Renaissance in Italy
Chapter 79 : The amus.e.m.e.nts lasted two months, from May 1 until the end of the midsummer feast o

The amus.e.m.e.nts lasted two months, from May 1 until the end of the midsummer feast of S. John, patron of Florence. Later on, we read of two companies, the one dressed in yellow, the other in white, each led by their King, who filled the city with the sound of music, and wore garlands on their heads, and spent their time in dances and banquets.[54]

Again, when the n.o.bles, after the battle of Campaldino, had been finally suppressed, Villani once more returns to the subject of these companies, describing the booths of wood adorned with silken curtains, which were ranged along the streets and squares, for the accommodation of guests.[55] It will be observed that Villani connects the gladness of this season with the successive triumphs of the Guelf party and the suppression of the n.o.bles by the Popolo. Not only was Florence freed from grave anxieties and heavy expenses, caused by the intramural quarrels between Counts and Burghers, but the city felt the advent of her own prosperity, the realization of her true type, in their victorious close. Then the new n.o.ble cla.s.s, the _popolani gra.s.si_, a.s.sumed the gentle manners of chivalry, accommodating its customs to their own rich jovial ideal. Feudalism was extinguished; but society retained such portions of feudal customs as shed beauty upon common life. Tranquillity succeeded to strife, and the medieval city presented a spectacle similar to that which an old Greek lyrist has described among the gifts of Peace:

To mortal men Peace giveth these good things: Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song; The flame that springs On carven altars from fat sheep and kine, Slain to the G.o.ds in heaven; and, all day long, Games for glad youths, and flutes, and wreaths, and circling wine.

Then in the steely s.h.i.+eld swart spiders weave Their web and dusky woof: Rust to the pointed spear and sword doth cleave; The brazen trump sounds no alarms; Nor is sleep harried from our eyes aloof, But with sweet rest my bosom warms: The streets are thronged with beauteous men and young, And hymns in praise of Love like flames to heaven are flung.

Goro di Stagio Dati, writing at the end of the fourteenth century, has preserved for us an animated picture of Florence in May.[56] "When the season of spring appears to gladden all the world, every man bethinks him how to make fair the day of S. John, which follows at midsummer, and there is none but provides himself betimes with clothes and ornaments and jewels. Marriages and other joyous occasions are deferred until that time, to do the festival honor; and two months before the date, they begin to furnish forth the decorations of the races--dresses of varlets, banners, clarions, draperies, and candles, and whatsoever other offerings should be made. The whole city is in a bustle for the preparation of the Festa; and the hearts of young men and women, who take part therein, are set on naught but dancing, playing, singing, banqueting, jousting, and other fair amus.e.m.e.nts as though naught else were to be done in those weeks before the coming of S. John's Eve." The minute account of the ceremonies observed on S. John's Day which follows, need not be transcribed. Yet it may be well to call attention to a _quattrocento_ picture in the Florentine Academy, which ill.u.s.trates the customs of that festival. It is a long panel representing the marriage of an Adimari with a daughter of the Ricasoli. The Baptistery appears in the background; and on the piazza are ladies and young men, clad in damask and rich stuffs, with jewels and fantastic head-dresses, joining hands as though in act of dancing. Under the Loggia del Bigallo sit the trumpeters of the Signory, blowing clarions adorned with pennons. The lily of Florence is on these trappings. Serving men carry vases and basins toward the Adimari palace, in preparation for the wedding feast. A large portion of the square is covered in with a white and red awning.

If the chroniclers and painters enable us to form some conception of Florentine festivity, we are introduced to the persons and pastimes of these jovial companies by the poet Folgore da San Gemignano.[57] Two sets of his Sonnets have been preserved, the one upon the Months, addressed to the leader of a n.o.ble Sienese company; the other on the Days, to a member of a similar Florentine society. If we are right in reckoning Folgore among the poets of the thirteenth century, the facility and raciness of his style, its disengagement from Provencalizing pedantry, and the irony of his luxurious hedonism, prove to what extent the Tuscans had already left the middle age behind them.[58] Folgore, in spite of his spring fragrance and auroral freshness, antic.i.p.ates the spirit of the Renaissance. He is a thirteenth-century Boccaccio, without Boccaccio's enthusiasm for humane studies. Ideal love, asceticism, religion, the virtues of the Christian and the knight, are not for him. His soul is set on the enjoyment of the hour. But this materialism is presented in a form of art so temperate, with colors so refined and outlines so delicately drawn, that there is nothing repulsive in it. His selfishness and sensuality are related to Aretino's as the miniatures of a missal to Giulio Romano's Modes of Venus.[59]

In his sonnets on the Months, Folgore addresses the Brigata as "valiant and courteous above Lancelot, ready, if need were, with lance in rest, to spur along the lists of Camelot." In January he gives them good fires and warm chambers, silken coverlids for their beds, and fur cloaks, and sometimes in the day to sally forth and snow-ball girls upon the square:

Uscir di fora alcuna volta il giorno, Gittando della neve bella e bianca A le donzelle, che staran dattorno.

February brings the pleasures of the chase. March is good for fis.h.i.+ng, with merry friends at night, and never a friar to be seen:

Lasciate predicar i Frati pazzi, Ch'hanno troppe bugie e poco vero.

In April the "gentle country all abloom with fair fresh gra.s.s" invites the young men forth. Ladies shall go with them, to ride, display French dresses, dance Provencal figures, or touch new instruments from Germany, or roam through s.p.a.cious parks. May brings in tournaments and showers of blossoms--garlands and oranges flung from balcony and window--girls and youths saluting with kisses on cheeks and lips:

E pulzellette, giovene, e garzoni Basciarsi nella bocca e nelle guance; D'amore e di G.o.der vi si ragioni.

In June the company of youths and maidens quit the city for the villa, pa.s.sing their time in shady gardens, where the fountains flow and freshen the fine gra.s.s, and all the folk shall be love's servants. July finds them in town again, avoiding the sun's heat and wearing silken raiment in cool chambers where they feast. In August they are off to the hills, riding at morn and eve from castle to castle, through upland valleys where streams flow. September is the month of hawking; October of fowling and midnight b.a.l.l.s. With November and December winter comes again, and brings the fireside pleasures of the town. On the whole, there is too much said of eating and drinking in these sonnets; and the series concludes with a piece of inhumane advice:

E beffe far dei tristi cattivelli, E miseri cattivi sciagurati Avari: non vogliate usar con elli.

The sonnets on the Days breathe the same quaint medieval hedonism.[60]

Monday is the day of songs and love; our young man must be up betimes, to make his mistress happy:

Levati su, donzello, e non dormire; Che l'amoroso giorno ti conforta, E vuol che vadi tua donna a fruire.

Tuesday is the day of battles and pitched fields; but these are described in mock-heroics, which show what the poet really felt about the pleasure of them. Wednesday is the day of banquets, when ladies and girls are waited on by young men wearing amorous wreaths:

E donzelletti gioveni garzoni Servir, portando amorose ghirlande.

Thursday is the day of jousts and tourneys; Friday of hounds and horses; Sat.u.r.day, of hawks and fowling-nets; Sunday, of "dances and feats of arms in Florence":

Danzar donzelli, armeggiar cavalieri, Cercar Fiorenza per ogni contrada, Per piazze, per giardini, e per verzieri.

Such then was the joyous living, painted with colors of the fancy by a Tuscan poet, and realized in Florence at the close of that eventful century which placed the city under Guelf rule, in the plenitude of peace, equality, and wealth by sea and land. Distinctions of cla.s.s had been obliterated. The whole population enjoyed equal rights and equal laws. No man was idle; and though the simplicity of the past, praised by Dante and Villani, was yielding to luxury, still the pleasure-seekers were controlled by that fine taste which made the Florentines a race of artists.[61] This halcyon season was the boyhood of Dante and Giotto, the prime of Arnolfo and Cimabue. The buildings whereby the City of the Flower is still made beautiful above all cities of Italian soil, were rising. The people abode in industry and order beneath the sway of their elected leaders. Supreme in Tuscany, fearing no internal feuds, strong in their militia of thirty thousand burghers to repel a rival State, the Florentines had reached the climax of political prosperity. Not as yet had arisen that little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, above Pistoja, which was destined to plunge them into the strife of Blacks and Whites. During that interval of windless calm, in that fair city, where the viol and the lute were never silent through spring-tide and summer, the star of Italian poetry, that "crowning glory of unblemished wealth,"

went up and filled the heavens with light.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Giesebrecht, _De Litterarum studiis apud Italos primis medii aevi saeculis_, Berolini, 1845, p. 15.

[2] See Giesebrecht, _op. cit._ p. 19. Wippo recommends the Emperor to compel his subjects to educate their sons in letters and law. It was by such studies that ancient Rome acquired her greatness. In Italy at the present time, he says, all boys pa.s.s from the games of childhood into schools. It is only the Teutons who think it idle or disgraceful for a man to study unless he be intended for a clerical career.

[3] See Adolfo Bartoli, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. i.

pp. 142-158, and p. 167, on Guido delle Colonne and Qualichino da Spoleto.

[4] See above, vol. i. _Age of the Despots_, 2nd ed. chap. 2.

[5] The Italians did not even begin to reflect upon their _lingua volgare_ until the special characters and temperaments of their chief States had been fixed and formed. In other words, their social and political development far antic.i.p.ated their literary evolution. There remained no center from which the vulgar tongue could radiate, absorbing local dialects. Each State was itself a center, perpetuating dialect.

[6] See Du Meril, _Poesies Populaires Latines anterieures au douzieme Siecle_, Paris, 1843.

[7] Regarding the authors.h.i.+p of Latin hymns see the notes in Mone's _Hymni Latini Medii aevi_, Friburgi Brisgoviae, 1853, 3 vols. For the French origin of _Carmina Burana_ see _Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder der Mittelalters_, von Oscar Hubatsch, Gorlitz, 1870.

[8] Du Meril, _op. cit._ p. 268.

[9] Dante, _Paradiso_, xv.

[10] See _Age of the Despots_, p. 65.

[11] xvi. 115.

[12] See D'Ancona, _Poesia Popolare_, p. 11, note.

[13] See Carducci, _Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura n.a.z.ionale_, p.

29.

[14] Romagnoli has reprinted some specimens of the _Ill.u.s.tre et Famosa Historia di Lancillotto del Lago_, Bologna, 1862.

[15] Muratori in _Antiq. Ital. Diss._ x.x.x. p. 351, quotes a decree of the Bolognese Commune, dated 1288, to the effect that _Cantatores Francigenarum in plateis Communis omnino morari non possint_. They had become a public nuisance and impeded traffic.

[16] In the _Cento Novelle_ there are several Arthurian stories. The rubrics of one or two will suffice to show how the names were Italianized. _Qui conta come la damigella di Scalot mor per amore di Lanciallotto de Lac._ Nov. lx.x.xii. _Qui conta della reina Isotta e di m. Tristano di Leonis._ Nov. lxv. In the _Historia di Lancillotto_, cited above, Sir Kay becomes _Keux_; Gawain is _Gauuan_. In the _Tavola Ritonda_, _Morderette_ stands for Mordred, _Bando di Benoiche_ for Ban of Benwick, _Lotto d'Organia_ for Lot of Orkeney.

[17] See Adolfo Bartoli, _Storia della Letteratura Italiana_, vol. ii.

chapters iii., iv., v., vi., for a minute inquiry into this early dialectical literature.

[18] _Cento Novelle_, Milano, 1825, Nov. ii. and xxi.

[19] _Chronica Fr. Salimbene Parmensis, ord. min._, Parmae, 1857, p.

166.

[20] See the _Cronache Siciliane_, Bologna, Romagnoli, 1865, the first of which bears upon its opening paragraph the date 1358. Sicilian, it may be said in pa.s.sing, presents close dialectical resemblance to Tuscan. Even the superficial alteration of the Sicilian _u_ and _i_ into the Tuscan _o_ and _e_ (_e.g._ _secundu_ and _putiri_ into _secondo_ and _potere_) effaces the most obvious differences.

[21] The Italians wavered long between several metrical systems, before they finally adopted the hendecasyllabic line, which became the consecrated rhythm of serious poetry. Carducci, in his treatise _Intorno ad alcune Rime_ (Imola, Galeati, 1876), pp. 81-89, may be profitably consulted with regard to early Italian Alexandrines. He points out that Ciullo's _Tenzone_:

Rosa fresc' aulentissima--c'appar' in ver' l'estate:

and the Ballata of the Comari:

Pur bi' del vin, comadr'--e no lo temperare:

together with numerous compositions of the Northern Lombard school (Milan and Verona), are written in Alexandrines. In the Lombardo-Sicilian age of Italian literature, before Bologna acted as an intermediate to Florence, this meter bid fair to become acclimatized. But the Tuscan genius determined decisively for the hendecasyllabic.

[22] See the Appendix to this chapter on Italian hendecasyllables.