So our busy friend rested at last from his wanderings, and came to end his days in the convents of his native province — a land flowing with milk and honey, if only men could have ceased for awhile from war. “This is the fairest spot in the world,” writes the Continuator of Ricobaldi’s Chronicle: “conveniently hilly, yet with fruitful plains and lakes for fish; and therein dwell men of kingly heart.”1 Parma and Reggio and Modena are sleepy enough nowadays; very restful to the weary traveller with their Apennines hard by, and far off the Alps of Trent and Verona looming in ghostly orange on the evening horizon, high above that endless stretch of purple plain. But in Salimbene’s days this sleepy world was like a swarming beehive, upon which the good old friar looked down as Lucretius’ philosopher contemplated the troubled sea of human error and pain.
In those harder times a man was already aged at fifty: but in 1282 Salimbene was in his 61st year, and had at least six more to live. This year 1282 passed comparatively peacefully for the cities in which he was most interested. His native Parma was now reconciled again to the Church, after an interdict of three years. For in 1279 the Dominicans had burned for heresy, first a noble lady of the city, and then an innkeeper’s wife, who had once been her maidservant (501). On this, “certain fools” attacked the Dominican convent and wounded some of the Brethren (507); or, as the contemporary Chronicler of Parma tells us with more detail “certain evil men, by suggestion of the Devil, ran to the convent and entered it by force and despoiled it, smiting and wounding many of the Brethren, and killing one Brother Jacopo de’ Ferrari, who was an aged man and (as was reported) a virgin of his body; who was also blind of his eyes, and had lived forty years and more in the Order.” Yet, in spite of her recent prosperity, Parma was not quite free from war. Her citizens made a petty raid into neighbouring 202 territory and destroyed some crops: again, they sent a force to garrison friendly Cremona while the Cremonese went to fight against the Ghibellines in Lombardy. Within the city itself, this was a gay year, in spite of the pulling down of certain rebels’ houses and of a sudden scare in the summer, when “thunderclaps were heard at nightfall so horrible and so startling that they seemed almost visible and palpable, and many fearful folk fell to the ground” (511). There were many worldly pageants, which the good friar describes in the language of keen enjoyment, but with extreme brevity. This is all the more disappointing because even a few details, such as might so naturally have come from the pen of an observant man writing for his favourite niece, would have made us realize even more vividly Villani’s description of the “noble and rich company, clad all in white, and with a Lord of Love at its head,” which made Florence so gay for nearly two months of the next year 1283, and which it is so natural to connect with the occasion, in that same year, when Dante first exchanged speech with his Beatrice, “dressed all in pure white.”2 At Parma, two brothers of the great Rossi family were knighted, one of them resigning his canonry for the occasion, and the feastings lasted nearly a month. Again, there were other knightings at Reggio, and most noble festivities at Ferrara, where Azzo of Este was knighted and wedded to a niece of Pope Nicholas III. At Reggio, rival factions were reconciled by the mediation of the Friars Minor, and “many men and women, youths and maidens,” were present at the solemn oath of reconciliation in the convent. Outside this narrow circle, however, the political horizon was dark enough. The Sicilians got rid of their French masters by the Sicilian Vespers: which Salimbene recounts with the brevity usual to him when he writes at second hand of distant events. “In the city of Palermo they slew all the French of both sexes, dashing their little ones against the stones, and ripping up the women that were with child: but the men of Messina treated them less cruelly, stripping them of their arms and their goods and sending them back to their master Charles” (508). The Vespers kindled a long and bloody war between Charles of Anjou and Peter of Aragon. Another war, equally long and bloody, was being fought out with redoubled energy by Martin IV, the French Pope whom Charles of Anjou had lately forced upon Christendom by kidnapping the dissentient Cardinals and intimidating the rest. Salibene, staunch Churchman as he is, speaks very plainly about these papal wars, as will presently be seen. This greed for fresh territory was all the more blameworthy because even their earliest territorial possessions 203 kept them constantly involved in political complications and their resultant wars. “The men of Perugia made ready to go and waste the lands of Foligno, and the Pope sent word that they should utterly desist, on pain of excommunication, since Foligno was of the garden of St. Peter. Yet the Perugians turned not aside from their purpose, but went and ravaged the whole Bishopric of Foligno even to the ditches of the city. So they were excommunicated; wherefore in their wrath they made a Pope and Cardinals of straw, an dragged them outrageously through the whole city: after which they dragged them to the summit of a hill, where they burned the Pope in robes of scarlet, and his Cardinals with him; saying, ‘this is such a Cardinal, and this is such another.’ And note that the Perugians thought to do a good deed in fighting against Foligno and ravaging the lands; for in former times there was much war between the two cities, and the men of Foligno raged so cruelly against the Perugians, on whom God sent at the same time such confusion, that one old woman of Foligno drove 10 Perugians to prison with a rod of reed: and other women did likewise; for the Perugians had no heart to resist them.” (510).
1283 was a fairly quiet year too: there was a great cattle-plague, but the mortality did not spread among men until the year following. At Parma men built rapidly, almost feverishly, in those days of prosperity: the Friars Minor built a handsome refectory, the city walls and Baptistery rose rapidly: the Cathedral was adorned with its “porch-pillars on the lion resting:” a great stone bridge was built, and three fair new streets lined with houses and palaces; also a governor’s palace and a canal — “ but this canal was little worth: I myself could have planned a better canal for the service of Parma if I were lord of the city.” Here a reader of the 14th or 15th century, provoked at Salimbene’s self-sufficiency, has scribbled on the margin of the MS. “note the bestial folly of this fellow!” (519).
At Reggio, the little cloud of last year, no bigger than a man’s hand, was coming up dark on the horizon. (515). “The Podesta was too remiss, and many manslaughters and crimes were done in the district, so that in one house in the city a man’s enemies entered by a ladder and slew him in his bed. This Podesta was succeeded next year by the Lord Bernabo dei Palastrelli of Piacanza, who spared none, and destroyed many evildoers and robbers in his days. Many he slew and caused to be slain in his government; and therefore, because he kept justice well, the men of Reggio said that he was the destroyer of their city. But his predecessor was rather their destroyer, who 204 was too remiss and negligent, so that many wars began in the city which last even to this day, and are a cause of destruction to the city, unless God shall ordain otherwise.”
God did not interfere to save them from the consequences of their quarrels: and next year saw the outbreak of savage civil wars at Reggio and Modena, though Parma was still in comparative peace. The last quarter of Salimbene’s chronicle is largely taken up with the record of these sordid and barbarous wars, which I shall give only in the briefest summary, except for those personal touches which put Salimbene so high above most of his contemporaries. Again in 1284 Reggio dismissed its Podesta: not only because his acts were factious and partial, but also because he put them to shame with his uncouthness. “He had such an impediment in his speech as provoked his hearers to laugh; for when in Council he would say ‘Ye have heard what hath been propolt,’ (audivistis propoltam), and so they mocked him as a tongueless man, for he was thick of speech. Yet the citizens were more worthy of scorn for electing to their lordship such men as are of no worth, for it is a saying that like loves like, and that they are ruled by private friendship, and care little for the common profit. . . . .” Indeed the position of podesta was not so enviable in those days, and Sacchetti very naturally wondered how any man of sense could be tempted to take the office. Here is another instance from Salimbene: “The Lord Jacopo da Enzola, Podesta of Modena, had fallen ill and died in that city, and lay buried there in the Cathedral church: and on his tomb he was portrayed sitting with all honour on his horse, as became a knight; and, for that in the days of his government all those manslaughters and misdeeds had been done, wherefrom sprang the divisions of parties and civil wars in Modena (for he had not done due justice and vengeance for them), therefore the men of Modena, provoked to wrath and troubled with indignation at the sight of these evils, put out the eyes of the Podesta’s image, and defiled his tomb in so foul and swinish a fashion as may scarce be written here.” 3 (608). Here again, as usual, outrage bred fresh outrage. “In process of time the citizens of Modena, sent to Parma two ambassadors, one of whom in full Council spake many opprobrious insults against this dead Podesta Jacopo da Enzola [who was a native of Parma]. Therefore his son Ghirardino, provoked to wrath by these words, wrought according to the saying of Scripture ‘A patient man shall bear for a time and afterwards joy shall be restored to him.’ For when that ambassador who had reviled his father departed, Ghirardino 205 followed after him along the road with certain wanton young men; and after he was come into the Bishopric of Reggio he grievously wounded and maimed him, yet not so as to slay him: wherefore he was condemned by the men of Parma [to pay £1,000 Parmese:] which he paid to the last penny. All this I say to show that the men of Parma did well in keeping justice, and they did evil who kept it not at Modena.”
With such rulers and such people, the story of Dante’s Florence was repeated in every city. A jealous quarrel — a cry of “cosa fatta capo ha,” — a sudden murder in the streets — a consequent series of vendettas — and in a few weeks the city was cleft in twain by a gulf of implacable feuds. After some days of street fighting, the weaker party would be driven into exile, and its houses razed to the ground with every circumstance of indelible insult. Nothing tended so inevitably to perpetuate civil feuds in Italy as these wholesale expulsions of the beaten party and destructions of their houses. Many who first read how the houses of the Ghibellines at Florence were pulled down, and their stones used to build walls which should shut out all Ghibellines for ever from their native city — or how the great Piazza was made on the site of the houses of the exiled Uberti — are apt to look on these as isolated and exceptional instances; but the chronicles of other cities show us that these barbarous reprisals were normal and incessant. The author of the Chronicon Parmense records twenty-four cases of house-wrecking in the forty years following 1265. These were all in consequence of quarrels between Guelf and Guelf, quite independently of the wholesale destruction of 1247, when “the Ghibellines’ house and towers were daily destroyed, and from the bricks and beams and planks men built walls and engines for the city.” The provocation was usually a murder, but often merely a bloodless quarrel: as in 1285 when Marcherio da Montecchio “had had words with (habuerant verba cum) Gherardino Ansaldi by reason of the priory of St. Bartholomew,” or in 1293 when “the Lord Podesta, with more than 1,000 armed men, ran as usual (more solito) to the house of the Lord Giovanni de’ Nizi, who was a Frate Godente, and likewise to that of Poltrenerio de’ Ricicoldi, by reason of certain injuries which they had committed against men of the Gild of the Cross.” The result was that Italy swarmed from sea to sea with homeless and desperate men, degraded still more by that hand-to-mouth life and base companionship which Dante describes so bitterly (Parad. xvii. 58 foll.) The acts of the Provincial Synod of Milan, held in 1311, contain a long decree as to the means of raising an income for the many bishops who were wandering in 206 exile from their sees.4 Here is the light in which Salimbene saw all this, anticipating Cacciaguida’s prophecy by thirteen years (1287-395). “Moreover, in this year all they who were of the old party of the Emperor Frederick, who had long been cast forth from their own cities and had wandered homeless in exile, thought to take some city wherein they might dwell without reproach and without loathing, and wherefrom they might take vengeance on their enemies unless they would live at peace with them. They were driven to this by utter necessity: for indeed they of the Church party utterly refused to show them bowels of mercy or receive them to peace by opening their cities to them.” It speaks much for Salimbene’s candour, that, good Guelf as he is, he cannot help finding some sympathy and justification for these Ghibellines at bay. Such exiles usually seized a neighbouring town or castle from which they might harass their former city, and possibly some day, by a sudden coup de main, enter again as victors and destroy their enemies’ houses in turn. Desperate themselves, they collected round them all the desperate characters of the district. The Monk of Canossa — probably one of those unfrocked clerics so often conspicuous among the ruffian leaders of medieval wars — made his den in Matilda’s old castle, and was probably still there in the year when Dante saw the transfigured Countess in his Earthly Paradise. Here is another scene from Salimbene (592). When the exiles stormed Magreba, “Nero de Leccaterra entered into the church of the Blessed Virgin and set fire to it that it might be utterly consumed, saying ‘Now, St. Mary, defend thyself if thou canst!’ Yet even as he spake these words of malice and insult, a lance hurled by some other hand pierced through his breastplate and entered even into his heart, and suddenly he fell down dead. And, for it is certain that his own men hurled no such lance, especially against their Captain, therefore it is believed that the blow was dealt by St. Mercury, both because he is the wonted avenger of wrongs done to the Blessed Virgin, and also because he slew the apostate Julian with his lance in the Persian war.” This legend of Julian’s death by the lance of St. Mercury and at the command of the Virgin Mary occurs first in the Life of St. Basil, whose prayers are said to have brought about this vengeance; it is told also by Vincent of Beauvais; and Cæsarius quotes it as a proof that Christian charity by no means forbids one saint to avenge injuries done to another: “St. Mercury the Martyr, though perchance in his life he prayed for his own murderers, yet stepped down from the realms of glory to slay Julian.”5
207The brutalities committed on each side were awful. The destruction of houses and crops, orchards and vineyards, went on wholesale: our good friar spares a word of special regret for one particular vineyard “which made Vernaccia wine.”6 Prisoners were killed in cold blood or carried off like cattle: “the greater part of these 103 prisoners were bound with a single rope and led off to Reggio, where men threw them into chains and kept them bound in the common prison.” On one attack, children were slaughtered in their cradles: at another time, the men vented their spite on the women (587). “In this year, when the women of Modena had come forth to gather grapes in the vineyards, the men of Sassuolo took 300 of them and led them to Sassuolo, and there cast them into prison . . . but they were quickly loosed, for the Modenese for their part took the women of Sassuolo.” It is not surprising to find that these ruffians, losing heart in battle, “took to flight, casting away their arms and garments and all that they had, desiring only to save their souls;” or that another, taken prisoner by the Monk of Canossa, “after but small persuasion of torture, became of his party and dwelt from thenceforth with him.” Yet the men who did these things might be good churchmen, as churchmanship was often understood. Here is Salimbene’s description of the Lord Burigardo, who cast the 300 women into prison. (589) “And note that he had certain virtues (bonitates) towards God: for he was so devout that he always had a chaplain of his own at his court, (as I saw with mine own eyes) who daily said Mass for him and celebrated divine service. When he was at Reggio he sent the Friars Minor a great branched candlestick to illuminate and honour the Lord’s body, when it is elevated and shown to the people in the Mass.” So far these people came up to the modern idea of the medieval robber-baron: but modern ideas of chivalry will find little satisfaction in the friar’s chronicle. Only one trait of generosity is recorded in this whole dismal series of civil conflicts: and the very stress laid on this is eloquent as to the ordinary practice. (636) “The chief captain of the men of Gesso was the Lord Rolandino of Canossa, a fair and noble man, courtly and liberal, and who in his day had been Podesta of many divers cities. His mother was of the house of Piedemonte, a noble lady and most holy of life. Moreover the Lord Rolandino did one great act of courtesy which is worthy to be recounted and remembered. For when the men of Gesso had a truce with the men of Albinea, a certain man of Albinea came and complained to the Lord Rolandino that a man of Gesso had driven off his oxen. And he had the oxen forthwith restored to him, adding 208 ‘what wilt thou now?’ Then the man answered, ‘I would have that man, who I see standing there, restore me my garment which he hath.’ So the Lord Rolandino prayed the man to restore the garment; and when he utterly refused, he himself took off his outer mantle and gave it to the man who had been robbed, saying ‘Methinks thou hast now full satisfaction for thy garment: go now in peace.’ When therefore the country fellow who had stolen the garment saw this, he was ashamed, and fell at the Lord Rolandino’s feet and confessed his fault.”
Imagine the lot of the ordinary peasant in these times — the class of whom we often speak as the back bone of the country, fretting ourselves nowadays merely because they insist on flocking, like ourselves, to the towns! Castles and cities being generally too well fortified for attack, the whole story of the war is that of outrages and reprisals upon the peasants of either party. “The villagers dwelt apart almost after the fashion of the Sidonians, nor was there any that resisted their enemies or opened the mouth or made the least noise. And that night they burned fifty-three houses in the village, good and mean alike: and they would have burned all without distinction but that they desisted at the prayers of the Friars Minor who opposed themselves to the evildoers. So the men of Bibbiano seeing this gave £100 imperial to the men of Gesso, and made a truce with them for one year, that they might labour in safety and gather in the fruits of the earth.” The majority of the peasants’ possessions were thus at the mercy of their enemies: even their lives and portable goods were in comparative safety only when they neglected ecclesiastical prohibitions and turned the parish churches into fortresses. Short of this, there was no salvation but in bodily removal of their houses. (633) “The men of Castelli carried away their houses and rebuilt them round the mount of Bianello, on its very summit. Likewise did the men of Coresana and Farneto and Corniano and Piazzola round Monte Lucio, on its highest point; likewise also did the men of Oliveto; the men of Bibbiano also fortified themselves, fearing the war to come. But the men of San Polo d’Enza built their houses round the parish church, and digged moats and filled them with water, that they might be safe from the face of the spoiler.” The ordinary farm-house was evidently slight enough in those days; for Salimbene thus describes the rejoicings after a battle: “that evening the citizens kindled a beacon of fire on the summit of the Tower of the Commune at Reggio in sign of joy and gladness, and to rejoice the hearts of their friends: and they for their part did likewise, showing lighted beacons, as the country folk do at 209 carnival times, when they burn down their cottages and hovels” (639).
Nor was it only the peasants who suffered from what may be called the contingent horrors of civil war. In those days of exasperated party feeling, both sides were merciless to traitors, real or suspected (1287-394). “The Monk of Canossa took Bernardo Guglielmi, deacon of the church of S. Antonino at Castelli, who confessed outright and of his own free will, without torment (as they said who took him captive) that he would have betrayed Bianello to the men of Gesso. So forthwith they slit his windpipe, and dragged his dead body naked through the town: afterwards they cast him forth like carrion without the walls, and so he was buried in his bare shirt at the church of S. Antonino. On St. John Baptist’s day when I sang Mass at Bianello, that same man sang the gospel to my Mass; and that same year, on the day folllowing the feast of the beheading of St. John Baptist, he also was beheaded. Moreover, they cut out the tongue of his sister, Bertha by name, and cast her forth into perpetual banishment. For they accused not only her but also the dead man’s leman or concubine of carrying evil news to and fro between Gesso and certain abominable traitors at Castelli. That deacon was an old man: he kept a concubine, and at his last end he could not, or would not, make his confession. He was slain by one Martinello, a murderer and notorious evildoer whom the Monk of Bianello kept in his castle. The year before, the Monk’s hired murderers had slain the parish priest of S. Polo, on the same accusation that he was not truly of the Monk’s party, and for many other reasons which are not worthy to be told or remembered. His four murderers supped familiarly with him one evening; and at night as he slept under his own roof and in his own chamber, they slew him with their swords and deformed his corpse with so foul a mockery that it was a horrible and monstrous sight to see. But God brought swift vengeance on them; for before the year was past, Raimondello was slain by the men of Gesso, into whose hands Giacomello likewise fell, and they smote out two of his teeth and scarce left him his life; and God smote Accorto and Ferrarello in their own beds.” On another occasion Modena was nearly taken by a band of exiles treacherously introduced by night: and next morning (1287-397) “men began to enquire diligently who were the traitors who had let them in. And they took the Lord Garso de’ Garsoni and hanged him at the Porta Bazoaria; and in those days thirty-nine men were hanged for the same cause, some of whom were said to have been guiltless. The Podesta of Modena at that time was 210 the Lord Bernardino of Ravenna, son to the Lord Guido da Polenta,” and therefore brother to Francesca da Rimini. . . “So the Lord Matteo Correggio went to Modena, and there in the Palazzo Communale, before the full council, he bitterly rebuked the Podesta, saying, ‘Of a truth, my Lord Podesta, ye have brought a great burden upon us and upon this city, seeing that we must now dwell in fear our whole life long by reason of the headlong vengeance which ye have taken.’ ” Two similar instances of torture and random vengeance are recorded about the same time (1287-389).
One of the most hopeless features of these civil wars is the part played in them by Churchmen. Salimbene shows us bishops driven out of their sees for their share in these faction-fights: the archpriest of Fornovo murdered in one political quarrel: and the Bishop of Tortona in another, by the “Guglielmo Marchese” of Purg. vii. 145. The abbots of the great monasteries, again, were almost as rich and powerful as the bishops: and they too were generally chosen on political principles and expected to work for political ends.
San Prospero at Reggio was one of the great abbeys of Italy, though its princely revenues had within recent years been much diminished by lawsuits and wars. The Abbot’s election in 1272 had been celebrated by a great feast whereat all the clergy and men of Religion were present, and all the good men (i.e. the upper classes) of the city” (488). In 1284 we find the Abbot on the losing side in the civil strife at Reggio, and only enabled to retain his Abbey by making peace with his powerful enemies the Boiardi, ancestors of the famous poet. Now, however, in 1286, the Abbot fell under suspicion not only of giving help to the other party, but also of complicity in two recent murders — that of the brothers da Bianello and of the archpriest Gerardo Boiardi. The rest may be told in Salimbene’s words (621) “The Abbot Guglielmo de’ Lupicini was a good man indeed with regard to God and to man’s honour; but as regards worldly affairs he was simple, and churlish, and miserly; for he treated his monks ill in the matter of their food, and therefore he found them traitors afterwards. For Bonifazio Boiardi, with the connivance of certain monks who stood ill with their Abbot for that he had dealt unkindly with them in the matter of victuals, took the monastery by assault on the feast of Pentecost, at the hour of dinner; and, having despoiled of it all that he coveted, he departed. And the Abbot sought safety in flight and came to the convent of the Friars Minor, where he abode all that day and the night following; then he went to the house of his brother 211 by blood, named Sinibaldo, and dwelt there some days in doubt of mind and anguish of heart. Moreover, the said Bonifazio seized all the granges of the convent at the season of wheat-harvest, and afterwards he seized Fossola by force, and besieged and took and burnt Donomatta, where he slew a man who defended his oxen and would not yield them up; and another they beat and grievously wounded, leaving him half dead. And note that all these things had been foretold to the Abbot before the event; but in his simplicity and miserliness he would not avoid them nor beware. But his friends, seeing that he was slow to guard himself, came of their own accord and uninvited, forty good men of Reggio in all, and kept the convent of San Prospero all night before Pentecost. But when the dinner hour came he thanked them not for the guard which they had held all night long, nor did he call them to dinner, but suffered each to go and dine at his own house while he himself went to dine at his palace with certain esquires and pages of his own. And lo, while he sat at meat and believed that all was at peace, suddenly he heard the bell which the traitor monks rang from the campanile. Then the secular enemies of the Abbot came forth swiftly from their hiding-places and rushed into the convent, wishing to make a fresh Abbot of their own; but by God’s mercy the Abbot cast himself down from a certain small upper chamber which they call the ambulatory, and forthwith he waded through the city moat and came, as aforesaid, to the convent of the Friars Minor, trembling for fear as a rush trembles in the water. There all his friends who came to visit him cursed him, heaping reproaches and imprecations on is head; for they said that all this was befallen him by reason of his churlishness and avarice. Yet he bore all with much patience, knowing himself guilty in this matter. Moreover, the month before, that is in May, before these things had befallen the Abbot . . . .”
Here we have another lamentable gap of five sheets, torn out by some impatient reader who was no doubt offended by our friar’s frank revelations. The Abbot’s story, like most others of the kind, had a bloody sequel next year, when (625) “peace was made between the Lupicini and Boiardi, and two monks of San Prospero were slain. These were the monks who had betrayed both their Abbot and their convent. And in process of time within a brief space, another monk of the same convent was slain in revenge for those two, on his way to the court with another priest, for the Abbot had made him his proctor. He asked of his murderers ‘Who are ye?’ They answered and said ‘We are the proctors of those two monks who were slain a few days 212 past; and we have been sent to return blow for blow.’ Thus then they wounded him and left him half dead; and he was taken to the house of his parents, where he confessed himself well, and fell asleep in the Lord. And within a few days the mother of the monk, bowed down with grief, fell sick and gave up the ghost.” Dom Affarosi, the historian of S. Prospero, gives us further details of these disorders. The Boiardi had sacked not only the convent but the church. As the civil wars went on, the affairs of the convent went from bad to worse, so that the monks were obliged to desert it altogether and live in their own hospice of S. Matteo. Not until some years after, when the city had recovered a little quiet by throwing itself into the arms of the despot Obizzo da Este, was Guglielmo’s successor able to begin restoring the ravages wrought on the Abbey by these wars. The Parmese, dreading the effect of these quarrels at Reggio and Modena on their own tranquillity, tried to make peace but only earned the further enmity of the two jealous cities. Shortly after our chronicler’s death, Parma also “drank of the cup of God’s fury.”
THE reader will easily realize that politics were a vivid interest in those days; and it is natural that the friars’ manuals should strictly forbid all listening to or repeating tales of worldly wars. This, however, if we may judge from Salimbene, did not render them less curious. Over and over again, he ends some fresh entry in his chronicle with a phrase like this: “Thus matters stand to-day, on the Octave of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin: how they will end we know not; yet, if life be spared us, we shall see.” We need not wonder that divines and prophets were in great request throughout these uncertain times. “The Inner Party of Modena had a man of Brescia who called himself an astrologer and diviner, to whom they gave daily ten great pennies of silver, and nightly three great Genoese candles of the purest wax, and he promised them that if they fought a third time they should have the victory. And they answered him ‘We will not fight on a Monday or a Tuesday, for that we have been conquered on those two days. Choose us therefore another day; and know that if we gain not this time the promised victory , we will tear out thy remaining evil eye:’ for he was one-eyed. So, fearing to be found out in his falsehood, he carried off all that he had gained, and went his way without saluting his hosts. Then the men of Sassuolo began to mock them, ‘as men who sacrifice to devils and not to God,’ as it is written in Deuteronomy.” Moreover, two of the soothsayers whom Dante has gibbeted were consulted in these civil wars. Asdente is first mentioned on p. 512, where he is described as “a poor working cobbler, pure and simple and fearing God and courteous and urbane: illiterate, but with great illumination of mind, so that he understood the writing of those who have foretold the future, as Abbot Joachim, Merlin, Methodius and the Sibyl, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Daniel and the Apocalypse, and Michael Scot, who was astrologer to the deposed emperor Frederick II. And many things have I heard from Asdente which in process of time 214 came to pass, viz. that Pope Nicholas III should die in the month of August, and be succeeded by Pope Martin: and many of the things which we hope to see if life be spared us. This man besides his own name, which is Master Benvenuto, is commonly called Asdente, that is toothless, by way of contrary, for he hath great and disordered teeth and an impediment in his speech, yet he understands and is understood well. He dwells at the bridge-head of Parma, hard by the city moat and the well, along the street which goes to Borgo San Donnino.” He is mentioned again under 1284 (531) “When the ambassadors of Reggio were in their lodging in the suburb of Santa Cristina, hearing of Asdente the prophet of the men of Parma, they sent for him to consult him of their state, and laid it on his soul that he should withdraw no word of the future which the Lord purposed to bring about. So he answered that if they would keep themselves in peace to the Feast of Christ’s Nativity, they should escape the wrath of God: if not, they should drink of the cup of His wrath as the men of Modena had drunk. They answered him that they would keep well at peace, for they purposed to make intermarriages for peace and friendship. Yet he answered that they were doing all these things fraudulently, and under a cloak and veil of peace. Wherefore the ambassadors of Reggio returned, and ceased from their marriages, and are rather preparing themselves to make and gather together arms of war than to keep peace with each other, that the word of Michael Scot may be fulfilled in them, which he wrote in his verses wherein he predicted the future, ‘And the factions at Reggio shall hold ill words together.’ ”
A little lower down we come for the third time to Asdente, and see again what injustice Dante has done him. (532) “In those days the Lord Obizzo, Bishop of Parma, invited to dinner the prophet of the men of Parma, who is called Asdente, and enquired of him diligently concerning the future. And he said that within a short while the men of Reggio and Parma would suffer many tribulations; and he foretold likewise the death of Pope Martin IV, determining and specifying the times of all these things which I will not set down: and he foretold that three Supreme Pontiffs should succeed and be at discord with each other, one of whom should be lawful, and two unlawfully created: and he had foretold the ruin of Modena before it came to pass. This man is only so far a prophet, that he hath a mind illuminated to understand the sayings of Merlin and the Sibyl and the Abbot Joachim, and all who have foretold anything of the future. He is courteous and humble and familiar, and without pomp or vainglory. Nor doth he say anything positively, but rather, ‘Thus it seemeth 215 to me,’ or ‘Thus do I understand that scripture.’ And when any man reading before him omits anything, immediately he perceives it, and says, ‘Thou deceivest me, for thou hast omitted something.’ And many come from divers parts of the world to inquire of him. A good three months beforehand he predicted the mishap of the Pisans; for a man of Pisa came to Parma of set purpose to inquire of him, after Pisa had already fought twice with Genoa. For the men of Pisa and Genoa met three times in sea-fight, once in 1283, and twice in 1284. In the first two fights 6000 Pisans were reckoned among the dead and wounded, and while they still fought fiercely at sea, a man of Genoa boarded a Pisan vessel, and loaded himself with many plates of silver, and thus armed in steel and laden with silver, wishing to board his own ship again, he missed his mark, and plunged to the bottom like a stone, with his silver and his steel and perchance with many crimes on his head. All this I heard from our Lector at Ravenna, who was a Genoese, and newly come from Genoa. Note and consider the marvel that the Pisans were taken by the Genoese at the same season and month and day and place wherein they themselves had taken the prelates in the days of Pope Gregory IX of pious memory, that thou mayest see the truth of what the Lord saith ‘He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of my eye.’ And note that the Parmese, of whom I am one, are wont to say that a vengeance of thirty years old is timely enough, and they say the truth.
So in the year 1284 the Pisans, seeing all the evil which the Genoese had inflicted upon them, and wishing to avenge themselves, built many ships and galleys and sea-vessels, in the river Arno, and when the fleet had been made ready, they ordained that none betwixt the ages of 20 and 60 years should stay at home, but all should go to the fight. And they scoured the whole of the Genoese shore, destroying and burning, killing and taking captives, and plundering. And this they did along all the shore from Genoa to Provence, desiring to find the Genoese and fight with them. But the Genoese had ordained that none of their citizens should remain at home between the ages of 18 years and 70, for all must go to fight. Thus they scoured the sea, desiring to find the Pisans. At last they found each other between the point of Corsica and Gorgona, and grappled their ships together after the fashion of sea-fights, and there they fought with such slaughter on either side that even the heavens seemed to weep in compassion, and many on either part were slain, and many ships sunken. But when the Pisans had already the upper hand, other Genoese came and fell upon them, wearied as they were. 216 Nevertheless, the battle still raged furiously on both sides. At last, the Pisans finding themselves worsted, yielded themselves to the Genoese, who slew the wounded, and kept the rest in prison: and even the victors had no cause for boasting, since fortune was cruel to either side; and there was such weeping and wailing in Genoa and Pisa as was never heard in those two cities from the day of their foundation to our times. For who without woe and bitter weeping can consider how those two noble cities, whereby all plenty of good things came to us in Italy, destroyed each other from mere ambition and pomp and vainglory, whereby each desired to overcome the other, as though the sea were not wide enough for the ships of both! I care not to write here the number of captives and slain from either side, for they were diversely told. Yet the Archbishop of Parma, in his letter to his blood-brother the Bishop of Bologna, hath named a certain number, which also I care not to write; for I expect Brethren Minor of Pisa, who will better tell me the exact number. And note that this murderous fight between Genoa and Pisa was foretold long before it happened. For in the town of San Ruffino in the Bishopric of Parma, women who were bleaching linen by night, saw two great oxen fighting and retreating, and again meeting to fight with each other. Moreover, after the fight of the Pisans and Genoese, many women of Pisa, fair ladies and noble and rich and mighty, gathered together in companies of thirty and forty at a time, and went on foot from Pisa to Genoa, to seek out and visit their captives. For one had a husband there, another a son or a brother or a cousin . . . And when the aforesaid women sought out their captives, the jailers would answer them, ‘Yesterday thirty died, and to-day forty. We cast them into the sea, and thus we do daily with the Pisans.’ So when these ladies heard such news of their dear ones and could not find them, they fell down amazed with excess of grief, and could scarce breathe for utter anguish and pain of heart. Then after a while, when their breath was come again, they rent their faces with their nails and tore their hair, and raising their voices wept with great wailing until their fountain of tears was dried. For the Pisans died in prison of hunger and famine, and poverty and misery, and anguish and sadness, for ‘they that hated them had dominion over them, and their enemies afflicted them: and they were humbled under their hands.’ Nor were they thought worthy of the sepulchres of their fathers, and they were deprived of burial rites. Moreover, when the aforesaid ladies of Pisa were come home, they found others dead whom they had left safe in their houses. For the Lord smote the Pisans with a 217 plague in that year, and many died: nor was there any house without its dead. For the sword of the Lord’s fury slew the Pisans, because they rebelled long time against the Church. Four years I dwelt in the convent of the Friars Minor at Pisa, a good forty years past; and therefore I am sad for the Pisans, and have compassion on them, God knoweth! Note moreover that as there is a natural loathing between men and serpents, dogs and wolves, horses and gryphons, so is there between the Pisans and Genoese, Pisans and men of Lucca, Pisans and Florentines. So the Florentines and men of Lucca, who are bound with a chain of close friendship, hearing of this defeat of the Pisans, and seeing now their own favourable time, ordained an expedition against Pisa a littlelbefore Christmas in that same year; with which expedition the men of Prato and Corneto also were to come and sweep the rest of the Pisans into their net, and raze the city if possible to the foundations, and blot it from the face of the earth. So the Pisans bethought them of a good counsel, and sent the keys of the gates of their city to Pope Martin, that he might defend them against their enemies. And he received them graciously and repressed the enemies that rose up against them.”
We have seen how Asdente unmasked the treachery which underlay these pacific overtures: and Salimbene shows us more than once how the promised peace of those days might be worse than open war. He himself was one of the two friars selected as peacemakers between the cities of Modena and their exiled enemies. “They answered me most courteously and kindly, that they were most willing to make peace with their fellow-citizens.” (500) But there was an evident want of good faith on both sides, and the war blazed up again. This leads our chronicler to remark “I have little trust of peace among Lombards: for their peacemakings are like the boys’ game when they lay hand above hand upon their knees; and each, seeking to get the better of the other, withdraws his hand from below and strikes it upon the hand above, and thus each thinks to have the better: but oftentimes we see the conqueror conquered in his turn.” And here, after giving instances of inextinguishable party hate at Parma and Bologna, Modena and Reggio, and Cremona, in which Imperialists and churchmen had shown equal rancour and treachery, he goes on to quote Jeremiah ix, 4, 5, and Ecclesiasticus xii, 10-12: “Take ye heed everyone of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother — distrust thine enemy for ever and ever.” He quotes the old fable of the man and serpent who, for a while, lived on friendly terms until one day the latter 218 killed the child of the man, who cut off a great part of his tail in revenge, and then felt generous enough to say “Shall we make peace?” “No,” said the serpent: “for thou wilt never forget thy son’s death, nor I my revenge when I see my mutilated tail. Let each, therefore, work for his own hand as best he can, which will be more profitable alike for thee and for me.”
Moreover, Salimbene’s descriptions show that these later wars in Emilia were no less barbarous than those of Romagna which he has already painted in such lurid colours. (1287-392) “Under pretext of the peace above-mentioned the siege was raised and the men escaped; yet peace was never made, but the men of Gesso did worse than before, plundering and spoiling the villages of the Bishopric of Reggio, and taking prisoners, whom they tortured with divers exquisite torments to extort money for their ransom. And they who did thus were hireling soldiers of Bergamo and Milan and other ruffians from Liguria. Once they took a poor man who had never harmed them; nay, who would have served them if he had been able; whom they led away captive to Gesso and said to him ‘Tax thyself,’ which was as much to say ‘Let us hear what thou canst give us.’ And when he answered that he had nought to give, forthwith they smote him in the mouth with a flint-stone, with which one blow six of his teeth were smitten out, and the seventh was ready to fall. Likewise also they did to many others. For some men’s heads they bound with a cord and lever, and strained it with such force that their eyes started from their sockets and fell upon their cheeks: others they bound by the right or left thumb only, and thus lifted the whole weight of their body from the ground: others again they racked with yet more foul and horrible torments which I blush to relate: others they would hang by the little toe of one foot, or seat them with their hands bound behind their back and lay under their feet a pot of live coals, blowing with the bellows to stir them yet more; with others again they would bind the great toe of their right foot with a bowstring to one tooth, and then prick their backs with a goad that they might tear out their own teeth; or they bound their hands and legs together round a spit (as a lamb is carried to the butcher) and kept them thus hanging on that pole all day long, without food or drink: or again with a hard and rough piece of wood they would grate their shins until the bare bone appeared, which was a misery and sore pity even to behold. And when the chief men of Gesso rebuked them, saying that it was horrible to see such things practised on Christian folk, then these ruffians waxed wroth and threatened to depart from them if they suffered 219 not such things; wherefore the chief men must needs suffer them whether they would or not. Many other torments they invented and inflicted, which I have omitted for brevity’s sake; but these I have written that it may be known how some men are more cruel than beasts: wherefore it is nought but just that they who do such things should be tormented with such devils in hell.”
Meanwhile, whoever might have lost during these civil wars, the friars of Reggio had steadily grown. Already in 1256 they bought the Emperor’s palace for their convent, and found occasion to enlarge it soon after. (463) Soon afterwards, when the Emperor of Constantinople passed through Reggio, it was the friars who lodged him, (no doubt by way of acknowledgment for their tenure of the palace): and the convent was the scene of brilliant festivities which brought rich gifts to the Brethren. (483) And now (582) they began to build a new church, laying the foundation stone on May 18th. But, as ill-luck would have it, “the whole May was a rainy month that year, so that it rained daily, and the country-folk were disquieted, for that they could do no work in the fields: and they laid the blame on the Friars Minor, who had dug up the graves of the dead for the foundations of their church.” St. Francis would have shared the peasant’s horror at this desecration, and still more at the present craving of his brethren for money and creature comforts. The men of Parma, complains Salimbene, “cared little for the friars, for they are ever indevout and hard-hearted towards men of religion.” He comes back to this same subject later on (596) while speaking of the Bishop of Spoleto, known as “Master Roland of Parma, whose father was called Master Taberna, a comely and courteous man and an excellent tailor, who made the garments of the nobles. This Master Roland went to Paris in great poverty, and there he studied many years in divers sciences, and became a great clerk and full of knowledge: after which he became a very great advocate at the Pope’s court, where he gained wealth and honour. And to the Religious of Parma he was ever hard and clownish, and never familiar or kindly: nor did he ever leave them anything at his death. And this cursed property is common to almost all the people of Parma — both clergy and laity, men and women, noble and commonalty — that they are always indevout and hard and cruel to Religious and other servants of God, whether of their own or of other cities, which would seem a most evil sign of the wrath of God upon them. For as Ezechiel saith ‘Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her and of her daughters, 220 and they did not put forth their hand to the needy and to the poor,’ so we may say of the city of Parma for its hardness and mercilessness towards the poor servants of God: and therefore I, Brother Salimbene of Parma, have been 48 years in the Order of Friars Minor, yet never would I dwell at Parma by reason of the indevotion which its citizens show and practise towards God’s servants. For they care not to do them kindness, though at times they could easily help them if they would: for they are most liberal in largesse to play-actors and minstrels and buffoons. Certainly if a city so great as Parma were in France, then 100 Friars Minor would be settled to dwell there in all decency and comfort, and abundantly supplied with all things needful.” Yet presently a Parmesan Cardinal did actually give £20 Imperial to the convent, and another £10 each to the two Brethren who went on an embassy to him at Rome (597) — which latter gift shows, even more clearly than Salimbene’s commercial criterion of religion, how far the Order had already changed in the 60 years since St. Francis had written “I strictly forbid the Brethren, all and single, to accept coin or money in any way, whether directly or through a third person.” We see also how fast the friars were losing the unique popularity and influence which they had enjoyed so long as they were really poor. (627) “In this year, at the Carnival season, the men of Reggio disported themselves not after the fashion of other Christian people, who all and in every place revel and play the fool at that season (stultizant et infatuantur); but rather they kept silence as though they mourned their dead. But in the season of Lent, when the time is sacred to God, then began they to play; yet this is the acceptable time and the day of salvation, a time for giving alms, and doing works of piety, moreover a time for confession and hearing of sermons, and of visiting churches, of praying, and fasting, and weeping, as the church lessons tell us. So in the solemn Lenten season the men of Reggio wrought not the aforesaid works of piety or devotion; and although the Lord forbiddeth a man to use woman’s apparel they heeded this not, but walked after their own inventions. For many of them borrowed garments from ladies, wherein they clothed themselves and began to play and wander through the city as in a tournament. And, that they might the better resemble women, they painted white masks wherewith they covered their faces, caring nought for the penalty promised for such deeds. For the Scripture saith of sinners ‘all faces shall be made like a kettle:’ and again ‘the faces of them all are as the blackness of a kettle:’ and again ‘their face is now made blacker than 221 coals.’ (Joel ii, 6. Nahum ii, 10. Lam. iv, 8.) Woe to such wretched Christians, who strive to turn the worship of the Church into dissoluteness and vain talk! for certain wretched Christians in the cities of Lombardy neither fast nor confess their sins in the solemn season of Lent. And, since no flesh can be found at that season in the market, therefore they eat in secret the flesh of hens and capons; and after the hour of siesta they sprawl all day long in the squares and under the porticoes, playing with dice at games of hazard; and there they blaspheme the Lord, and the Blessed Virgin His mother. Note that the Apostle hath described certain signs of evil Christians who shall live about the days of Antichrist; which signs seem to be fulfilled in these men of our days who sin without shame. (1 Tim. iv, 1: 2 Tim. iii, 1.) And note that for the many evils done by the Jews, the Lord complained of them and removed them from before his face (Jer. xxxii, 30.) See in the Bible. Yet not even so will wretched sinners be warned; but they are as the sluggard of whom it is written in Proverbs (xxii, 24-32). For in the years before this date certain millers of the city with cunning and malice prepense, begged and obtained of the Friars Minor certain old frocks, saying that they would cause them to be cleansed in a fulling-mill: and afterwards, in the Carnival season and at the hour of vespers, they clothed themselves in these borrowed frocks as Friars Minor and danced in the public street. Which folly they wrought at the instigation of the Devil, desiring to lay a blot on the elect, that the passers-by might believe those revellers to be Friars Minor, and the matter might thus redound to the scandal and disgrace of the Order. But the Podesta of the city, hearing of this, and being moved to bitter wrath by his zeal both for the Friars and for the dignity of his office, fined them heavily and issued a perpetual decree that no others should ever dare to do likewise.” Though two well-known preachers publicly justified these lententide revels at Reggio, God showed His displeasure by permitting the Monk of Canossa to make a bloody incursion into the city shortly afterwards: (632) “and that day I came down to Reggio from the convent of Montefalcone and entered the city, and saw all these things with mine own eyes: for all day I went round the streets while these things were done. Moreover, on this day of tumult, after the hour of noon, many ribalds and evildoers ran to the convent of the Friars Minor, and would have entered it and carried off the goods therein deposited [by others]. But the Brethren seeing this rang the great bell, and forthwith the Lord Guido da Tripoli came fully armed on his charger, as I saw with mine own eyes, and smote 222 them with his mace and put them all to flight. And he looked on me and said ‘Ha, Brethren, why have ye no stout staves wherewith to smite these ribalds, that they spoil not your goods?’ Then I answered that it was not lawful to us to smite any man, as the Lord saith, ‘If one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other.’ Yet He Himself showed that we should not do this to the letter, in that He answered to him who smote Him on the cheek, ‘If I have spoken well, why strikest thou Me?’ Yet a certain holy father fulfilled this to the letter: for when a demoniac had smitten him on the cheek, he turned the other; and forthwith the demon, confounded at his humility, left the man’s body and vexed him no more.” Nor was this the only occasion on which rioters scented plunder in the friaries; for “in this same year 18 ribalds of the men of Gesso purposed to come and despoil the Friars Minor in their convent of Montefalcone. But when this came to the ears of certain Lords, they frightened them by threats from their purpose; so that the fools ceased from their folly.” But, however the Friars had lost in real spiritual influence with the masses — however they might alarm even their patron the Pope by their encroachments on the duties and privileges of the parish clergy — they were still at the zenith of their popularity among the richer classes, to whom for many generations they were tactful and not too exacting confessors. Of this Salimbene gives us instructive glimpses on almost the last page of his chronicle. In spite of the peculiarly odious crimes with which he charges Obizzo of Este, one of the most conspicuous tyrants in Dante’s Inferno; in spite of the fact that Boccaccio put the Countess on very much the same moral plane as her husband, our chronicler is proud to relate how the former feasted the assembled Friars at the General Chapter of 1287, and how the latter was buried in their convent. This Chapter (it may be noted) was presided over by the Acquasparta of Par. xii. 124.
It is evident that the good old friar felt deeply both the public disasters around him and the decaying prestige of his Order; “These accursed parties and divisions in Italy cannot be healed or assuaged, by reason of men’s wickedness and the Devil’s malice” (591): and again “the whole world is seated in wickedness.” One symptom of the deep-rooted unrest was the appearance of an impostor claiming to be the Emperor Frederick, long since dead and damned. Another report, still more interesting to Salimbene, announced the impending conversion of the Tartars to Christianity: for “truthful travellers who have lately come from the Holy Land (to wit, Friars Minor and Preachers,) report 223 that a very great and new marvel shall come to pass among the Tartars and Saracens. For they say that the son of the late king of the Tartars is purposed to be in Jerusalem for Easter Eve; and if he shall see the fire coming down from heaven as the Christians assert, then he promises to slay all the heathen whom he can find.” These reports of a wholesale and miraculous conversion of Tartars or other infidels were frequently circulated by “truthful travellers” in the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon shows us how they were begotten of men’s belief in the approaching end of the world, to which this conversion would be a necessary preliminary (Matt. xiv. 14).1 The yearly miracle of fire at Jerusalem had been condemned by Gregory IX in 1238 as a barefaced forgery of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre: but it evidently flourished still, for Salimbene hints no suspicion whatever, though he was not uncritical for his age.
But amid all his records of war, and grave misgivings for the future, he never loses his interest in picturesque trifles. He has much to tell us of the obstinate ambition of the Parmese to get a bell which would be heard northward to rival Borgo San Donnino, and southward to Reggio — 14 and 17 miles off. (584) They sent for a famous master who came from Pisa “like a great baron.” The whole town marvelled at his elaborate preparations for the great mould. Vast sums were spent on three attempts, yet even the last and best of the three bells “could scarce be heard over the city of Parma,” which was a providential blow to the citizen’s pride. Two years later a fourth was made, which, before it had been hung in the tower, “fell down from its platform and hurt no man, save that it cut off the foot of a certain young man, wherewith he had once spurned his own father” (634). He is always much impressed by comets, eclipses, and earthquakes, and believes, of course, firmly in their occult influence on current events. Of plagues there are naturally frequent notices: e.g., in 1285 (584) “in the village of Popilio in the bishopric of Parma 80 men died within three months; for this is a general rule or proved fact that, whensoever we have a cattle plague, the next year comes always a pestilence on men. The plague and sickness was so great that year in Rome, that bishops and mitred Abbots, between Easter and the Feast of the Assumption, died to the number of twenty-four (593). And, of strangers only, two thousand died in the city; and the Friars Minor had oft-times four funerals in their church in one day. And there was an old bishop-elect from beyond the Alps, who had come to Rome for his consecration; and he died with twenty-five of his attendants. Then I remembered the words of the prophet Amos ‘Wailing 224 shall be in all streets, and they shall say in all the highways Alas! alas!’ (v. 16, 17: viii, 3).” Later on in the year (608) “there was a terrible plague among the cats: for they fell sick, and were covered with blotches like lepers, and in process of time they died. Moreover, on the feast of St. Callistus (Oct. 14) two stars appeared in conjunction at the hour of dawn; and so they appeared nightly for many days; but about the feast of All Saints they began to separate again.” Nothing seems to escape him. He notices how rich one particular summer is in butterflies, and augurs from it a repetition of past caterpillar plagues. (547). Another year, there were “such a vast multitude of gnats that their importunate bites made men aweary of their lives . . . and the reapers ended not their harvest till the end of July; so that to Christian folk there seemed a punishment in that which had been promised as a blessing to the Jews: ‘the threshing of your harvest shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing-time.’ ” Even his smallest personal experiences are recorded to point a moral. (547) “In this aforesaid year, on the Feast of St. Clara, I ate for the first time raviuoli without any crust of pastry; and this I say to show how subtle is human gluttony in this appetite of bodily meats in comparison of earlier men, who were content with the food created by nature, whereof Ovid saith in the first book of his Metamorphoses ‘And, contented with the meats created of nature’s own free will, they picked arbutus berries and beechnuts from the mountains, and cornels and blackberries clinging to the rough brambles, and acorns fallen from the spreading tree of Jove.’ ” Raviuoli are a sort of rissole: and it was evidently looked upon as a tour de force to fry them without the usual envelope of pastry.
Under the year 1285 he records an incident at Reggio which illustrates admirably the medieval attitude towards inconvenient trade combinations. (586) “In this year it was ordained in full council of the citizens of Reggio, that fishmongers should sell no fish from the beginning of Lent until after Easter, under penalty of £25 Bolognese, and that none should buy of them under pain of £10 Bolognese; and this statute was most strictly kept. Now the cause thereof was that, when knights or judges would enquire of some fisherman ‘At what price wilt thou sell this fish?’ the latter, though asked twice or thrice, would disdain to answer; nay, rather he would turn away his face, and speak with his partner, saying: ‘Gossip, put the barrel or the chest in that place!’ according to the Proverb ‘A servant will not be corrected by words: because he understandeth what thou sayest, and 225 will not answer.’ Moreover, they demanded three or four grossi for a single small tench or eel. When therefore the fishermen and fishmongers saw how strictly and steadfastly men kept the statute made against them, and they lost much thereby (for all their fish were numbered and placed in stewponds until after Easter) then they came to the Friars Minor and besought them to beg of the Podesta and the Captain and the Ancients and the whole council some relaxation of that statute: in which case they for their part would promise to sell reasonably and discreetly and courteously and good cheap to all who desired to buy of their fish. Yet not even so was the statute relaxed, as the Apostle saith of Esau, ‘for he found no place of repentance, although with tears he had sought it.’ Moreover, the citizens threatened to deal in like manner with the butchers at Eastertide, unless they sold their flesh in the shambles both courteously and reasonably. But the butchers hearing this did after the Wise Man’s counsel ‘The wicked man being scourged, the fool shall be wiser.’ ”
A similar quarrel between priests and people had already had much the same issue (504). “In the month of October 1280 a quarrel arose between the Lord Guglielmo, Bishop of Reggio, with the clergy of his city and bishopric on the one part, and the Lord Dego, Captain of the people, with the citizens of Reggio on the other part. This quarrel was by reason of the tithes, for the clergy seemed to wish to collect too much from the men of the people and all the citizens. Wherefore the Lord Captain, with the 24 Defenders of the People, made certain statutes against the lay-collectors of the said tithes, by reason of which statutes the Lord Bishop excommunicated the aforesaid Captain and 24 Defenders and the whole Council-General of the people, and therewithal he laid the whole city under an interdict. So the people were wroth at this, and chose other 25 from among themselves, among whom were 7 judges (among the aforesaid 24 there had been 4 judges), and made many other statutes against the clergy. First, that none should pay them any tithe, nor give them counsel, help, or favour, nor sit at meat with them, nor stay in their service, nor have any dealings of trade with them, nor dwell in their houses or at their farms, nor give them to eat or to drink — and many other such provisions there were, and a most grievous penalty was laid upon the breach of any one. Neither might any man grind their corn, nor bake their bread, nor shave them, nor do any service to them: and the aforesaid Wise Men claimed of their own authority to proclaim, resolve, and ordain in the aforesaid matters according to their own will and pleasure. 226 This claim was afterwards confirmed by the General Council of the People, and all the aforesaid laws were ratified and kept both by all the people and by the Knights and other chief men. So the reason of these laws many millers were condemned each to a fine of £50 of money of Reggio, for that they remained in the mills of the clergy against the aforesaid ordinances beyond the term fixed; and many other persons were condemned also . . . In the month of November of the same year this matter of the tithes was peaceably concluded . . . to the effect that none should be compelled to pay tithes but according to his own conscience, and many other provisions which were written in the aforesaid treaty.”2
IT is natural enough that the tone of the old man’s chronicle should grow sadder towards its end. The year 1285 was marked by many tragic occurrences. At Faenza, hard by, a noble was murdered with his son, by some cousins in whose house they had sat down to dinner: at Cesena Malatesta of Rimini (the Mastin Vecchio of Dante, Inf. xxvii, 46) was nearly murdered by Taddeo da Buonconte, but just managed to slip away, though wounded, through the open door of the convent of the Austin Friars, where he took sanctuary. This same year saw the death of the four sovereigns who loomed largest on the horizon — Charles of Anjou, Peter of Aragon, Martin IV, and Philip the Bold of France: and our chronicler dismisses them with a characteristic epitaph (600) “Note that these four great men of whom I have made mention were all ‘stout hunters before the Lord,’ (i.e., oppressors of mankind) . . . . . yet in one and the same year they went the way of all flesh. Whereof Primas hath written most excellently in his treatise ‘Of this World’s Life,’ saying
‘Out, alas! dear life on earth,
Why art thou so rich in mirth?
Since thou mayst not stay with me,
Why must I so cling to thee?’ ”
Not only was there this public memento mori, but Salimbene had also to mourn a far nearer loss — that of two old friends (594). “About the Feast of St. Lucy died Bernabo di Regina, a native of Reggio, expiring suddenly in his bed without warning of illness. He was a dear friend of mine, and his words were the joy of canons, cardinals, and prelates, with knights and barons and all who loved mirth; for he spake most excellently in the French and Tuscan and Lombard tongues, and in divers other fashions. He could speak childishly, as children speak with each other; or as women speak with women, discussing 228 their own affairs in familiar speech with their gossips; and he could imitate the fashion of address of the ancient preachers, as they held forth in the days of the Alleluia, when they took upon themselves to work miracles, as I saw with mine own eyes in those days.”1 The other friend was a lady, heroine of a domestic tragedy, which recalls that of Pia de’ Tolomei. We must go back a little, with Salimbene, to understand the circumstances of the family into which she married.
Ghiberto da Gente, Podesta of Parma for many years, became so unpopular that he was finally driven from the city, but kept a country villa not far off, at Campagine. In process of time, however, his sons became even more unpopular than the father: so that the whole race was driven forth utterly by the citizens in this year 1285, and their villa destroyed. (606-607). “For thou must know that Ghiberto had a son named Pino, whose wicked deeds provoked the men of Parma in many ways against Ghiberto’s heirs; for first he attacked and took Guastalla, and would have held it in spite of Parma; then he married a wife whom he afterwards caused to be murdered; from which crime, by God’s providence, much evil came afterwards upon him. Now his father Ghiberto was at first desirous to take this same lady to wife, when he dwelt in exile at Ancona after his expulsion from Parma: but Pinotto forestalled his father and secretly stole her away, for greed of her wealth and for the allurement of her comeliness. She was called the Lady Beatrice; and she had much treasure and was a comely lady, alert and merry and liberal and courtly; and she was exceeding well skilled in the games of chess and hazard,2 and dwelt with Pino her husband at Bianello, which had once been a castle of the Countess Matilda. Oftentimes she would come to the convent of the Friars Minor at Montefalcone in the days when I dwelt there, for the sake of recreation and of speaking with the Brethren: and she related to me in familiar converse that men would have slain her; and I know of whom she spoke, and had compassion on her, and taught her that she should confess her sins and ever order her life well, that she might be ever ready to meet death. In those days her husband Pino departed in great wrath against the Lord Guido his cousin, as I saw with mine own eyes, and he took his wife with him to the village of Correggio, wherein he caused her to be smothered with a featherbed by a squire named Martinello, and in that same village she was buried; and he had by her three daughters who are most comely damsels. And, seeing it is written that ‘the soul of the wounded hath cried out, and God doth not suffer it to pass unrevenged,’ therefore I must say 229 somewhat of the misfortunes which befel her husband. First he became hateful, not only to the men of Parma, but even to his cousins and nephews: secondly he was taken by the ruffians of Sassuolo, who took from him for ransom his horses and £200 Imperial: thirdly, on a time when he would have avenged himself by plundering a wayfarer on the highway leading to Parma, the citizens sent to the village of Campagine, wherein he had his possessions, and ploughed up all his crops and green corn, and razed to the ground fourteen or twenty of his houses in the village: fourthly, the lady whom he took to wife after the murder of his first spouse could never be his lawful wife, since there were many hindrances on either side. She was named the Lady Beatrice even as his first wife, and was most comely, and daughter to the Lord Jacobino da Palude; he espoused her in her widowhood of her first husband the Lord Atta da Sesso. Fifthly and lastly, once again he took certain men and cast them into chains in his dungeons, and would take no ransom for them, though they had never offended him nor owed him any obedience: wherefore the men of Parma, seeing that he was already outlawed and yet ceased not from evil, cast forth both Pino and all the heirs of Ghiberto da Gente from their village of Campagine. This Pinotto was named likewise the Lord Jacobino, and was a comely man and of great courage, bold and careless, and most haughty, as is the manner of the men of Parma.
The misfortunes which Salimbene so gladly records here may seem a light enough punishment for a cowardly murder; but there was more to follow in later years. Next year the cousin Guido, whose conduct had occasioned Pino’s jealousy, was himself murdered. (615) “For he was journeying from Reggio to Bianello with his kinswoman, the Lady Giovannina, wife to his brother Bonifazio, which brother followed without attendants at a distance of three miles; and these three had only a few hackneys with them, and they were unarmed and without escort. The murderers of these two brethren were, first, one Scarabello da Canossa, who threw the Lord Guido from his horse and thrust him through with his lance as he lay on the ground so that there needed not second blow: and secondly, Azzolino, brother to the Abbot of Canossa, and son to the Lord Guido da Albareto, who smote off his head: and others there were, both on horse and on foot, who smote him with many strokes, ‘and tore him with wound upon wound.’ So likewise they did to his brother Bonifazio who followed hard on him. Then they laid the Lady Giovannina on her horse, wherefrom she had cast herself to fall upon her Lord Guido, believing and hoping that they 230 would spare him for her sake, since she was their kinswoman; and all day she journeyed alone and groaning in the bitterness of her heart, and came to Bianello; and there she told her bitter tidings. And they that heard her lifted up their voices and wept most bitterly, until the fount of their tears was dried up. And all that night the bodies of the two brethren lay in that waste and solitary spot. Yet some say that the Lord Manfredino was moved to pity at these tidings, and took men and a waggon, and raised and joined together the bodies, and laid them in the church of the Templars midway on the road to Bianello. And next day came the men of Bianello, and carried off the bodies and buried them in their robes and armour in the sepulchre of their fathers, in the convent of the Friars Minor at Montefalcone; and it was a Saturday, whereon men sang for the Epistle at Mass those words of Jeremiah, ‘Let their wives be bereaved of children, and widows.’ And, for that the Lord Rolandino of Canossa was cousin-german to this Scarabello, therefore he was accused before the Podesta: (for Scarabello himself had been already banished from Reggio, nor would he have appeared if he had been cited.) Wherefore the Lord Bonifacio, Podesta of Reggio, sent for the Lord Rolandino, who came before him with a very great multitude of armed men: so when the Podesta had learned his innocence in this matter he suffered him to go in peace and unhurt. Then the Lord Guido da Albareto was accused, and appeared and was kept ten days in prison, and gently tortured once only, and then sent away. And while he was being put to the torture, the men of Reggio thought they must needs have civil war for three reasons: first, by reason of these two brothers lately slain; secondly, by reason of this great lord who was being tortured; and thirdly, by reason of the parties at Reggio. (For there were two parties, each whereof called itself, and was indeed, of the Church party: for they of the Emperor’s party had been cast forth from the city many years since, and still wandered homeless through the world.) But at the beginning, when the Lord Guido was to be put to torture, the Podesta besought him to suffer it in all patience for God’s sake and his own; more especially’ (he said) ‘in that I am unwilling to inflict such pain, but I needs must do so, both by reason of my office, and by reason of the crime whereof you stand accused.’ So the Lord Guido, knowing that the Podesta did this for the honour of both parties, suffered patiently that which afore would have been sour and bitter to him; yet afterwards, when he knew the reason, he held it pleasant. And he said to the Podesta, ‘If it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as 231 thou wilt.’ Yet there were some who said that the aforesaid Guido was spared all torment, with the help of money, which all things obey. For his son Roland, Abbot of Canossa, gave £100 Imperial to the Lord Guido da Correggio, and as much again to the Podesta of Reggio; and by their favour he escaped this torment. So when it was noised abroad that he should be tortured, the Podesta would suffer none to be there with him but himself alone; and then he caused him to sit awhile on a great balance for weighing flour, and spake familiarly with him of all these things which had befallen. So when he was come down from this instrument of torture3 and lay in bed, he sent for his brother Jacopo da Palude and told him all that he had suffered in his torture: then he came down from the palace and went to the house of the Lord Roalndino of Canossa, which was hard by the piazza; and there he dwelt at his ease, eating and drinking and merrymaking the whole day long. Yet before, when he came down from the Palazzo Communale, he had caused himself to be upheld by two men, one on either side, as desiring thereby to show that he had been grievously tortured by the Podesta. But the Lord saith ‘There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed.’ Moreover, concerning this Lord Guido da Albereto, it was told me by his son the Abbot of Canossa, speaking familiarly with me hard by the gate of the town of Gesso, that five years before his father suffered this mishap, he himself had enquired of a certain diviner of that which should befal his father; whereupon the diviner showed him a book wherein was written ‘He shall fall into the hands of a judge:’ as indeed came to pass. Whereby we see not only prophets foretell the future, but even sometimes demons and sinful men; yet the righteous foretell it better than they, as I may be able to show next year, if life be spared me. . . .
(617) “Now this Lord Guido da Bianello who was thus murdered was a comely man, and learned, and of great discernment and memory, and ready speech, and eloquence, sprightly and jocund and free and liberal, and of most familiar and pleasant company, and a lover and a great benefactor of the Friars Minor. For the Friars Minor had a convent on his lands, in the wood at the foot of Montefalcone, where he also was buried with his brother in the supulchre of their fathers, as I have said above: God of his mercy grant that his soul may rest in peace, if so it may be. Amen. for while he lived he was an exceeding good friend to me and to Guido di Adamo, my brother in the flesh and in Religion, who likewise died and was buried at Montefalcone. Yet this Lord Guido was held to be a man of malice by them 232 that loved him not; and they accused him of many wickednesses; that is, that he was a slanderer and defamer of God’s servants. And that is ever the wont of carnal men, gladly to defame God’s servants, for that they think themselves excused of their own sins if they may have holy men to bear them company. Moreover, men accused him that he was wont to say ‘If I am predestined to eternal life, then shall I come thereto, whatsoever may be my sins; and if I am predestined to eternal damnation, so shall it be likewise, in spite of all good deeds.’ In proof whereof he would bring forward that which is written ‘Whosoever shall seek to save his life, shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose it, shall preserve it.’ And such was his folly that, howsoever either I or other Brethren and friends of his might warn him to look to his ways, he scorned to hear us and would only answer, ‘It is written, “He that is hasty to give credit, is light of heart, and shall be lessened.” ’ Yet I would answer against him (for he was most learned in the Bible) saying ‘The Wise Man saith “Blessed is the man that is always fearful.” ’ And, as aforesaid, he would not hear me, but ever shook his head as though he scorned all that I spake to him. So I said to him, ‘It is written in the Proverbs “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that is wise hearkeneth unto counsels.” ’ Yet when I had thus spoken, adding, ‘I have said to thee all that in me lieth,’ then answered he and said ‘Ecclesiasticus saith “There are many words that have much vanity in disputing.’ ” . . . . Here five sheets have been torn out of the MS., no doubt as having scandalized some reader. This fatalistic infidelity, as will be seen below, was common among the upper classes in the Middle Ages.
The feud broke out again; and the Monk of Canossa made a murderous incursion into the city of Reggio, as above recorded, in revenge for the death of his kinsman. But the final vengeance only came in 1287 (638), when “on the 17th day of May was slain Pinotto, son of the Lord Ghiberto da Gente, in his villa of Campagine, by his nephews Ghibertino and Guglielmo. The cause of this murder was a certain mill, for the possession of which each party contended — nay, what is worse, he was slain for the sake of a pinza or small tongue of land behind the mill. But many days and years before this he had exchanged words of discord and contention with them and with their father; wherefore they came with certain evil doers and hired murderers and fell upon him with clubs and other weapons, and slew him. And note here three judgments of God. First, that all who were consenting and privy to the death of Pinotto’s wife, the Lady 233 Beatrice of Apulia, were slain themselves also within a brief space: the first of whom was Pinotto himself; then the Lord Guido da Bianello. For the Lord Guido had given Pinotto cause for her death, since he would have lain with her, but she utterly spurned such a temptation, not only for the crime of adultery, but also for that Pinotto and Guido were cousins-german. The third was one Martinello, who smothered her one night with a featherbed in the villa of Correggio. The second judgment of God is that this same Martinello was not only present at the murder of Pinotto (whose wife he had already slain at his bidding) but also, being wounded at the siege of Montecalvolo, returned home, and there met his death by his wife’s own treachery, whereof he was ignorant. The third marvellous judgment of God is that, if strangers had slain Pinotto, instead of his nephew, then those same nephews would have avenged his death for the honour of their house, and according to the vainglorious custom of worldly men.”4
This, then, was a sad year for our sociable friar; and his melancholy finds expression in the last words he wrote under this date. He has been speaking of certain noble families which he remembered in Parma, and of Friars who lived in the earlier heroic days of the Order; and he goes on (1286-366) “I have written these matters aforesaid, for that I have seen and known wellnigh all these men whereof I have spoken; and quickly, as in a brief space, they have passed from this life into another. If more noteworthy deeds were done in this year 1285 I remember them not. I have written the aforesaid in good faith, with truth for my guide, even as I saw each thing with mine own eyes. Here endeth the year 1285: and here followeth the year which is to come.”
Our chronicler’s forebodings of evil were soon justified: for the year 1286 was not only destined to bring fightings and fears to Reggio, but was big from the first with those small troubles of life which are not always the most tolerable. “This year was a disordered wintertide, for all ancient saws were found false except one which men commonly say, ‘February brief, yet most fulfilled of grief.’ Which proverb was most plentifully fulfilled this year, above all that I have seen in all the days of my life: for seven times this February did God ‘give snow like wool;’ and there was a mighty cold and frost. And many blains and boils were engendered both in men and in hens, which afterwards broke out openly. For in Cremona and Piacenza and Parma and Reggio and many other cities and Bishoprics of Italy there were very many deaths both among men and among hens; and 234 in the city of Cremona a single woman lost, within a brief space, forty-eight hens; and a certain doctor of medicine caused some to be opened, and found on the tip of the heart of each hen a boil like unto a small bladder; he caused a dead man to be opened likewise, on whose heart he found the same. In those days, in the month of May, Master John the Leech, who dwelt at Venice and had a stipend from the city, sent a letter to his fellow citizens of Reggio, warning them to eat neither potherbs, nor eggs, nor hens’ flesh throughout the month of May: wherefore a hen was sold in those days for five small pence. Yet certain wise women fed their hens with pounded rue mingled with bran or meal; by the virtue of which antidote they were liberated and escaped death.” Then, when a bright spring sunshine had tempted the almonds and all the other fruit trees into their richest blossom, a sudden frost cut off all the hope of the orchards for that year, and men were but half consoled even by the plenty of corn and oil and wine which followed.
Moreover, it was a bad year for the Franciscan Order, and therefore for Salimbene, than whom the Order had no more convinced champion. Pope Honorius very nearly decided a quarrel between “certain prelates” and the Friars in favour of the former, and would certainly have done so but for his providential removal from this world in the very nick of time, in answer to the prayers of the Brethren (see chap. xxi below). Again, the Franciscans were boycotted by their old allies the Cistercians, whom the friars had at last alarmed by their enormous growth and (it must frankly be confessed) their continual pious encroachments (623). “A certain Friar Minor left our Order to enter that of the Cistercians, and he bore himself so well among them that they made him Abbot of a great monastery. Then the Friars, having a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge on this occasion, fearing moreover lest others might leave our Order after the example of this brother, took him and brought him back into his past Order and fed him with the bread of affliction and water of distress. The Cistercians hearing this were greatly troubled and incensed against the Friars, and this for five several reasons. First, for that they punished so sorely a man who deserved no punishment. Secondly, for that he had already been released from our Order. Thirdly, for that they took him clad in his own Cistercian habit. Fourthly, for that he had a great prelacy in their Order, being an Abbot. Fifthly, for that he had borne himself so excellently in their Order, as to his life and good manners, as to be acceptable and gracious to all men. Brother Bonagrazia, when he was Minister Provincial 235 of Bologna, had a like quarrel with the Abbey of Nonantola. For a certain brother Guidolino of Ferrara left our Order and entered among the Black Monks of St. Benedict, where he bore himself so well and laudably in the Abbey of Nonantola that he was beloved by all, and they chose him for Abbot.5 Wherefore the Friars had a great altercation with those monks before the Lord Giovanni Gaietano, who was then Protector of our Order and who after was Pope Nicholas III; and the Friars with much violence obtained their desire that he should not be Abbot; yet the said monks spent £10,000 Imperial that they might have him for their Abbot. And finding that they laboured in vain to procure his election, they chose no other in his room, but made him lord of their Abbey as though he were their true Abbot. See now how those monks loved him! Yet he was like Joseph of old, nor would he return evil for evil unto his brethren, though he had it in his power and opportunity: nay, rather he studied to do them good. For he saw and welcomed our Brethren at Nonantola as angels from heaven, and prayed them to keep two copyists always there at the expense of the Abbey, that they might copy to their fill the original writings whereof it had great plenty. This Brother Guidolino was my close friend when we dwelt together in the convent of Ravenna. And note that the Friars Minor obtained of Pope Nicholas IV (who was of their own Order) the privilege that none who left their Order should ever be promoted to any prelacy in another Order.” It is obvious how often such a privilege must have roused the indignation of the older foundations, already too often jealous of the rapid growth of the Friars. The Cistercian quarrel, however, was settled by the personal intervention of the Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg, who loved both Orders alike.
The events of these last years were indeed a few degrees less barbarous than what Salimbene had seen in his youth at the siege of Parma, and later on during the civil wars of Romagna: but his mind had lost something of its elasticity, and it now seemed to him that the foundations of the earth were out of course. He was out of sympathy even with the democratic movement of the century which the Friars, directly or indirectly, had done so much to promote. (1287-391) “In these days the Commonalty of Bologna made heavy statutes against their knights and all the nobles of their city, namely that whosoever of the knights or nobles should wrong a man of the people’s guilds, that man should be so spoiled both in his villages and in the city, in his houses and fields and trees, that of all his possessions not one stone should be left on another. And the 236 first to fall under this curse were the sons of the Lord Niccolo de’ Bazeleri, who were utterly despoiled by the people: wherefore the knightly families of Bologna fear now to live in the city, for the onslaughts of the famous Commonalty: and, like the French, they dwell now on their country estates: wherefore the common folk, who now live in the city, may well be called henceforth the bourgeois, as in France. But let the Commonalty dread lest God’s wrath come upon them, for they do against the Scripture (Levit. xix, 15). Moreover the men of the people and country folk are they through whom the world is ruined, but through knights and nobles it is saved. For Patecchio saith in his Book of Pests
“Et quando de sola fit tomera, etc.,”
which is to say, that it is a pest when that is exalted which should be lowly. Remember the example of the butchers of Cremona, one of whom had a great dog who bore patiently many insults from another butcher’s small dog; but when the other would not ease from his accustomed insolence, being at last provoked beyond measure, he caught him by the throat and drowned him in the Po. And so are many in this world, who if they lived in peace would be hurt by no man; but because they go about seeking quarrels of set purpose, therefore they find them. That same year the men of Bologna banished many of their fellow citizens to dwell in exile in divers cities: and this was done by the Commonalty, who had gained the mastery over the knights. And note that the Holy Scriptures speak of the dominion of certain persons as most mischievous; that is, of women, children, servants, and fools; also of enemies and worthless persons.”
He was evidently weary of politics: for, after a brief notice of the faction fights at Parma between Guido Correggio and the Bishop, he adds (398): “and men spake of these things with praise or reviling according to their love or their hate. But the blessed Augustine saith that we should care little for men’s judgment, giving for his reason that ‘neither can injustice damn a man, nor false praise crown him.’ ”
But, looking at the wars beyond his own immediate neighbourhood, the good friar chronicles an event in which he evidently took a personal interest of the liveliest sort. In these, the last words that he wrote, readers of Dante will recognize something more than mere aversion to the foreigner as a foreigner: something of that filial compassion for Mother Italy which, even in those minds in which party politics came foremost, necessarily 237 implied a hatred of the French. Salimbene had lived in France and made friends there; his own Guelfs owed their triumph in the peninsula mainly to a French prince, Charles of Anjou; but the foreigner could bring no lasting peace to Italy. On the contrary, his very presence implied, and tended to perpetuate, the discords which had made her a mere “hostelry of pain.” The Frenchman in Italy, like our own Henry V and Bedford in France, was inevitably hated even by the party to whose political purposes he directly ministered: and Salimbene, who had so little sympathy with the political ambitions of the Popes, had naturally still less with the foreigners who had been imported to serve those ambitions. These concluding words of his chronicle form an admirable commentary on the striking fact that, to Dante, St. Louis himself is not the hero which even modern Protestants and freethinkers see in him, but simply the somewhat despicable brother of the hated Charles of Anjou.6
“Moreover, in this year 1287, many French ships were sunken in the sea beyond Naples by the fleet of Peter of Aragon. And many of King Charles’ fleet who had survived the fight, common folk and knights, nobles and barons, were blinded by their captors. Which vengeance was just and merited, for they are most proud and foolish, an accursed folk who despise almost all other peoples of the world; and especially do they scorn the English and the Lombards (under which term they include all Italians and all on this side of the Alps): whereas in truth it is they who are despicable and scorned of all men. For to them we may apply that which is said in the trutannic verse of Trutannus
The Vagrant with his pot of wine, warm in an ingle-nook,
Will deem the wealthiest Eastern King scarce fit to be his cook.7
For when Frenchmen have well drunken, then they think to beat down and conquer the whole world at one blow. But they are deceived * . . . . therefore the French are proud beyond measure. And they afflicted the Kingdom of Naples, and Tuscany, and the Lombards dwelling in the kingdom of Apulia, and took from them their victuals without money and without price — corn and wine and milk, fish and flesh, capons and geese and hens and whatsoever they found fit for food. Nor was it enough that they gave no payment; but they beat men also and wounded them grievously. A man of Parma had a most fair wife; and when she asked of a certain Frenchman 238 the price of the geese which she had sold him, not only did he refuse her all payment, but he wounded her grievously, with so sore a stroke that no second was needed; and yet he asked of her ‘Wilt thou that I smite thee again?’ Her husband hearing this quaked with indignation; and herein was no marvel: for whereas aforetime she had been most perfect in beauty, now all the rest of her life she halted in her gait by reason of that stroke. Wherefore I say that the rule of the French hath ever been most foul and cruel, and it is just that mishap should fall upon them and that they should be destroyed. Moreover in that same year the men of the ancient party of the Emperor Frederick, seeing that they could neither take by force nor hold Reggio nor Modena, went then and seized . . . . .” With these words the present manuscript breaks off, though, as we know from the author’s own headline to fol. 356 (p. 590), there once existed more of it, in which he treated again of civil wars under the two texts “Mistrust thine enemy for ever and ever” and “Bring not every man into thine house” (Eccles. xii, 10 and xi, 31). The good friar, as we have seen, probably died either towards the end of 1288 or not long afterwards.
* On this last page of the MS. a few words here and there are entirely illegible.
WITH these last words of his chronicle Salimbene the man disappears suddenly and finally from our sight. But his outlook on the Italy of St. Francis and Dante is more interesting even than his personality: and many of his anecdotes, omitted hitherto as bearing only remotely on his life, are of extreme importance for the light they throw on contemporary society. I will therefore summarize these briefly here, with only such outside illustrations as are strictly necessary to give them their full significance.
I must begin by repeating that our author’s love of small details and his familiar style have blinded some critics to his true authority as a chronicler. Miss Macdonell, for instance, complains that “the solemnity with which his judgments on men are received, is absurd;” but it is abundantly evident that, apart from her frequent failure to understand Salimbene’s own words, she lacks the knowledge of other contemporary authorities which is necessary to form a sound opinion on this subject. It is natural enough that his lively style should at first suggest doubts of his accuracy. Yet, on comparing him closely with the most valuable of his contemporaries — distinguished Churchmen who wrote under a strong sense of responsibility — we find that his judgments on the principal figures and institutions of his time coincide in the main with theirs. St. Bonventura, Roger Bacon, Adam Marsh, Bishop Thomas of Cantimpré, Cæsarius the novice-master of Heisterbach, have penned sadder words on the whole than Salimbene. The private Register of Archbishop Eudes Rigaud, like many other strictly official documents, bears the same testimony. Joinville, if we read him carefully from end to end, gives us an equally sad impression of the past, and equal hope, by comparison, for our own much-abused age. Salimbene is not less trustworthy as a historian for being instinct to his finger-tips with that life which most medieval chroniclers so sadly lack: and indeed his most startling 240 pictures are corroborated by independent witnesses from his own and the next two centuries.
There is enough in Salimbene’s more strictly autobiographical pages to show the general reader as much as he needs to realize nowadays of those barbarous and incessant wars which made Italy so miserable not only in Dante’s day, but for generations before and after him. Moreover, Salimbene’s judgments show us how little respect sober men often felt for the leaders on either side — for the Emperor and his princes or the Pope and his Legates. He could not help seeing some good both in Frederick and in Manfred, as he frankly confesses: but in his youthful days of Joachism he had looked upon Frederick as Antichrist (174), though in later life he thought this somewhat exaggerated (362). Still, he always felt a mystery of evil about him, both in his birth and in his death: though his silence shows that Villani’s and Dante’s legends on both these subjets are of later growth than his day. To Salimbene, Costanza was imply a femme incomprise: and his version of her marriage is more consonant with known facts than Villani’s. (358) “King William of Sicily on his deathbed bade his sons, I know not wherefore, never to marry their sister Costanza: wherefore they kept her by them until the 30th year of her age. But she was a froward woman, and troubled her brothers’ wives and their whole household. So, considering that the Wise Man said truly, ‘It is better to sit in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman and in a common house,’ they said among themselves, ‘Let us marry our sister and put her far away from us.’ ” Although Costanza was 20 years younger at her marriage than Villani imagined, and only 40 when Frederick was born, yet already in Salimbene’s day his enemies believed him a supposititious child. (43) “Now Frederick was born at Jesi; and it was noised abroad concerning him that he was the son of a baker in that city, for the Empress Constance was aged and advanced in years [multorum erat dierum et multum annosa] when she espoused the Emperor Henry; nor is she said to have had any son or daughter but this one; wherefore it was said that she took him from his father (having first feigned herself great with child) and took him to herself that she might be thought to have brought him forth: which I am led to believe by three things. First, that women are indeed wont to do thus, as I remember oft-times to have found. Secondly, that Merlin wrote of him ‘The second Frederick [shall be] of marvellous and unhoped-for birth’; thirdly, that King John [of Brienne], who was King of Jerusalem and father-in-law to the Emperor, one day with wrathful soul and 241 frowning brow called the Emperor in his own French speech the son of a butcher, since he would fain have slain his kinsman Gualterotto. And because the Emperor could not compass his wish with poison, therefore it was to be done with the edge of the sword, while they sat together at a game of chess: for the Emperor feared lest by some chance the kingdom of Jerusalem [or rather of Sicily] should fall to Gualterotto. But these things were not hidden from King John, who went and caught his nephew by the arm as he played with the Emperor, and withdrew him from the game and reproached the Emperor bitterly in his own French tongue, saying: ‘Devil! son of a butcher!’ For King John was tall and stout and of great stature, strong and brave and skilled in war, so that he might seem a second Charlemagne: and when with his mace he smote on every side in battle, then the Saracens fled from before his face as though they had seen the devil, or a lion ready to devour them. Wherefore concerning him and Master Alexander [of Hales], who was the most learned man in the world and was of our Order and taught at Paris — in their praise (I say) a song was made half in French and half in Latin, which I have oft-times sung: and it began
Avent tutt mantenent
Nostris florent temporibus.
This King John, while he was being armed by his servants for battle, would tremble as a rush quakes in the water. And when they asked him wherefore he thus trembled, since he was a stout and mighty fighter against his enemies in battle, then he would answer that he cared not for his body, but feared lest his soul were not well with God. This is as the Wise Man saith [Prov. xxviii. 14, and Ecclus. xviii. 27]: moreover St. Jerome saith “it is prudent to fear whatsoever may come to pass” . . . . When this King John went into battle and was heated in fight, none durst stand before his face, but they turned aside when they saw him, for he was a brave and mighty warrior.” The chronicler Pipinus, as I have already noted, gives another cause of quarrel between John and Frederick: but there is no reason to doubt that both are true.
To Salimbene, as to Dante, Frederick was a man of heroic proportions in his very sins. (348) “Of faith in God he had none; he was crafty, wily, avaricious, lustful, malicious, wrathful; and yet a gallant man at times, when he would show his kindness or courtesy; full of solace, jocund, delightful, fertile in devices. He knew to read, write, and sing, and to make songs 242 and music. He was a comely man, and well-formed, but of middle stature. I have seen him, and once I loved him, for on my behalf he wrote to Brother Elias, Minister-General of the Friars Minor, to send me back to my father. Moreover, he knew to speak with many and varied tongues, and, to be brief, if he had been rightly Catholic, and had loved God and His Church, he would have had few emperors his equals in the world.” He goes on to enumerate several specimens of the Emperor’s “curiosities” or “excesses,” though for sheer weariness he will not tell them all. Frederick cut off a notary’s thumb who had spelt his name Fredericus instead of Fridericus. Like Psammetichus in Herodotus, he made linguistic experiments on the vile bodies of hapless infants, “bidding foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no wise to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments.” Again, “when he saw the Holy Land, (which God had so oft-times commended as a land flowing with milk and honey and most excellent above all lands,) it pleased him not, and he said that if the God of the Jews had seen his lands of Terra di Lavoro, Calabria, Sicily, and Apulia, then He would not so have commended the land which He promised to the Jews. But Ecclesiasticus saith: ‘Speak nothing rashly, nor let thy heart be swift to utter thy speech before God: for God is in the heaven, and thou upon earth; wherefore let thy words be few.’ Take an example of that clerk who uttered against God such words as should not have been said: wherefore he was smitten forthwith by a thunderbolt from heaven, and fell dead. His fourth excess was that he oft-times sent one Nicholas against his will to the bottom of the Faro, and oft-times he returned thence; and, wishing to know in sooth whether he had indeed gone down to the bottom and returned thence, he threw in his golden cup and found it and brought it back, whereat the Emperor marvelled. But when he would have sent him again, he said: ‘Send me not thither, I pray you; for the sea is so troubled in the depth that, if ye send me, I shall never return.’ Nevertheless the Emperor sent him; so there he perished and never returned: for in those sea-depths are great fishes at times of tempests, and rocks and many wrecks of ships, as he himself reported. He might have 243 said to Frederick in Jonah’s words ‘Thou hast cast me into the deep, in the heart of the sea, and the flood encompassed me about; all thy whirlpools and waves went over me.’ This Nicholas was a Sicilian who once grievously offended his mother and provoked her to wrath; wherefore she cursed him that he should ever live in the water and come seldom to land; and so it came about. Note that the Faro is an arm of the sea in Sicily hard by the city of Messana, where there is a times a mighty rush of waters, and great whirlpools which suck ships under and drown them; and therein are Syrtes and Charybdes and rocks of vast size, and many misfortunes. And on the other shore of this strait is the city of Reggio, whereof St. Luke writeth (Acts xxviii. 13). All that I have above written I have heard a hundred times from Brethren of Messana, who have been close friends of mine: for I had in our Order a cousin-german, Brother Giacomino da Cassio of Parma, who dwelt at Messana and told me those things which I have written above.1 Moreover, Frederick had likewise other excesses and curiosities and cursed ways and incredulities, whereof I have written some in another chronicle: as of the man whom he shut up alive in a cask until he died therein, wishing thereby to show that the soul perished utterly, as if he might say the word of Isaiah ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ For he was an Epicurean; wherefore, partly of himself and partly through his wise men, he sought out all that he could find in Holy Scripture which might make for the proof that there was no other life after death, as for instance ‘Thou shalt destroy them, and not build them up’: and again ‘Their sepulchres shall be their houses for ever’ ” [also Ps. xxxviii. 14, Ecclus. xlviii. 12, Ps. cvi. 5, Ecc. iii. 19-22, “and many such, which Solomon said in Ecclesiastes in the person of carnal folk:” after which Salimbene quotes several contrary texts, “all of which make for the destruction of the credulity of Frederick and his wise men, who believed that there was no life but this present, in order that they might the more freely employ themselves in their fleshly lusts and wretched ways.”] “Sixthly, he fed two men most excellently at dinner, one of whom he sent forthwith to sleep, and the other to hunt; and that same evening he caused them to be disembowelled in his presence, wishing to know which had digested the better: and it was judged by the physicians in favour of him who had slept. Seventhly and lastly, being one day in his palace, he asked of Michael Scot * the astrologer how 244 far he was from the sky, and Michael having answered as it seemed to him, the Emperor took him to other parts of his kingdom as if for a journey of pleasure, and kept him there several months, bidding meanwhile his architects and carpenters secretly to lower the whole of his palace hall. Many days afterwards, standing in that same palace with Michael, he asked of him, as if by the way, whether he were indeed so far from the sky as he had before said. Whereupon he made his calculations, and made answer that certainly either the sky had been raised, or the earth lowered; and then the Emperor knew that he spake truth.” (350 foll.) Yet Salimbene is careful to note that Frederick’s cruelties might justly be excused by the multitude of his open and secret enemies, and that he had a saving sense of humour. (353) “He was wont at times to make mocking harangues before his court in his own palace, speaking for example after the fashion of the Cremonese ambassadors, who were sent to him by their fellow-citizens; one of whom would begin by praising the other with manifold words of commendation, saying ‘This lord [my fellow] is noble, wise, rich, and powerful’: and so after commending each other the ambassadors would at last come to their proper business. Moreover, he would suffer patiently the scoffings and mockings and revilings of jesters, and often feign that he heard not. For one day, after the destruction of Victoria by the men of Parma, he smote his hand on the hump of a certain jester, saying ‘My Lord Dallio, when shall this box be opened?’ to whom the oher answered, ‘’Tis odds if it be ever opened now, for I lost the key in Victoria.’ The Emperor, hearing how this jester recalled his own sorrow and shame, groaned and said, with the Psalmist, ‘I was troubled, and I spoke not.’ If any had spoken such a jest against Ezzelino da Romano, he would without doubt have let him be blinded or hanged. Again, another time he suffered patiently that Villano da Ferro mocked him at the siege of Berceto; for the Emperor asked him how men named the mangonels and catapults which were there, and Villano gave him for their names certain mocking words, namely, ‘sbegna’ and ‘spegnoino.’ But the Emperor did but smile and turn away.” Moreover, he could himself play cruel practical jokes (591) “For one day, when he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX and had come to certain parts where was the Patriarch of Aquileia, the Lord Berthold, whom I have seen and known, a comely man and uncle to St. Elizabeth of Hungary, — then the Emperor sent word to him to come and hear Mass with him. But the Patriarch, knowing all this, called his barber and caused himself to be bled before he had seen the 245 Emperor’s messenger; then he sat down and began to dine, and sent word to the Emperor that he could not go and hear Mass with him, since he had been bled and was set down to meat. So the Emperor sent a second time, bidding him come forthwith, all impediments notwithstanding: whereupon, willing to redeem his vexation, he humbly obeyed, and came and heard Mass with him.” To hear Mass with an excommunicate was of course a mortal sin, which the poor Patriarch had only aggravated by the trick of beginning his dinner beforehand: and the anecdote gains point from what Salimbene tells us on another page of the victim’s grandeur. He has been speaking of superfluity in food and dress; and he goes on (281) “It is reported, and truly reported (and this is altogether superfluous) that the Patriarch of Aquileia, on the first day of Lent, has at his table forty dishes, that is forty varieties and courses of food: and thus one less is set on every day until Holy Saturday: and he says that he does this for the honour and glory of his Patriarchate. Truly then Patriarchs of Aquileia took not this example from Christ, who fasted forty days and forty nights in the desert.” The Patriarch was honourable and glorious, and uncle to St. Elizabeth; and to hear Mass under these conditions was to crucify Christ afresh: but the Emperor was the Emperor, who (if he had been driven to it) was quite capable of having the great churchman ripped open to see whether the excuse of dinner was true.
That superabundant awe of the Emperor, which our Chronicler shared with so many others of his time, made him ready to attribute to Joachim’s and Merlin’s and the Sibyl’s prophecies an authority scarcely second to that of Holy Writ. (174) “I could never have believed that he was indeed dead, had I not heard it with mine own ears from the mouth of Pope Innocent IV, preaching at Ferrara in full concourse of people; for I was a Joachite, believing and expecting and hoping that Frederick would do yet more evil.” So widespread was the reluctance to believe in the Emperor’s final disappearance, that he was twice personated after his death: and ambassadors came from far countries to see the second of these pretenders. Even in his old age, Salimbene attributes the death of Pope Gregory X and Honorius IV, in part at least, to their flying in the face of Providence by attempting to set up new Emperors after Frederick’s death, for it had been prophesied “by some Sibyl, as men say,” that the Empire should end with him, (349: 494: 629).
Next to the Emperor and to St. Louis, the most strikingly kingly figure of the book is Charles of Anjou. Salimbene shows mingled admiration and repulsion for “him of the manly nose.” He 246 mentions neither the cynical greed with which Charles robbed unhappy Crusaders wrecked on his coasts,2 nor his reputed guilt as the poisoner of St. Thomas Aquinas — but he repeatedly censures his ambtion and violence and those of his French knights. At the same time, he bears the most emphatic testimny to his valour (599). A Campanian champion was reputed invincible in single combat: and all the knight-errant in Charles’ soul was grieved to hear this man’s praise. He therefore challenged the knight incognito, brushing aside impatiently his son’s prudent quotation from Ecclesiasticus, “He that is high hath another higher, and there are others still higher than these.” The champions fought like heroes of romance, until Charles was smitten senseless from his horse; and the knight, horrified to find who it was that he had conquered, fled the country to avoid the vengeance which too often awaited a successful champion after medieval tournaments. Charles, on recovering his senses, was anxious to renew the fight: and his son had much ado to quiet him with a “Peace, father, for the leeches say that ye have two ribs of your body broken.” Salimbene has much also to say of the abortive duel between Charles and Peter of Aragon: of Peter’s pitiful evasions, and the accusations of treachery against Charles. (517 ff.) Yet Peter, for all his unknightly shifts on this occasion, was not unworthy to rest by his rival’s side in that Valey of Flowers where Dante saw them on the brink of Purgatory. He was the hero of one of the earliest recorded Alpine ascents, climbing to the top of Canigou for mere adventurous curiosity. (598) A thunderstorm broke over the party half-way, and the other knights “fell to the ground and became as dead men for the fear and anguish that was come upon them.” Peter had much ado to tempt them a little further upwards; breath and courage alike deserted them, and he was obliged to finish the ascent alone. At the top he found a lake: “and when he had cast a stone into the waters, a monstrous dragon of loathly aspect issued therefrom, hovering round in the air until the face of heaven was darkened with the vapour of his breath: whereupon Peter went down again. Methinks that this achievement of his may be reckoned with those of Alexander.”
Salimbene gives only the briefest glimpses of our own Edward I, first as a crusader, and then on his way back from the Holy Land to take possession of his crown: but he records two characteristic anecdotes of Henry III. (305) The pious King humbled himself to welcome John of Parma, and kiss him as an equal, silencing the murmurs of his knights with the reminder tat this was for the honour of God and St. Francis. But then 247 Henry “was reputed a simple man.” One day a jester cried aloud in his presence “Hear ye, hear ye, my masters! Our king is like unto the Lord Jesus Christ.” “How so?” asked the King, hugely flattered. “Because our Lord was as wise at the moment of His conception as when he was 30 years old; so likewise our King is as wine now as when he was a little child.” Henry, like other weak men, had his fits of sudden fury; and he ordered the jester to be strung up out of hand. His servants, however, only went through an empty form of execution, and bade the unlucky fool keep carefully out of the way until the King should have forgotten. Of Manfred, again, he tells us disappointingly little, though he one implies a real sympathy at bottom for that bright and unfortunate figure, and his words go far to explain the feeling even among the Guelfs which dictated Dante’s “per lor maladizion sì non se perde.” (472) Of all the princes of his time, our good friar seems to have had the greatest admiration for the above-quoted John of Brienne. Not only was John the hero of almost as many martial legends as our own Cœur-de-Lion; but he was persuaded to join the Franciscan Order on his death bed; and our chronicler is convinced that “he would have persevered in the Order all the days of his life, if God had prolonged his days.” (44)
I will not attempt to follow Salimbene from point to point among the scores of petty princes who fought nominally for Pope or Emperor, but really for their own hand: yet much must be told of these men if we are to understand the age of Dante. Perhaps the most striking figures in the Inferno are the great Guelf and Ghibelline leaders. We find them in the Tombs of Fire or the River of Blood, or bound to their trees of anguish in the Forest of the Harpies; and we long to know more of their life on earth. What brought these great soldiers and statesmen to this dolorous pass? By what stealthy temptations, what mad passions, what fatal pressure of circumstances, did Satan gain such empire over these souls for whom Christ died? Our footnotes give us a few dry sentences with a couple of dates; and even Benvenuto da Imola, the great collector of Dante legends, too often fails us in our sorest need. The real commentator on Dante is Salimbene, not only directly by what he tells us of actual actors in the Commedia, but still more by his living portraits of their compeers. Yet his pictures of these men (like the words of all free-spoken medieval churchmen) are most unflattering to knightly society. From Ezzelino downwards — Ezzelino, who was the devil’s chosen servant, as St. Francis was the chosen servant of Christ — there is scarcely one for whom we can feel 248 real respect. Ezzelino once slaughtered in cold blood a crowd of prisoners variously reckoned, no doubt with medieval exaggeration, at eleven or twelve thousand. (367) “I believe in truth that no such wicked man has been from the beginning of the world unto our own days: for all men trembled at him as a rush quivers in the water, and not without cause: for he who lived to-day was not sure of the morrow. The father would seek out and slay his son, and the son his father, or any of his kinsfolk, to please this man: he would submit ladies to the foulest mutilations, and cast them into prison with their sons and daughters to perish of hunger.” Scarcely lest devilish was his brother Alberigo, on whom, when at last he fell, his infuriated enemies inflicted cruelties more bestial than those he himself had exercised on them and theirs. Neither age nor sex was spared in these civil wars: to Papalist and Imperialist alike, death or bodily torture were not enough for an enemy, whose last moments must be still further embittered by the anguish and shame of his womenfolk; and it was probably Alberigo’s deathbed repentance and horrible fate which moved Dante to spare him the tortures of the River of Blood. “He was indeed a limb of Satan and a son of iniquity,” writes Salimbene; “but he died an evil death with his sons and daughters. For those who slew them tore the legs and arms of his little sons from their living bodies, in the sight of their parents, and therewith they smote the father’s and mother’s mouths. Afterwards they bound his wife and daughters to stakes and burned them, though they were noble maidens, and the fairest in the world, and guiltless: yet men so hated their parents that they would not spare their innocence. For the father and mother had brought terrible evil and horrible affliction on the Mark of Treviso: wherefore men came to Alberigo with pincers, and there in the market-place each tore a piece from his living flesh; thus they destroyed his body in mockery and scorn and grievous torments. For he had slain this man’s cousin, that man’s brother, another’s father or son; moreover, he had laid so grievous taxes and fines on that land that they must needs tear down their own houses and lay the boards and beams and chests and casks and barrels on barges, and send them for sale to Ferrara, that they might have money to pay the taxes and redeem themselves. This I saw with my own eyes. And he feigned to be at war with his own brother Ezzelino, that he might the more securely do these evil deeds: nor did he spare to slay his own fellow-citizens and subjects. Moreover, in one day he hanged 25 of the greatest men of Treviso, who had in no wise offended or harmed him: but, because he feared they might harm him, 249 therefore he removed them from before his face by basely hanging them. And at the same time he caused 30 noble ladies, their wives and daughters and sisters, to come and see them and to be seen of them while they were hanged; moreover, he would have cut off the ladies’ noses, but this was spared them by the grace of one whom he called his bastard son, but who was not. Yet, even so, their garments were cut away in the most foul and shameful wise3; and they were thus shown to the men who were to be hanged. And these were hanged so near to the ground that the ladies were driven among their feet: and they in the bitterness of their soul smote the ladies’ faces as they died with their legs and feet: whose life was pain and anguish to them for this foul mockery. After this, Alberigo caused them to be ferried over the river Sila, that they might go whither they would; and with the shreds of garments which were left they bound themselves about the middle like wild folk; and all that day they went 15 miles through an untilled land, among thorns and briars and nettles and burrs and pricks and thistles, while the flies stung their bare bodies; and thus they went weeping, as indeed they had cause; and withal they had nought to eat. But God’s help must needs come where man’s help fails, as we see in the story of Susanna, and in the case of Esaias who, while he was being sawn asunder with a wood-saw and was in vehement thirst, and his tormentors would give him no water to drink at his request, the Lord sent water from on high which flowed into his mouth. So these ladies came that day, about nightfall, to the lagoons of the Venetian Sea: and behold! they were aware all at once of a fisher alone in his little boat, to whom they cried for help: but he was sore afraid, thinking to see some diabolical illusion, or a crew of spirits, or monsters of the sea at least; but at last by God’s grace, and for their instant prayers, he came to them. So when they had told their whole story and all their woes, he said ‘I pity you sore, nor will I leave you till God give you help: yet, since my little boat may bear but one at a time, therefore will I bring you one by one and set you down on dry land in Saldino; for if ye should stay here this night the wolves would devour you. Then on the morrow, before daybreak, I will get me a greater boat and bring you to St. Mark’s church at Venice; where I hope God will give you help.’ In brief, he brought all over but one, the last, whom he led to his fisher’s hut and fed her to her heart’s content, and treated her with all kindness and courtesy and humanity and charity and honesty: and on the morrow he exactly fulfilled all his promises. So when he had brought them into St. Mark’s church, he came to the Lord Ottaviano, 250 Cardinal of the Roman Church and Legate in Lombardy, who at that time was at Venice; to whom he told the whole tale of these ladies and of their misfortunes, and where they now were. So the Cardinal came forthwith to them and gave them to eat; and he sent word throughout the whole city that all should come to him swiftly and hastily without delay in the church of St. Mark: both men and women, small and great, young men and maidens, old men and young: for he would tell them (he said) such things as they had never heard, and show them such sights as they had never seen. What then? swifter than the tale may be told, the whole city of Venice was gathered together to him on the Piazza of St. Mark, and from his lips they heard all the aforesaid story: and when he had finished speaking, he brought forward those ladies, in such foul array and such nakedness as that accursed Alberigo had devised to their dishonour; and this he did to provoke the citizens unto the greater hatred against that tyrant, and pity towards these ladies. So when the Venetians heard the story, and saw the ladies as naked as I have said, then they raised a great shout and cried, ‘Let him die! let that accursed man die! Let him and his wife be burnt alive, and his whole seed be rooted out from this world.’ Then, by the common consent of the whole city, both men and women, he preached a crusade against that accursed Alberigo. So they went with one mind against Alberigo and wrought him much evil, yet they destroyed him not utterly: howbeit within a short time after that crusade he was utterly destroyed with his seed, and suffered justly the aforesaid mockery and torments and woes. For one day, having lost his hawk, and being under the open sky, he made so foul and boorish a gesture at the heaven, in sign of mockery and contumely and derision, thinking thereby to take vengeance on God, as may scarcely be told: moreover, when he was come home, he went forthwith into the church and defiled God’s altar in unspeakable wise, at that very spot where the Lord’s Body is consecrated. Moreover his wife would call other noble ladies and matrons harlots and such like names, nor did her husband ever rebuke her and say, ‘Wherefore sayest thou thus?’ Nay rather, but he heeded it not, and she took heart from his heedlessness: so that was a just vengeance which the men of Treviso wreaked upon them. But after the Cardinal had ended his sermon to the Venetians, then he commended those ladies to the citizens as he would have commended himself: and they succoured them most liberally both in food and in clothing: moreover the men of Treviso spared that man by whose grace the ladies had not lost their noses, and they suffered him to live and 251 did him much kindness, whereof he was worthy; for he oft-times restrained those tyrants from many iniquities which they would have done.”
These two brothers are only the first in evil pre-eminence among a whole host of petty tyrants whom Salimbene enumerates under the year 1250, and to whom he frequently refers elsewhere. There, first, is Obizzo of Este — the flaxen head which emerges side by side with Ezzelino’s shaggy black locks from Dante’s River of Blood. In 1290 Obizzo became tyrant of Reggio; and this explains why Salimbene’s very unflattering description of him (167) has been so mutilated by some cautious hand that it is only legible here and there. To begin with, he was believed to have been a supposititious child, intruded by a trick into the noble inheritance of Este. Furthermore, “he caused his own mother to be drowned: for she had been a washerwoman, and the buffoons were wont to put him to shame for his base birth and his ignoble mother. Moreover it was reported of him that he violated the wives and daughters of both nobles and commons at Ferrara; and he was ill-famed of many foul and incestuous connexions. Many other evils he did, and many shall he receive from God, unless he converted to Him. He was so intimate a friend of the Cardinal Ottobono, who was afterwards Pope Adrian V, that he took his near kinswoman to wife: and his firstborn was the Lord Azzo [Inf. xviii, 56] who had a wife of the kin of Pope Nicholas III, a Roman by birth.” We get brief glimpses of other figures familiar to us in the “Commedia” — Pietro Pagani (370), whose wife and sister were both Salimbene’s spiritual daughters: Salinguerra, (165) “who was wont to say ‘He hath given the heaven to the Lord of Heaven, but the earth to the children of men,’ as who should boast of his own might here on earth. Yet he was drowned in the lagoons of Venice; and wise as he was, he had a foolish son, as Rehoboam was to Solomon.” We get some glimpses of Buoso da Duera, who (363) “did much evil to others, and in the end himself also received much evil.” Pinamonte, again, is mentioned at some length (436 ff): “he was feared as much as the Devil: he was an old man and altogether bald-headed, and had a huge multitude of children; among whom was a certain Friar Minor, Brother Philip by name, and good and honest man and Lector in theology, who was once Inquisitor, and took and scattered and destroyed many heretics of the district called Sermilione.” To him, in 1283, the Cardinal-Legate Bernardo sent two friars as ambassadors for the sake of peace: “and the Lord Pinamonte received them courteously, both for their Order’s sake and for 252 the Cardinal’s: notwithstanding it had been ordained that whosoever should bring a letter into Mantua should be beheaded. And he sent to the Friars Minor, for these messengers’ sake, a waggon-load of good wine, and the half of a flitch of bacon; and one of his sons sent to the Brethren a great and glorious pasty, with may other gifts. So the Brethren returned with the Lord Pinamonte’s letters: what might be contained therein, God only knoweth. Moreover the Lord Pinamonte was wont to boast that he had never had any ill-fortune, but all things had succeeded has he had wished: which was a great folly, as the wise man saith in Proverbs [xxvii, 1].” Of Guido Vecchio da Polenta, father to the ill-fated Francesca da Rimini and grandfather to Dante’s last patron Guido Novello, Salimbene gives us one of his few anecdotes worthy of the romantic conception of the Age of Chivalry. (606) After relating an instance of bitter and somewhat ungenerous rivalry, he goes on: “The Lord Guido da Polenta of the city of Ravenna wrought far better than this, in that he avenged himself sufficiently, yet would not pass beyond measure. For when he was yet a boy, and the Emperor kept his father in chains, the Lord Guido Malabocca, brother of the Count Roger of Bagncavallo, persuaded the Emperor to cut off the father’s head; wherefore the Lord Guido, when he was grown to man’s estate, cut off in return the head of Guido Malabocca. Now, in process of time, as he was journeying to Bagnacavallo with a great following of armed men, and those who were his fellows on that journey would have persuaded him that he might now rid himself wholly of the Count Roger and never fear him more, yet he answered and said, ‘We have done enough: suffice it then that we have done this far: for evil may ever be done, but afterwards it may not be undone.’ And so he suffered him to go free.” The very emphasis with which the chronicler records this trait of ordinary generosity is significant; and indeed all intimate records of the Middle Ages give very much the same unfavourable picture of the feudal nobility. Not that they were unworthy of the place they occupied in their own times and among their own circumstances: — but what circumstances and what times! No more damning judgment can be passed on medieval society than the continual cry of the apologist, perfectly true within its own limits, “You must not judge the man or the deed in that century as you judge them in ours!” Yet the best man of their own age made less allowance for them than we. Cardinal Jacques de Vitry, when he comes to speak of the sufferings of the common folk in the 13th century, exclaims outright “How mad are the men who rejoice when sons 253 are born to their lords!”4 Page after page of Salimbene’s book tells us of reckless bloodshed, cowardly murders, and treachery. Like the Knight of La Tour Landry, [p. 2 and passim] he shows us plainly and frequently the risks which a lady’s honour ran in noble houses.5 (pp. 27, 67, 417, 429] His average noble, like those of contemporary chronicles and even of many medieval romances, answers pretty well to the Byronic sarcasm — not quite a felon, yet but half a knight. We have the knightly forger of a will (1287-398), and the usual knightly Bluebeard. (483) “The Lord Jacobino di Palude on divers occasions slew many of his own house, namely, the father of his son-in-law, and his son-in-law, and the son of his own daughter, a little child still at the nurse’s breast, whom he dashed against the earth, and his cousin-german, the Lord Arverio, with his two sons, and likewise another of his own house.”
Salimbene is exceptional in giving us no hint of the frequency with which ladies were beaten in private life by their fathers and husbands; but we have already had glimpses of their fate in time of war — and when was there not war? The study of fresh documents makes it plainer every day that theory and practice were as widely divorced in medieval chivalry as in religion. Sacchetti, who was born about the time of Dante’s death, complains repeatedly that money would buy knighthood for the vilest — mechanics, bakers, “usurers and cozening ribalds.” His contemporary Fra Giordano da Rivalto implies the same: and Salimbene also shows us how great a part usury often played in family greatness (609). It was a mortal sin, of course; and few figures are more pitiful in the Inferno than the usurers writing and shifting under the rain of fire; yet, as the good Benvenuto complains in his commentary, “He who taketh usury goeth to hell: and he who taketh none liveth on the verge of beggary.” Moreover, there was always good hope of escaping the doloroso foco: it was only necessary to make a last confession to the friars and leave them some of the ill-gotten gains for conscience-money. We see this even in Salimbene: Ubertino and the Spirituals complain of it as one of the worst scandals in the Order; and St. Bonaventura sadly admits something of the impeachment.6 Though this process of buying nobility marks the beginning of a new world, yet the people in general were scarcely happier under this new aristocracy than they had been under the old. Canon Knox-Little, with even more neglect than usual of plain facts, asserts that the Franciscan Tertiary system broke the power of Feudalism before 1230, and had “emancipated the middle classes and the poor from feudal tyranny“ before the death of Frederick 254 in 1250. (pp. 217-220). No doubt the Tertiary system exercised a real democratic influence in the long run; but it is almost incredible that anyone professing an acquaintance with Italian history could bring himself to write “What now? Military service was swept away.” To St. Bonaventura, the Tertiaries were mainly an ungrateful burden.7 Often as Salimbene tells us of the Friars’ services, either as peacemakers or as combatants against the pre-eminently feudal party, he has not a word to say for the Tertiaries: while for their aristocratic imitators, the Frati Godenti, he has as little sympathy as Dante had. (467) “In the year 1261 was composed and ordained the Rule of the knights of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by the mediation of Brother Ruffo Gurgone of Piacenza, who for many years had been Minister Provincial of Bologna, and was then a Penitentiary at the Papal court. The Order was founded by Loderingo degli Andaloi of Bologna, who was its Prior and Prelate, and by other honourable and noble men. These knights are by the country-folk scoffingly called ‘Godenti,’ as who should say ‘They are only become Frati that they may keep their goods for themselves alone, according to the word of that miser of whom Ecclesiasticus speaketh (xi. 18). Moreover I remember that this Order was founded in Parma at the time of the Alleluia, (that is in the days of the other great devotion), by the means of Brother Bartholomew of Vicenza of the Friars Preachers, who in those days had high rank in Parma, a good man who was afterward Bishop of Vincenza, his own native city. And the aforesaid Brethren had the same habit as these [Godenti], and a white saddle and a red cross: there was only this difference, that the Parmese Order were called Knights of Jesus Christ, and the Godenti, Knights of St. Mary. But the former lasted and endured many years, and at length failed: for I saw both their beginning and their end, and few entered into their Order. Likewise these Godenti are indeed multiplied like bread in the hand of a hungry man: and they think themselves to have done a great and noble deed in taking this habit: but they are little esteemed at the Court of Rome; and this for four reasons. First, they have never used their wealth to build monasteries or hospitals, or bridges, or churches, nor are they found to have done other works of piety. Secondly, that they have ravished much of others’ goods, as great men were wont to do, nor have they restored their ill-gotten gains. Thirdly, after they have wasted their wealth in lavish expenses upon many vanities, and in banqueting with buffoons rather than with Christ’s poor, they now beg of the Roman church and would fain get from the Pope and enter into the convents of better Religious than themselves, 255 and expel these latter from their dwellings. Fourthly, for that they are most avaricious men. Fifthly and lastly,” [for our chronicler finds an extra reason], “I see not whereunto they serve God’s church or what profits they bring, unless perchance that they save their own souls, which St. Jerome calleth ‘a holy boorishness, profitable to itself alone.’ Enough of this matter: now must we rejoice with them that rejoice [cum Gaudentibus] and weep with those that weep, as the Apostle saith.”
In spite of Salimbene’s many aristocratic friends; in spite of the consciousness of noble birth which never deserted him and coloured all his views, you may seek vainly from end to end of his long chronicle for more than one or two instances of real chivalry. Of mere vulgar barons of prey there are plenty: Ghiberto da Gente, for instance, whom the Chronicon Parmense accuses of abusing his judicial power to torture an innocent noble after failing to seduce his daughter; and who after coming into power with the help of the butchers of Parma, showed himself as grasping and close-fisted as any nouveau riche of our own country (448) “He was reedy and avaricious beyond all measure; so that, during his dominion, no man in Parma might sell any sort of victual except publicly; and he made himself a partner with all who sold, that he might get his share of gain from all. Moreover he was so stingy that, when a knight of the court [i.e., jongleur] had begged him for a gift, he said he would give him a shilling of Bologna to buy himself figs withal. I myself experienced and proved and saw and knew his boorishness and avarice and filthy stinginess [merditatem] in his villa of Campigine; yet I had gone thither on his own service, with Brother Bernardino da Buzea.” There is Uberto Pallavicino, again, (344) “a puny and weakly old man, and one-eyed (for, while he was yet in his cradle, a cock had picked out one of his eyes), whom in former days I have seen so poor that he was proud to have two squires riding abroad with him on sorry jades”: yet by his courage and audacity he won city after city, built palace upon palace, (one of which was “like a town in itself”), and exchanged his barren wife, like any Henry VIII, for another who might bear him a son. We see too the truth of Joinville’s remark that many men of great pretensions belied their reputation in the hour of danger. Bartolino Tavernario, one of the greatest nobles in Parma, lived many days and nights” in such anguish of his life for fear of Pallavicino and other enemies that “when he heard noises by night — as indeed he heard many such — he would flee forth on horseback from his villa into the field and tarry there sleepless all night long in the open air, ready at any moment for flight.” 8 256 (604) Another, it is true, commanded Salimbene’s admiration by his coolness and courage under similar circumstances: for “one day when Pallavicino was to march with his 500 men-at-arms through one of the quarters of Parma, the Marchese Lupi bade a servant wash his feet in a tub under his portico in the very street; for he wished to show how he cared no more for Pallavicino than for a goat’s tail.” (605) Rare indeed is such a picture as this following, of one who might pass for a living illustration of Chaucer’s “verray parfit, gentil knyght.” “The Count [Lodovico] di San Bonifazio,, who should have been Lord of Verona, wandered through the world as an exile: yet he was wholly devoted to the Church party, a good man, and holy, and strong and doughty in arms, and skilled in war. In the year 1283 he lay dying, and by his testament he committed all his children into the hand of the lord Obizzo of Este, who received them courteously and treated them as his children, though formerly he loved not the count, for they had quarreled concerning the city of Mantua. So in the night following the count died in the presence of the Friars Minor, to whom he had confessed: and he ordered excellently for the health of his soul. And the citizens of Reggio spent liberally on his funeral, as for a noble man who had been their Podesta and had been driven from his possessions for the sake of the Church party. And all the Religious of Reggio and many nuns were at his funeral, and all the citizens with many foreigners, and the nobles of the city bore him on his bier. His body was clothed in scarlet with fair fur of vair and a splendid pall; and it was laid with the same magnificence on the Monday following in a fair tomb, exceeding fair, which the Commune had caused to be made at their own expense. His sword was by his side, and his gilded spurs on his feet, and a great purse at his belt of silk, and gloves on his hands, and on his head a most fair cap of vair and scarlet, and a mantle of scarlet trimmed with divers furs. And he left his charger and his armour to the Friars Minor. He was an honourable and holy man: so honourable that when he went through the city he never raised his eyes to look on any woman, whereat even the women and the fairest ladies marvelled. Moreover, on the anniversary of his death his wife sent a fair pall of purple samite for the altar of the Friars’ convent at Reggio, where her husband was buried. May his soul, by God’s mercy, rest in peace! Amen.” (368; 513).
* Dante. Inf. xx. 116. In spite of his later evil fame, he was honoured in his lifetime by two popes.
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