the university. There he fell into an apparently fatal illness, “but one day he was comforted in the Lord and said in the bystanders’ hearing, ‘The Lord chastising hath chastised me, but He hath not delivered me over to death.’* After this he recovered suddenly of his sickness and began to study with fervour, and walked most manfully in the way of the Lord until he became a Friar Minor; and then he began to go on most abundantly from virtue to virtue and was full of power and wisdom, and God’s grace was with him. He was of middle stature or rather less; he was shapely in all his limbs, and of a strong complexion and sound and stout to bear labours, both in walking and in study. His face was as an angel’s face, gracious and ever bright of cheer: he was free and liberal and courtly and charitable, humble and mild and kindly and patient; devoted to God and fervent in prayer, pious and gentle and compassionate. He sang Mass daily, and so devoutly that those who stood by felt some of his own grace: he would preach so fervently and well both to the clergy and to the Brethren that, as I have oft-times seen, he provoked many of his hearers to tears: he had a ready tongue that never stumbled, for he was most learned also, having been a good grammarian and a Master in Logic while yet in the world; and in our Order he was a great theologian and disputator. He was a mirror and an example to all that beheld him; for his whole life was full of honour and saintliness, and good and perfect manners: he was gracious both to God and man: learned in music and a good singer. Never saw I so swift a writer, in so fair and true a hand; for his characters were exceeding easy to read. He was a most noble composer in the polished style; and whensoever he would, he enriched his letters with many wise sentences. He was the first Minister-General who began to go round the whole Order 106 and visit province by province, which had not been the custom aforetime, except that Brother Aymo went once to England, which was his native land. But when Brother Bonagratia would have thus visited the Order after the example of John of Parma, the travail was more than he could bear, wherefore he fell sick unto death within four years of his Generalship, and ended his life at Avignon. Moreover Brother John of Parma gave licence to Brother Bonaventura of Bagnorrea* to lecture at Pa4ris, which he had never as yet done anywhere: for he was but a Bachelor and not yet Master. Moreover, at another time, during the Chapter of Metz, the Provincials and Custodes said to Brother John: ‘Father, let us make some Constitutions.’ [i.e. bye-laws.] But he asnwered and said, ‘Let us not multiply our Constitutions, but let us keep well such as we have. For know that the Poor Brethren** complain of you that ye make a multitude of Constitutions and lay them on the neck of your subjects, and ye who make them will not keep them.’ For he looked more to a Superior’s hand than to his tongue; as we read of Julius Cæsar, who never said to his soldiers ‘Go ye and do that,’ but ‘Let us go and do it,’ ever associating himself with them.” He also introduced uniformity into the Friars’ services: for thitherto they had made many changes each after his own fancy “either contrary to the rubrics or altogether beside them, as I have seen with mine own eyes.”
“Moreover, while he was Lector at Naples, and not yet Minister-General, he passed through Bologna, and sat down one day to meat in the guesten-hall with his companions and with other strangers: then certain Brethren came and took him by force from the table, that they might bring him to eat in the infirmary.*** But he, seeing that his companion was left uninvited, turned back and said, ‘I will eat nowhere without my companion’: which was thought great boorishness on the part of the hosts, and the greatest courtesy and fidelity on Brother John’s part. Another day, when he was General and would fain find a moment’s leisure, he came to the convent of Ferrara: and, considering himself that the same Brethren were always invited to eat with him — that is, the same who had dined with him, were at supper also, and the same to-day, the same to-morrow — he saw that our Guardian was a respecter of persons, which displeased him. So when Brother John was washing his hands 107 one day for supper, then the Brother on service asked of the Guardian, ‘Whom shall I invite?’; and he answered, ‘Take Brother Jacopo of Pavia and Brother Avanzio and such an one and such an one.’ Now these four had already washed their hands in expectation, and stood ready, behind the General’s back, as he had well seen from the first: wherefore he took up his parable, inspired perhaps by the Holy Ghost in the fervour of his sprit, and cried, ‘Yea, yea! Take Brother John of Pavia, take Brother Avanzio, take this one and that other! — take ten stripes for thyself, for that is a mere goose’s song!” So they who had been invited to the meal were confounded and put to shame when they heard this: and the Guardian was no less ashamed, saying to the Minister, ‘Father, it was for thine honour that I invited these to bear thee company, since I hold them the most worthy.’ The Minister answered, ‘Saith not the Scripture, “When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind: and thou shalt be blessed”? (and I heard all this, for I stood by his side). Then said the friar on service, ‘Whom then shall I ask?’ ‘Invite,’ said the Guardian, ‘as the Minister shall bid thee.’ Then said he, ‘Go, call me the poor Brethren of the convent; for this office [of eating] is one wherein all know enough to bear their Minister company.’ So that friar on service went to the refectory, and said to the feeblest and poorest Brethren, who seldom ate outside the refectory, ‘The General inviteth you to supper: I bid you on his part to bear him company forthwith’: and so it was. For Brother John, whenever he came to some fresh convent, would ever have the poor Brethren to eat with him, or else all together, or else these and those by turns, that they might have some refreshment by his coming. And thus he would ordain before his guest-table was full, that is, before he went into the refectory to eat, which he ever did forthwith after he was refreshed from his journey and his travail, when he stayed in any convent. So Brother John was no respecter of persons, nor bare he private love for any, but he was most courteous and free at table, so that, if divers sorts of good wine were set before him, he would cause equal portions to be poured out for all, or else he would pour it into a great cup, that every man might drink alike, which was esteemed by all to be an excellent courtesy and charity. Moreover, even when he was Minister-General, whensoever the bell was rung for cleaning the vegetables or herbs for the table, he would come to the convent-workers and labour with the other Brethren, as I have oft-times seen with mine own eyes; and, being familiarly known to him, I said to him, ‘Father, ye do as the Lord taught: “He that is the leader among you, 108 let him be as he that serveth.” ’ And he answered, ‘ “So it becometh us to fulfil all justice,” that is, perfect humility.’ Moreover he fulfilled his church services both nightly and daily, and especially Mattins and Vespers and the Conventual Mass, and whatsoever the Cantor laid upon him he obeyed at once, either beginning the antiphons or chanting lessons and responses or singing conventual masses. In short, he was full of all good deeds: he would fain write with his own hands even when he was a General, that he might by his labour earn wherewithal to be clothed: but the Brethren would not suffer this, for they saw him busied with the service of the Order, and therefore they gladly supplied him with all things necessary.”
But John, as will be seen in Chaper XIII, was a Joachite; he apparently did nothing to punish the rash author of the “Introduction to the Eternal Gospel”; and the scandal of the book fell in a great measure upon him also. His restless energy had already worn out twelve secretaries one after the other: even his own iron frame and cheerful temper must have bent under the discouraging drudgery of visiting convent after convent that was drifting daily farther from the Founder’s purpose:5 and, if Salimbene is right, he met his sentence halfway, calling a special General Chapter to tender his resignation. For a whole day the Chapter refused to accept it, but at last, “seeing the anguish of his soul,” they unwillingly consented, and besought him to name his successor: “and forthwith he chose Brother Bonaventura, saying that he knew none better in the whole Order. So Brother Bonaventura held the Generalate for 17 years, and did much good.” According to Wadding, it was the Pope who had insisted on this resignation, partly on account of his Joachism, and partly because his efforts to enforce the strict observance of St. Francis’s precepts had exasperated a section of the Order: and John gladly obeyed, alleging “his feebleness, his weariness, and his age.”6 Before his fall, John had won golden opinions on all sides: Salimbene tells us of the great respect with which he was treated by princes so different as the emperor Vatatzes; Henry III of England; and, “as I saw with mine own eyes,” St. Louis and his brothers. Even Popes and Cardinals admired him, in spite of his Joachism. The worldly Innocent IV (304) “loved him as his own soul, and ever welcomed him with a kiss on the mouth when he came to see him, and thought to make him a Cardinal, but was himself overtaken by death.” Alexander IV had loved him also; and even now in his disgrace he found powerful defenders. St. Bonaventura did indeed permit the heresy-hunters to bait his old master, and would even have 109 acquiesced in his imprisonment; the disgust of the Spirituals at this and other concessions to the “relaxed” party found utterance in the vision of blessed Jacopo dell Massa (Fioretti chap. 48). It is true that the compiler of the Fioretti takes care, for scandal’s sake, to suppress the great General’s name: but the earlier versions of the vision in the Actus and the Seven Tribulations tell us plainly that the bitter adversary, with iron nails like razors, who would fain have torn John of Parma to pieces, was no other than Dante’s guide through the twelfth Canto of the Paradiso. John was saved — not, as in the vision, by St. Francis stooping from heaven, but by the intervention of Cardinal Ottobono, afterward Pope Adrian V. He was allowed to choose his own place of retreat, and selected the secluded hermitage of Greccio, where St. Francis had spent one Christmas and imitated the Manger of Bethlehem. Even in this his exile, he was still remembered at the Roman Court. (304) “When Master Pietro Ispano7 was made first a Cardinal and then presently Pope John XXI, being a great dialectician and logician and disputer and theologian, he sent for Brother John of Parma, who also had the like qualities. For the Pope would fain have had him ever at his court, and thought to make him a Cardinal; but death overtook him before he could fulfil his purpose; for the vault of his chamber fell upon him and slew him.” The next Pope, however, had no less respect for the saintly ex-General. (302) “A long time after [his retirement], Pope Nicholas III took him by the hand and led him familiarly through his palace, saying to him, ‘Since thou art a man of much counsel, were it not better for thyself and for thine Order that thou shouldst be a Cardinal here with us at our court, than that thou shouldst follow the words of fools who prophesy from their own heart?’ So Brother John answered and said to the Pope, ‘I care nought for your dignities, for it is sung in praise of every saint: “He sought no glory of earthly dignity, but came to the Kingdom of Heaven.” As concerning counsel I say unto you that I could indeed give some counsel if there were any who would hear me. But in these days little else is treated in the Court of Rome but wars and buffooneries, instead of matters which concern the salvation of men’s souls.’ The Pope, hearing this, groaned and said, ‘We are so accustomed to such things that we believe all that we say and do to be profitable.’ Then answered Brother John, ‘And the blessed [Pope] Gregory, as we read in his Dialogues, would have sighed at such things.’ So Brother John was sent away and returned to the hermitage of Greccio where he was wont to dwell.” Salimbene, in spite of his 110 personal affection, agreed with the criticism passed by a fellow-friar on Brother John, that if he could have given up his Joachism he might have effected some real reform at the Court of Rome. He goes out of his way to account for John’s clinging to the creed even after the shock dealt to it by Frederick’s premature death in 1250; “Some men so cling to their opinions that they are ashamed afterwards to retract, lest they should seem liars: and therefore they cannot change their minds” (303). He himself once volunteered to go to Greccio and attempt to convert his old master: but he is unwontedly reticent as to the issue of this journey. Later on, however, he gives us two anecdotes of the holy man*#8217;s life there: (310) a pair of wildfowl built their nest and hatched their brood under his study desk; and again, an angel came and served for him at Mass when the poor little scholar, who should have served, had overslept himself. “Much more good,” continues Salimbene, “have I seen and heard and known of Brother John of Parma, which would be worthy of record; yet I must omit the rest for brevity’s sake and because I am in haste to pass on to other things; and because the Scripture saith, ’Praise not any man before death.’ For he hath lived long he liveth yet in this year 1284 wherein I write.”8
Five years afterwards, in the year in which Salimbene himself probably died, John of Parma undertook a second journey to Constantinople for the conversion of the Greeks. He started with the blessing of his general, Acquasparta, and of Pope Nicholas IV, himself a Franciscan; but at Camerino in the Apennines his strength failed him. As he entered the city he murmured the words of the Psalmist, “This is my rest for ever and ever; here will I dwell, for I have chosen it.” A few days later, he breathed his last among the Brethren, and in the presence of many citizens whom the renown of the stranger’s sanctity had attracted to the convent. Dante’s Ubertino da Casale, who in former days had made a special pilgrimage to Greccio for the sake of the old man’s absolution and blessing, records the vivid and immediate renown of the miracles worked at this tomb. “Seldom do I remember to have read, for a long time past, so many miracles worked by any saint. . . . . The less he hath been formally approved by that carnal church which he most bitterly rebuked, the more richly he would seem to have been endowed in the heavenly Church with the manifold working of miracles.” To Angelo Clareno he was one of the four great wonder-workers of the latter 13th century — witnesses of God’s power in an age which had almost lost the power of miracles. A hundred and 111 fifty year later, St. Bernardino of Siena calls him Saint John, and alludes to a record which attributes more miracles to him than to any other disciple of St. Francis. His tomb was still hung round with a multitude of votive offerings at the beginning of the XVIIIth century, when they were destroyed by “restorers.” The original Gothic tomb, which is described as a work of great beauty, had perished at a still earlier restoration. His worship had long been officially recognised, if not by the Pope, at least by the city so that it remained untouched by that Papal decree of 1675, which forbade the cult of unauthorised saints unless they could show a prescription of at least 100 years. John was formally beatified by Pius VI in 1777, so that Salimbene’s friend has now his special Mass and Offices among the services of the Roman Church.9
Our chronicler claims also to have known intimately all the twelve “companions” or secretaries whom John wore out successively by his long journeys on foot from convent to convent; and he paints most of them with vivid touches (550 foll.). First comes Brother Mark of the swift untiring pen; “an honest and holy man who lived to a great age; he was of Modena, and lies buried at Urbino where he coruscates with miracles. He was a good writer and swift and easily understood: and for the labour which he bore as companion to Ministers-general and in writing their letters, he earned for himself the decree in a general chapter that each priest in the Order, should, after his decease, say a funeral mass for his soul. He was a special friend of mine, and he dearly loved Brother Bonaventura, the Minister-General, so that after his death, whensoever he recalled his great learning and all the graces that were his, he would burst into tears at the sweetness of that memory. Moreover, when Brother Bonaventura was to preach before the clergy, Brother Mark would go to him and say, ‘Thou art but an hireling, and when thou preachedst last, thou knewest not what to say; but I hope thou wilt not do so this time.’ Thus said Brother Mark that he might provoke him to speak the better; and yet he would write down all Brother Bonaventura’s sermons for his own use! But Brother Bonaventura rejoiced when Brother Mark reviled him, for five reasons; first, because he was a kindly and patient man; secondly, because therein he imitated St. Francis; thirdly, because he was assured that the Brother loved him dearly; fourthly, because he had an occasion of avoiding vainglory; and fifthly, because it gave him an occasion of greater prudence.” Next comes Brother Andrew of Bologna, Minister of the Holy Land and Penitentiary to the Pope. “The third was Brother Walter, 112 English by birth, and a truly angelic man.* He was a good singer, slender, and of seemly stature, a goodly man to see, of holy and honest life, well-mannered and learned. Moreover, Brother Walter was sent to stay at the Court of Rome, but he laboured all he could to be removed thence, rather choosing to be afflicted with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for a time, esteeming the reproaches of Christ greater riches than the treasure of the Egyptians. Yet I have heard of this Walter that afterwards against his will he was made a Bishop, I know not where. He was my friend. And note that all the comrades of Brother John of Parma were my intimate and familiar friends. The fourth was Brother Bonagiunta of Fabriano, a good Guardian and a learned man, a good singer, preacher and writer, bold, and of middling stature, and with a face like St. Paul. When I was a novice in the convent of Fano in the year 1238, he was a youth and lived there with me. He was first and last bishop of Recanati. The fifth was Brother John of Ravenna, big and corpulent and black, a good man, and of honest life. Never saw I a man who so loved to eat macaroni with cheese” — yet, as a native of Parma, Salimbene must have had great opportunities in this line. “The sixth was Anselmo Rabuino of the city of Asti in Lombardy, big and black, with the figure and bearing of a prelate, and of honest and holy life; he was a judge while in the world; he was Minister of the Province of Terra di Lavoro.” The Brethren looked upon him as a saint (315). “The seventh was Brother Bartolomeo Guiscolo of Parma, a great orator and a great Joachite, a courtly and liberal man, who in the world had been a Master in Grammar, of honest and holy life in the Order. He could write, illuminate, and preach. The eighth was Brother Guidolino Gennaro of Parma, a learned man and a good singer, who sang excellently both in harmony and plain-song. His singing was better than his voice, for he had a very slender voice. He was a good writer, and his hand-writing also was good and fair. And he corrected texts well in the convent at Bologna, for he knew the text of the Bible excellently, and was of honest and holy life, so that the Brethren loved him. The ninth was Brother Giacomino da Berceto, Guardian of the convent at Rimini, a man of honest and holy life, and a good preacher, having a mighty voice. The tenth 113 was Brother Jacopo degli Assandri of Mantua, a man of honest and holy life, and excellently versed in the Decretals, and in giving counsel. The eleventh was Brother Drudo, Minister of Burgundy, lector in theology, who would daily preach to the Brethren concerning Divine influences, as I heard with mine own ears, when I was in Burgundy with him. He was a noble and comely man, and of incredibly honest and holy life, for he was marvellously devoted to God beyond all thought of man. The twelfth was Brother Bonaventura da Iseo, who was ancient both in the Order and in age, wise and industrious, and most sagacious, and a man of honest and holy life, and beloved of Ezzelino da Romano; yet he played the lord (‘baronizabat’) above measure, seeing that his mother, as men said, was hostess of a tavern. He wrote a great volume of sermons for the Sundays and Feast-days of the year. His end was praiseworthy; may his soul rest in peace! And note that Brother John of Parma, when he was Minister-General, had not all the aforesaid comrades travelling with him at the same time, but successively; for he would go round and visit the Order, and his comrades could not endure the labour — therefore he needed to have a multitude of comrades. These twelve aforesaid had in them much good which I have omitted for brevity’s sake.”
But Salimbene was not familiar with saints alone; we get constant references to such personages as Buondio the Jew (394), or Asdente, the harmless cobbler-prophet of Parma, whom Dante thrust so rudely down to Hell.10 He dwells, too, with pardonable pride on his noble friends. (467) “In the year 1261 died the Lord Simon de Manfredi. He was my friend, and a good and valiant fighter for the Church party at the time of the Great War.” Again, (377) “The Lady Mabel, daughter of the Lord Markesopolo* Pallavicini, was married by her father before I entered the Order, and she came from Soragna to Parma, and lodged near the church of St. Paul. And her father gave her a dowry of £1,000 Imperial, and wedded her to the Lord Azzo, Marquis of Este,11 who was a good man and courteous, humble and gentle and peaceful, and a friend of mine. For once I read to him the Exposition of the Abbot Joachim on the Burdens of Esaias, and he was alone with me and another Friar Minor under a fig-tree. The Lady Mabel likewise was devoted to me, and to all men of Religion, and especially to the Friars Minor, to whom she confessed, and whose Offices she always said, and in whose church at Ferrara she was buried 114 by her husband’s side, and rests in peace. She did much good in her lifetime, and at her death scattered abroad and gave to the poor many alms of her possessions. Seven years I dwelt at Ferrara, where she likewise dwelt. She was a fair lady, wise, clement, benign, courteous, honest, and pious, humble, and ever devoted to God. She was not avaricious of her goods, but freely she gave to the poor. She had a furnace in an inner chamber of her palace, as I have seen with mine own eyes, and she herself made rose-water and gave it to the sick; wherefore the physicians stationary* and apothecaries loved her the less. But she cared for none of these things, if only she might succour the sick, and please God. Many years she lived with her husband, and was ever barren. But after the death of her husband she caused a house to be built for her beside the convent of the Friars Minor, and there she dwelt in her widowhood. May her soul, through God’s mercy, rest in peace, for she was a virtuous lady. After the death of the Marquis she came to Parma, and I was there, and heard from her that she was in marvellous comfort, for that she was hard by the convent of the Friars Minor, and the church of the glorious Virgin. Never saw I any lady who so brought to my mind the Countess Matilda,12 according to all that I have found written of her.” Her father, Markesopolo, had long since found himself unable to keep up his old baronial dignity in the new and prosperous Parma, “for he was noble and great-hearted, and therefore took it ill that any man of the people soever, whether of the city or of the country around, might send an ambassador with a red fillet on his brow, and draw him to the Palazzo Communale to go to law with him before the judges.” So he went off and fought in Greece, where he was treacherously slain in his own house: ‘for all things obey the power of money.’13 Moreover, the Lord Rubino, his brother, dwelt in Soragna, and had to wife the Lady Ermengarda da Palude. She was a fair lady, but wanton, of whom we might say with Solomon, ‘A golden ring in a swine’s snout, a woman fair and foolish.’ The Lord Rubino was old and full of days, and sent for me in the year of the great mortality (1259), and confessed to me and made his soul right with God, and died in good old age, passing from this world to the Father. But his wife took another husband, one Egidio Scorza; and afterwards she fell down from an upper chamber, and died and was buried.” For Salimbene is always laudably anxious to bring his heroes to a good end, and to record how his villains had their reward at last.
* A miracle-working Brother Salimbene was in fact buried at Rodi; but he can scarcely be our chronicler (Eubel. Provinciale, p. 53).
* Vix humilis parvus; vix longus cum ratione;
Vix reperitur homo ruffus sine proditione (233).
* Cf. Newman — “All thugh (my fever in Sicily) I had a confident feeling I should recover . . . . and gave as a reason . . . . ‘I thought God had some work for me.’ ” — Letters, vol. i., p. 414.
* Saint Bonaventura.
* i.e. the Spirituals, with whom he deeply sympathized.
* Where the food was always more delicate.
* The text has “Anglicus natione, et homo vere angelicus:” there can be no doubt that the writer intended a pun here: (cf. Sussex Arch. Coll., vol. vii, p. 219.) Salimbene seems always so interested in his English frinds that it is a thousand pities he died a few years too soon to have known the Adam Goddam who (in spite of his truly medieval nickname) was a pillar of the English province in 1320 (Wadding, 1320, § 1).
* Marchese Paolo.
* i.e., those who kept shops.
IN spite of the distant thunder of the Brother Elias storm, Salimbene’s first years in those Tuscan convents seem to have been among the most peaceful of his life. At Cremona, however, in the ninth year after his reception, he found himself a close spectator of one of the most savage and prolonged wars in civilized history. The conflicts of thirteenth century Italy between Pope and Emperor on the one hand, and jealous cities on the other, have seldom been surpassed in horror among Christian nations. The bitterest period of those conflicts began with the renewed excommunication and deposition of Frederick II by Innocent IV in 1245. Salimbene describes Frederick’s spirit at this time as that of “a bear robbed of her whelps.” The war speedily degenerated into a chaos of sickening atrocities and reprisals: I give a few of the entries as specimens.
In 1239 “The Emperor caused castles of wood to be made, to fight with the men of Brescia: and on those castles he placed the captives whom he had taken. But the men of Brescia smote the said castles with their mangonels, without any hurt to the captives who were therein; and they for their part hanged up by the arms, without the palisade of their town, such of the Emperor’s men as they had taken captive” (95). In 1246 “Tebaldo Francesco and many other barons of Apulia rebelled against the deposed Emperor Frederick; and after a long siege they were taken in the castle of Cappozio, and miserably tormented, both men, women, and little children.” In the year following, “Ezzelino laid waste the whole diocese of Parma, on this side of the Lencia toward the castle of Bersello: — and from Torricella downwards. For it was a fierce war, and tangled, and perilous“ (178). In a war of this description, the first advantage would seem to lie with the more barbarous and unscrupulous of the two parties: and there can be little doubt that, on the whole, this bad pre-eminence was with the Ghibellines. With the help of his unspeakable lieutenant Ezzelino, 116 Frederick had devastated the north of Italy, and was already thinking of crossing the Alps to attack the Pope in his refuge at Lyons, when the sudden revolt of Salimbene’s own native city struck the blow which was destined to ruin his hopes. It was the old story: the Imperialists of Parma had in the previous year expelled all the principal Guelfs from the city, and burnt their houses; so that these desperate men, having nothing further to lose, led a forlorn hope which turned the whole tide of the war. (188) “In the year of our Lord 1247 a few banished knights, dwelling at Piacenza, who were valiant, vigorous, and strong, and most skilled in war — these men were in bitterness of spirit, both because their houses in Parma had been torn to the ground, and because it is an evil life to wander as guest from house to house1 — for they were exiles and banished men, having great households and but little money, for they had left Parma suddenly lest the Emperor should catch them in his toils — these men, I say, came from Piacenza and entered Parma, and expelled the Emperor’s party on the 15th day of June, slaying the Podesta of Parma, who was my acquaintance and friend, and dearly beloved of the Brethren Minor.
Now there were many reasons why these banished men were easily able to take the city . . . The third reason is that on that day the Lord Bartolo Tavernario gave his daughter in marriage to a certain Lord of Brescia, who had come to Parma to fetch her; and those who met the exiles as they came to attack the city had eaten at that banquet, so that they were full of wine and over-much feasting; and they arose from table and fondly thought to overthrow all at the first onset. Seeing therefore that they were as men drunk with wine, their enemies slew and scattered them in flight. The fourth is that the city of Parma was wholly unfenced, and open in all directions. The fifth is that those who came to invade the city folded their hands on their breasts, thus making the sign of the Cross to all whom they met, saying, ‘For the love of God and the Blessed Virgin His Mother, who is our Lady in this city, may it please you that we return to our own city, whence we were expelled and banished without fault of our own; and we come back with peace to all, nor are we minded to do harm to any man.’ The men of Parma who had met them unarmed along the street, hearing this, were moved to pity by their humility, and said to them, ‘Enter the city in peace, in the name of the Lord, for our hand also shall be with you in all these things.’ The sixth is that they who dwelt in the city did not concern themselves with these matters, for they neither held with those who had come in, nor did they 117 fight for the Emperor; but bankers or money-changers sat at at their tables, and men of other arts worked still at their posts as though nought were.” Our author presently goes on to describe in the words which I have already quoted in full, that horrible devastation of the country which he expressly dates from “the time when Parma withdrew from Frederick’s allegiance, and clave to the Church.”
To Salimbene, this revolt was but a natural consequence of the Pope’s ban, which had reduced the Emperor to the state of “a bird whose wing feathers have been plucked away.” But the blow only roused Frederick to greater exertions. His son Enzio, who was the nearest imperialist commander, might have retrieved the disaster by a sudden counterstroke: but he lacked the necessary nerve. (193) “When King Enzio heard that the Guelf exiles had entered Parma by force, leaving the siege of Quinzano, he came by a forced night march, not singing but groaning inwardly, as is the wont of an army returning from a rout. I lived in those days in the convent of the Friars Minor at Cremona, wherefore I knew all these things well. For at early dawn the men of Cremona were assembled forthwith with the King to a council, which lasted even to high tierce (i.e. past 9 o’clock); after which they ate hurriedly and went forth to the very last man, with the Carroccio in their van. There remained not in Cremona one man who was able to march and fight in battle; and I am fully persuaded that if they had marched without delay to Parma and quit themselves like men, they would have recovered the city. For if one enemy knew how it fared in all things with his enemy, he might oft-times smite him; but by the will of God King Enzio halted with the army of Cremona by the Taro Morto, and came not to Parma, that the Lord might bring evil upon them. For he wished to wait there until his father should come from Turin. Meanwhile succour came daily from all parts to the men of Parma who had entered the city: and the citizens made themselves a ditch and a palisade, that their city might be shut in against the enemy. Then the Emperor, all inflamed with wrath and fury at that which had befallen him, came to Parma; and in the district called Grola, wherein is great plenty of vineyards and good wine (for the wine of that land is most excellent), he built a city, surrounded with great trenches, which also he called Victoria, as an omen of that which should come to pass. And the moneys which he minted there were called Victorini; and the great church was called after St. Victor. So there Frederick lodged with his army, and King Enzio with the army of Cremona; 118 and the Emperor summoned all his friends to come in haste to his succour. And the first who came was the Lord Ugo Boterio, a citizen of Parma, sister’s son to Pope Innocent IV; who, being Podesta of Pavia at that time, came with all the men of Pavia whom he deemed fit for war. Neither by prayers nor by promises could the Pope tear away this nephew of his from the love of Frederick; and yet the Pope loved his mother best of all his three sisters — for the other two were likewise married in Parma.
After him came Ezzelino da Romano, who in those days was Lord of the Mark of Treviso, and he brought with him a vast army. This Ezzelino was feared worse than the devil: he held it of no account to slay men, women, and children, and he wrought such cruelty as men have scarce heard. On one day he caused 11,000 men of Padua to be burnt in the field of Saint George in the city of Verona; and when fire had been set to the house in which they were being burnt, he jousted as if in sport around them with his knights. It would be too long to relate his cruelties, for they would fill a great book. I believe most certainly that as the Son of God wished to have one specially whom He might make like unto Himself, namely St. Francis, so the Devil chose Ezzelino. It was of the blessed Francis that it was written that to one servant He gave five talents; for never was there but one man in this world, namely the blessed Francis, on whom Christ impressed the five wounds in likeness of Himself.2 For, as was told me by Brother Leo, his comrade, who was present when he was washed for burial, he seemed in all things like a man crucified and taken down from the cross.
Furthermore, after Ezzelino many nations came to Frederick’s succour, as the men of Reggio and Modena, who were for the Emperor in their several cities, the men of Bergamo also, and other cities, as well as of Tuscany as of Lombardy, and other parts of the world which held rather with the Emperor than with the Church. And they came from Burgundy and Calabria and Apulia and Sicily, and from Terra di Lavoro; and Greeks, and Saracens from Nocera, and well-nigh from every nation under the sun. Wherefore that word of Esaias might have been said to him, ‘Thou hast multiplied the nation, and hast not increased the joy’: and this for many reasons. First, with the aid of his whole host he could but beset that one road from Parma to Borgo San Donnino; while the rest of the city felt nothing of the siege. Again, whereas the Emperor thought in his heart utterly to destroy the city and to transfer it to the city of Victoria which he had founded, and to sow salt in token of barrenness over the destroyed 119 Parma; then the women of Parma, learning this, (and especially the rich, the noble, and the powerful), betook themselves with one accord to pray for the aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that she might help to free their city; for her name and title were held in the greatest reverence by the Parmese in their cathedral church. And, that they might the better gain her ear, they made a model of the city in solid silver, which I have seen, and which was offered as a gift to the Blessed Virgin; and there were to be seen the greatest and chiefest buildings of the city, fashioned of solid silver, as the cathedral church, the Baptistery, the Bishop’s palace, the Palazzo Communale, and many other buildings which showed forth the image of the city. The Mother prayed her Son: the Son heard the Mother, to whom of right He could deny nothing, according to the word which is figuratively contained in Holy Scripture, ‘My mother, ask: for I must not turn away thy face.’ These are the words of Solomon to his mother. And when the Mother of Mercy had prayed her Son to free her city of Parma from that multitude of nations which was gathered together against it, and when the night was now close at hand, the Son said to His Mother, ‘Hast thou seen all this exceeding great multitude? Behold, I will deliver them into thy hand this day, that thou mayest know that I am the Lord.’ ” In repeating this dialogue between the Virgin Mary and her Son, Salimbene is of course only a child of his time. It was a commonplace of thirteenth century theology, that “it was not right for the Son to deny His Mother aught”: and a far more blasphemous dialogue to the same effect, which is repeatedly recorded by the Franciscan and Dominican writers, may be found in the first chapter of “Lives of the Brethren.” More popular ideas of the Virgin Mary’s power over her Son are exemplified by Cæsarius’s story of the simple-minded Cistercian lay-brother who was heard to pray, “In truth, Lord, if Thou free me not from this temptation, I will complain of Thee to thy Mother.” The convent was much edified by the lay-brother’s simplicity, and by our Lord’s humility in condescending to grant a prayer couched in such terms.3 We have here only the grosser side of the rapidly-growing materialism: the great encyclopedist Vincent of Beauvais, who compiled his work with the help of St. Louis’ library, writes of a Pope as saying that “Mary, the Mother of Jesus . . . is the only hope of reconciliation for [sinful] man, the main cause of eternal salvation” (Spec. Hist. vii. 95).
Meanwhile the Emperor pushed the siege with an energy proportionate to the bitterness of his disappointment. Salimbene 120 had returned by this time to his native city — probably among those Guelf exiles from Cremona of whom he speaks so feelingly below: and here he found plenty of exciting incidents: for (196) “men went out daily from either side to fight: crossbowmen, archers, and slingers, as I saw with mine own eyes: and ruffians also daily scoured the whole diocese of Parma, plundering and burning on all sides: and likewise did the men of Parma to those of Cremona and Reggio. The Mantuans also came in those days and burnt Casalmaggiore to the ground, as I saw with mine own eyes. And every morning the Emperor came with his men, and beheaded three or four, or as many more as seemed good to him, of the men of Parma and Modena and Reggio who were of the Church party, and whom he kept in bonds: and all this he did on the shingles by the riverside within sight of the men of Parma who were in the city, that he might vex their souls. The Emperor put many innocent men to an evil death, as we see in the case of the Lord Andrea di Trego, who was a noble knight of Cremona, and of Conrad di Berceto, who was a clerk, and valiant in arms, whom he tortured in divers manners with fire and water and manifold torments. The Emperor was wont to slay of these captives at his will; and especially when he made assault with outrageous words against the city, and when the battle went against him, then would he refresh his soul in the blood of these captives. At one time also certain knights of the Mark of Ancona deserted the Emperor, and fled to Parma; because at the beginning of the rebellion the Emperor caused many knights of the Mark to be put in ward as hostages in the city of Cremona. And a messenger came from the Emperor bidding five of these knights, even as they washed their hands before supper, to mount their horses forthwith and ride with him to the Emperor. And when they were come to a certain field called Mosa, which is without the city of Cremona, he led them to the gallows, and they were hanged. And these butchers said, ‘This is the Emperor’s command, for ye are traitors’; yet they had come to his succour. On the day following the Brethren Minor came and took them down and buried them; and scarce could they drive away the wolves from eating them while they yet hung on the gallows. All this I saw, for I lived at Cremona in those days, and in Parma likewise. It would be too long to recount all those of the Church party whom he slew and caused to be slain in those days. For he sent the Lord Gerardo di Canale of Parma into Apulia, and caused him to be drowned in the depths of the sea with a mill-stone at his neck; and yet he had been at first one 121 of his nearest friends, and had held many offices from him; and ever he remained with him in the army without Parma. And the Emperor had but this one cause of suspicion against him, that the tower of his mansion in Parma was not destroyed.4 Wherefore the Emperor would sometimes say to him, laughing in false and feigned jest, “The men of Parma love us much, my Lord Gerard, for that whereas they tore down in their city the other Ghibelline buildings, they have as yet destroyed neither your tower, nor my palace on the Arena.’ Wherein he spoke ironically, but the Lord Gerard understood him not. When therefore I left Parma to go into France, I passed through the village wherein the Lord Gerard then lived; and he saw me gladly, saying that he was of much profit to the citizens of Parma. And I said to him, ‘Since the Emperor is besieging Parma, be ye wholly with him or wholly with the citizens, and halt not between two opinions, for it is not to your profit.’ Yet he hearkened not unto me; wherefore ye may say of him with the Wise Man ‘The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that is wise hearkenth unto counsels.’ And note that the Lord Bernard, son of Rolando Rossi of Parma, who was of kindred with the Lord Pope Innocent IV (for he had the Pope’s sister to wife), better understood the Emperor’s ironical speech than did the Lord Gerard di Canale. For when, as he rode one day with the Emperor, his horse stumbled, then the Emperor said to him, ‘My Lord Bernard, ye have an evil horse, but I hope and promise you that within a few days I will give you a better, which shall not stumble.’ And the Lord Bernard understood that he spake of hanging him on the gallows: wherefore he was inflamed with indignation against the Emperor, and fled from before his face.5 Yet the Lord Bernard was the Emperor’s gossip and most intimate friend, and well-beloved of him, and when he would enter into his chamber, no man ever denied him the door. But the Emperor could keep no man’s friendship; nay, rather, he boasted that he had never nourished a pig, but that at last he had its grease, which was as much as to say that he had never raised any to riches and honour but that in the end he had drained his purse or his treasure. Which was a most churlish saying, yet we see an example thereof in Pier delle Vigne, who was the greatest counsellor and writer of State papers in the Emperor’s court, and was called by the Emperor his chancellor. And yet the Emperor had raised him from the dust; and afterwards he returned him to the same dust, for he found an occasion of a word and a calumny against him, which was as follows. The Emperor had sent the judge Taddeo and 122 Pier delle Vigne, whom he loved above all, and who stood above all others in his court, and certain others he had sent with them to Lyons to Pope Innocent IV, to hinder the said Pope from hastening to depose him; for he had heard that to this end the Council was being gathered together. And he had straitly charged them that none should speak with the Pope without his fellow, or without the presence of others. But after they were returned, his comrades accused Pier delle Vigne that he had often had familiar colloquy with the Pope without them. The Emperor therefore sent and caused him to be taken and slain by an evil death, saying in the words of Job ‘They that were sometime my counsellors have abhorred me: and he whom I loved most is turned against me.’ For in those days the Emperor was easily troubled in his mind, because he had been deposed from the Empire, and Parma had fostered the spirit of rebellion against him.
So Frederick’s affliction and cursedness wherewith he was inflamed against Parma, endured from the end of the month of June 1247 to Tuesday the 18th of February 1248, on which day his city of Victoria was taken. For the men of Parma went forth from their city, knights and commons side by side, fully harnessed for war; and their very women and girls went out with them; youths and maidens, old men and young together. They drove the Emperor by force from Victoria with all his horse and foot; and many were slain there, and many taken and led to Parma. And they freed their own captives, whom the Emperor kept in bonds in Victoria. And the Carroccio of Cremona, which was in Victoria, they brought to Parma, and placed it in triumph in the Baptistery. But those who loved not the men of Cremona, (as the Milanese and Mantuans, and many others whom the men of Cremona had offended,) when they came to see the Baptistery, and saw the Carroccio of their enemies, carried off the ornaments of ‘Berta’ (for so was that Carroccio called) to keep them as relics. So the wheels alone and the framework of the carriage remained on the pavement of the Baptistery: and the mast or pole for the standard stood upright against the wall. Moreover the men of Parma spoiled the Emperor of his treasure — for he had a mighty treasure of gold and silver and precious stones, vessels and vestments. And they took all his ornaments and his imperial crown, which was of great weight and value, for it was all of gold, inlaid with precious stones, with many images of goldsmith’s work standing out, and much graven work. It was as great as a cauldron, for it was rather for dignity and for great price than as an ornament 123 for his head; for it would have hidden all his head, face and all, had it not been raised to stand higher by means of a cunningly disposed piece of cloth. This crown I have held in my hands, for it was kept in the sacristy of the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin in the city of Parma. It was found by a little man of mean stature, who was called ironically Cortopasso (Short-step), and who bore it openly on his fist as men bear a falcon, showing it to all who could see it, in honour of the victory they had gained, and to the eternal disgrace of Frederick. For whatsoever each could seize became his own, nor did any dare to tear aught away from another: nor was a single contentious or injurious word heard there, which was a great marvel. So the aforesaid crown was bought by the men of Parma from this their fellow-citizen, and they gave him for it £200 Imperial, and a house near the Church of Santa Cristina, where of old days had been a pool to wash horses. And they made a statute that whosoever had aught of the treasure of Victoria should have the half for himself and should give half to the community: wherefore poor men were marvellously enriched with the spoil of so rich a prince.
Now the Emperor’s special effects which appertained to war, as his pavilions and things of that kind, were taken by the Legate, Gregorio da Montelungo; but the images and the relics which he possessed were placed in the sacristy of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin, to be kept there. And note that of the treasures which were found in Victoria little remained in Parma; for merchants came from divers parts to buy them, and had them good cheap, and carried them away — namely, gold and silver vessels, gems, unions, pearls and precious stones, garments of purple and silk, and of all things known that are for the use and ornament of men. Note also that many treasures in gold and silver and precious stones remained hidden in jars, chest, and sepulchres, in the spot where the city of Victoria was, and are there even unto these days, although their hiding-places are unknown. Note also that, after the destruction of Victoria, each man recognised so clearly the place in which aforetime he had had his vineyard, that no word of contention or quarrel arose among them. Moreover, at that time when Frederick was put to flight by the men of Parma, the Scripture was fulfilled which saith ‘As a tempest that passeth, so the wicked shall be no more.’ ” Here Salimbene enters upon a lengthy exposition of the eleventh chapter of Daniel, the detailed fulfilment of which he sees in Frederick’s career, and especially in the fact that his own illegitimate son Manfred poisoned him by means of a clyster, and was himself slain in battle by Charles of Anjou.
THOUGH Frederick never recovered from the blow that fell upon him at Victoria, he still hovered about Parma, ravaging the country and waiting for some unguarded moment. The Pope vainly attempted to stir up St. Louis against him. Meanwhile the war raged with varying success. Bernardo Rossi was slain in battle, to the disappointment of Frederick, who had hoped to take him alive and put out his eyes. Next year, however, the tide turned again and the Emperor’s natural son Enzio was taken by the Bolognese. (329) “In the year 1249 the Podesta of Genoa came to our convent on the day of Pentecost to hear Mass. And I was there; and the sacristan was Brother Pentecost, a holy, honest, and good man, who would have rung the bell for the Podesta’s coming: but he said, ‘Hear first my tidings, for the men of Bologna have taken King Enzio, with a great multitude of the men of Cremona and Modena, and German solders.’ Now this King Enzio was a valiant man, and bold and stout-hearted; and doughty in arms, and a man of solace when he would, and a maker of songs: and in war he was wont to expose himself most boldly to perils. He was a comely man, of middle height; many years the men of Bologna kept him in prison, even to the end of his life. And when one day the gaolers would not give him to eat, Brother Albertino of Verona, who was a mighty Preacher in our Order, went and besought them to give him to eat for God’s love and his. And when they gave no ear to his petition, he said to them, ‘I will play at dice with you, and if I win, I may then bring him meat.’ So they played, and he won, and gave the king meat, and remained in familiar converse with him: and all who heard this commended the friar’s charity, courtesy, and liberality.1 Moreover, the Lord Guido da Sesso, who was the chief of the Emperor’s party in the city of Reggio, perished in the flight [of Enzio’s army], for he was smothered with his war-horse in the cesspool of the leper-house of Modena. He was a most bitter enemy of the Church party, so that once 125 when many had been taken by the King and doomed to the gallows, and would fain have confessed their sins, he would grant them no respite, saying, ‘Ye have no need to confess; for, being of the Church party, ye are saints, and will go forthwith to Paradise:’ so they were hanged unshriven. Moreover, in those days he would enter with other malefactors into the convent of the Friars Minor; and calling together the Brethren in the Chapter-house he would demand of each in turn whence he came; and he let write their names by his notary, saying to each, ‘Go thou thy ways, and thou likewise go thy ways, and never dare to appear again in this convent or this city.’ And so they expelled all but a few who kept the convent, and even these, as they went begging through the city for their daily needs, were reviled and slandered by him and his men, as though they carried false letters, and were traitors to the Emperor. Neither the Friars Minor nor the Preachers dared to enter the cites of Modena or Reggio or Cremona on their journeys, and if ever any had chanced to enter unwittingly, they were led to the Palazzo Communale and kept in ward; and having been fed with the bread of affliction and the water of anguish for certain days, they were opprobriously driven out, cast forth and tormented, or even slain. For many were tortured in Cremona and in Borgo San Donnino. In Modena they took the Friars Preachers who had iron moulds for making holy wafers, and led them with many indignities to the Palazzo Communale, saying that they bore stamps to coin false and counterfeit money. Nor did they spare even the Brethren of their own party whose kin were said to be wholly on the Emperor’s side, and who themselves also persevered therein; for Brother Jacopo of Pavia was expelled and thrust forth with ignominy, and Brother John of Bibbiano and Brother Jacopo of Bersello among others; and, in a word, all in the convent of Cremona who were of the Church party, were dismissed: and I was present in that year. Moreover, they kept Brother Ugolino da Cavazza long waiting in ward at the gate of the city of Reggio, and would not suffer him to enter in, though he had several blood-brethren of the Emperor’s party in the city. To speak shortly, they were men of Satan, the chief of whom in malice was one Giuliano da Sesso, a man grown old in evil days, who caused some of the Fogliani family to be hanged, and many others to be slain because they were of the Church party; and he gloried in these things, saying to his fellows, ‘See how we treat these bandits.’ This Giuliano was in truth a limb of the fiend; wherefore God struck him with palsy, so that he was wholly withered up on one side, and his eye started from his 126 head, yet without leaving its socket, but jutting forth outwardly like an arrow, which was loathsome to me. Moreover, he became so stinking that none dared come near him for his superfluity of nastiness, except a certain German damsel whom he kept as a leman, and whose beauty was so great that he who beheld her without pleasure was held most austere. This Giuiliano said in full assembly that it were better to eat quicklime than to have peace with the Church party, though he himself fed on good capons, while the poor were dying of hunger. Yet the prosperity of the wicked endureth not long in this world: for presently the Church party began to prosper; and then this wretch was driven forth and carried secretly from the city, and died a mass of corruption, excommunicate and accursed; unhouseled, disappointed, unanel’d. He was buried in a ditch in the town of Campagnola.”
In 1250 Frederick gained his last victory against the rebellious city, on that very site of Victoria where his own army had been defeated. He drove them back in such headlong rout that his men would have entered the city pell-mell with the fugitives, had not the blessed Virgin intervened by breaking the bridge and drowning Guelfs and Ghibellines together in the moat. As it was, the Ghibellines took the Parmese Carroccio with 3,000 prisoners. (335) “They bound their captives on the gravel of the River Taro, as the Lord Ghiaratto told me, who was bound there himself; and they led them to Cremona and cast them chained into dungeons. There for vengeance sake, and to extort ransom, they practised many outrages on them, hanging them up in the dungeons by their hands and their feet, and drawing out their teeth in terrible and horrible wise, and laying toads in their mouths. For in those days were inventors of new torments, and the men of Cremona were most cruel to the captives of Parma. But the Parmese of the Emperor’s party were still worse, for they slew many; but in process of time the Church party in Parma avenged themselves wondrously.”
An interesting side-light is thrown on this account of Salimbene’s by the very impartial contemporary Chronicle of Parma published by Muratori (Scriptores vol. ix. P. 771 foll.) It tells us of savage reprisals on the part of the citizens: and how “many [imperialists] were caught coming in as spies hidden in hay or straw waggons, or in casks and chests: and such were tortured, confessed, and were burned on the river-beach of the city. And many women were thus caught, put to torment, and burned.” The Emperor, adds the Chronicler, beheaded only some ten or twelve of his prisoners, and spared the rest, partly at the prayer 127 of the men of Pavia, partly because he recognised the uselessness of such executions. But he kept in bonds about a thousand of his Guelf prisoners: and “their kinsfolk rejoiced rather in their death than in their life . . . for oftentimes these prisoners died in the aforesaid prisons, slain with stench and terror.” In the year 1253 peace was made and all prisoners were released: but of the thousand only 318 returned to their homes, “since all the rest had died in the aforesaid prisons by reason of their grievous and insupportable torments. For daily they were set to the rack, and hanged upon the engines as upon a cross; and oft-times men denied them food; and they suffered from the stench of the corpses, for the dead were never drawn forth from prison until the living had first paid the tax imposed upon them, and [meanwhile] men gave them no bread: so that the living oft-tines hid their bread and other victuals among the bodies of the dead, lest their cruel jailors should find them when they locked up the prison. And the aforesaid prisons wherein the men of the Church party lay bound were called ‘The Hell’; and such indeed they were. The dead had no sepulture, but were cast into the Po.”3 The Chronicler expressly mentions that the death of Bernardo Rossi in the battle of 1248 was avenged by the cold-blooded execution of four of the chief Ghibelline captives in Parma; and that the Emperor retaliated by transporting fourteen of his Guelf prisoners to his Apulian dungeons.
All this time the Parmese Ghibellines had taken up their headquarters at Borgo San Donnino, a little town some fourteen miles N. W. of Parma on the Emilian Way. They long counted on some such sudden turn of fortune’s wheel as that by which they themselves had lost the city: for they had still partisans among the citizens. (371) “But in process of time the Parmese exiles at Borgo San Donnino besought their fellow-citizens of the Church party that they would vouchsafe to take them into the city again, for God’s sake and the blessed and glorious Virgin’s: for they would have peace, since the Emperor was now dead. So those made peace with them and brought them into their city, as I saw with mine own eyes. But they, seeing their houses destroyed (for this the Church party had done when they expelled them) began to contend again and to attack the Church party; and seeing that Uberto Pallavicino was lord of Cremona and of many other cities, they thought in their hearts to make him lord of Parma also. At this the citizens quaked as a rush quakes in the stream, and set themselves to hide many of their dearest possessions. I also hid my books (for I lived at Parma then), and many citizens of the Church party purposed to depart from 128 the city of their own free will, lest Pallavicino should come and catch them and spoil their goods. Meanwhile, Parma was full of rumours of his coming, and yet he came not so soon, since he had other threads to weave. For he purposed first to take Colurnio and Borgo San Donnino (as indeed he did), that he might enter Parma more triumphantly afterwards: seeing that the Guelfs, driven out from Parma, would have no place of refuge, and would thus receive checkmate after cherishing the serpent in their bosom. But suddenly in the meanwhile a man rose up against him, who dwelt hard by the bridge-head of Parma. This was a tailor, Giovanni Barisello by name, the son of a farmer (such as the Parmese call mezzadro) on the estate of the Tebaldi. For he took in his hands a cross and a book of the Gospels, and went through Parma from house to house of the Ghibelline party, and made each swear obedience to the Pope’s bidding and to the Church party; for he had with him a full five hundred armed men who followed him as their chief. Wherefore many swore obedience to the Church and the Pope, partly of their free will, partly for fear of the armed men whom they saw; and such as would not swear went forth hastily from Parma to dwell at Borgo San Donnino; for whensoever there was a division between the citizens of Parma, the exiles had that city of refuge ever at hand; whose citizens rejoiced in the discords of Parma, and would have rejoiced yet more to see her utterly destroyed. For they of Borgo never loved Parma; nay rather, when Parma was at war, all the ruffians of Lombardy would gather together there, and Borgo would receive them gladly for the destruction and confusion of Parma. Yet the Parmese had done well to Borgo, as I saw with mine own eyes, for I lived there a whole year in 1259, when the great plague was throughout Italy. The first benefit was, that they gave them a Podesta yearly from Parma and paid the half of his salary. The second, that the citizens might have at Borgo, without contradiction of the Parmese, the market of all the land on their side of the river Taro, which is five miles distant from Parma: and thus they had ten miles of the Bishopric of Parma for their market, and the Parmese five miles only. The third was, that the Parmese defended them if they were at war with the Cremonese or others. The fourth, that, though there were but two noble houses in Borgo, the Pinkilini and the Verzoli, and the rest were citizens and rich farmers, yet the Parmese would marry their noble ladies among them, which was no small matter. I think I have seen there a score of ladies from Parma, clothed in fur of vair and in scarlet cloth. In spite of all these benefit’s the men of Borgo were ungrateful, and well they deserved 129 their destruction by the men of Parma when a fit time was come. So this Giovanni Barisello, as he went through Parma and made all the suspects swear, came to the house of the lord Rolando di Guido Bovi, who dwelt at the bridge-head by the church of San Gervasio; and, calling him forth from his house, he bade him swear fealty to the Church party without further delay, or else depart from Parma as he loved his life. This lord was of the Ghibelline party, and had been Podesta of many cities under the Emperor: yet when he saw so great a multitude gathered together and heard their demands and their threats, he did as the Wise Man saith ‘The prudent man saw the evil and hid himself: the simple passed on, and suffered loss.’ For he took the oath, saying ‘I swear to stand by and obey the precepts of the Pontiff of Rome, and to cleave to the Church party all the days of my life, to the shame of that other most miserable and utterly filthy (merdiferosae) party of all that are beneath the sky.’ This he said of his own, the Emperor’s party, for that they had suffered themselves to be basely trodden under foot by such men. And the Parmese Guelfs loved him from thenceforth, for it was reckoned to his honour. Now this Giovanni Barisello who rose up in Parma was a man poor and wise, who delivered the city by his wisdom: wherefore the citizens were not ungrateful but repaid him with many kindnesses. First, they turned his poverty to riches; secondly, they gave him a wife of the noble family of Cornazano; thirdly, they ordained that he should ever be of the Council without further election, for he had mother-wit and was a gracious speaker; fourthly, they permitted him to found and lead a gild called after his own name, on condition that it should ever be to the honour and profit of the Commune. This gild lasted many years; but a certain Podesta of Parma, the Lord Manfredino di Rosa of Modena, would fain have destroyed it, for he would not that the men of Parma should be called after such a man’s name: and he wished to rule the city with his own Council. Wherefore he bade Giovanni Barisello see to his own house an his own work, and leave this gild and this great show which he seemed to make: so Giovanni obeyed humbly, and that same day he went back to his board and took his needle and thread, and began to sew garments in the sight of his fellow-citizens. (The father of the aforesaid Podesta was of my acquaintance; his mother and his wife were my spiritual daughters). Yet this Giovanni was ever beloved of the citizens, and had ever a place and a good repute in Parma. But in process of time King Charles of Anjou, hearing that the Parmese were a warlike folk, and friendly to him, and ever ready to succour 130 the Church, sent word to them to found a gild in honour of God and the Holy Roman Church, which should be called the Gild of the Cross: of which gild he himself would be one; and he would that all other gilds of Parma be incorporated in this, and that they should ever be ready to succour the Roman Church when she should need it. So the citizens formed this gild and called it the Gild of the Crusaders, and they inscribed King Charles in letters of gold at the beginning of the register, that this prince and duke and count and king and triumphant hero might be the captain and leader of this gild. And whosoever in Parma is not thereof, if he offend any of the gild, they defend each other like bees, and run forthwith and tear down his house to its very foundations, razing it so utterly to the ground that not one stone is left upon another: which strikes fear into the rest, for they must either live in peace or enter this gild. And so the gild hath increased marvellously, and the men of Parma are no longer named after Giovanni Barisello, but after King Charles and the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom is honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen.”
Prof. Holder-Egger (p. 375, notes 4, 5,) points out inaccuracies of detail in this account: and Salimbene’s narrative needs one important rectification which the author did not live to make: for in 1298 poor Barisello was taken prisoner and tortured to death. But the description of the gild’s activity is fully borne out by the Chronicon Parmense, from which one extract may suffice. “In the year 1293 the Lord Podesta, with an armed force of 1,000 or more, made an assault after the customary fashion upon the houses of the Lord Giovanni de’ Nizi (who was a Frate Godente), and of Poltrenerio de’ Ricicoldi, by reason of certain injuries which they had done to some who were enrolled in the Gild Book.” So valuable a privilege naturally led to abuses; and we accordingly find that in 1286 the Gild Register had to be burnt “because many were found to be illegally enrolled therein. . . . Wherefore it was ordained that another new register should be compiled from that copy which was in the Sacristy of the Cathedral Church, and that it hold be so rubricated with red ink as that no fresh names could be added thereto.” But the political morality of a medieval Italian city rendered all such precautions useless. Only seven years later the Captain of the City and his notary, in collusion with another scrivener, falsified the register afresh, and fled the city on the discovery of their forgery.3
The Gild, however, had thoroughly done its work of ensuring Guelf supremacy in Parma. The first inquisition held by Bariselli with his 500 satellites had inaugurated a three days’ 131 reign of terror in the city, marked by robberies and ravages which the Podestas were powerless to prevent or to punish. Many Ghibelline houses were razed, or burned with such blind fury that even a raven’s nest was consumed in the flames, in spite of the medieval superstition which reprobated so ominous an outrage. The palaces of the obnoxious Pallavicino were of course destroyed, and the site turned into a meat market, as in the case of the Uberti at Florence: Salimbene mentions a third case at Reggio under the year 1273. This destruction at Parma was probably in 1266. In 1268 the citizens already felt strong enough, with their allies, to attempt the complete reduction of Borgo San Donnino: “but after a long siege they retired, destroying the trees and corn and houses outside the walls, together with the vineyards. And that same year the men of Parma made peace” (475).
As the Chronicon Parmense tells us, this peace was received in the city with such wild rejoicing that many were crushed to death that evening in the crowd. The same year saw the defeat and death of Conradin, the last hope of the Ghibellines in Italy; and it was evident that Borgo could no longer sustain the unequal struggle. The Parmese were planning the details of a great fortress to act as a perpetual check upon the rebel stronghold, when the Podesta and councillors came with the keys of their town to surrender at discretion. The Parmese might now spare themselves the expense of the new fortress: “they razed the walls of Borgo San Donnino to the ground, and filled up the moats, and commanded the citizens to quit the town and to rebuild their houses in a long street on either side of the high road towards Parma; and thus they did, and thus it remains unto this day” (478). Eleven years afterwards, another great step was taken in the cause of peace. Parma had long since allied herself with her old enemy Cremona; and now at last (505) “the Parmese restored to Cremona her Carroccio, which they had taken when they drove the Emperor from Victoria; and so also did the Cremonese with the Carroccio of Parma which they had captured, restoring it now to the men of Parma; and these restitutions were made with great honour and joy and gladness on either side.”
So Parma now no longer fights for life and death, but is a definitely Guelf city at comparative peace. The stormcloud drifts away for a while, and we get only fitful glimpses of battle that flash and die out in the distance like summer lightning all round Salimbene’s horizon; but such flashes are still frequent and lurid enough. “In 1248 the town of Castellarano was taken 132 by the Commune of Reggio and many were taken and slain; and all men of Trignano and of the Bishopric of Reggio who were found in the said town were put to an evil death.” In 1265 the Count of Flanders “destroyed the town of Capicolo, and all were slain therein, men and women and children, for that they had hanged one of the aforesaid count’s knights.” Salimbene records many other similar incidents under the years 1266-1280: after which these monotonous notices of petty quarrels give way to fresh pictures of civil war on a larger scale. For the discords of Florence from which Dante suffered so cruelly were merely typical of the state of things throughout Italy. The Guelfs had hardly assured their supremacy over the Ghibellines, when they themselves split into new parties as savage and irreconcilable as the old. Salimbene complains (379) that “the Imperial party has been utterly destroyed in Imola, and the Church party from its envy and ambition is now divided into two factions. This same curse has now come to the men of Modena, and is to be found in Reggio also. God grant that it be not found in Parma, where the same matter is likewise to be feared.” Again (370) “This city of Bologna was the last to drink of the cup of God’s wrath, and she drank it even to the dregs, lest perchance she should be moved to boast of her righteousness and insult other cities which had already drunk of the cup of the wrath of God, and of His fury and indignation. For in that city were assassins, nor could she get the better of them.” . . . . . here a page is cut out of the manuscript, which (as we learn from the ancient table of contents), treated “of the causes of the destruction of Bologna, and against the taking of usury and bribes, and concerning other sins.”4 Italy, in short, remained for generation after generation in a state of anarchy and misery which among our own annals can be paralleled only in Stephen’s reign; when men said that God and His saints slept. Yet the sad facts must be faced: for it was from this violent ferment that noble minds like St. Francis and Dante took much of that special flavour which appeals so strongly to the modern literary mind. Here, as on many other points, Salimbene’s evidence is all the more valuable that he himself was neither saint nor poet, but a clever, observant sympathetic man with nothing heroic in his composition. All through his chronicle runs the feeling that, in this “hostelry of pain,” the only fairly happy folk were fools at one end of the scale and friars at the other: that a man’s only wise bargain was to destroy his house on earth that he might build himself a mansion in heaven.
Nor was his individual experience specially unfortunate for 133 that time: his long tale of slaughter and ravage includes scarcely the most distant allusion to those wars in Tuscany which to Dante and his commentator Benvenuto seemed worst of all.5 To Benvenuto, indeed, at the end of the 14th century, things seemed if possible more intolerable than to Salimbene in the middle of the 13th: he complains of even Sordello’s bitter Philippic as utterly inadequate. “In they time, O Dante, certain special evils did indeed oppress Italy, but those were small and few [in comparison with to-day]. . . . I may say now of all Italy what thy Virgil said of one city: —
‘Look where you will, heart-rending agony
And panic reign, and many a shape of death.’
Assuredly Italy suffered not so much from Hannibal or Pyrrhus or even from the Goths and Lombards. . . .Thy lines, Dante, were cast in happy days which may well be envied by all of us who live in the wretched Italy of to-day.”6 Yet, a century later, Savonarola might have looked back with regret even to the days of despairing Benvenuto.7 This decline, whether real or apparent, was certainly not so rapid as each of those writers imagined; but it is plain that the good man was always uneasy in his own age, and sighed fondly for a comparatively unknown past, or for a future in which some sudden stroke of God’s hand might create a new heaven and a new earth. The saint’s constant cry was “Would God it were even!” or else “Would God it were morning!” The conception of a world around us slowly yet surely working out its own salvation by God’s grace was almost impossible to him. Nowadays, thanks to the work of saints in all ages, and to this era of patient research and free discussion, men are able to face the facts of human life with a serener eye. We see how much richer the world has grown, from age to age, by the lives of such men as St. Francis; even though learned and pious Italians of the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th, centuries constantly yearned backwards to “the good old days” before St. Francis was born. It is our privilege, in the broader light of history, to see how the world is more truly Christian, on the whole, than in our Lord’s days: more truly Franciscan than in the age of St. Francis: and how the loss of the past centuries is not worthy to be compared with our present gain and our future hopes.
SALIMBENE, as we have seen, had left Cremona — expelled, perhaps, by the Ghibelline authorities — and had come to Parma at the beginning of the siege. However, he did not see that siege to an end, but left the city after a few months with news for the Pope; one of the thousand friars who swarmed on all the roads of Italy and did such yeoman service to the Guelf cause as despatch-bearers and spies. (53) “In that same year 1247, while my city was beleaguered by the deposed Emperor Frederick, I went to Lyons, and arrived there on the Feast of all Saints. And forthwith the Pope sent for me and spake familiarly with me in his chamber. For since my departure from Parma, even until that day, he had seen no messenger nor received no letters. And he was very gracious unto me; that is, he heard the voice of my petition, being indeed a most courteous man, and a liberal.” Elsewhere he specifies the favours here received from the Pope: permission for his mother to enter a convent of Clarisses (55), and for himself the covted ranks of a Preacher in his Order (178). This Pope had himself been a canon of Parma and on fairly intimate terms with Salimbene’s father. Now, as the bearer of news from the front, our hero was fully conscious of his own importance; and he dwelt fondly on the scene his whole life long. As he tells us later, he allowed himself in this interview to hint very plain doubts as to the good faith of the great Cardinal Ottaviano: (Dante Inf. x. 120,) and the scene as he describes it supplies a vivid commentary on the “messagier che porta ulivo” in Dante’s meeting with Casella and his companions. (384) “The bystanders were there in such multitudes that they lay hard one on the other’s shoulders in their eagerness to hear tidings of Parma1; when therefore they who stood by heard me end my speech thus, they marvelled, and in my own hearing they said to each other, ‘All the days of our life we have seen no friar so void of fear, and speaking so plainly.’ This they said partly because they saw me sitting 135 between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Guardian, (for the Guardian had invited me to sit down, and I thought not fit to spurn and contemn such an honour;) and also because they saw and heard me speak so of so great a man, and in the presence of such an assembly. For in those days I was a deacon, and young man of 25 years old.”
But Lyons and the Pope w3re only the beginning of our friar’s adventures on this journey. (206) “After the Feast of All Saints I set out for France,2 And when I had come to the first convent beyond Lyons, on that same day arrived Brother John di Piano Carpine, returning from the Tartars, whither the Pope had sent him. This Brother John was friendly and spiritual and learned, and a great speaker, and skilled in many things. He showed us a wooden goblet which he bore as a gift to the Pope, in the bottom whereof was the likeness of a most fair queen, as I saw with mine own eyes; not wrought there by art or by a painter’s cunning, but impressed thereon by the influence of the stars: and if it had been cut into a hundred parts, it would always have borne the impress of that image. Moreover, lest this seem incredible, I can prove it by another example. For the Emperor Frederick gave the Brethren a certain Church in Apulia, which was ancient and ruined and forsaken of all men. And, on the spot where of old the altar had stood, grew now a vast walnut-tree, which when cut open showed in every part the image of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross; and if it had been cut a hundred times, so often would it have shown the image of the Crucifix. This was miraculously shown by God, since that tree had grown up on the very spot whereon the Passion of the spotless Lamb is represented in the Host of Salvation and the Adorable Sacrifice; yet some assert that such impressions can be made by the influence of the stars.”3 Brother John told the Brethren those stories which may still be read in his own book (Ed. C. R. Beazley, Hakluyt Soc. 1903): remarkably true and sober accounts on the whole, of China and the Far East. “And he caused that book to be read, as I have often heard and seen, when he was wearied with relating the deeds of the Tartars. And when they who read wondered or understood not, he himself would expound and dissert on single points. When I first saw Brother John he was returning from the Tartars, and on the morrow he went his way to see Pope Innocent; and I on mine to France. And I dwelt in Brie of Champagne; first for fifteen days at Troyes, where were many Lombard and Tuscan merchants, for there is a fair which lasts two months. Then I went to Provins, from the 13th day of December until the 2nd 136 of February, on which day I went to Paris, and dwelt there a week, and saw many pleasant sights. Then I returned and dwelt in the convent of Sens, for the French Brethren gladly kept me with them everywhere, because I was a peaceful and ready youth, and because I praised their doings. And as I lay sick in the infirmary by reason of the cold, there came hastily certain French Brethren of the convent to me, with a letter, saying, ‘We have excellent news of Parma; for the citizens have driven out Frederick, the late Emperor, from the city of Victoria which he had built, and have taken the Emperor’s whole treasure, and also the chariot of the Cremonese; and here is a copy of the letter from the men of Parma to the Pope.’ And they asked me to what purpose that chariot could be used. And I answered them that the Lombards call this kind of chariot a ‘Carroccio,’ and if the Carroccio of any city be taken in war, the citizens hold themselves sore ashamed; even as, if the Oriflamme were taken in war, the French and their King would hold it a great disgrace. Hearing this, they marvelled, saying, ‘Ha! God! We have heard a marvellous thing.’ After that I recovered. And behold! Brother John di Piano Carpine was on his way home from the king, to whom the Pope had sent him; and he himself interpreted whatsoever seemed obscure and difficult to understand or believe. And I ate with Brother John, not only in the Convent of the Brethren Minor, but outside in abbeys and places of dignity, and that not once or twice only, for he was invited gladly to dine and to sup, partly as the Pope’s Legate, partly as ambassador to the King of France, partly because he had come from the Tartars, and partly also for that he was of the Order of Friars Minor, and all believed him a man of most holy life. For when I was at Cluny, the monks said to me, ‘Would that the Pope would ever send such Legates as Brother John! for other Legates, so far as in them lies, spoil the Church, and carry off all that they can lay their hands upon. But Brother John, when he passed by our Abbey, would accept nothing but cloth for a frock for his comrade.’4 And know thou who readest my book, that the Abbey of Cluny is the most noble monastery of Black Monks of St. Benedict in Burgundy; and in that cloister are several priors; and in the aforesaid Abbey the multitude of buildings is so great that the Pope with his Cardinals and all his Court might lodge there, and likewise at the same time the Emperor with all his; and this without hurt to the monks: nor on that account would any monk need to leave his cell or suffer any discomfort. Note also that the Order 137 of St. Benedict, so far as the Black Monks are concerned, is far better kept in lands beyond the mountains than among us in Italy,5 Then from Sens I went to Auxerre, and dwelt there, for the Minister of France had assigned me specially to that convent.” Auxerre interested him with its many tombs of Saints and martyrs, and as the dwelling-place of Master William, a great contemporary theologian and disputant, but one who “when he undertook to preach, knew not what to say: note the example of that cobbler in Brother Luke’s sermon, who removed a mountain in the land of the Saracens and freed the Christians.” But the city had another still more vivid interest for him: “I remember how, when I dwelt at Cremona, Brother Gabriel, who was a most learned and holy man, told me that Auxerre had more plenty of vineyards and wine than Cremona and Parma and Reggio and Modena together; whereat I marvelled and thought it incredible. But when I dwelt myself at Auxerre, I saw how he had said the truth; for not only are the hillsides covered with vineyards, but the level plain also, as I have seen with mine own eyes. For the men of that land sow not, nor do they reap, neither have they storehouse nor barn; but they send wine to Paris by the river which flows hard by; and there they sell it at a noble price. And I myself have encompassed the diocese of Auxerre three times on foot; once with a certain Brother who preached and gave men the Cross for the Crusade of St. Louis; another time with another Brother who, on the day of the Lord’s Supper, preached to the Cistercians in a most fair Abbey; and we kept the Feast of Easter with a certain Countess, who gave us for dinner (or rather, who gave to her whole court) twelve courses or diversities of food — and if the Count, her husband, had been there, then still greater plenty would have been served. The third time I journeyed with Brother Stephen, and saw and heard many noteworthy things, which I omit here for brevity’s sake. And note that in the Province of France are eight custodies of our Order, whereof four drink beer, and four drink wine. Note also that there are three parts of France which give great plenty of wine, — namely, La Rochelle, Beaune, and Auxerre. Note that the red wines are held in but small esteem, for they are not equal to the red wines of Italy. Note likewise that the wines of Auxerre are white, and sometimes golden, and fragrant, and comforting, and of strong and excellent taste, and they turn all who drink them to cheerfulness and merriment; wherefore of this wine we may rightly say with Solomon ‘Give strong wine to them that are sad, and wine to them that are grieved in mind: Let them drink and forget their want, and remember their sorrow 138 no more.’ And know that the wines of Auxerre are so strong that, when they have stood awhile, tears gather on the outer surface of the jar. Note also that the French are wont to tell how the best wine should have three B’s and seen F’s. For they themselves say in sport
‘Et bon et bel et blanc
Fort et fier, fin et franc,
Froid et frais et frétillant.’ ”
Here, as elsewhere where he is reminded of good cheer, Salimbene seizes the occasion for breaking out into a drinking song: it is of the usual type of clerkly medieval rhymes; and I have tried to render it fairly literally, while softening down some of its inevitable crudities. It will no doubt be noted that the metre is one of those which hymn-writers very likely borrowed at first from secular songs, and which bacchanalian or erotic songsters undoubtedly borrowed back from the Church hymns, often with a very definite turn of parody.6
‘Drink’st thou glorious, honey’d wine?
Stout thy frame, thy face shall shine,
Freely shalt thou spit:
Old in cask, in savour full?
Cheerful then shall be thy soul,
Bright and keen thy wit.
Is is strong and pure and clear?
Quickly shall it banish care,
Chills it shall extrude:
But the sour will bite thy tongue,
Rot the liver, rot thy lung,
And corrupt thy blood.
Is thy liquor greyish pale?
Hoarseness shall thy throat assail
Fluxes shall ensue:
Others, swilling clammy wine,
Wax as fat as any swine,
Muddy-red of hue.
Scorn not red, though thin it be:
Ruddy wine shall redden thee,
So thou do but soak:
Juice of gold and citron dye
Doth our vitals fortify,
Sicknesses doth choke:
139
But the cursed water white
Honest folk will interdict,
Lest it spleen provoke.’
“So the French delight in good wine, nor need we wonder, for wine cheereth God and men,’ as it is written in the ninth chapter of Judges.” The author here loses himself again in Biblical quotations — Noah, Lot, and the warnings of Proverbs — after which he goes on: “It may be said literally that French and English make it their business to drink full goblets; wherefore the French have bloodshot eyes, for from their ever-free potations of wine their eyes become red-rimmed and bleared, and bloodshot. And in the early morning after they have slept off their wine, they go with such eyes to the priest who has celebrated Mass, and pray him to drop into their eyes the water wherein he has washed his hands. But Brother Bartolomeo Guiscolo of Parma was wont to say at Provins (as I often heard with mine own ears) ‘ale, ke malonta ve don Dé; metti de l’aighe in le vins, non in lis ocli;’ which is to say, ‘Go! God give you evil speed! Put the water in your wine when ye drink it, and not in your eyes!’ The English indeed delight in drink, and make it their business to drain full goblets; for an Englishman will take a cup of wine, and drain it, saying, Ge bi, a vu,’7 which is to say ‘It behoveth you to drink as much as I shall drink,’ and therein he thinketh to say and do great courtesy, and he taketh it exceeding ill if any do otherwise than he himself hath taught in word and shown by example. And yet he doth against the Scripture, which saith, ‘. . . Wine also in abundance and of the best was presented, as was worthy of a king’s magnificence. Neither was there any one to compel them to drink that were not willing.’ (Esther i, 7). Yet we must forgive the English if they are glad to drink good wine when they can, for they have but little wine in their own country. In the French it is less excusable, for they have greater plenty; unless indeed we plead that it is hard to leave our daily wont. Note that it is thus written in verse, ‘Normandy for sea-fish, England for corn, Scotland [or Ireland?] for milk, France for wine.’ — Enough of this matter. — But note that in France, as I have seen with mine own eyes, the days are longer in the corresponding months than in Italy: namely, in May they are longer there than here, and in winter they are less. Let me return now to my own affairs, and speak of the French king.
“In the year 1248, about the Feast of Pentecost or somewhat later, I went down from Auxerre to the convent of Sens, for the 140 Provincial Chapter of our Order in France was to be held there; and the Lord Louis (IX), King of France, was to come thither. And when the King was already hard by our convent, all the Brethren went forth to meet him, that they might receive him with all honour. And Brother Rigaud of our Order, Professor of Theology at Paris, and Archbishop of Rouen, clad in his pontifical robes, hastened forth from the convent, crying as he went, ‘Where is the King? Where is the King?’ So I, followed him for he went by himself as a man distraught, with the mitre on his head, and his pastoral staff in his hand.8 For he had fallen behindhand in robing himself, so that the other Brethren had already gone forth, and stood on either side of the street with their faces turned towards the King, in their eagerness to see him coming. And I marvelled beyond measure within myself, saying ‘Certainly I have read oftentimes how the Senonian Gauls were so mighty that under Brennus they took the city of Rome; but now their women seem for the most part like handmaids: yet, if the King had passed through Pisa or Bologna, the whole flower of the ladies of those cities would have gone out to meet him.’ Then I remembered that this is indeed the custom of the French; for in France it is the burgesses only who dwell in the cities, whereas the knights and noble ladies dwell in the villages and on their estates.
“Now the King was spare and slender, somewhat lean, and of a proper height, having the face of an angel, and a mien full of grace. And he came to our Church, not in regal pomp, but in a pilgrim’s habit, with the staff and the scrip of his pilgrimage hanging at his neck, which was an excellent adornment for the shoulders of a king. And he came not on horseback, but on foot; and his blood-brethren, who were three counts, (whereof the eldest was named Robert, and the youngest Charles, who did afterwards many great deeds most worthy of praise), followed him in the same humble guise, so that they might have said in truth that word of the prophet ‘Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help, trusting in horses, and putting their confidence in chariots, because they are many, and in horsemen, because they are very strong: and have not trusted in the holy One of Israel, and have not sought after the Lord.’ Nor did the King care for a train of nobles, but rather for the prayers and suffrages of the poor; and therefore he fulfilled that which Ecclesiasticus teacheth ‘Make thyself affable to the congregation of the poor.’ In truth he might rather be called a monk in devotion of heart, than a knight in weapons of war. When he had come into our church, and had made a most devout genuflexion, he prayed 141 before the altar; and as he departed from the church, and was yet standing on the threshold, I was by his side; and behold, the treasurer of the cathedral of Sens sent him a great living pike in water, in a vessel of fir-wood, such as the Tuscans call “bigonza,’ wherein nursling children are washed and bathed: for in France the pike is esteemed a dear and precious fish. And the King thanked not only the sender, but him who brought the gift.
“Then cried the King in a loud and clear voice that none but knights should enter the Chapter-house, save only the Brethren, with whom he would fain speak. And when we were gathered together, the King began to speak of his own matters, commending himself and his brethren and the Queen his mother, and his whole fellowship; and kneeling most devoutly he besought the prayers and suffrages of the Brethren. And certain Brethren of France who stood by my side wept so sore for devotion and pity that they could scarce be comforted. After the King, the Lord Oddo, Cardinal of the Roman Court, who had formerly been Chancellor of the University of Paris, and was now to go beyond the sea with him, began to speak, and concluded the matter before us in a few words, as Ecclesiasticus teacheth: ‘Desire not to appear wise before the king.’ After those two, Brother John of Parma, the Minister-General, (on whom in virtue of his office fell the task of replying), spake as follows: “ ‘Our King and lord and benefactor hath come to us humbly and profitably, courteously and kindly; and he first spake to us, as was right; nor doth he pray us for gold or silver, whereof by God’s grace there is sufficient store in his treasury; but only for the prayers and suffrages of the Brethren, and that for a most laudable purpose. For in truth he hath undertaken this pilgrimage and signed himself with the Cross, in honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to succour the Holy Land, and to conquer the enemies of the Faith and Cross of Christ, and for the honour of Holy Church and the Christian Faith, and for the salvation of his soul, with all theirs who are to pass the seas with him. Wherefore, seeing that he hath been a special benefactor and defender of our Order, not only at Paris, but throughout his kingdom; and that he hath come humbly to us with so worthy a fellowship to pray for our intercession, it is fitting that we should render him some good. Now whereas the Brethren of France are already more willing to undertake this matter, and purpose to do more than I could impose upon them, therefore upon them I lay no precept. But, seeing that I have begun to visit the Order, I have purposed in my mind to enjoin on 142 each priest of the whole Order to sing four masses for the King and this holy fellowship. And if so be that the Son of God call him from this world to the Father, then shall the Brethren add yet more Masses. And if I have not answered according to his desire, let the King himself be our lord to command us, who lack not obedient hearts, but only a voice to prescribe.’ The King, hearing his, thanked the Minister-General, and so wholly accepted his answer that he would fain have it confirmed under his hand and seal. Moreover, the King took upon himself all that day’s cost, and ate together with us in the refectory; and with us sat down to meat the King’s three brethren, and the Cardinal, and the Minister-General, and Brother Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, and the Minister-Provincial of France, and the Custodes and Definitores, and the Discreti,9 and all who were of the capitular body, and the Brethren our guests, whom we call ‘foreigners.’ The Minister-General therefore, seeing that the King had already a noble and worthy fellowship, was unwilling to thrust himself forward, according to the word of Ecclesiasticus, ‘Be not exalted in the day of thy honour,’ though indeed he was invited to sit by the King’s side; but he loved rather to practise that courtesy and humility which our Lord taught by word and example. Wherefore Brother John chose rather to sit at the table of the humble; and it was honoured by his presence, and many were edified thereby: for consider that God hath not placed all the lights of heaven in one part alone, but hath distributed them in divers parts and in sundry manners for the greater beauty and utility of the heavens. This then was our fare that day: first, cherries, then most excellent white bread; and choice wine, worthy of the King’s royal state, was placed in abundance before us; and, after the wont of the French, many invited even the unwilling and compelled them to drink. After that we had fresh beans boiled in milk, fishes and crabs, eel-pasties, rice cooked with milk of almonds and cinnamon powder, eels baked with most excellent sauce, tarts and junkets, [or curd-cheeses] and all the fruits of the season in abundance and comely array. And all these were laid on the table in courtly fashion, and busily ministered to us. On the morrow, the king went on his way; and I, when the Chapter was ended, followed him; for I had a command from the Minister-General to go and dwell in Provence: and it was easy for me to overtake the King, for oft-times he turned aside from the high road to visit the hermitages of Brethren Minor or of other Religious, that he might commend himself to their prayers; and so he did daily until he came to the sea, and set sail for the Holy Land. When therefore 143 I had visited the Brethren of Auxerre, which had been my convent, I went in one day to Urgeliac, a noble town in Burgundy, where the body of the Magdalene was then thought to lie. And the morrow was a Sunday; so at early dawn the King came to our church to pray for our suffrages, according to the word which is written in Proverbs ‘Well doth he rise early who seeketh good things.’ And he left all his fellowship in the town hard by, save only his three brethren, and a few grooms to hold their horses; and, when they had knelt and made obeisance before the altar, his brethren looked round for seats and benches. But the King sat on the ground in the dust, as I saw with mine own eye, for that church was unpaved.10 And he called us to him, saying, ‘Come unto me, my most sweet Brethren, and hear my words’; and we sat around him in a ring on the ground, and his blood-brethren did likewise. And he commended himself to us, beseeching our suffrages: and after we had made answer, he departed from the church to go on his way; and it was told him that Charles still prayed fervently; so the King was glad, and waited patiently without mounting his horse while his brother prayed. And the other two counts, his brethren, stood likewise waiting without. Now Charles was his youngest brother, who had the Queen’s sister to wife; and oft-times he bowed his knee before the altar which was in the church aisle hard by the door. So I saw how earnestly Charles prayed, and how patiently the King waited without; and I was much edified, knowing the truth of that Scripture ‘A brother that is helped by his brother is like a strong city.’ Then the King went on his way; and, having finished his business, he hastened to the vessel which had been prepared for him: but I went to Lyons, and found the Pope still there with his Cardinals. Thence I went down the Rhone, to the city of Arles, and it was the 29th of June.”
We here take leave of the saintly King, of whose crusade Salimbene tells us briefly later on (320) that it failed “by reason of the sins of the French,” and whom after this he only mentions cursorily here and there, without any first-hand touches. But the next stage of his journey brought him into contact with a man almost as celebrated in his own day as St. Louis himself: the holy Cordelier of Joinville’s narrative (§§ 657 foll.), which is too vivid and characteristic to be omitted here. “King Louis,” writes Joinville of the year 1254, “heard tell of a Grey Friar whose name was Brother Hugh: and for the great renown that he had the King sent for that Friar to see and hear him speak. The day he came to Hyères, we looked down the road whereby he came, and were aware of a great company of people, 144 both men and women, following him on foot. The King bade him preach: and the first words of his sermon dealt with men of Religion. ‘My Lord,’ said he, ‘I see many more folk of Religion in the King’s court and in his company than should of right be there’; and then ‘First of all,’ said he, ‘I say that such are not in the way of salvation, nor can they be, unless Holy Scripture lie. For Holy Scripture saith that the monk cannot live out of his cloister without mortal sin, even as the fish cannot live without water.11 And if the Religious who are with the King say that his court is a cloister, then I tell them it is the widest that ever I saw; for it stretches from this side of the great sea to the other. And if they plead that in this cloister a man may lead a hard life to save his soul, therein I believe them not; for I tell you that I have eaten with them great plenty of divers flesh-meats, and drunken of good wines, both strong and clear; wherefore I am assured that if they had been in their cloister they would not have been so at their ease as they now are at the King’s court.’ Then in his sermon he taught the King how he should hold himself to please his people; and at the end of his sermon he said that he had read the Bible and all the books that go against the Bible; and never had he found, whether in believers’ books or in unbelievers’, that any kingdom or lordship was ever ruined or ever changed its lord, but by reason of defect of justice: ‘Wherefore’ said he ‘let the King look well to it, since he is returning to his kingdom of France, that he render his folk such justice as to keep God’s love, that God may never take the kingdom from him so long as he is alive!’ So I, Joinville, told the King that he should not let this man quit his company, if by any means he might keep him: but he answered ‘I have already prayed him, and he will do nought for me. Come,’ said he, taking me by the hand, ‘let us go and pray him once more.’ We came to him and I said to him, ‘Sir, do as my Lord the King hath prayed you, to abide with him while he is yet in Provence.’ And he answered me in great wrath, ‘Be sure, Sir, that I will not do so: for I shall go to a place were God will love me better than He would love me in King’s company.’ One day he tarried with us, and on the morrow he went his way. They have told me since that he lieth buried in the city of Marseilles, where he worketh many fair miracles.” A fine, sturdy John-Baptist of a friar, this: but how will he suit our chronicler, who is so far from sharing his abhorrence of delicate fare and choice wines in Kings’ houses? Excellently, according to Salimbene’s own account; nor is there any reason to doubt his word. To begin with they had 145 common friends and strong common interests: for Joachism was a powerful freemasonry in the thirteenth century. Moreover, Salimbene was one of those who, without great pretensions to superior personal sanctity, are yet so sympathetic and sociable that the most intractable saints suffer their company as gladly as Johnson suffered Boswell’s. Our friar, like so many others, constantly plumed himself on the theoretical strictness of that Rule which in practice he interpreted so liberally; and he took just the same æsthetic delight in the rugged sanctity of his friend. So from Arles he went to Marseilles (226) “and thence to see Brother Hugues de Barjols, or de Digne, whom the Lombards call Brother Hugh of Montpellier. He was one of the greatest and most learned clerks in the world, a most famous preacher, beloved of clergy and layfolk alike, and a most excellent disputant, ready for all questions. He would entangle and confound all men in argument; for he had a most eloquent tongue, and a voice as a ringing trumpet, or mighty thunder, or the sound of many waters falling from a cliff. He never tripped or stumbled, but was ever ready with an answer for all. He spake marvellously of the Court of Heaven, and the glories of Paradise, and most terribly of the pains of hell. He was of middling stature, and somewhat swarthy of hue — a man spiritual beyond measure, so that he seemed a second Paul or Elisha; for in his days he feared neither principalities nor powers; none ever conquered him or overcame him in word. For he spake in full consistory to the Pope and his Cardinals as he might have spoken to boys assembled in school; both at the Council of Lyons, and aforetime when the Court was at Rome: and all trembled as a reed trembles in the water. For once being asked by the Cardinals what sort of tidings he had, he rated them like asses, saying, ‘I have no tidings, but I have full peace, both with my conscience and with God, which passeth all understanding, and keepeth my heart and mind in Christ Jesus. I know in truth that ye seek new tidings, and are busy about such things all day long, for ye are Athenians, and no disciples of Christ.’ ” This little incident forms a living commentary upon one of the precepts most frequently insisted upon in the Franciscan disciplinary writings. The friar of Shakespeare’s plays — a sort of walking newspaper and ready deus ex machina for any innocent little plot that may be on foot — the indispensable confidant in all family matters, from the least to the greatest — was already fully developed in St. Bonaventura’s time, and was the bugbear of the convent authorities, since he brought into the Order the oft-forbidden “familiarities with women,” together with all sorts of other 146 purely worldly interests. To take only one quotation out of many from the “Mirror of Novices” (p. 239); “Study thy whole life long, so far as thou well mayest, to avoid familiarities with secular persons; for they are ‘a perverse generation and unfaithful children,’ as the Scripture saith. And when thou art brought among them by the compulsion of necessity or [spiritual] profit, beware lest thou ever speak with them any but profitable and honest words; and if they themselves speak of secular matters, or of the wars, or of other unprofitable things, never follow them even though thou know of these matters, but say with the Prophet ‘That my mouth may not speak the works of men.’ . . . Moreover, flee from women, so far as in thee lieth, as thou wouldst flee from serpents, never speaking with them but under compulsion of urgent necessity; nor ever look in any woman’s face; and if a woman speak to thee, circumcise thy words most straitly, for as the Prophet saith ‘Her words are smoother than oil, and the same are darts.’ ” The rest of Hugh’s long speech to the Cardinals, vivid as its interest is for the student of medieval manners, belongs rather to another place:12 as indeed Salimbene himself must have realized by the time he had come to the end of it: for he exclaims again “Blessed be God that I am at last at the end of this matter!”
He goes on to enumerate Hugh’s special friends: (232) the first was John of Parma, “for whose love he became my familiar friend also, and because I seemed to believe in the writings of Abbot Joachim of Fiore.” The second was the Archbishop of Vienne; the third, Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln; the fourth, Adam Marsh, the great Oxford scholar and adviser of Simon de Montfort. While Salimbene was a youthful convert at Siena he had already met Hugh, whose eloquence and readiness in disputation had electrified him (233). Our chronicler had again heard him preach on a solemn occasion at Lucca: (234) for “it chanced that I came thither from Pistoia at the very hour at which he must needs go to the Cathedral Church, and the whole convent was gathered together to go with him. But he, seeing the Brethren without the gate, marvelled and said, ‘Ha! God! Whither would these men go?’ And it was answered him that the Brethren did thus for his honour, and for that they would fain hear him preach. So he said ‘I need no such honour, for I am not the Pope; but if they will hear me, let them follow when I am entered into the church; for I will go on with a single comrade, and not with this multitude.’ Brother Hugh therefore preached with such edification and 147 comfort of his hearers that the clergy of the Bishopric of Lucca were wont to say many years after how they had never heard a man speak so well; for the other had recited their sermons even as a psalm which they might have learnt by heart. And they loved and revered the whole Order for his sake. Another time I heard him preach to the people in Provence, at Tarascon on the Rhone, at which sermon were men and women of Tarascon and Beaucaire, (which are two most noble towns lying side by side, with the river Rhone between; and in each town is a fair convent of the Brethren Minor). And he said to them (as I heard with mine own ears) words of edification, useful words, honeyed words, words of salvation. And they heard him gladly, as a John the Baptist, for they held him for a Prophet. These things find no credence with men who are themselves deprived of such grace; yet it is most ridiculous if I will not believe that there is any Bishop or any Pope because I myself am not a Bishop or a Pope! Moreover, at the court of the Count of Provence was a certain Riniero, a Pisan by birth, who called himself an universal philosopher, and who so confounded the judges and notaries and physicians of the Court that no man could live there in honour. Wherefore they expounded their tribulation to Brother Hugh, that he might vouchsafe to succour and defend them from this bitter enemy. So he made answer: ‘Order ye with the Count a day for disputation in the palace, and let knights and nobles, judges and notaries and physicians be there present, and dispute ye with him; and then let the Count send for me and I will prove to them by demonstration that this man is an ass, and that the sky is a frying-pan.’ All this was so ordered, and Brother Hugh so involved and entangled him in his own words that he was ashamed to remain at the Count’s court, and withdrew without taking leave of his host; nor did he ever dare thereafter to dwell there, or even to show his face. For he was a great sophist, and thought within himself to entangle all others in his sophistries. Brother Hugh therefore delivered the poor from the mighty, and the needy that had no helper;’ and they kissed his hands and feet. Note that this aforesaid Count was called Raymond Berenger, (Paradiso vi, 134), a comely man, and a friend of the Friars Minor, and father to the Queens of France and of England. Moreover, in Provence there is a certain most populous town named Hyères, where is a great multitude of men and women doing penitence even in worldly habit in their own houses. These are strictly devoted to the Friars Minor; for the Friars Preachers have no convent there, since they are pleased and comforted to dwell in 148 great convents rather than in small. In this town Brother Hugh lived most gladly, and there were many notaries and judges and physicians and other learned men, who on solemn days would assemble in his chamber to hear him speak of the doctrine of Abbot Joachim, or expound the mysteries of Holy Scripture, or foretell the future. For he was a great Joachite, and had all the works of Abbot Joachim written in great letters: and I myself also was there to hear him teach.”
These Franciscan Tertiaries of whom Salimbene speaks were the nucleus of one of the earliest and most famous Béguinages, under the direction of Hugh’s sister St. Douceline, of whom Salimbene gives a brief account lower down (554). “In another stone chest by Brother Hugh’s side is buried his sister in the flesh, the Lady Douceline, whose fame God likewise showed forth by miracles. She never entered any religious Order, but ever lived chastely and righteously in the World. She chose for her spouse the Son of God, and for the saint of her special devotion the blessed Francis, whose cord she wore round her body; and almost all day long she prayed in the church of the Friars Minor. There was none who spoke or thought evil of her; for men and women, religious and layfolk, honoured her for her exceeding sanctity. She had of God a special grace of ecstasies, as the Friars saw a thousand times in their church. If they raised her arm, she would keep it thus raised from morning to evening, for she was wholly absorbed in God: and this was spread abroad through the whole city of Marseilles, and through other cities also. She was followed by eighty noble ladies of Marseilles, of middle and of higher rank, who would fain save their souls after her example; and she was lady and mistress of them all.” Of this saint, her asceticism and her trances, and the wonderful power over others which she found in her single-hearted devotion to God, the reader may find a full account in Albanès’ edition and translation of the thirteenth-century life by one of her disciples, and in a recent essay by Miss Macdonell.
Here then dwelt Salimbene, for the second time in his life, in an atmosphere of the most contagious religious enthusiasm, thoroughly enjoying it all, and yet saved by his critical faculty (as we shall presently see) from being swept off his legs altogether. It is not difficult, I think, to trace in his history a very usual type of religious development. The Alleluia of 1233 marked his conversion, his first realization of a life to come; an overpowering appeal to his feelings while his intellect was as yet utterly undeveloped. Now, as an impressionable and (for his age) highly educated young man, he is brought into close contact 149 with a party leader of intense magnetic power, from whom, and from others of the same party, he imbibes a new and startling theory of Church statesmanship, and a philosophy of history which, even after experience had proved its partial falsehood, was so noble and true that it could not fail to influence all the rest of his life. Even in the ashes of Salimbene’s old age lived the wonted fires of Joachism: after all his disillusions, and even through his period of antagonism to his old comrades, he was always a different man for having once accepted this 13th-century “Theory of Development.” It is this which gives much of its charm to his book: one feels the mellow judgment of a man who, (to put it in terms of our own age), after having been “converted” as a boy in the Evangelical sense — after having been carried away at Oxford by Newman — has gradually settled down to views more consonant with the facts of human life than that earlier intense Tractarianism, and yet Tractarian in their sense of an eternal purpose for the Church amid the perplexing phenomena of daily life.
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